10-16-2017, 04:18 AM
In the UK, the wind energy industry is celebrating. Last month, the cost of renewable energy dropped dramatically to undercut by almost half the government’s projections for 2025. At £57.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh), it is far cheaper than the state-backed price of £92.50 awarded in 2016 to Hinkley nuclear power station. The speed of wind’s progress is extreme and inarguable... Toulson has a slide that shows one very clear reason for the falling cost of wind energy. Over time, the diameter of the blades have enlarged. A turbine commissioned in 2002 swept 80 metres; in 2005, that figure rose to 90 metres; in 2011, it was 120 metres. By 2020, it will be 180 metres. Of course, the supply chain has improved, and there have been engineering refinements. But put baldly, wind energy costs less, and will go on costing less, because the turbines are growing taller and the blades longer. The manufacturers of these machines are in a race to produce the largest... One limit is that if a blade can’t support its own weight, it buckles. And the size at which this would happen? Garrad laughs. “About 1.5km in length.” To add to the sense of the fantastical, last week two scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, California, published a study that suggested a windfarm the size of India, in the North Atlantic, could power the world.
Wild is the wind: the resource that could power the world | Environment | The Guardian