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‘World’s largest offshore wind farm’ produces power for the first time
(www.euronews.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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I've never read this sort of description of the amount of energy things produce before. That's very cool.
HARD disagree. You can make anything sound terrible or impressive this way, by changing the comparison point.
Honestly if they said "for 6 hours" rather than "for two days", would the effect not have been the exact same? Still sounds extremely impressive! Yet it's a 400% difference. The number they give is not a useful metric at all, it just sounds nice.
Such literary tactics are used all the time to make things sound good or bad, regardless of any kind of "objective" merit.
Often it's clueless journalists copy/pasting these "layman's comparisons" from marketing material, without contextualizing or giving hard numbers. That's extremely misleading and blindly plays into the marketer's/politician's hands.
At least this article gives hard figures (13 MW/turbine, 3.6 GW total, which is honestly most of the substance of the article) as well as an actually relevant comparison for the layman (2.5x more powerful than the previous biggest power plant in the UK). Which is good (both the numbers themselves and the article including them).
Anyway sorry for the rant but as someone with an interest in renewables, I see too much of this shitty journalistic practice. I guess it can be neat, but at best it's eye-catching but not actually useful information, and at worst it is just outright propaganda.
Pretty staggering statistic, offset by a disappointing lifespan for the entire project. Hopefully engineering in 35 years will have the best of both worlds. Bet you my electricity bill will still be high regardless 🤣
Hey this is a pretty common misconception! Project lifespan here is used like a financial term, not an engineering one. It's cost of initial project + maintainance and other costs, compared to energy generation $ minus energy losses over time from equipment degrading. Infrastructure requires maintenance and replacement, and 35 years here is kind of a "best by" guarantee.
Also, 35 years is actually a pretty long time! From now, that's 2058; looking backwards, that's 1988. Take a look at what wind turbine engineering looked like in 1988 and the difference to modern equipment is enormous. 35 years is a full generation of people: someone 18 today will be 53 when this project needs refurbishment.
This is a really exciting project (I think the article quoted some 5% total energy generation for the UK? That is truly insane) and I don't think that excitement should be outweighed by pretty mundane lifespan number! This much clean energy is awesome, will be present for a long long time, and get recycled and rebuilt when it has run its course.
And of course it's worth noting that it almost sets a precedent. In 35 years it'll be much easier to upgrade the project then it would be to get a new project off the ground 35 years from now, if one hadn't already been initiated at that location. People will be on board with maintaining infrastructure, far more than they will be on board with creating any new infrastructure. Even if functionally the costs end up being the same.
What length of life should we want?