The German government today announced plans to build 30 wind farms in the North and Baltic Sea north of Germany. Each facility will cost $1.57 billion. The first farm will become reality this year. By 2030, a total of 25,000 megawatts are supposed to be produced when the grid of interconnected wind farms is finalized.
With the record investment, the German government said it wants to increase the level of autonomy regarding foreign energy and oil supply. The wind turbines will be erected offshore in water up to 40 meters deep and connected to the mainland using cables, which are up to 100km long.
This is really cool… I believe they also have enormous solar farms as well… I wish other governments took energy as serious as these guys!
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
25k Watts? Something is not right here. I mean, sure, those 47 BILLION dollars are not going to produce much power anyway – but 25k is ridiculously low even for wind farms. Just enough for 10 households or so.
It should be 25000 megawatts:
The government is aiming to obtain “25,000 megawatts of energy from windfarms by 2030″, Tiefensee said.
Udo, notagolfer:
Thanks for the pointer, I changed the text accordingly.
Problem is… it’s not going to work as planned.
See the article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/wind_power_needs_dirty_pricey_gas_backup_report/
Now, before all you haters jump on;
1) I’m *PRO* green energy (just think solar + storage improvements will be a better long-term solution)
2) The Register is hardly a source of anti-global warming pap.
While one can make the argument that both wind & solar suffer the problems of drop-off, and both still lack viable large-scale storage solutions, the severity and length of time of these “no wind” periods across Europe are significant.
My bottom line: there is no silver bullet solution to the challenge, and when we’re talking about $45B investments, it’s important that critical thinking take place before cheerleading. As I do quite a bit of business in Germany almost monthly, it’s downright frightening the pace at which the public spending is taking place, with shamefully little analysis of what the payoff will be, if any, and in what kind of timeframe. Too many of these kind of projects are being railroaded through in the spirit of “well, we’ve got to do *something*, and soon”.
With as much irrational exuberance for alternative energies as there currently is (particularly in Europe), all I’m asking is, what will the backlash be when the results don’t show up as expected? The cost per kwh go up? The CO2 emissions don’t drop? brownouts occur?
Seems like a great idea, but I wonder what the impact will be on migratory birds who have to run the twice a year?
Nice At least some Government is Planning to be Green….
Now America should look into the Green plan… They are the Oil Guzzlers….
http://free-and-useful.blogspot.com
Has anyone actually thought about the impact to the environment of mass distribution of wind farms? Aside from birds flying through them, what about changes to overall wind and sea currents.