Wind Farms

[mullokintyre]

Chris Bowen announced recently announced the second offshore wind turbine area off the NSW hunter Valley Coast, after the Gippsland Coast was declared in December 2022 as the first preferred location for off shore wind farms.
Howver, all the players might want to read a paper from Materials performance which has looked at the longer term performance of some materials in the off shore wind construction arena. they have found that both internal and external corrosion has occurred faster than initially thought from modelling when using one of the most common forms of monopile construction.

The authors comment that both external and internal corrosion issues have affected monopile foundation structures. External corrosion of the foundation is similar to that observed in other offshore industries, and corrosion protection is prescribed in current industry guidelines based on experiences from the oil and gas industry.
Presently, the authors note, precise guidelines for internal corrosion protection of monopile wind turbine foundations are not provided in current industry standards, and the corrosion protection strategy for the internal surfaces is up to the individual owners or designers. In early projects, additional material thickness for corrosion allowance was used as corrosion protection for the internal surfaces. The monopile foundation’s closed-compartment design was assumed to be completely air- and watertight, and low, uniform corrosion rates were anticipated. In a completely airtight structure, the dissolved oxygen (DO) in seawater would be quickly consumed by uniform corrosion on the entire steel surface, and corrosion rates would decrease as the seawater became anaerobic.
Industry experience has shown, however, that it is difficult in practice to completely seal compartments and render them airtight. If the closed-compartment structure is not properly sealed, direct ingress of air is possible. Seawater and oxygen ingress have been detected in foundations that are two to 10 years old, which increased the rate of corrosion and localized corrosion attacks. Furthermore, in some cases, the increasing water level has led to the internal aluminum ladder acting as a sacrificial anode (Figure 2).

Maybe the need to go the more expensive routes.
Mick

 

[macca]

Chris Bowen announced recently announced the second offshore wind turbine area off the NSW hunter Valley Coast, after the Gippsland Coast was declared in December 2022 as the first preferred location for off shore wind farms.
Howver, all the players might want to read a paper from Materials performance which has looked at the longer term performance of some materials in the off shore wind construction arena. they have found that both internal and external corrosion has occurred faster than initially thought from modelling when using one of the most common forms of monopile construction.

Maybe the need to go the more expensive routes.
Mick

Just for fun think about this

Where the windfarm is to be erected is very close to the coal port of Newcastle, it is one of the busiest coal ports (plus grains) in the world.

Colliers are Very large ships, they have to anchor to wait their turn at the coal loaders (and grain silos) in Ncle.

History shows that there has been two ships go ashore in the area in the past 50 years, what history does not show is that a number of ships have came Very close to also going ashore.

They avoided the beaching by going with the storm, steering parallel to the coast and then veering out to sea when they had boatspeed, Right where the windfarm will be in the future.

This area of the coast is renowned as a rough anchorage, it is a combination of circumstances similar to Bass Straight, "Shallow water and big seas"

We get the big seas from East Coast Lows which often form between Newcastle and Wollongong, a result of regular weather patterns and ocean currents which are seasonal each year.

Where the ships anchor is where the Hunter River dumps its silt, so it does not scour and remains reasonably shallow.

When the sea swells generated by the EC lows reach about 14-15 metres they start to interact with the bottom and turn from swells into waves.

They go from green mounds to vertically faced waves up to 18metres high which lift the ships causing the anchors to drag (Sygna)

It is very possible that with a 100k wind blowing an empty ship it could flatten a Lot of Windmills

 

[Knobby22]

 

[IFocus]

UK wind farm generation map and output

GB Renewables Map

Live map showing realtime renewable energy generation in Great Britain

renewables-map.robinhawkes.com