Cheap offshore wind power may be lighting your home, feasibility study on

Soon cheaper electricity may be powering your home if a new effort to harness offshore wind power is successful. 

The government is exploring the potential of wind power as an alternative source of energy, given the low potential of hydropower and the land scarcity challenges faced by solar power. 

A 2022 International Renewable Energy Agency publication shows offshore wind power plant electricity generation cost at around USD0.075 per kilowatt hour or Tk7.86 at current rate, which is much more competitive than coal- or gas-fired power plants.

The Ministry of Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources has signed a contract with the Italian Centro Elettrotecnico Sperimentale Italiano (CESI) lead consultancy firm and its joint venture partners to conduct a pre-feasibility and detailed feasibility study for developing offshore wind farms in the Bay of Bengal. 

Funded by the Asian Development Bank, the project began on 16 February this year and aims to identify potential offshore areas for wind power development. 

Power Division Secretary Md Habibur Rahman confirmed to The Business Standard that the project is part of the government's efforts to harness environment-friendly energy.

Governments around the world are ramping up policy support to develop offshore wind power projects and global offshore wind capacity could increase by 3.5x from 50.6GW in 2021 to 177.5GW by 2027, says a 2022 report of the US Department of Energy.

Md Shahriar Ahmed Chowdhury, the deputy team leader of the international joint venture consultancy team, told The Business Standard that their team will assess the potential for wind power in offshore areas of Bangladesh located in the Bay of Bengal. He added that they will identify two suitable locations for developing offshore wind farms.

Shahriar further explained that their team will investigate whether existing maritime and hydrocarbon exploration activities and navigability will be affected by the offshore wind farms. As the Director of the Centre for Energy Research at United International University, he also mentioned that their team will determine which offshore windmill piling model is suitable for the existing seabed. Additionally, they will be identifying the most suitable windmill model for the existing sea bed.

As per the Power Sector Master Plan 2016, the government aims to generate 10% of its power from renewable sources by 2030 and 40% by 2041 when the country's total power generation capacity would stand at 40GW and 60GW respectively.

Currently, Bangladesh's total renewable energy production capacity stands at only 3.61% of its total capacity, with solar energy being the primary source of renewable energy production. However, land scarcity is holding back the growth of solar power generation.

Bangladesh has previously attempted to harness wind energy with two onshore windmills in Cox's Bazar and Feni districts. However, technical faults like low height have caused them to remain out of service. As a result, the government is now exploring offshore wind power as a potential alternative energy During the kick-off meeting held this March, the consortium stated that renewables will be at par or cheaper than fossil fuel-based electricity in the short to medium term. 

With offshore wind generation facilities already present in 19 countries, including the USA, UK, and China, the consortium warned that investments in coal or gas-based power plants now can make those plants stranded assets in the future.

Hornsea-2 is one of the largest wind farms situated in waters roughly 89 kilometres off the coast of Yorkshire, England which has a capacity of more than 1.3 gigawatts.

Earlier in 2017, a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study said Bangladesh has a wind speed of 5.75-7.75 metres per second and which has a potential of 30,000MW wind power generation per day.

Currently, there are eight windmill projects in different stages of completion, with a combined capacity of 357MW. 

One 60MW wind power project at Cox's Bazar is expected to come into production in June this year. 

In addition, the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (Sreda) is implementing a wind resource assessment project in four sites in the country in cooperation with the World Bank.

Wind in the sails of renewable energy around the globe

Offshore wind power is increasingly being seen as a way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and speed up the journey toward net zero, as stated in a report by the World Economic Forum.

One of the advantages of wind power over solar power is that it can generate electricity round the clock. The global capacity of large-scale wind farms is projected to increase from 34GW in 2020 to 330GW in 2030, according to a Wood Mckenzie report.

Several countries have pledged to increase their offshore wind power generation capacity, including eight EU countries on the Baltic Sea which aim to increase their capacity seven-fold by 2030, up from 2.8GW currently, most of which is in Danish and German waters.

The Biden administration in the US has also unveiled its Floating Offshore Wind Shot, which aims to reduce the costs of floating technologies by over 70% to $45 per megawatt-hour and increase capacity to 15GW by 2035, enough to power five million homes, according to the World Economic Forum's report.