No place like Taiwan for offshore wind power?

Especially for dying battery tech.

TSMC has backup diesel power generators.
They could choose to replace some od them with Megapacks.

And it’s not like they have a choice: Taiwan gird is still carbon heavy and pressures to offer low carbon footprint products forces them do it (if they don’t, they could be hit by opportunistic punitive Eco tariffs, carbon trading overhead and bad PR)

TSMC switched to their diesel generators for backup power. There were no required evacuations or safety issues related to this outage.

https://www.siliconexpert.com/blog/tsmc-plant-hit-by-temporary-power-outage/

I would have assumed they would be already! Isnt this common sense for plugging in variable sources? God help us if they are manually switching off and on plugs like me tryingto bump my internet into functional use lol.

Backups and plan B, even if dirty fuels, isnt illogical. some people want to derail the renewable push by such all or nothing claims. clearly everywhere important should have backups, even if not the cleanest, to push them through emergencies. Doesnt make developing better tech shouldn’t be top priority.

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what does that table show?

fields’ outputs.

I assume those are “optimal numbers”. Like car mileage on the dealers pamphlet.

so full rated power at optimal wind speed and all units functioning?

Those are the so-called Round 3 of bidding for Offshore wind farm in Taiwan. The developers bidding for rights to develop certain area that designated by Taiwan government for wind farm.

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I dont know, looks like a projected best case. like a car dealer advertising their models.

They are the rated power production for the designated area.
Rated power for WTG usually at 12 m/s wind.
Say a location deemed to have rated power production of 800 MW. Means that if the developer build the wind farm using 8 MW WTG, they need to use 100 wind turbines. If the wind farm build using 6 MW, they need to use 133 WTG.
On average Taiwan offshore have annual average wind speed from 7.5 to 10 m/s depends on the actual location. Anything above 7.5 m/s considered good for offshore wind farms.

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out of curiosity, how do they calculate the averages? I was thinking that Taiwan often has wind speeds far too high for turbines to operate. I assume those high speeds arent calculated into the average. Perhaps it’s more the average within a range (0 to maximum operational speed)?

Just measure it second by second with a met mast. There are various definitions. Hourly average, 10 mins average, 3 sec gusts, among others.
The measurement also includes when typhoon come.

Measurement at certain height could be normalized to another height. Say you measure at 10, 20 and 50 m height on met mast. You need to know wind speed at 100 m height (where the nacelle at these days), you can do math on that.

If you define the wind speed in 10 mins average.
In general, wind turbine starts make production at 3 m/s wind, then reaches the maximum power production at 12 m/s wind.
Say, 6 MW wind turbine (rotor diameter around 150-155 m), will make 60 kW on 3 m/s wind, 3 MW on 8.5 m/s and 6 MW on 12 m/s wind.
From 12 m/s to 25 m/s the output stay the same at maximum, by changing the pitch angle of the blades (how the blade “facing” the wind).
After 25 m/s, wind turbine will be automatically stopped. It will restart operation when wind goes lower than 20 m/s.

When typhoon come, wind speed could reach 30-60 m/s, the rotor will be intentionally braked by using lock mechanism for safety. In lock condition, WTG installed in Taiwan could sustain up to 71 m/s wind (biblical scale typhoon that comes once every 50 years).
Typhoon Morakot 2009 and Soulik 2013 reached 65 m/s at the maximum.

With these operational modes/constraints, the life of each machine 20-25 years.

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Cheers. But i am wondering if the averages take in the wind speeds that are too high for operation as well. Not just typhoons, but certainly also typhoons.

Are the wind speeds a total average or an average within working range (ie. not counting speeds that would cause them to lock)?

For example a wind speed average average that measures everything will be much higher with big storms. That could be used to project higher numbers of generation even though the wind mills are stopped and not producing.

Without taking those numbers into account and using a functional range average (not sure what the proper terminology is) it would be a more accurate estimate of actual production.

Was curious about that aspect.

There is parameter call Nominal Wind Distribution, that measure/predict how much time in one year a certain wind speed occur. Same average wind speed for different location could (definitely) have different distribution.
image

It’s a statistic thing.
Weibull distributions with k and A constants.

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When making those predictions, are they inputting very high wind speeds that would cause the wind farms to brake into the average?

The wind speed was measured actually.
Or extrapolated from weather station or met mast measurement. If the wind is good (average and distribution are good), then technically it could go ahead.
Then goes financial aspect, how long the investment could return. 7 years would be good scenario. 11 years maybe a bit too long.
No one gonna burn their money building an expensive ivory tower.

Got it. So they include the typhoons, for example, in their yearly averages of wind speeds. This would bump up their average m/s a bit, but it wouldnt be accurate given the mechanisms would be stopped during high winds.

The production calculated not from average, but more detailed from hourly wind distribution.
Like calculation of power density function in college statistics.
At wind speed 3 m/s… Turbine power in MW x yearly hours of wind at 3 m/s
At 4 m/s … Turbine power in MW x yearly hours of wind at 4 m/s
So on… until 25 m/s wind.

Remember, below 3 m/s and above 25 m/s, turbine power is 0. So no production there.

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Cheers. so between 3m/a and 25m/s is the operational speeds.

When they are making their figures of annual energy production they must be using data over the year(s) though. It would seem to erroneously bump up those projections if they are also using wind speeds below and above those to make power production predictions.

Or were you saying those figures are just the manufacturers output at XX speed?