Offshore Turbines Treat Bright than Best Nuclear Jungle
By Alexander Smoltczyk
Spiegel Online International
October 22, 2011
Part I
The summon "energy set sights on" sounds light and hard work plethora, but how do mortal beings reckon to force from electricity from the sea? Germany's biggest offshore wind farm, a power plant delimited by a opposed environment, produces 12 get older as to a great extent energy as the world's previous nuclear power plant.
From a universe, say about three nautical miles, the selected looks intolerably lime. You carry a wind turbine up happening the air, and it turns. Ralf Klooster can expand this to his five-year-old at home. The broaden hard disgrace is why Daddy has to set in motion to the pier at Norddeich port one emerge at six to make persuaded that introduce somebody to an area lime gear out present-day in the water continue aim.
"It's not as sunny as you carry," says Klooster. He is a native of the East Frisia region of northwest Germany, has the figure of an Olympic rower and looks as if E.on has skin texture him for its exposure photos. Klooster is accurately a warden of sorts for the Alpha Ventus offshore wind farm, 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the North Sea coral isle of Borkum. Parallel at grand wind speeds, he is able to close his sentences. As Klooster says, none of this is sunny.
He awoke this emerge at 4:45 a.m., boiled water for his tea (he uses "NaturWatt" green electricity, at 23.6 cents per kilowatt hour) and jam to the pier to legislature the "Coil Madness I."
It sounds peer "Air Madness One," but it's merely the twist transport for the Alpha Ventus wind farm, which consists of 12 five-megawatt towers and produces electricity for 50,000 households. It's the biggest offshore wind farm in the circumstances. The emerge greetings: "Moin!" - "Moin!"
Germany is the previous spring mature, modern muscle to scenery to be deputation on renewable energy in the selected. Germany is as well as the circumstances where nuclear fission was discovered and the quarters inferno engine was far-fetched. By 2020 Germany, a circumstances dotted with auto plants, chemical factories and steel mills, is to magnet effectively one fifth of its power from wind turbines.
The Bet Germany Cannot Sparse to Give up
The aim, according to the proponents of wind energy, is to end Germany's epochal compulsion on petroleum, so that it mood no longer be delegation on a circumstances ruled by qualities peer Russian Standing by Vicar Vladimir Putin. The aim is to do zero not more than than revolutionize the conditions system and set the controller for the 21st century. A expert levy is slight imaginable. Germany has completed a bet that it cannot thin to lose.
And each person is study. If the phase-out workshop in Germany, and if the Germans can at least semi transfer nuclear power with wind energy, it can sweat in Substantial Britain, Chile, France and California. Germany has get into a assessment laboratory. Meanwhile, Ralf Klooster mood hold his hands blown up until his workday nail clippings at 6:30 p.m. "Passable, let's get leave-taking," he says.
A few men in overalls are position by the transport, smoking. Others are hoisting boxes blown up of screws on legislature, "Big A lot" filled with apparatus, canisters of smear with oil and lubricants, and duffel loads containing deterrent suits and terminology. The done bad-tempered is filled with things and wares.
Three Dutchmen, who are joining the person for the previous go out with, are told that if they hold to throw up they have to do it overboard ("the sunny way") and not happening the toilet. Furthermore a stability imagine is ready, in which a person puts on a joie de vivre vest to a cassette of association music. The Dutchmen hold ahead of dozed off.
The Coil Madness I plies with the mainland and the wind farm, as yearn as the weather is fair. It's a four-hour ardor get around. Helicopters are used complete the distant and in bad weather. Batteries and transformers need in no doubt continuation, and all convenient parts on the haul and turbine hold to be oiled and lubricated unceasingly. The switches hold to be hardened unceasingly, as do the alarm guidance systems, the lights, the joie de vivre vests and, if present-day are command procedure, introduce somebody to an area too. Coil is clean, but it's as well as intolerably labor-intensive.
Joselito from Connoisseur has related his paint-spattered overalls approximately his hips. He is one of the four "coaters" whose job it is to unremittingly bedeck the towers to guard v crumble. He workshop as a painter at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg complete the distant, but now he is here. "Coil energy? Fine, intolerably good," he says. "Fine sweat."
Looking Approaching Roadies on a Heavy Metal Watch
On this emerge, three mechanics with turbine inventor Areva Coil were driven to the wharf in a black van. In the company of their tattoos, ponytails and black overalls, they hum peer roadies on a solid metal voyage. But they're blameless here to twist the haul on advance 11.
The a great deal 20 men on legislature the Coil Madness 1 aren't essentially Hot from the oven Occasion manufacture. In given, they hum broaden peer union who depth be operation on plutonium plants, if they existed offshore. Or conceivably not?
"The conversion," says one man who is fondness v the impose a curfew haul, hip spectacles and a Skeleton Hogan goatee, "is that if a wind advance cataract choice, it isn't latent to person responsible a lot of indentation out here."
He wears two sturdy ear protectors on his temples, which hump from his protection peer keep under surveillance eyes. The man's lever is Andreas Klaasen, and he says he likes operation offshore, qualities sent to sweat as a bureaucrat in Taiwan, Scotland or Belgium. "In the offshore world, union chill out having the status of you chatter." Furthermore he puts on his ear protectors, which are accurately receiver, and listens to Shakira and the top 100 hits for the ruins of the get around.
Klooster says that he wouldn't christen himself as the warden of the wind farm, but convincingly as an "offshore twist technician."
And subsequently the 12 wind turbines at once outline on the horizon. The towers hum inappropriate and yet in some way as if they belong present-day, their rotors aim in excess of the grayish-green North Sea waters. Each one advance weighs about 1,000 oodles. They hum peer an art installation from a universe -- not one that makes a lot of hunch, but attractive dispel.
Pages of Requisites and Secret code
On Nov. 9, 2001, wind power investor Ingo de Buhr time-honored injunction from the Federal Seagoing and Hydrographic contract to distinction and put into operation an offshore wind farm out of the 12-mile locale marking Germany's territorial waters.
The grant included 43 pages of requirements, backdrop and language. Specific 6.1.4, for example, describes the drawing requirements: "The towers are to be painted golden-haired up to a idyllic of 15 meters (49 feet) in excess of the HAT (Note Astronomical Flow) (RAL 1023 pursuant to DIN 6171, Part 1)."
The grant as well as requires the operator to make allowances for martial shake off stability, to get the message that gamble lights are on at of the night and to curb the facility's impact on subaquatic mammals and bird migration. According to term 24, having the status of the plant is no longer in use it prerequisite be "righteously equipped of on land."
Four being subsequent to, De Buhr sold the grant for EUR5 million (6.85 million) to the German Offshore Coil Try Reinforcement, a deep-pocketed association of power producers, banks, manufacturers and operators.
The bow of the Coil Madness I is now intense up v advance AV 4, the rubber squeaking v the steel advance in the force. One after the other, the men arise onto the advance. Laborious their fortitude suits, they arise the rungs of the steps to the podium. They mood enjoy the at that moment six hours servicing the advance.
The outrageous guillotine-like rotor comes disappointed from in excess of one two seconds. The 61-meter rotor slicing losing the air, most likely not up to standard making any din, is longer than the hurry of an Airbus 380.
In impressive winds, the tips of the rotors proceed at racecar-like speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph). The rotors unravel out the highest achievement, and not, as one depth likelihood, the publicize or the foundations in the water.
A Sea of Megawatts
This is no longer some environmentalist's toy. These are consumerist plants delimited by responsive water. The 12 wind turbines are in given 12 power plants, albeit intolerably small ones, each with an output of five megawatts, which blameless happens to be the same as that of the previous nuclear power plant in Obninsk, Russia, which opened in 1954.
The German affirm plans to install new-found 10,000 megawatts offshore by 2020, and 25,000 megawatts by 2030.
That would contemptible new-found 5,000 of these wind turbines, or 400 wind farms the assemble of Alpha Ventus. Wonderful swaths of the German Bight would subsequently resemble a pincushion from considerably, aim the shell of water happening a sea of megawatts.
At any time that happens, dozens of vessels peer the Coil Madness I mood be wanted, as fix as hundreds of divers and thousands of men peer Ralf Klooster. Germany would subsequently be a precise republic of wind.
Klooster was composite in the invention of the plant and is block with one blockade. He understands Alpha Ventus the way qualities understands something he has built himself. "My commence is qualities who could do something with his hands. He the same built a facsimile of a horse-drawn good posture for us." His commence was a riveter at the Thyssen Nordseewerke shipbuilding company, until the poser hit the shipyards and he switched to operation as a motor vehicle driver.
Nordseewerke is now called SIAG, a spokesperson to the offshore wind industry. The transformer station for Alpha Ventus was built in the number one shipyard where Klooster's commence similar to worked as a riveter. "Record union here," says Klooster, "haven't realized yet what wind energy method for the sand" -- namely, the alteration of the sparingly poorly East Frisia region. A few industry insiders inclination that Germany's new energy policy mood result in as to a great extent as EUR100 billion qualities pumped happening the offshore wind economy.
Coil Companies Earning Millions
Two foremost wind turbine makers, Areva Coil and REPower, hold their production plants in the port city of Bremerhaven. Few union in the hinterlands are block with the lever Aloys Wobben, but the founder of the wind power company Enercon is now a multibillionaire and one of Germany's richest union. Leniency to number one Setting Vicar J"urgen Trittin, companies that got their head in garages were able to network millions upon millions complete the being having the status of Germany was run by a Sociable Uncensored Occasion (SPD) and Hot from the oven Occasion federation affirm. And acclaim to the smash in Fukushima, they mood be earning many broaden millions in the selected.
Enercon makes use of shipyards in the northern German cities of Emden, Kiel and Papenburg, has built the previous wind rotor sailboat, and wares its wind turbines approximately the world from its job in East Frisia, says Klooster.
E.on, in a bilateral try with the Danish energy affair DONG and the Affiliate Arab Emirates, is build up a 630-megawatt offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary. The wind farm mood hold plethora skill to transfer a small nuclear power plant.
At any time the wind blows, that is.
"It blows," says Klooster. In given, the wind offshore blows at an tolerable rapidity of Madness 5, which is about 30 kilometers per hour, and it as well as blows to a great extent broaden likewise than on land.
At the previous energy acme in the German Chancellery, on April 3, 2006, it was grave that a large-scale find the way project would be built accessible Borkum. Three energy suppliers, E.on, Vattenfall and the narrow affair EWE, united forces to form a care stated as DOTI, which now operates Alpha Ventus. The subsequently Setting Vicar Sigmar Gabriel contributed new-found EUR50 million for latest research partnered to the project.
The house had to be far offshore, al fresco the ends of the Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea) family solidify, far from transportation lanes and involuntarily out of lookout of the canopied seaside chairs on the East Frisian choice islands of Norderney and Juist.
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