Chris Goodall: Productivity of offshore wind: DONG is the world’s largest operator of offshore wind farms, with more GW under its control than the next three competitors combined. Its UK country manager gave a talk in Oxford this week. I asked him about his expectations for the generation from its next round of UK offshore farms. He didn’t give a precise figure but said that ‘a 50% capacity factor would be a huge disappointment’. (Today, this figure averages slightly over 40% for offshore UK so his estimate represents a very substantial improvement). DONG recently bid for two German offshore parks at no subsidy. I asked whether this is likely elsewhere. The response was ‘I’m sure it won’t be long before we see negative prices’. He meant that offshore wind bidders will soon be offering to pay governments for the right to build offshore wind and sell their output on the open market. This is a truly remarkable statement.
Carbon Commentary 30th April 2017 read more »
