World's largest offshore wind farm opens

Walney Extension has a capacity of 659 megawatts – making it the world’s biggest offshore windfarm. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters (Source: The Guardian)

Offshore wind is superior to onshore wind because it blows more regularly and more strongly.  It's also (you guessed) more expensive.  But the costs are falling fast as we move down the learning curve, and offshore wind is now competitive with onshore.

From The Guardian:

The world’s biggest offshore windfarm has officially opened in the Irish Sea, amid warnings that Brexit could increase costs for future projects.

Walney Extension, off the Cumbrian coast, spans an area the size of 20,000 football pitches and has a capacity of 659 megawatts, enough to power the equivalent of 590,000 homes [the UK has 27.1 millions households, so that's about 2.5%.]

The project is a sign of how dramatically wind technology has progressed in the past five years since the previous biggest, the London Array, was finished.

The new windfarm uses less than half the number of turbines but is more powerful.

Matthew Wright, the UK managing director of Danish energy firm Ørsted, the project’s developer, said: “It’s another benchmark in terms of the scale. This – bigger turbines, with fewer positions and a bit further out – is really the shape of projects going forward.”

Matthew Wright, the UK managing director of Danish energy firm Ørsted, the project’s developer, said: “It’s another benchmark in terms of the scale. This – bigger turbines, with fewer positions and a bit further out – is really the shape of projects going forward.”

[Read more here]