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Renewable energy statistics just keep topping each other. Solar power is getting cheaper. Battery storage capacity is getting better. And wind farms are getting bigger.
2019 saw the world’s biggest (at the time) offshore wind farm come online, as well as construction of the biggest offshore wind farm in the US off the coast of Atlantic City.
But a new figure blows all of these out of the water. Last week, British renewable energy developer SSE announced construction of Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the eastern coast of England in the North Sea.
With a capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW), Dogger Bank will be three times bigger than the world’s biggest existing wind farm, the nearby 1.2 GW Hornsea One.
Located near a seaside town called Ulrome, which is 195 miles north of London, Dogger Bank will have three separate sites—Creyke Beck A, Creyke Beck B, and Teesside A—each with a 1.2 GW capacity, and construction is slated to take two years.
The project is a collaboration between SSE and Equinor, a Norwegian energy company.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by EventH0rizon on Tuesday January 21 2020, @10:48AM (6 children)
I don't mean to sound pushy, but 50 kWh a day? Do you actually see that number on your current power bills.
We're a family of three 100% off the grid in a large home - our typical daily load is anywhere from 8 - 12 kWh.
I've seen graphs over the years suggesting that batteries were set to reach meaningful price parity in 2020, and as far as I can tell that has happened (well here in Australia at least). I don't think it would have been as feasible to do what we are doing now 10 years ago, for example. The rate of technical improvement in this space has clearly helped people like us get off the grid.
I hope this helps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @12:41PM
A family of 4 in a detached house with electric heating (water heat pump) in cold, cold Canada, is about 20,000kWh/year. That gives you 55kWh/day. If only using air heat pump for heating, that would be most likely closer to 75kWh/day.
And yes, it's possible to augment your heating with thermal solar panels heating your concrete basement (heat store) during winter. But when it's -30C outside, you need to heat your house one way or another. And burning wood is not something allowed if you live in a city.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @12:52PM
AGM lead-acid is getting close to parity, more from electricity prices rising and feed-in tariffs falling than from any improvements in batteries. Main problem is the uncertain life, If you use them hard, they die quicker.
Tesla's Powerwall (tm) ($8000 for 7Kwh) is not sensible. It will never pay for itself.
Last time I ran the numbers, if the batteries lasted forever you could afford to pay up to about $400 per Kwh of storage. Given the limited life of lead-acid, and having to at least double the capacity so as not to kill them, $150 per Kwh was pretty close to price parity. But that involved you taking on the risk of battery failure.
Adjust those figures up or down a bit depending on whether you are prepared to go completely off-grid and save the connection charge as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:59PM
Yes, well when it is 32 C with 95% humidity you will be running the 400 W per room AC if you do not want to soak everything with sweat.
Also, don't forget an electric oven is 5 kW and stove is 1 kW per burner. To be fair I also have a machine learning rig for work that can use another 5-10 kWh per day, that will be an additional source of consumption.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:37PM (2 children)
We're just now building a house, and considered going off-grid. Briefly. It just doesn't make financial sense for us: battery storage is still way to expensive to make sense.
While we do have a lot of sunshine, when it gets stormy in the Winter or Spring, it is entirely normal to have 3-4 days of heavy cloud cover. Since we have electric (heat-pump) heating, 10kwh/day is probably a fair estimate for Winter. So I would want around 30kwh of storage, costing around $30k. That amount of money would pay for - literally - decades of power from the local electric company.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by EventH0rizon on Tuesday January 21 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
Total cost of our system (ground mounted panels, batteries, etc) was around $AU 47k. So your $30k ($US ?) sounds about right.
One factor to consider in deciding whether or not the ROI happens soon enough is the stability of the cost of grid-connected power.
In our part of the world this has been rising steadily, year on year. Each years rise brings the ROI horizon that much closer to us closer to us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:38PM
Can you really put a price on independence from the grid though? I expect more power outages like we see in california going forward. Plus they are connecting everyone's meters to wifi which is bound to end in tears.