New North Sea windmill parks to generate 6000 megawatt - how many cars will that feed?

Comment

Comment by Ryan Renner on January 15, 2009 at 9:24pm

Tom- Not to state the obvious, but you avoid all of these problems if you go underwater or underground.
Here is a brief AP article as well: http://tinyurl.com/Ned-6GW-Wind

Netherlands does have 2 underwater HVDC links with Norway and UK (respectively). From that location in the N. Sea, they could provide energy security for any number of areas within Europe. We'll soon find out whether or not they'll need to build any more HVDC links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Europe
http://www.ece.uidaho.edu/hvdcfacts/Projects/HVDCProjectsListingMay2008-existing.pdf

Irsan- Thanks for the post. I love what we learn here at Planet BP

KHooper- And the sun provided the energy to plants and algae that became crude oil. We're finding a much more direct route for the sun to power our lives. It's a great opportunity.

--Cheers

Comment by irsan on December 14, 2008 at 2:30am

Tom: with the concentration of the windmills to these regions the Dutch government is -I guess- trying to prevent a "jungle" of transmission lines etc. Personally, I'd prefer a view of the transmission towers than no view at all because of smog :-)

Comment by Tom Russo on December 13, 2008 at 9:46pm

Large offshore and onshore wind energy requires a very good transmission system. I'm assuming that the Dutch government has a good power system and that some of that wind power will be exported. That requires that high voltage transmission lines be constructed. As shown below, these lines are very large compared to the distribution lines we see in our communities. I wonder if there is as much opposition to these large power line in Europe as there is in the U.S. In the latter, the lack of adequate electric transmission has thwarted wind energy and solar and biggest obstacle to the U.S. really adding more renewables.