Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Kaptonii t1_jc2f41v wrote

It’s important to note that there has been a huge push in the oil&gas industry to repurpose old rigs because it’s cheaper than building new ones. I don’t know if this data takes that into account.

My main source is me. At work, a majority of the jobs we are getting are updating old rigs and starting up abandoned ones.

Here’s an article talking about an increase in rig utilization globally. https://www.rigzone.com/news/offshore_rigs_set_for_very_busy_year_in_2023-26-jan-2023-171875-article/?amp

19

Icosahunter t1_jc32y7k wrote

You're talking about oil/gas extraction though, whereas the article is talking about power production, two different (though related) things.

7

AverageAustralian111 t1_jc2fmla wrote

I know almost nothing about this field, is restarting and repurposing old rigs any better than building new ones? Intuition would say yes but like I said I have no idea

3

Kaptonii t1_jc2gpyh wrote

Ya, there is a huge upfront cost to building a rig (engineering hours alone are insane lol) Especially offshore rigs. Also, building a new rigs takes a long time, like several years, and these contractors want to churn out profits ASAP.

Also, most rigs are mobile. Once they are built, they can be moved to new wells. The ones that are not mobile are left there, and when new tech comes out to suck more oil out of a well, they are updated and reused.

7

AverageAustralian111 t1_jc3qw6m wrote

Huh, that's really good to know. I had heard from a geopolitical analyst (my field) that oil rigs take 7 years to build and offshore takes 10 and I thought he must be exaggerating but I guess not lol.

3

dsafklj t1_jc42gdm wrote

I really wish someone would do this kind of analysis looking at expected total generation rather than name plate capacity. The capacity factor is going to vary a lot for the renewables based on specific project and be much higher otherwise (though some natural gas will be peaker plants). The nuclear plants are likely going to be running at 95+% of capacity, the solar much less.

Also, I can't decide if I'm annoyed that this labeled 'generating capacity' when including battery installations that technically speaking don't generate anything, just time shift supply/demand. I can see the point (both ways), but still...

6

xylopyrography t1_jc5dprb wrote

Yeah I'm no fan of the labeling either.

I'd rather at least a predicted amount of annual energy produced. If batteries are to be included, it should be the amount by which they improve solar and other intermittent sources' efficiency.

1

twilliwilkinsonshire t1_jc44o03 wrote

There should be far more nuclear on that chart than there is and batteries shouldn't be included, they only shift capacity not generate more - unless somehow they are calculating the efficiency gain for solar which brings me to that question.. is this just total peak generation capacity? That is not a particularly accurate way to measure solar and wind... this feels like a nearly useless chart.

4

xylopyrography t1_jc5dk6a wrote

This is just nameplate capacity best I can tell, so it's just the maximum output rate that the installed batteries will be able to do.

Solar and batteries will definitely occupy a much smaller portion of real-world energy.

−1

twilliwilkinsonshire t1_jc5it8t wrote

The chart has this caption right above it:

>Solar, wind, battery storage and nuclear make up 84% of utility-scale generating capacity planned to come online this year

So IMHO batteries should not be included.

1

mhornberger t1_jc47g9m wrote

Since people keep mentioning that nameplate capacity is not the same as generation:

So we can sort of predict from the new capacity coming online how much new generation we'll get. Why is there not more nuclear? Cost and build times. Here's just one decade of generation changes in the US. Solar and wind are ramping at very high rates around the world.

3

cepegma t1_jc3fk4c wrote

I hardly believe it. It’s very difficult that clean energy can non renewable sources as the available data shows

−1

Cocoaboat t1_jc3gwhg wrote

I believe it, this is new stuff being built, not the entire energy grid. We’re a long way off from completely renewable/clean, but we’ve definitely been building a ton of it recently

5

Taxoro t1_jc3rzb5 wrote

You need to remember this is by capacity. Renewable energy has about half the capacity factor than fossil fuels in usa, so in reality it's more like 65-70%

2