Energy from offshore wind in the UK will be cheaper than electricity from new nuclear power for the first time.
The cost of subsidies for new offshore wind farms has halved since the last 2015 auction for clean energy projects
Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a subsidy of £57.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23.
This compares with the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant securing subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour.
Nuclear firms said the UK still needed a mix of low-carbon energy, especially for when wind power was not available.
Both nuclear and wind receive subsidies, but for the first time wind is coming to market with less, so providing the same electricity with less cost to the public than nuclear.
(Score: 1, Troll) by choose another one on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:38PM
> It is not impossible that the company/administration managing the wind farm you were looking at, either ran out of money for maintenance
It is more that they (quite possibly deliberately) let the turbines decay to the point where they would be too expensive to fix, and then applied to replace them (so they had money available) with newer bigger ones (that would get newer bigger subsidies and hence make bigger profits). It was a gamble that failed - I don't think many people were actually against them when they were turning and doing something useful, but once they were ugly broken stumps opposition to them grew, after all what was to stop the new ones becoming even bigger broken ugly stumps in a few more years? Planning permission was refused and they were ordered to removed the old broken ones.
> Conversely, wind power tech has gone leaps and bounds in the last ten years, so what made sense building 15 years ago can be only good for the scrapyard today.
So 15yr subsidy makes sense, no sign the improvement is slowing down.