EcoRadio

Category: Energy Matters

  • Florida Feed-in

     

    Solar photovoltaic rebates had traditionally been part of the energy efficiency program. In addition to rebates, retail net metering was offered to PV customers in 2008. These incentives were successful by comparison: Although making up 1 percent of the state’s population, Gainesville residents installed 12 percent of the distributed PV in Florida in 2008.

    However, GRU felt the solar program was falling short on two key elements. First, rebates were issued to purchase equipment and not energy. Once the equipment was purchased, there was no further incentive for customers to maintain their systems. Second, net-metering provided little incentive for commercial customers to install PV. Since they were paid at the same rate they purchased energy, which is traditionally much lower than residential rates, they were less inclined to invest in PV, although they had the largest rooftops.

    In the summer of 2008, the Solar Electric Power Association sponsored a trip to Germany for utility executives, so that they could see firsthand the effect that German renewable energy policies had had on that country. GRU’s representative on that trip returned with accounts of market transformation, innovative design and manufacturing and an explosion of green jobs, all due directly to a policy known as a “feed-in tariff” (FIT). In short, the feed-in tariff allows anyone to become a renewable energy generator, have access to the power grid and guarantees a flat rate-payment for every kilowatt hour of energy they produce.

    Upon reflection, it was clear that applying such an approach to Gainesville would have two immediate benefits. Replacing rebates with a performance-based incentive would increase the actual delivery of energy. And there would be a much greater incentive for commercial customers to participate.

    The potential of the FIT to spark economic growth, in addition to simply developing renewable energy sources, was not lost on the Gainesville City Commission. Implementing the FIT was seen as a chance to use energy policy to create jobs and establish a flourishing green marketplace. However, in order to meet these objectives, investors needed to be convinced that building PV installations would be a prudent business move. Therefore, an FIT rate was designed to provide a return high enough to be worthy of investment.

    In March 2009 the Gainesville FIT program was officially launched with these primary objectives:

    • To transform the GRU capacity-based incentives to performance-based incentives
    • To provide much greater incentive for commercial participation in the solar program
    • To assure a ready supply of renewable energy for the near and far future
    • To create both jobs and a strong, renewable energy marketplace.

    In the months since the program’s inception, the FIT has proven successful beyond expectations. Thirty megawatts of solar capacity has been successfully applied for and reserved through 2017. Already, in less than a year, GRU has doubled the amount of solar capacity that had ever been installed in the city. Two solar “farms” designed to produce nearly 2,400 MWh of energy each year are currently in construction and a 2 MW rooftop system will crown Gainesville’s largest shopping center by the end of the year.

    As Ray Kroc, the innovative founder of McDonald’s once said: “The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it”. The time for renewable energy is now, and Gainesville is proud to have taken the steps towards its success.

  • Camel-drawn solar-powered mini-van

     

    Only a trickle is left in the river, whcih began flowing for the first time in a year last Thursday, and peaked at 2.85 metres at the weekend.

    Klaus Menzel, 61, has been on the road with his camels Snowy and Willy for eight years and says he is enjoying the desert’s wet conditions.

    “It is good to have but it is hard to pull through,” he said.

    “Willy was with me over at Camels Corner but then Snowy his partner came from Queensland.

    “We walked 14 wild ones up to Queensland and as a reward I got these two fellas and they been pulling me around ever since.”

     

  • China powers the global green tech revolution

     

    Yes and no. When it comes to technological and entrepreneurial innovation, Beijing lags Silicon Valley (and Austin, Boston, and Los Angeles)—for now. But as a market, China is likely to drive demand for renewable energy, giving companies like eSolar the opportunity to scale up their technology and drive down costs.

    [We’ll pause here to state the obvious: China’s investment in renewable energy and other green technologies is miniscule compared to the resources devoted to its continued building of coal-fired power plants and efforts to secure dirty oil shale supplies in Canada and elsewhere.]

    “All the learning from this partnership will help us in the United States,” Bill Gross, eSolar’s founder and chairman, told me. “I think as soon as the economy improves in the rest of the world and banks start lending, there will be a lot of competition in the U.S. and Europe. But, until then, China has the money and the demand.”

    In a one-party state, a government official saying, “Make it so,” can remove obstacles to any given project and allocate resources for its development. Construction of the first eSolar project, a 92-megawatt power plant, in a 66-square-mile energy park in northern China, is set to begin this year

    “They’re moving very fast, much faster than the state and U.S. governments are moving,” says Gross, who is licensing eSolar’s technology to a Chinese firm, Penglai Electric, which will manage the construction of the power plants. Another Chinese company will open and operate the projects.

    For the past two-and-a-half years in California, meanwhile, the state’s first new solar thermal power plant in two decades has been undergoing licensing as part of an extensive environmental review process.  The goal is to maximize production of carbon-free electricity from BrightSource Energy’s 400-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project in the Mojave Desert while minimizing its impact on fragile ecosystems.

    The end game begins Monday in Sacramento at a public hearing where BrightSource will face off with environmental groups that argue the project will harm the imperiled desert tortoise and destroy the habitat for a host of plants and animals.

    In contrast, it was only six months ago that executives from Penglai Electric first contacted eSolar as they scoured the world for a technology to use in that nation’s first big foray into solar thermal power.

    China leads the world in production of photovolatic panels like those found on residential and commercial rooftops, but the country has had little experience with solar thermal technology, which uses arrays of mirrors called heliostats to heat a liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

    Penglai executives flew to Los Angeles last fall to meet with Gross and examine a five-megawatt demonstration power station called Sierra that eSolar brought online in August in the Southern California exurb of Lancaster. “A parade of people came over—we probably had 20 different government officials from China come to look at Sierra and review its operation,” said Gross.

    “The most convincing aspects of eSolar’s technology is the fact that it is the only commercially operating technology in North America,” Eric Wang, a Penglai Electric spokesman, told me in an email.

    That’s not quite correct—a solar trough plant was recently built in Nevada and solar power plants from the 1980s continue to operate in California—but eSolar’s technology is particularly suited for China.

    As I wrote in a Green State column about eSolar last year, eSolar’s innovation is its sophisticated software controls systems and imaging technology which controls heliostats that focus the sun’s rays on a tower that contains a water-filled receiver. That allows the company to use small mirrors packed closely together as the software positions them to create a virtual parabola to focus sunlight. The mirrors are cheap to make and easy to install.

    “When we do solar fields in California, we use $8 labor to open up the fields,” said Gross. “It takes 15 minutes training. In China, they wanted to use untrained labor as well.”

    Since eSolar can place the mirrors close together—its standard 46-megawatt solar farm has 176,000 of them—the power plants needs half the land of an equivalent photovoltaic farm, according to Gross—a feature attractive to China, Wang said.

    China, however, is not merely importing eSolar’s technology. Biomass power plants will be built alongside the solar farms and will use the same turbines, cutting the project’s costs and allowing the energy complex to operate when the sun goes down. The sand willow plant, a shrub planted in the surrounding region to fight desertification, will provide the fuel for the biomass power plants, according to Penglai Electric.  ESolar already makes its heliostats in China and will begin manufacturing its proprietary receiver technology there as well.

    While eSolar, which counts Google among its investors, retains ownership of the intellectual property behind its solar technology, China will gain valuable experience building and operating large-scale renewable energy facilities. 

    Much the same is happening in the nascent electric car industry, where China is pushing ahead and partnering with California companies like Coda Automotive to develop advanced battery technology.

    All of which is not necessarily a bad thing. But one has to wonder if it won’t be too long before we’re cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in our Chinese-made electric car and plugging it in to our Chinese-made solar array

  • When Will Renewable Energy Companies Overtake Traditional Enegry Companies

    As a new year — and new decade — begins, many hope it will launch a new era of growth and profit for renewable energy after a year of financial suffering. It’s also a time when companies, as well as individuals, traditionally take stock of where they are and set new goals and resolutions. So it seems like a fitting time to examine this question and take a look at various predictions of when this might happen.

    Total Energy

    One of the most obvious ways to attempt to answer the question is by looking at how much of the world’s energy comes from renewables today. According to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, in 2008 renewables made up 18 percent — or 3,470 terawatt hours — of the global electricity generation but in 2023 the investment in renewables passed the investment in oil production. In the 2008 report, the agency forecast renewable-electricity generation would overtake natural gas, becoming the world’s second-largest source of electricity after coal, “soon after 2010.” According to those predictions, renewables are on track to account for 4,970 terawatt hours in 2010 and more than 7,700 terawatt hours, or 23 percent of the global electricity production, in 2030.

    That expected growth might have been slowed by financial difficulties this year. According to the 2009 World Energy Outlook, investment in renewables-based power generation “fell proportionately more than that in other types of generating capacity” in late 2008 and early 2009. The report forecast that investment in those projects may have declined by nearly one-fifth this year, and would have dropped by almost 30 percent without government stimulus packages worldwide. Even if renewables do still overtake natural gas by 2015, that isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison as it compares all types of renewable electricity, including hydro, wind, solar and more, to only one type of fossil fuel.

    Looking at the numbers for just one type of renewable energy, such as solar, for example, shows renewables are far behind in total production. Adam Krop, vice president for equity research at Ardour Capital Investments, said his company estimates that solar will likely only be about 1 percent of the total global electricity generating capacity for the foreseeable future — and that’s an aggressive target. In the United States, which is a small solar market today, solar electricity accounts for only 0.01 percent of the total, he said, but could grow to 0.5 percent by 2020. “Growing from 0.01 percent to 0.5 percent still represents rapid growth, but growing to the size of conventional energy companies is not likely,” he said.

    As independent analyst Peter Lynch puts it, “If the solar industry doubled every year for the next 20 years, it wouldn’t even be a significant number.”

    Meanwhile, an early release of this year’s U.S. Department of Energy’s International Energy Annual forecasts that the electricity generated from renewables worldwide will match that of natural gas in 2015, but sink slightly below it through 2030 (see chart here titled “Figure 6:World Electricity Generation by Fuel”). Renewables make up a much smaller portion of the total energy (not just electricity) usage, however. According to the report, renewables made up only 41.5 quadrillion Btu of the total world energy consumption compared with 28.5 quadrillion Btu for nuclear, 115.5 quadrillion Btu for natural gas, 136 quadrillion Btu for coal and 175.2 quadrillion Btu for liquids, including biofuels.

    Profits and Revenues

    But finding a single company large enough to rank among the energy majors isn’t the same as comparing global energy output or usage. A common way of determining the size of a public company is its market capitalization, or the total value of all the shares owned by investors. Ardour’s Krop pointed out that at $323.72 billion as of Dec. 31, Exxon Mobil’s market cap is still 28 times larger than that of First Solar, the largest stock in his solar group, at $11.52 billion. It’s also 26 times larger than Danish wind company Vestas Wind Systems’ market cap of 64.57 billion kroner, or $12.47 billion. “My sense is that my solar group will not likely approach conventional energy company size in the foreseeable future,” he said.

    Another way to compare renewable- and conventional-energy companies is through their revenues and profits. Let’s compare Vestas, the largest pure-play wind-turbine manufacturer, to Exxon Mobil, which sits at the very top of the Fortune 500. Exxon Mobil saw its revenue grow 18.8 percent to a whopping $442.851 billion last year as its profit grew 11.4 percent to $45.22 billion. Meanwhile, Vestas saw its revenue grow 24 percent to €6.03 billion last year — valued at $8.51 billion at the time of its annual report, according to Hoover’s Inc. — while its profit grew 75.6 percent to €511 million.

    If Vestas continued to grow at exactly the same annual rate, which is unlikely, it would catch up to Exxon Mobil’s 2008 revenue in 18.7 years, and reach its profit in seven and a half years. (In dollar terms, revenue grew only 18.9 percent to $8.51 billion in 2008 from $7.15 billion in 2007, according to Hoover’s. At that rate, it would take 23.3 years. But the discrepancy has to do with exchange rate differences, so we’ve instead compared euros to euros above.)

    But unsurprisingly, Vestas’ growth has slowed in 2009. In the first nine months of 2009, the company reported €4.13 billion in revenue, up 16.2 percent from €3.55 billion in the same period the previous year, and €264 million in profit, up 35.4 percent from the first nine months of 2008. According to its guidance, Vestas anticipates revenue of €7.2 billion for 2009, which would represent growth of 19.4 percent.

    Of course, this is a simplistic way of looking at this question, as the growth of renewable energy isn’t linear. Many as-yet-unknown factors play into the equation. For example, government incentives and other policies play a huge role in determining the market for renewable energy today, as well as the price of renewable projects compared to the ever-changing price of the traditional energy it might be competing with. “Until the industry can get along without government incentives, it will be at the mercy of how government incentives are structured,” said Alfonso Velosa, a research director at Gartner Inc. He pointed to the consequences of the Spanish feed-in tariff, which more than quadrupled the country’s solar market to 2.5 gigawatts in 2008 only to cut the program to 500 megawatts in 2009, leading to an oversupply of panels and shrinking panel prices globally.

    Infrastructure challenges such as electrical transmission or biofuel distribution, as well as the need to figure out how to smooth and control the intermittent electricity from sources such as solar and wind, also stand in the way, he said. Financing for these projects will also likely need to improve before a renewable company will reach the Fortune 500. “Financing is the No. 1 concern for any renewable-energy project; it goes hand in hand with finding a customer,” Velosa said.

    Companies that help arrange financing for their customers, such as SunPower Corp., which offers power-purchase agreements through financing partnerships with the likes of Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, could have a  big advantage, he said, adding that he expects to see more companies get into financing.  All together, Velosa said, he expects to see world-scale renewable-energy companies emerge in 15 to 20 years.

    Independent analyst Peter Lynch also forecasts it will take at least 10 years — and potentially “decades,” as fossil-fuel companies continue to receive subsidies and government support far beyond renewables — to see companies at that size.

    Shares and Returns

    From an investor perspective, what matters most isn’t a company’s market cap or energy output, but the potential returns — or growth in share price — which depends, in part, on anticipated future revenue and profit. As Lynch pointed out, “Investors could care less which company is bigger, but care instead which company is going to grow the most,” he said.

    “Solar companies are going to grow a heck of a lot faster [than conventional energy companies]. They have potentially far greater room to grow; therefore, their stocks probably have equally greater potential to grow.”

    It’s easier to invest in solar than in wind because the sector has far more pure play companies, or “more items on the menu,” he said. For example, GE is a big player in wind power, but has so many other businesses that the wind part of the company doesn’t drive the stock. “You don’t buy GE because they have a good wind turbine,” Lynch said.

    Solar stocks dramatically outperformed the market in 2005, 2006 and 2007, although they fell way down in 2008, he said (see chart on returns, below). Lynch predicts that solar will be the fastest-growing segment of the energy industry, with returns exceeding those in oil and gas, but doesn’t expect solar companies’ market caps will overtake those of the oil and gas giants. Not all renewable-energy sectors perform similarly, though. He pointed out that biofuel stocks are down 50 to 80 percent over the last three years.

    Short Answer: In a Long Time

    From all of these different angles, it’s obvious that renewable energy companies are a long way from catching up with fossil-fuel energy industry giants. In addition to all the above-noted variables, David Jones, editor of the Platts Renewable Energy Report, said he doesn’t expect to see a renewable-energy company on the Fortune 500 until governments set a market price on carbon emissions. “Until that takes place, companies and other organizations will naturally release carbon because it doesn’t cost anything,” he said. “Once a price gets put on those emissions, renewables will be much more competitive.” Europe already has a carbon emissions trading program, and the United States also is considering one in several proposed climate bills.

    In addition, Jones said prices need to keep coming down to make renewable energy affordable for the majority of customers, and the industry needs to grow large enough so that renewable energy is accessible as an everyday option for most people. “I think there will be a time when utilities automatically add [a green power] option on their bills.”

    Consumer awareness and marketing is another big factor. “What you’re going to need is some sort of consumer revolution in which renewable energy becomes a standard feature of energy generation,” he said. “It’s got to be in the consumers’ interest beyond trying to make a difference. … It has to be really attractive to people as a product.”

    Overall, with a worldwide market, Jones said its always possible renewables could see explosive growth — and in fact solar is already becoming mainstream in some markets — but added that he’d be very hard pressed to predict a year — or even a decade – when a renewable company will reach that size. “In a nutshell, it’s going to take a while,” he said. Manufacturers of smaller-scale systems that are mass-produced and sold in large volumes to consumers are most likely to get to the Fortune 500, he predicts.

    Still, keep in mind that looking at the state of pure play renewable companies hardly tells the whole story of the success and growth of clean energy. After all, many existing energy companies, including oil companies and major utilities, are getting involved in renewable energy, and Gartner’s Velosa said he expects that trend to keep growing. BP Solar, for example, has some advantages — such as experience in the energy industry, a familiarity of the market dynamics involved, the relationships and the ability to get financing — from its parent company, he said. And even though wind may make up a small part GE, the company is a major player in the sector.

    Velosa expects to see large energy-generation and –distribution companies get more involved in renewables, leading to more mergers and acquisitions and other impacts. “Global companies are very interested in this because they see a market segment that has higher growth than the overall energy industry does,” he said.  In other words, the next BP of renewables could be BP.

    And of course, a spot on the Fortune 500 isn’t the only measure of success. Dan Adler, director of the California Clean Energy Fund, said while he wants the renewable industry to be huge and profitable, his gut reaction to the question of when renewable-energy companies would catch up to conventional energy players was “hopefully never.” He would like to see the renewable industry retain a larger number of players rather than the few energy giants that exist in oil, gas and coal today.

    While oil companies, for example, have to be big because oil’s so expensive to produce and oil resources are more centralized, one of the goals — and strengths — of renewable energy is its diversity and the ability to distribute its production, Adler said. “The nature of the technology doesn’t require the kind of scale and vertical integration [of oil companies],” he said. “If we start to see a lot of consolidation, we may be moving away from that strength.”

    Freelancer Jennifer Kho has been covering green technology since 2004, when she was a reporter at Red Herring magazine. She has more than nine years of reporting experience, most recently serving as the editor of Greentech Media. Her stories have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek.com, CNN.com, Earth2Tech, Cleantechnica, MIT’s Technology Review, and TheStreet.com.

  • Oil Production Waste Stream: A Soutce of Electrical Power

     

    Two formations at NPR-3, the Pennsylvanian Tensleep and Mississippian Madison formations, produce sufficient hot water to generate low-temperature geothermal energy. The current flowing water resource from these formations is 45,000 barrels of water per day (BWPD). The present and potential areas for Tensleep and Madison production are shown in Figure 2 (below). The average production temperature for the Tensleep is 195°F to 200°F and for the Madison is 200°F to 210°F. Currently, hot water in the oil field is a waste stream and is treated through a series of treatment ponds and then discharged into an adjacent stream. Projections suggest that with minor work on existing wells, the rate for the combined Tensleep and Madison produced water would be between 126,000 and 210,000 BWPD.

    NPR-3 is not located in an area of known high surface heat flow (Figure 3, below), so the produced water temperatures seen from the relatively moderate depths of 5,500 feet are anomalous for the area. Based on the temperatures observed from Tensleep and Madison production, the local geothermal gradient is 3.0°F per 100 feet of depth (55 C per km). This compares with an average thermal gradient for the southern Powder River Basin of 2.2°F per 100 feet. As the figure suggests, the heat flow at Teapot Dome is more similar to the “Battle Mountain High” of northern Nevada.

    The water resource in both the Tensleep and Madison formations is continuously recharged from mountains to the west (Figure 4, below) and the Tensleep reservoir has a strong water drive, resulting in no loss of reservoir pressure (2,350 PSI) over 30 years of production. The hydrologic system in the area must have the groundwater heated by proximity to deep basement rocks prior to entering the Teapot Dome anticline.

    The Demonstration Project

    In January 2007, Reno, Nev.-based Ormat Nevada Inc., which develops and operates geothermal power plants in Nevada, California and Hawaii, entered into a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with DOE at RMOTC to perform a validation of an Ormat organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power system to generate commercial electricity from hot water produced at a typical oil field. The project is designed to validate the premise that a binary geothermal power generation system that uses the hot water produced by an oil field can reliably generate commercial electricity. For the demonstration, Ormat supplied the ORC power unit while RMOTC installed and is operating the facility for a 12-month period.

    Prior to this test, hot water in the oil field was considered a waste stream and treated through a series of treatment ponds and discharged into an adjacent stream. The ORC power unit was connected into the field electrical system and the produced energy is metered and monitored for reliability and quality. The produced electricity from the Tensleep wells is presently being used to power field production equipment.

    The 250 kW unit arrived in the field as three skids with associated parts. The three main components were an 8 ft by 40 ft vaporizer skid–which also contained the turbine, generator and instrumentation cabinet–and two 8 ft by 40 ft finned-tube condensers. The assembly was completed in about one month using an oil field roustabout crew and contract welders (Figure 5, below). The unit was wired directly into a 480-volt leg of the field power distribution system. Power from the unit is metered and monitored for reliability and quality. For field safety purposes, the Ormat unit was installed such that the unit will shut down if the main field power is interrupted.

    The power generation system was installed in August 2008. The unit’s design was based on a relatively low produced water temperature of 170°F and an average ambient temperature of 50°F, as shown in Table 1 (below). At design conditions, the nominal 250 kW unit would produce a gross power of 180 kW (net 132 kW). However, between initial design and installation, two major changes were made. On the equipment design, the pump for the working fluid–isopentane–was incorporated into the turbine-generator package. By incorporating this feature, the unit’s parasitic electrical load was decreased. On the field side, the Tensleep production facility was upgraded and an insulated, produced water storage tank installed. This upgrade kept the produced water temperature in the 195°F to 198°F range.

    The higher inlet water temperature allows the system to operate nearer the maximum net power output of 225 kW. Since the system was put into full-time service in September 2008, the net power output has ranged from 80 kW to 280 kW. The output power fluctuates with the average daily ambient temperature when a constant hot water inlet volume is used (Figure 6, below). Through Feb. 9, 2009, the unit had produced over 586,000 kWh of power from 3 million barrels of hot water.

    Until last February, the generation system was online 90 percent of the time. If the downtime caused by shutting down the system as a result of field power loss is removed, then the online percentage is 98 percent. System-related downtime was largely the result of the operator’s learning curve.

    In February, the unit was shut down because of operational problems. It was determined that changes in the control system and repairs to the generator/turbine system were needed. The existing control system could not prevent higher than desired heat loads caused by daily ambient temperature fluctuations and a constant setting of hot-water flow rate. The high heat loads damaged the generator’s rear bearing. The unit was removed, repaired and reinstalled with a new control system. Repairs consisted of replacing the generator bearings and the mechanical seal between the turbine and generator. The new control system included installing a hot-water flow control valve, a turbine vibrator sensor and temperature probes on both generator bearings. The startup control for the unit was also changed providing for a smoother, trouble-free startup. The unit was restarted on May 7, 2009.

    Evaluation of changes to the system for better control of the inlet hot water to reduce fluctuating output power and the ability to generate power above 250 kW are being made. A newly formed collaborative initiative with the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program will continue to operate the existing 250 kW unit (Ormat) for three more years and install a second 250 kW unit at an additional site in the north of the field (this one to be water cooled with associated cooling tower) and operate it for three years. In addition, RMOTC will develop a geothermal testing facility for testing small scale prototype power production systems requiring either air or water cooling.

  • Oil rig-style “offshore communiies” to maintain windfarms

     

    The improvement of maintenance support for offshore wind farms is one of the main focus areas for a £30m acceleration programme which is being undertaken by the Carbon Trust and is designed to support the rollout of the next phase of so-called phase three offshore wind farm projects.

    Access to offshore wind farms is currently gained by boat or helicopter, both of which are problematic in the high wind conditions that are most likely to cause a turbine to malfunction.

    The challenge of maintaining offshore wind turbines will become more problematic for larger round three wind farms, which are due to be announced on Friday and are expected to be located up to 150km offshore.

    Experts have warned that access to some of the sites will prove so difficult that a turbine breaking down during the winter may have to wait months before an improvement in the weather allows it to be repaired, raising the prospect of maintenance workers being located near the wind farm to increase the speed with which turbines can be repaired.

    One Danish wind farm already has an offshore community living next to it and the Carbon Trust predicts similar facilities will be built in UK waters.

    “Turbine engineers are finding even on near-shore projects that they can’t work after three hours on a boat in high seas,” said Benj Sykes, senior technology acceleration manager at the Carbon Trust. “This is a very real problem, and I think we can expect to see offshore communities around the furthest farms.”

    Andrew Garrad, chief executive of Garrad Hassan, the world’s largest wind energy consultancy, said last year that he expected workers to live inside giant offshore wind turbines in the future, in a similar way to lighthouse keepers.