Skip to main content

World's largest offshore wind farm opens for business

By

Walney wind farm off the coast of Cumbria in the UK yesterday became the world's largest offshore wind facility. One hundred and two turbines over 73 sq km (28 sq miles) provide a maximum output of 367.2 MW. It's claimed the facility will provide enough power for about 320,000 homes - half as many again as the total number in Cumbria.
The project's first phase, Walney 1, has been providing power since January 2011 from 51 137-meter-high (450-ft) turbines, each with a 107-m (350-ft) rotor diameter. The completed second phase, Walney 2, adds another 51 turbines of even greater size to the installation. These 150-m (492-ft) tall turbines have three 18-tonne (19.8-short ton) blades with a total diameter of 120 m (394 ft). Despite the differing dimensions, all turbines are Siemens-made 3.6 MW turbines. All told a single wind turbine weighs a hefty 550 tonnes (606 short tons). The Walney 2 installation was completed in an impressively tight six-month window.
The turbine specs appear well-suited to the UK's considerable wind assets, functioning at wind speeds between 4 and 25 m/s (9 and 56 mph), operating at a peak in winds of 14 m/s (31 mph), with mean wind speeds for the area thought to be just over 9 m/s (20 mph) at the critical altitude.

The above map shows the Walney wind farm's position in the Irish Sea. The distance of the turbines to the coast varies between 14.4 and 25.8 km (9 and 16 miles) - a significant distance that helps to reduce the visual impact of the scheme. The blue and red lines indicate the export cables for Walney 1 and 2 respectively.
The facility makes use of offshore substations, stepping up the voltage from 34 kV to 132 kV. This is good news for the environment as transmission at higher voltage minimizes losses, and so reduces the need for inefficient lower-voltage transmission to an onshore substation.
The facility has been built by a company called Walney (UK) Offshore Windfarms Limited, a joint enterprise with DONG Energy and SSE as the major stakeholders. DONG is also the major stakeholder in the even larger London Array wind farm. It is not clear when this 1000 MW wind farm will be complete, though phase 1 should be making a maximum capacity of 630 MW available before the end of the year. Walney, therefore, will not hold the top spot for long. DONG will surely try to improve upon the construction of the Walney facility, phase 2 of which (according to the UK'sGuardian newspaper) DONG claims was the fastest wind farm construction of its type.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 URLs to Find Out What Google Knows About You

By
Google is much more than just a search giant. It is also home to many of your favorite products: Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome, just to name a few. Apart from that, it also offers many products to help you  keep track of your data . Most of these are  hidden deep  inside the My Account dashboard, which many users don’t really know of. These hidden tools  may reveal interesting details  about your usage of Google’s many services. We’ve compiled a list of important Google URLs of some  hidden tools  that carry information of what you did with Google, mostly from the searches that you have made on their many products, the voice searches and typed out Google searches that you have made. Are you ready to  find out what how Google knows about you ? 1.  Google Dashboard Google Dashboard offers  transparency and control over the personal data stored with your Google Account. You can  view  and  manage the data gener...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nine government sites hit by cyber attacks: NIC

By
The National Informatics Center (NIC) has revealed that as many as nine government websites were defaced by recent cyber attacks. The center further said that the servers, which hosts these government sites, suffer a number of hacking attempts on a daily basis. The websites www.kumbh2010haridwar.gov.in, www.ueppcb.uk.gov.in, www.gov.ua.nic.in/ujn, www.cdodoon.gov.in, www.arunachal.nic.in,www.bee-india.nic.in, www.civilsupplieskerala.gov.in, www.mpcb.gov.in and www.informatics.nic.in were  defaced , prompting authorities to  ramp up  the cyber security safeguards. In an RTI reply, the NIC, which reports to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said that it was impossible for the body to accurately quantify these attacks but they are usually blocked by security controls put in place. The Ministry was asked to provide details of hacking attempts made on the governments websites in the last ten years (2001-11) along with url names of the portal...
1 comment
Read more

Solar car hits U.S. in round-the-world jaunt

By
Last October, the SolarWorld GT solar-powered car set out from Darwin, Australia on a drive around the world. It has since driven 3,001 kilometers (1,865 miles) across Australia, logged 1,947 km (1,210 miles) crossing New Zealand and been shipped across the Pacific Ocean. This Friday, it will embark on the U.S. leg of its journey, as it sets out across America from the University of California, Santa Barbara.   The SolarWorld GT is the result of a collaboration between solar panel manufacturer SolarWorld, and Bochum University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The four-wheeled, two-door, two-seat car gathers solar energy through photovoltaic panels built into its roof, with its solar generator offering a peak performance of 823 watts. Custom hub motors are located in both of the front wheels. The vehicle manages an average speed of 50 km/h (31 mph), with a claimed top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph). In order to demonstrate that solar powered cars needn't be a radical...
Post a Comment
Read more