Sounds like a solid plan (the scale model looks better than the 3D renders)
> Why are they getting so big?" he asks. "What's happening is that it installation and maintenance costs are so insane for these turbines, that you'd rather install and maintain one giant one than two medium ones. But those costs don't apply to us. And there's something called the square-cube law; when you double the size of a turbine design, you increase the swept area of the rotor by four times – but the weight goes up eight times, because you're doubling the height, width and length of every part in three dimensions. So it's actually a losing proposition to go too big for us. We're probably going to find our sweet spot with the lowest cost at somewhere around 7-8 megawatts."
But, seems like they're a pretty small outfit and have no actual business as yet.
The current median LCOE for new offshore wind is ~$125. Reducing capital costs to 30% could bring the median LCOE down to ~$67.
That would make offshore wind a good deal cheaper than all fossil fuels [2]. Natural gas, pre-war, was the cheapest - at about ~$75+.
Onshore wind saw a ~50% decrease in LCOE in 2011 [3]. This could lead to a similar decrease for offshore.
Solar is gaining ground rapidly - 38% growth from 2010-2020 vs 16% for wind. But solar isn't perfect. In the US - we have 3x more wind energy production than solar [4]. But >90% of that is onshore wind - because it was previously so much more economical.
A massive improvement like this for offshore could be huge! If we could add as much offshore wind as we do onshore wind - that could cut out an extra ~12% of fossil fuel consumption over the next decade.
Reminder that you'd need either equivalent backing storage and overprovisioning (not yet feasible except in the rare cases where pumped hydro can be built) or backing fossil fuel plants for each unit of wind, even more so than solar. The LCOEs are not directly compatible.
Dependability has value to society and LCOE does not account for it whatsoever.
As your renewables approach “free” (sub 2 cents/kWh), the marginal cost is storage, and is still competitive against fossil and nuclear (per page 122 of NextEra’s most recent investor deck). Near firm is industry parlance for battery backed.
Tangentially, the Australian gov is pulling forward 10 years their coal generator retirements (2037->2027) due to how quickly new utility scale renewables are going live.
Australia does have some geographic and climate advantages when it comes to solar installations. Most of the interior is basically desert. It also helps that it has one of the lowest population densities of any continent.
It's also important to note that plans to phase things out do not indicate success. See California right now.
California solar plateaus at 10-12GW during the day, a bit less than total coal generation capacity in Australia (per ElectricityMap.org). California needs more solar, wind, and batteries, full stop (and CAISO is working on it if you review their interconnect queue). At least they decided to hold on to Diablo Canyon. You refer to Australia’s desert; 75% of California’s natural gas generation could be replaced with solar sited over existing irrigation canals, and there is a large Nevada desert to the east of the state.
Large AC needs after the sun goes down will need to be served by time shifting chillers, batteries, wind, hydro, and the last nuclear plant standing in the state.
> Why are they getting so big?" he asks. "What's happening is that it installation and maintenance costs are so insane for these turbines, that you'd rather install and maintain one giant one than two medium ones. But those costs don't apply to us. And there's something called the square-cube law; when you double the size of a turbine design, you increase the swept area of the rotor by four times – but the weight goes up eight times, because you're doubling the height, width and length of every part in three dimensions. So it's actually a losing proposition to go too big for us. We're probably going to find our sweet spot with the lowest cost at somewhere around 7-8 megawatts."
But, seems like they're a pretty small outfit and have no actual business as yet.