One Hundred And Forty Gigawatts!

On By southwerkIn Corporate Social Responsibility, Philosophy of Business

From the BBC –

Ministers from 10 European countries bordering the North Sea have agreed the construction of a new offshore electricity grid.

The grid will link countries across Europe and make it much easier for member states to trade energy.

It will also simplify the exploitation of the 140 Gigawatt offshore windfarm currently being planned in the North Sea.

By comparison, Hoover Dam generates about 2 Gigawatts.

Think of the enormous coastline of the United States and the possibilities of offshore windpower, and then note that no matter what happens giant windmills can’t destroy the gulf coast.

James Pilant

One thought on “One Hundred And Forty Gigawatts!”

  1. Andrew's avatar Andrew

    The only thing that really needs to be considered is the meteorological and atmospheric changes that such a massive wind farm will create. Those changes may be minimal, or those changes could be huge.

    According to Betz Law, the THEORETICAL maximum output of a wind turbine is roughly 59%. Then, when you consider real world losses of any mechanical system, a wind turbines real output is usually around 30% of the energy in the wind.

    So, there would need to be an available wind power of about 466 GW to produce the rated output. Thats a lot, but definitely possible if enough turbines are connected to the system.

    I’ll be interested in seeing how this works out.

    Like

Comments are closed.