The Anonymous Widower

Ossian Floating Wind Farm Could Have Capacity Of 3.6 GW

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz,

This is the first paragraph.

SSE Renewables, Marubeni Corporation, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) have identified an increase in the potential overall project capacity for their Ossian floating wind project in Scotland from 2.6 GW to up to 3.6 GW.

It appears that surveys have shown that the wind farm can be bigger.

About The Name Ossian

This press release from SSE is entitled New Offshore Wind Farm To Take Name From Scottish Literature.

These three paragraphs explain the name and the partners behind the project.

A new wind farm project in Scotland is to take its name from an historic series of books which depict the epic quests of a third-century Scottish leader, following his adventures across rolling seas.

Ossian (pronounced ‘os-si-un’) from The Poems of Ossian is to be the name for the proposed new offshore wind farm across 858 km2 of seabed in waters off the east coast of Scotland.

The project will be delivered by the partnership of leading Scottish renewable energy developer, SSE Renewables, Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corporation (Marubeni) and Danish fund management company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).

I don’t think the three partners will have any difficulty raising the extra finance to expand the wind farm.

Where Is The Ossian Wind Farm?

This Crown Estate Scotland map shows the position of each of the Scotwind wind farms.

Note, that the numbers are Scotwind’s lease number in their documents.

The Ossian wind farm is numbered two.

At present, the South Eastern group of wind farms are as follows.

  • 1 – BP – Fixed – 2.9 GW
  • 2 – SSE – Floating – 2.6 GW
  • 3 – Falck – Floating – 1.2 GW
  • 4 – Shell – Floating – 2.0 GW
  • 5 – Vattenfall – Floating – 0.8 GW
  • 6 – DEME – Fixed – 1.0 GW

This totals to 10.5 GW, which would be 11.5 GW, if the capacity of Ossian is increased.

Will Ossian And Nearby Wind Farms Be Developed As A Co-Operation?

The six companies involved in this group of wind farms, are all experienced developers of wind farms or oil and gas fields.

They also come from all around the world, so I can see the best technology being employed on this group of wind farms.

Will Other Wind Farms In The Group Be Expanded?

The surveys at Ossian appear to have shown that the area is ideal for floating wind and this is enabling the expansion of the farm.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the other wind farms be expanded.

I also feel that floating wind farms like Ossian, where it is likely that all the turbines on their floats are connected to a central substation, that could also be floating, may be a lot easier to expand.

Does Ossian Wind Farm Have A Web Site?

Not that Google can find, although ossianwindfarm.com appears to be under construction.

November 4, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Biggleswade Wind Farm

The Biggleswade Wind Farm is a small wind farm on the East side of the East Coast Main Line, to the South of Biggleswade.

I took the pictures as I went North to Doncaster yesterday.

  • The wind farm generates 20 MW.
  • There are ten turbines.

I was sitting backwards in one of LNER’s Azuma trains.

It was in some ways an experiment to get a general wind farm picture.

November 3, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , , , | 2 Comments

Oysters Get New Home At Eneco Luchterduinen Offshore Wind Farm

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

I have never tasted oysters, but what put me off them, was I took a client; Bob, who was the Chief Management Accountant at Lloyds Bank to Dirty Dicks. Bob had a lot of oysters and spent a weekend in Bart’s Hospital.

It turned out to be the first of many drunken meals with Bob and I learned a lot from him, about how to deal with bankers and accountants. He was one of the uncredited designers of Artemis. Thank you Bob!

I do think though that using offshore wind farms to grow food in their shelter will be something we’ll be seeing more and more.

November 3, 2022 Posted by | Computing, Energy, Finance, Food | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Centrica Partners With Hull-Based HiiRoc For Hydrogen Fuel Switch Trial At Humber Power Plant

The title of this post, is the same as that on this article on Business Live.

This is a paragraph.

It comes as the owner of British Gas has also increased its shareholding in the three-year-old business to five per cent. Last November it was one of several investors to pump £28 million into HiiRoc alongside Melrose Industries, HydrogenOne, Cemex, Hyundai and Kia, who joined existing strategic investors Wintershall Dea and VNG.

This could be sensational.

The reason I said that was that I used to share an office at ICI Mond Division, with Peter, who was putting instruments on a plant called the Badische. It was a new process to create acetylene. If I remember correctly, the process was as follows.

Ethylene was burned and then quenched in naptha.

The trouble was that the process produced a lot of carbon, which clogged the burners, and masses of black smoke, which upset everybody in Runcorn, especially on washing day!

Someone was worried that the plant might go into explosive limits, so Peter had devised a clever infra-red instrument to read the composition of the off-gas from the burner. It was found to be in explosive limits and ICI shut it down. BASF said ICI were wrong and there was no way to measure the composition of the off-gas anyway. A few months later BASF’s plant exploded and buried itself in a hillside in Southern Germany. Upon hearing this news, ICI shut the Badische for ever. ICI were annoyed in that they had to spend £200,000 on a flameless cutter to dismantle the plant.

I do wonder, if HiiROC have tamed BASF’s beast to do something useful, like produce hydrogen and carbon black!

November 2, 2022 Posted by | Energy, Hydrogen | , , , , , | 6 Comments

Ocergy Floaters Selected For 100 MW Project Off Scotland

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Splash247.com.

These two paragraphs outline Ocergy’s OCG-Wind foundation technology.

The Salamander floating offshore wind project, a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, Ørsted and Subsea 7, has awarded the pre-FEED (front-end engineering design) deal to Ocergy for its OCG-Wind foundation technology.

The US-based Ocergy has developed a novel semisub floater called OCG-Wind, to support turbines larger than 10 MW, designed for the development of large-scale wind farms. It is targeting a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) that can start to drive reductions in floating offshore wind farms to eventually be competitive with fixed offshore wind farms.

Note.

  1. There is a picture showing two turbines on OCG-Wind floats.
  2. Salamander is intended to be an INTOG project of 100 MW.
  3. The floaters are expected to be fabricated at Global Energy Group’s Port of Nigg.
  4. ERM’s Dolphyn electrolysis, desalination and hydrogen production concept is also planned for the project.

The Salamander project is certainly going for a lot of innovation.

October 31, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

BP To Open Offshore Wind Office In Germany, Starts Recruitment Drive

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the first paragraph, which adds a bit more information.

Global energy major bp plans to open an office in Hamburg, Germany dedicated to the development of offshore wind projects and is in the process of seeking employees for the new office.

These are other points from the article.

  • The topic of wind power is being promoted particularly in Hamburg.
  • BP said that the company has already achieved a number of milestones in the field of wind energy.
  • In cooperation with EnBW, bp is currently developing several wind farms in the Irish and Scottish Seas.
  • Similar plans already exist for the Netherlands.
  • The energy major would also like to supply charging stations for electric vehicles with green electricity.
  • In Germany, wind and solar energy should account for 80 per cent of electricity generation by 2030, compared to today’s 42 per cent.
  • Offshore wind energy is planned to grow seven times by 2045.

I believe that BP’s project expertise and management, backed by billions of German euros could be a complimentary dream team.

October 31, 2022 Posted by | Energy, Finance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Offshore And Nearshore Survey Work Complete For 2 GW Scottish Wind Project

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the first paragraph.

The developers of the West of Orkney Windfarm have completed its 2022 offshore and nearshore surveys for the project area, located around 25 kilometres off the Sutherland coast in Scotland.

Note.

  1. Surveys were on time and on budget.
  2. Consent applications are expected next year.
  3. Both fixed and floating turbines are being considered.

The West of Orkney wind farm has its own web site, with this proud mission statement.

Designed For Delivery, Driven By Scale

The West of Orkney Windfarm has the potential to power more than two million homes and deliver long-term economic benefits to communities across the north of Scotland.

The web site says that the target for first power generation is  2029.

In How Long Does It Take To Build An Offshore Wind Farm?, I said that it typically takes between six and eight years to for consent to commissioning for an offshore wind farm.

So with consent in 2023, commissioning in 2029 could be possible.

October 31, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , , , | 2 Comments

Metocean Measurement Campaign To Start At 1 GW Scottish Floating Wind Farm Site

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the introductory paragraph.

Partrac will soon deploy a floating LiDAR Buoy at the site of the Buchan floating wind project offshore Scotland, which is being developed by Floating Energy Allyance (FEA), a consortium comprising BW Ideol, Elicio, and BayWa r.e.

It appears, that the Buchan floating wind farm is the first of the floating Scotwind Leasing round of projects to get going in a meaningful way.

The article details some of the design details of the wind farm.

  • The site is located some 75 kilometres to the northeast of Fraserburgh on the Aberdeenshire coast,
  • The Floating Energy Allyance consortium plans to build a floating offshore wind farm with a capacity of approximately 1 GW, whose wind turbines will be installed on BW Ideol’s Damping Pool floating foundations.
  • This page on the BW Ideol web site describes their Damping Pool technology.
  • The patented square barge-like floats can be used for offshore wind turbines, substations and hydrogen electrolysers.

BW Ideol appear to be a French company with projects in France, Japan, Taiwan and now Scotland.

The home page of the BW Ideol web site opens with a promotional and explanatory video of their technology.

 

October 31, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , , , | Leave a comment

Cummins Is Charging Towards Green

If ten years ago, you’d asked any green activist to name companies, that would be ruined by or fail to adjust to global warming by decarbonising their product line, I’m sure most big diesel engine manufacturers, like Cummins, would have been on their list.

But Cummins have successfully moved on as their latest press releases about their technology show.

These can be summarised as follows.

  • Green Solutions – 4
  • Electrolysers for green hydrogen – 3
  • Decarbonisation of diesel engines – 3
  • Community Support – 2
  • Electric Powertrains – 1
  • Solar Power – 1

According to Google, the Cummins share price has risen thirty percent in the last five years.

They must have done something right!

 

October 31, 2022 Posted by | Energy, Hydrogen, Transport/Travel, World | , , | 2 Comments

Knoydart Renewables – The Power of Knoydart

The BBC has been showing a film all day about the Knoydart area of the Scottish Highlands and their community-owned hydroelectric power system.

The title of this post, is the same as that of this page on the Knoydart Foundation web site.

This paragraph introduces the system.

Knoydart is not connected to the National Grid and generates all of its own electricity. Other than some small run-of-burn micro-schemes in outlying hamlets, by far and away the the main producer and distributer of electricity on Knoydart is Knoydart Renewables Ltd. that supplies electricity around Inverie Bay.

Note.

  1. The system is based on a 280 kW turbine and generator.
  2. The turbine is fed over a kilometer by steel and plastic pipe from a man-made loch with an estimated storage capacity of at least 74 MWh.
  3. There is a back-up diesel generator.
  4. 120 residents in 90 properties are supplied with electricity.

It sounds like a very professional system for a community with a convenient hill and water supply.

The system is being expanded and connected to the grid.

The whole page is a must read for anyone, who wants to put in a small hydroelectric power station for their house, castle or community.

October 28, 2022 Posted by | Energy | , , | Leave a comment