Its electricity network will fail to meet requirements of nine colossal wind farm projects, according to experts. It is necessary that the “Super Grid” costing another £10-15bn is constructed to cater for peak supply of wind power.
The nine wind farms that The Crown Estate announced will generate 32 GW from 6,400 turbines. It is sufficient to supply energy to 20 million households.
Chief executive, Eddie O’Connor, of Mainstream Renewable, one of the firms honored to develop wind power off the coast of Lincolnshire, proclaimed that the national grid is the only weak spot in the project. The super-grid is needed to make export of energy possible to the northern Europe.
The super-grid would consist of establishing a coherent electricity network with nine countries where some are Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. This would allow energy to be shared along the super grid. Excess capacity could be stored by pumping up water to re-produce hydroelectric.
How the super grid will be financed has not yet been unraveled. The cables of the network are supposed to be placed undersea level.
According to Mr. O’ Connor the super-grid will gradually be developed. It is expected that by 2050 it will cover 40 percent of electricity in the Europe zone.
The Britain wind power expansion, according to Gordon Brown will develop around 70, 000 jobs by 2020. The government has yet been unable to ensure that any of the wind turbines manufacturers set up a business unit in Britain. Turbines are expected to come from Germany or Denmark.
Despite recent lobbying with General Electric, Siemens, Mitsubishi and Vestas none of them are willing to establish a business manufacturing unit in Britain. There is only one closed turbine manufacturer in Britain, at Isle of Wight, Vestas Factory. It was closed because the wind turbine market took too much time to expand.
These wind turbines will be double the size of land wind turbines. The height of the wind turbine will be 170m from sea level at the highest tip of the blade. They will be placed in water of depth of up to 70 meters, which is more than 3 times normal depth (10-25 meters).
The wind turbines will be far away from the coast. In North East Coast it will be as far as 130 miles away and there will be residential platforms for repair and maintenance service workers. The construction is predicted to set-off in 2013 or 2015.
However, none of the wind farms is probably going to supply any energy before 2015. The progress of the project will depend on variables such as finance availability, price of fossil fuels and other competitive sources of electricity.
According to British Wind Energy Association, the price of wind turbines has raised significantly. This has been because of the fall of the pound and over dependency on import. The price of producing one megawatt of wind energy today costs £3.1 million whereas a decade ago it costs only £1.5 million.
In this mega-wind-farm project, the government plays a critical role to ensure that work is created for the British population.
Source: The Times
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