Sky lapse in two tone(blog.datadesk.eco) |
Sky lapse in two tone(blog.datadesk.eco) |
I know from some people involved there that they are always looking for developers and data scientists.
The main page is in German but the call for volunteers (you need to scroll down to "Volunteers for Space-Eye") is in English.
I ask b/c if they are synthetically removing the sea surface at 1-5m resolution that seems really hard given tides, waves, etc.
Images collected at lower incidence (closer to nadir) might feature very bright surface water if it is calm, as more energy is reflected towards the radar.
Rough water surface is a diffuse scatterer, and will generally appear brighter than calm waters.
my absolute favorite of the wind farms shown is sheringham, a true ocean rhomboid. i got curious and found the website for the wind farm [1], and here's an aerial view [2]
[1] https://sheringhamshoal.co.uk/about/overview.php
[2] https://sheringhamshoal.co.uk/about/benefits-of-offshore-win...
There are plenty of accurate maps/widgets for ground based PV, but ocean data seems much rarer
Source: I made it up, I'm a software engineer not a maritime power expert.
Also, waterproofing is a nightmare, and the panels get dirty (salt, algae, bird shit) and stop producing power efficiently.
EDIT - thanks all. I'll read it next time ...
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:1.7/center...
"Since December 2004, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) requires all passenger and commercial vessels over 299 Gross Tonnage that travel internationally to carry an AIS transponder that include a GPS receiver which collects the vessel's position and movement details."
Counting across the longest segment of ships at the narrowest point of the English Channel in the feature article I see about 18 ships. In the live image from marinetraffic I see about 8. So even though the feature article is a composite image, the English Channel is indeed pretty crowded.
> Inspired by some similar images shared by Tim Wallace in 2020, we’ve created a series of black-and-white composite renderings of some of the points of flux in the global energy system. Created in Google Earth Engine, these pictures are effectively annual timelapse images based on Sentinel-1’s radar, consisting of multiple snapshots taken by the satellite across 2023.
Not sure if the wind farm images are also composites (wouldn't make a lot of sense), but those of shipping lanes definitely are...
> Created in Google Earth Engine, these pictures are effectively annual timelapse images based on Sentinel-1’s radar, consisting of multiple snapshots taken by the satellite across 2023.
Edit to add: the Hornsea wind farm featured in this article is 2.5 GW and about 400 sq miles. [0]. The total energy capacity of existing generation assets is on the order of 7,500 GW [1]. Let's double that, so 15,000 GW, which would be about 2,400,000 sq miles. There's 1,015,756 linear miles of coast [2]. We know Hornsea is roughly square, so a 20 mile deep set of turbines doesn't interfere with each other, so that gives us ~20,000,000 sq miles of usable coast for wind, and again, if we double the existing electrical generation for the earth, we'd cover 2,400,000 sq miles. (obviously not all of that is usable, but we're talking orders of magnitude here) There's really no conceivable situation where we'd build enough wind farms to interfere with each other.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267358/world-installed-p...
I read that a rule of thumb was 4-5 diameter widths between turbines at right angles to prevailing wind and then 7 diameter widths between rows facing the wind
I am curious how much small elevation differences impact optimal positioning of turbines, as that is a non-issue with offshore wind. The turbines in land-based wind farms are not in a nice grid like the offshore wind farm. https://openinframap.org/#9.68/41.6112/-92.4971
The excerpt from an abstract below mentions the wake turbulence can cause other turbines to shut down.
"...The distance between the turbines is among other things dependent on the recovery of wind energy behind the neighboring turbines and the increased wind load. Models for the mean wind speed and turbulence intensity in wind turbine parks are considered with emphasis on modeling the spatial correlation. Representative limit state equations for structural failure of wind turbine towers are formulated. The probability of failure is determined taking into account that wind turbines are parked for wind speeds larger than 25 m/s resulting in reduced wind loads. An illustrative example is presented where illustrative models for the spatial correlation is taken into account"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/102866006011566...
(i guess stuff like o&m, grid connection and yield are really project dependent)
edit: solar duck just announced 150mw combined pv wind project
Our biggest problem with small wind turbines on buoys is fishingpeople throwing line into them.
But yea, solar for power generation at sea is not realistic.. and you are stealing it from the tiny animals that make up our carbon sink. https://twilightzone.whoi.edu/explore-the-otz/value-of-the-o...
There is also a very good SAR vulgarisation book written by Tom Ager [2].
[1] https://www.routledge.com/Introduction-to-Microwave-Remote-S...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-SAR-Conceptual-Remarkable-...
I've never seen "close to nadir" radar images... wouldn't the ground fold over itself?
even with a strictly side-looking geometry, images collected closer to nadir (steep/low incidence) start exhibiting some artifacts such as nadir returns [1].
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-nadir-echo-in...