BW Ideol In Talks To Raise EUR 40 Million For Floating Wind Development
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Norway-headquartered BW Ideol and French state-owned investment company ADEME Investissement have agreed to enter into exclusive negotiations for EUR 40 million in funding by ADEME Investissement for BW Ideol’s project development activities.
The rest of the post is all about the clever, but I suspect legal ways, that the € 40 million is raised.
When I needed any advice in that area, I used to consult my late friend the banker; David, who is mentioned in Diversifying A US$200 billion Market: The Alternatives To Li-ion Batteries For Grid-Scale Energy Storage.
When he needed computing advice, that is another story.
The First Of The Cavalry Arrive To Rescue Kwasi Kwarteng
Most commentators think Kwasi Kwarteng is in trouble, but I feel that he has the strength of the mathematics around him.
This press release from BP was released on Wednesday and is entitled UK Offshore Wind: Laying The Groundwork Today.
These two paragraphs outline the work BP are doing to develop wind power in the Irish Sea.
Plans are critical, but it’s putting them into action that counts. As part of our strategy to get wind turbines turning, specialist vessels and crew are out on the Irish Sea undertaking massive seabed survey work. It’s an early but important step on the road to building some of the UK’s biggest offshore wind farms.
Once up and running, our Morgan and Mona projects could deliver enough capacity to power 3.4 million homes with clean electricity and help the UK to meet its climate goals. Their near-shore location – around 30 kilometres off the coast of northwest England and north Wales – will allow for lower-cost, more reliable transmission infrastructure, making them a core part of our plans for more secure and lower carbon energy for the UK.
This EnBW-BP infographic describes the project.
Note.
- BP’s partner is EnBW, who are a publicly-traded German energy company.
- There is a project web site.
- The press release and the graphic are showing the same numbers.
- Morgan and Mona will use proven fixed-foundation wind turbine technology.
- The combined site is around 800 km² or a square of under thirty kilometers, so it is only quite small in the context of the Irish Sea.
- First operation is given on the web site as 2028.
As BP and enBW have massive financial, engineering and project management resources, I believe they will look to bring the 2028 operation date as far forward as is possible.
If you do the cash flow for a project like this, especially when you have the financial and engineering resources of BP and enBW, the mathematics show that if you can accelerate the installation of the turbines, you will start to have a cashflow earlier and this will finance the debt needed to install the wind farms.
Consider.
- I believe the 2028 date, is one that BP know they can keep, to satisfy the Stock Market and investors.
- BP have large cash flows from their profitable oil and gas businesses.
- BP have probably reserved places in the manufacturing queues for wind turbines, foundations and all the electrical gubbins to connect the turbines to shore.
- BP want to prove to themselves and sceptics, that they can handle the building of wind farms.
- The are already lots of wind farms along the North Wales Coast, so I suspect that the problems of building wind farms in the Irish Sea are well known.
I will not speculate on the date that Mona and Morgan are complete, but I very much doubt it will be in 2028.
These are some more thoughts from the BP press release.
What’s Happening And Why?
The purpose of these deep geotechnical investigations, carried out by specialist Geo-data company Fugro, up to 100 metres below the seabed is to determine soil characteristics for foundation design (find out how it’s done in the short film, above). Collecting this data will enable bp and EnBW to build efficient offshore wind farms with the least environmental impact. It is crucial for securing government consents for the projects and defining the structure and location of the individual turbines.
Even thirty kilometres off shore, there needs to be detailed planning permission.
Our Other Offshore Wind Projects
We aim to become a leader in offshore wind and, over the past three years, we’ve built up a pipeline of projects with partners in both the US and UK that have the potential to power more than 5 million homes.
And earlier this year, we agreed to form a partnership with Marubeni to explore an offshore wind development in Japan.
It’s all part of our aim to have 20GW of developed renewable generating capacity by 2025 and 50GW by 2030 – that’s broadly enough to power the needs of 36 million people.
Note.
- Their ambitions are high, but then so much of the experience of offshore oil and gas can be applied to offshore wind.
- BP has the cashflow from oil and gas to reinvent itself.
- Assuming a strike price of £40/MWh and an average capacity factor of 30 %, that is an income of around five billion pounds for starters.
- If they added energy storage to the wind farms, there’s even more money to be generated.
As Equinor, Ørsted and SSE have shown, you have to be big in this business and BP aim to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest.
Conclusion
Wind farms like Mona and Morgan, and there are several under development, will create the electricity and revenue, that will come to the rescue of the Chancellor.
As I update this after a busy day, it looks like Jeremy Hunt has inherited KK’s excellent groundwork and mathematics.
UK In Hydrogen Breakthrough As New £26m Deal With Japan To Help Tackle Energy Crisis
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Central.
These two paragraphs explain the deal.
The UK has received a major boost to its hydrogen ambitions as a Japanese energy company is set to sign a £26million deal to develop green hydrogen projects in Wales.
The local council of Bridgend in Wales has signed a memorandum of understanding with Marubeni, a Japanese green energy specialist company. The agreement sets out proposals to develop a new 5MW-class green hydrogen initiative after the company decided to pick Wales as the preferred UK location for a green hydrogen demonstrator project.
These two paragraphs describe how the hydrogen will be used.
Through this deal, the Welsh Government hopes that the project would generate clean fuel for fleet vehicles ranging from council gritters to recycling and refuse collection lorries.
The company is also trying to figure out how hydrogen fuel might be used to heat buildings such as schools, residential homes, and local swimming pools.
We need more projects like these to cut carbon emissions.
When is Sadiq Khan going to produce a hydrogen strategy for London, to help clean up the city’s polluted air?
It’s A Tough Job, But Someone’s Got To Do It!
For a couple of stops today, on the Elizabeth Line, I shared my section of the carriage, with a party of four Japanese tourists, who I took to be mother, father and son, with an older man, who was probably one of the boy’s grandfathers. The father had his camera out and was photographing his family and the train. As I passed him to leave the train, he said “Good train!” He also pointed to himself and said. “Japanese railway engineer!”
I wonder how many other professional railway engineers will visit London and run their eyes over the Elizabeth Line?
Foot Crossing Obstacle Detection Using AI
The title of this post, is the same as that as this article on the Railway Gazette.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Seibu Railway is to start testing a newly-developed AI-assisted warning system for detecting obstacles on foot crossings at two stations on the Ikebukuro Line in the suburbs of Tokyo.
The article is a detailed description of how the Japanese are using technology to make foot crossing a lot safer.
I can see applications for this technology not just on the rail system, but in other situations as well.
Kawasaki’s Liquefied Hydrogen Carrier Departs To Pick Up First Cargo
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Green Car Congress.
This is the first paragraph.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ Suiso Frontier, the world’s first liquefied hydrogen carrier, has left Japan to pick up its first hydrogen cargo in Australia. A return to Japan is expected around late February.
As the cargo is only seventy-five tonnes of liquid hydrogen, I have my doubts about shipping hydrogen from Australia to Japan.
Late February is two months away, so this represents a production rate of 37.5 tonnes per month.
In Can The UK Have A Capacity To Create Five GW Of Green Hydrogen?, I said the following.
Ryze Hydrogen are building the Herne Bay electrolyser.
- It will consume 23 MW of solar and wind power.
- It will produce ten tonnes of hydrogen per day.
The electrolyser will consume 552 MWh to produce ten tonnes of hydrogen, so creating one tonne of hydrogen needs 55.2 MWh of electricity.
This would mean that if the Japanese built one Herne Bay-size electrolyser, then it would produce around three hundred tonnes of hydrogen in an average month.
The only possible use for this ship at the moment, is as a research project to identify the problems of the transportation of hydrogen over long distances by sea.
But we may need to use ships for the coastal transportation of hydrogen in the UK and to Europe.
Road-Rail Services Inaugurated
The title of this post, is the same as that as this article on Railway Gazette.
This first paragraph tells all.
The start of regular road-rail services on the Asa Kaigan Tetsudo in southeast Shikoku was marked with a ceremony at Awa-Kainan-Bunkamura on December 25.
I have found this video of the vehicles.
I do wonder if there is a simpler way.
In Zwickau in Germany on the Vogtlandbahn, standard Stadler diesel multiple units, run through the streets from the main station to a tram-stop like station in the centre of the town.
They are more of a train-tram, than a tram-train.
- The train is fitted with orange warning lights.
- The train shares the same corridor with a tram, that uses a different gauge, using three-rail track.
- Access between the train and platform is more-or-less level and as good as, if not better than most German trains.
- The platform at Zwickau Zentrum is an island platform, where the trams call at the other side.
- The concept would work with any independently-powered multiple unit.
I am sure, where there are places where this will work in the UK.
We almost do the same thing at some seaside stations like Saltburn, Sheringham and St. Ives.
Road-Rail Midi-Buses To Start Revenue Service On December 25
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette.
There’s more about this bus in this article on Coach and Bus Week, which is entitled Japan Launches Road-Rail Bus.
Engineers have been trying to design a road-rail busfor decades. Finally, it looks like one is up and running.
Velocys’ Fischer–Tropsch Tech Picked For E-fuels Project In Japan
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Renewables Now.
Fischer–Tropsch technology has a chequered history, as it has been used by regimes like Nazi Germany and South Africa under apartheid to create the fuel they need.
But now Oxford University spin-out company; Velocys have improved the process, so that it can turn rubbish destined for landfill into sustainable aviation fuel.
This is the last paragraph from the article.
The developer says its FT reactor can enable the production of SAF from household waste and woody biomass. The end product is a high-quality version of existing fuels, requiring no changes to engines or infrastructure, Velocys says on its website.
This is surely a viable alternative to keep airlines flying, until hydrogen-powered planes are developed.
Hydrogen And The Anglo-Australian Trade Deal
This article on the BBC is entitled UK And Australia In First Post-Brexit Trade Deal.
I can see one very profitable result of this trade deal.
The world has a large and growing need for green hydrogen produced by renewable energy.
Australia is embracing the hydrogen economy and I have posted about Australia hydrogen developments several times.
This post is entitled H2U Eyre Peninsula Gateway Hydrogen Project Begins Largest Green Ammonia Plant and it describes how Australia will convert renewable electricity into liquid green ammonia for export to Japan.
Australia has a lot of sun and can create a lot of green hydrogen and ammonia for South East Asia.
Electrolysers need to be used to convert solar and wind electricity into hydrogen, which would be exported in tankers either as liquid hydrogen or liquid ammonia.
The largest hydrogen electrolyser factory in the world, is owned by ITM Power and is located in Sheffield/Rotherham. It has a capacity to build 1 GW of electrolysers in a year.
Looking at the electrolyser market, I can see the company needing another similar-sized factory.
Australia’s Solar Power Potential
This section in the Wikipedia entry for Solar Power In Australia is called Potential.
These are some points from the section.
- Typically, in the winter months, a square metre of much of Australia receives 4 kWh of insolation per day.
- Some areas in the North receive fifty percent more.
- Australia has the potential to install 179 GW of solar power on roofs across the nation.
Australia used to curse the sun because of all the cancer it brought. Now it could make them the world’s hydrogen powerhouse!
At present ninety percent of Australia’s solar panels are made in China.
But that may not be for ever, if what I wrote in Solar To Hydrogen Efficiency Record Broken By Australian National University Researchers, turns out to lead to an alternative technology to create hydrogen.
An Anglo-Australian Hydrogen Alliance
What better possible place to build a second electrolyser factory is there, than in Australia?
- The Australian economy can use a lot of hydrogen for transport.
- Australia is embracing hydrogen technology.
- Australia is well-placed to export electrolysers to their friends in South East Asia.
- Australia has the sun to produce massive amounts of green hydrogen.
If the UK and Australia developed hydrogen together, it would be good for both countries.
- Australia can develop massive levels of renewable electricity from solar.
- The UK can develop massive levels of renewable electricity from wind and possibly other sources.
- Both countries are researching the ways to create and use hydrogen.
- Both countries could produce hydrogen for nearby economies needing large amounts of hydrogen.
- Many UK and Australian companies operate in both countries.
But above all, we haven’t had a major fall-out with Australia since the Bodyline Tour in 1932-1933.
The Anonymous Widower 