Not long ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to support the Siemens wind turbine in Hull’s maritime construction equipment manufacturing plant. The program will renewable energy key to economic growth as the UK industry breakthrough.
After 20 years of development, the global offshore wind power technology is relatively mature. Compared with onshore wind farms, offshore wind farm with wind energy resources are very stable, do not take up valuable land resources, environmental impact, etc, and offshore wind power is generally close to the traditional load centers, to facilitate power consumptive, replacing the long-distance transmission problems. Therefore, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and other European countries have increased efforts to develop offshore wind power.
In 2010, the global offshore wind power installed capacity was added 1.444 million kilowatts, an increase of 110 percent of the global wind power new installed capacity of 3.7%, mainly in Europe, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium and Germany. Maritime New England in 2010 of which 925,000 kilowatts installed capacity, as the global offshore wind power leader, is expected in the coming years will still maintain its leading position.
According to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) report, the United Kingdom not only in the construction of offshore wind farms outnumber other countries, it is almost swept all the first half of Europe into the sea fans.
Britain has a total length of about 11,450 km of coastline, offshore wind resources. “In the best wind resource areas, the annual average wind speed can reach 8 meters / sec.” UK Renewable Energy Association, offshore wind power project, said chief officer Bidemadi root. In fact, according to the British Royal Property Bureau, the UK has a commercial development of wind power projects of total value of up to 48GW, about the whole of Europe’s total offshore wind power 1 / 3 of its potential for offshore wind power is about the current UK Power consumption 3 times. “Britain already has 1.3GW of offshore wind power capacity in Europe and the world are in a leading position.” Madigan said.
European countries, Britain is the highest in the market, but also subsidies for offshore wind power project of the highest rates. The current UK offshore wind market share is close to half of the global share. The research department predicted that by 2017 the UK offshore wind power generation capacity will reach 12 GW, the annual compound growth rate of 42%.
According to Bloomberg News on August 1, the UK’s electricity and natural gas operator State Grid Corporation will invest £ 3.6 billion (about $ 5.9 billion) for new wind power plant in 2012 and update the grid.
Over the past four months, the British power company National Grid to cooperate with Norway, Norwegian and British construction to connect the submarine cable, the cable length of 800 km this provision, the world’s longest cross-cable, expected to be completed between 2017 and 2020 . By then, the Norwegian and British to achieve power through the cable swap, and share the North Sea offshore wind power.
EWEA pointed out that the UK wind power plan targets far more than other countries, built in the first half of the UK fans only its ambitious plans for a small part. All wind farms are expected to be completed grid, it will be for the United Kingdom 2240 megawatts of generating capacity. In contrast, the German wind farms built its power generation capacity is only 1 / 5, about 450 MW.
However, EWEA’s report also pointed out that the construction of their fans will be some time between the grid. Britain in the first six months of the completion of the fan, only 68 wind turbines actually connected to the grid, representing about 2 / 3; Germany over the same period, only 32 turbines to the grid.
September 23, 2010, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, located in southeast England started Sani Sea upper hand electric grid. The total investment of more than 750 million pounds, installed capacity of 30 MW wind farm to generate enough electricity use of about 20 million households.
“Although the British made a detailed offshore wind power development plan, but to really achieve this figure is not easy.” Study: the UK offshore wind costs about 7.2 pence / kWh, natural gas and nuclear power generation costs were 2.2 pence / kWh and 2.3 pence / kWh. By comparison, the cost of offshore wind power price is still too high.
According to the United Kingdom last year submitted to the EU’s renewable energy action plan, the British government plans to build by 2020 a total capacity of 13 GW, about 3600 sea fans, for the United Kingdom has launched three offshore wind power project bidding. The broad scope of the tender, can reduce costs but also to develop new market participants, but also for offshore wind power to create long-term sustainable development has become a chain.