Tag Archives: Energy

Business, Science, TechNews

World’s largest offshore wind farm: England less dependent on fossil fuels

The British want to make themselves less dependent on fossil fuels with a new offshore wind farm. The energy is transported on land with 390 kilometer long cables.

The Danish energy company Ørsted has implemented what it says is the world ‘s largest offshore wind farm. This is located around 89 kilometers off the coast of Yorkshire in England and produces more than 1.3 gigawatts of energy.

These come from 165 turbines, which can power more than 1.4 million British homes. The entire park is 463 square kilometers. 81 meter long rotor blades from Siemens are installed in the wind turbines. According to Ørsted, these can power an average British home for 24 hours with just one turn.

Image: Offshore Wind Farm, Free Stock Picture, MorgueFile.com.

Pandemic as a challenge

Patrick Harnett, vice president of the UK program at Ørsted, saw the corona pandemic as a challenge for the project. He said: “This project has been an amazing undertaking. Building the world’s largest offshore wind farm during a global pandemic was a challenge the team overcame with flying colors. I am so proud of how our team worked together to safely deliver this remarkable project. A big thank you to everyone involved who contributed to it.”

The UK could also use the new wind farm to strengthen its energy grid and reduce its dependency on fossil fuels, according to Duncan Clark, UK Region Manager at Ørsted. He says:

“The UK is truly a world leader in offshore wind energy and the completion of Hornsea 2 is a tremendous milestone for the offshore wind industry, not just in the UK but globally. Current global events are underscoring more than ever the importance of pioneering renewable energy projects such as Hornsea 2, which is helping Britain increase the security and resilience of our energy supply and lower costs for consumers by reducing our dependence on expensive fossil fuels. ”

Hornsea 3

With the completion of Hornsea 2, however, Ørsted’s work is not over. Another wind farm called Hornsea 3 is planned to be built in the same area. The company secured a contract with the British government for this at the beginning of the year.

However, Ørsted is not only active in the English North Sea. Last year, the company made a deal with Google to build 83 wind turbines in the North Sea of ​​Lower Saxony .

Crypto, Financial, Science

Energy Efficiency “crucial” for Crypto Mining

Bitcoin miners say: energy efficiency and regulatory certainty are crucial for success of Crypto Industry

Bitcoin mining is often criticized as an imperfect process due to its energy expenditure, but major firms in the industry are trying to maximize efficiency and sustainability while seeking regulatory clarity.

Image by TeX9.net: Cryptocurrency Revolution
Image by TeX9.net: Cryptocurrency Revolution

In a dimly lit room at the FTX and SALT’s Crypto Bahamas event, some of the largest crypto miners in the world took the stage to discuss the future of the nascent but growing industry in the “Crypto Mining: Maximizing Efficiency and Sustainability” panel.

Crypto miners are looking to improve their market through efforts ranging from improving hashrate efficiency, which is the amount of power that a machine requires to produce a bitcoin, to data mining centers becoming more specialized and optimized for lower energy consumption, Marco Streng, CEO and co-founder of Genesis Digital Assets, said at the event.

Computers that mine bitcoin are 58 times more efficient than they were eight years ago, according to a report by the Bitcoin Mining Council. In addition to machines becoming more efficient, the engineering of the facilities and the sources of power have become much more efficient, which improves the productivity of an individual bitcoin mining computer, Mike Levitt, co-chairman, co-founder and CEO of Core Scientific, said.

Some miners are even using excess heat and converting it into close to 100% heat-generated energy, which would otherwise be wasted but instead is being channeled into energy, Streng said.

“It’s clear now that miners are converging toward renewable sources,” Streng said.

Out of all the energy that gets generated and used in the U.S., about 65% was wasted in 2021, according to a chart by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and UC Berkeley.

Miners can be a solution to the problem of unconsumed energy, Streng said.

Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, agreed.

“By working together with a local power grid, we actually are a stabilizer,” Leverton said.

The amount of energy that it takes for Bitcoin to produce $1 billion worth of value is significantly less than the amount of energy it takes for something like an airline to produce $1 billion worth of value, Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury, said.

A key point that’s hurting the crypto mining industry right now is the lack of regulatory clarity, all the panelists said.