Offshore Windpower To Potentially Exceed US Demand

SpuriousLogic writes to mention that a new Interior Department report suggests that wind turbines off US coastlines could supply enough electricity to meet, or exceed, the nation's current demand. While a good portion of this is easily accessible through shallow water sites, the majority of strong wind resources appear to be in deep water which represents a significant technological hurdle. "Salazar told attendees at the 25x'25 Summit in Virginia, a gathering of agriculture and energy representatives exploring ways to cut carbon dioxide emissions, that "we are only beginning to tap the potential" of offshore renewable energy. The report is a step in the Obama administration's mission to chart a course for offshore energy development, an issue that gained urgency last year amid high oil prices and chants of 'Drill, baby, drill' at the Republican National Convention."

Comments

There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[Hoyty1]

So when can I purchase my chunk of the ocean to erect my power plant?

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[nschubach]

I'm sure there are laws about international waters, but does the closest state own the rights to waters offshore? Could they issue "property taxes" to windmills offshore? And how to they determine who has first dibs to build things at sea?

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[tripdizzle]

Hopefully our politicians are as forward thinking as you. One of the reasons we need to do this is so that we can save our fossil fuels for when they are absolutely necessary. I don't think we will ever be able to run a tank or a fighter jet off of electricity alone.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[buswolley]

I want to hear a little about whether mass tapping of wind power would alter climate by sapping winds of their energy?

No flames or trolls please, just a straight forward question.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[Gibbs-Duhem]

Yes, but the effect is not readily noticeable. Around very large wind farms they seem temperature increases of ~1C due to the air not circulating as well as in the surrounding area. This is equivalent to the effect of a city on the local climate.

As far as removing energy from the overall climate, the scales are not even close to what would seem to cause a problem (although who knows, right?). Plus, global warming is injecting lots of energy into the weather system right now... so at least the change is in a good direction.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[buswolley]

well lets compare mass. Let's say we made earth into an ice cube, and hurled into the sun. Is the suns climate going to change. Well sure, something will happen. How much. Well if I lived on the sun, I wouldn't expect snow any time soon.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[raddan]

We know that energy must be leaving the system, because we're capturing it with a turbine. We know that the amount of energy we remove from the system (we can define the system here as "the Earth", I suppose) is [energy harnessed] + [conversion loss]. Conversion losses probably happen in the mechanical linkages, transmission losses on the power lines due to impedance, and so on. These things generate heat. I don't know what the net effect of reducing wind speed would be. Maybe it increases the local temperature because there is less convection, but the global temperature is decreased because there is less friction from air movement? I don't know a whole lot about fluid mechanics.

In the end, I think an engineer/scientist/physicist would ask: how significantly do these things impact their surroundings? On the global scale, it may be insigificant. On the local scale, it may also be insignificant-- the only way to find out is to try it (and then revise our model).

What we do know is that traditional (carbon-powered) power plants presently generate an enormous amount of heat, noise and emissions, since they rely on combustion. So even if wind generation does indeed have enough significance to alter the global climate, we may find that we still prefer it to our present technology.

I welcome comments from anyone who has actual figures they can post.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[PeeAitchPee]

Indeed . . . especially those of dying liberal icons.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[snowraver1]

global warming is injecting lots of energy into the weather system right now...

What about the actual act of generating electricity/energy. All of the waste goes to heat. The Earth's electrical generation capacity is currently a little more than 3.5 TW. Imagine 3 billion space heaters. That's a lot of heat. Include waste heat in the generation process (which according to National Geograhic last month appx 2 units of electricity are lost for every unit delivered) and you have ~10TW of heat FROM ELECTRICITY ALONE. Include planes, trains and automobiles, and you might get an idea on how much heat humans contribute to the earth.

I wonder if that has a noticeable impact on the Earth's climate. I really don't know, but noone ever talks about this in the climate change models. Just like water vapor gets overlooked so often.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[raddan]

Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that 1.5*2 is a lot closer to 3.35 than 1.5*3, a large proportion of that 3.35 Terawatts/year is not converted into heat. It is converted into mechanical work (machinery, etc) and other things (televisions, computers, communications and so on). Now, the net heat dissipation of the United States from electrical power-- I'm not sure anyone knows that, but by conservation of energy, we know it cannot be the total 3.35 Terawatts/year. Because some of it is being used for other things.

Which is almost beside the point. Let's say that that 3.35 Terawatts/year is converted into heat (i.e., it is used 100% inefficiently), and that that heat dissipation directly causes 2 additional hurricanes/year. Well, by virtue of the fact that we've removed 2 hurricanes/year's worth of energy from the wind by capturing it in a turbine, in order to power our 2 hurricanes/year, at worst, we are better off than we are in our actual state. There is no net gain in wind energy in the system. Right now, in our actual state, again assuming the worst case, 100% inefficiency, we are pulling 2 hurricanes worth of energy out of the ground and putting it straight into the atmosphere. That's a net gain of 2 hurricanes. By this logic, wind turbines are easily a benefit over conventional power production. Since we used the worst case above for wind production, and the reality of it is better than that, the argument for wind looks even better.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[roystgnr]

I don't think we will ever be able to run a tank or a fighter jet off of electricity alone.

We could do so right now, if we really had to. For example, electrolysis of water produces hydrogen, the Sabatier process adds carbon dioxide and gives you methane, steam reforming gets you back to carbon monoxide and hydrogen, Fischer-Tropsch gives you alkanes, and then you just pour your synthetic diesel and kerosene into the same tanks and jets that you were fueling with fossil fuels before. All the technology is at least half a century old. Historically it normally couldn't compete with just sticking a pump in the ground and sucking oil out, but that would change if there were no fossil fuels left in the ground.

In the meantime there are intermediate options too. Oil will run out before natural gas or coal do, and you can start with one or both of the latter to shave a bit of expense off the "start with water, CO2, and electricity" methods.

It's a shame none of this gets much press. Using electricity to synthesize chemical fuel is exactly how the overhyped "hydrogen economy" is supposed to work, except that synthetic liquid hydrocarbons could work with existing vehicles, whereas hydrogen is a questionable choice for spaceships and an outright bad choice for anything lower tech.

Re:There's wind in them thar.... oceans?

[CubicleView]

Surely all the craptronic devices would just generate heat that would have been released by the wind anyway, albeit a lot more diffusely? The wind is mostly just another sink for solar energy, tapping into that can't release more energy into the system then was there to begin with.

Makes me wonder about cabling

[ajs]

Undersea cables are a notoriously problematic thing, and a wind farm is going to be running lots of live power back to shore. Would cut cables endanger sea life? If so, to what extent? It may not sound like a big deal on a one-off basis, but if you have thousands of these things surrounding the continental shelf, this could seriously impact the viability of our coastal wildlife populations, no?

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[WCguru42]

Nuclear power stations, which cause cancer when they go wrong.

The biggest problem with the 3-mile Island incident is that it was only a partial meltdown and not a complete meltdown. Because if it had completely melted down then there would be an example of just how good our containment is (suffice to say, it would not have ended up like Chernobyl). Oh well, I guess we'll just have to keep living in a world where people fear what isn't going to happen.

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone done any studies to see if wind-power actually has environmental negatives (other than the bird thing)? I can't imagine that slowing down all this wind will result in 0 changes with the environment.

There is a lot of wind out there, but it too is not infinite. Imagine the climate change that would happen then!

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[c6gunner]

Nuclear is (or should be), without a doubt, the biggest part of the picture. In it's current form it's relatively clean and safe. And if we finally get fusion to work within the next few decades, it should be fairly easy to convert existing nuke plants, making them even safer. We should be breaking ground on dozens of new reactors, not looking to stick windmills in the middle of the atlantic.

Solar and wind have their place, but they're simply not a viable alternative if your goal is to stop burning fossil fuels. They're a good way to supplement our existing infrastructure, but that's about it.

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[drinkypoo]

The real solution is to have more point of use generation. Transmission losses are not a serious issue, but distributing power generation makes it much more difficult to knock out. Some types of power also generate energy when it's needed most, for example solar is a perfect match for air conditioning or a swamp cooler. Of course, a green roof and passive solar design that reduces or even eliminates the need for active cooling is better than either... But in terms of what we can do from where we are now, I think that wind and solar actually do have a place in our lives. You can get on ebay and get an 80W grid-tie solar system you can literally plug into a wall outlet for $500. The only reason it's not cheaper is that we don't all have one.

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[jamesivie]

I totally agree with your point, but your numbers leave something to be desired...a watt is a measure of energy per unit of time (which is why your electricity bill is in watt-hours). In terms of water, watts is equivalent to something like gallons per minute. So, 4500 terawatts per minute makes about as much sense as 4500 gallons per minute per minute, which only makes sense if you are talking about a CHANGE in the rate of energy output.

Re:Makes me wonder about cabling

[iminplaya]

...a third arm growing from you rectum...

Cool! Now I can keep both hands on the keyboard

Floating Cities

[Anenome]

I would love to see a future where rich libertarians build floating cities free of the governmental restraints and constraints of the pandering politicians. Live free on the water! No taxes. Everything accomplished by contract. It's like a paradise *sigh*

The maps are interesting

[jbeaupre]

For just the US: http://www.bergey.com/Maps/USA.Wind.Lg.htm For the world: http://www.bergey.com/Maps/World.Wind.Lg.htm

Re:Maybe we should test it first?

[rubycodez]

how are the terrorists going to take out dozens of square miles of windmills and undersea HVDC cables, even a large nuke is too small for the job. We have the small attractive targets NOW with our current way of producing half the nations electricity.

off-shore power

[secPM_MS]

While the near-shore environment is reasonably suited to cables, the cost of long distance power transmission in the deep ocean environment may be problematic. This suggests that the power be stored into some transmissible fuel that can be picked up intermittently. One possibility would be Ammonia, NH3, which could be made by electrolysis of water to get the Hydrogen and nitrogen from the atmosphere. The heat of formation of NH3 is ~ 10% of the available energy in the Hydrogen (liquefying Hydrogen requires ~ 30%). Anhydrous ammonia is easily handled at moderate pressures in steel vessels, has a higher volumetric density than liquid Hydrogen, could be easily handled by tankers, and the Hydrogen can be easily released at moderate temperatures by catalytic reforming. Spills of NH3 are limited by its high solubility in water and lack of persistence - plants metabolize it rapidly.

Re:Yeah yeah, heard it all before

[EaglemanBSA]

The congressional budget office studied exactly this (distributed generation) in 2003 after the blackout, and determined that there would be significant economic and infrastructural benefits from such a system - it would, however, require a significant overhaul of our existing grid to control all the variable power being added. In the end, it's been largely ignored, Heaven knows why. There are a lot of merits to a system like this, among them energy independence, as well as infrastructure security. If each city block or even city for that matter is generating its own power, how can you attack that infrastructure on a national scale?

Re:The problem with wind

[Courageous]

Wind power has a severe problem - uncontrolled availability

Well, yah. But as you point out, converting wind power by pushing it into a durable sink is of no particular challenge. There are many places that simply push water up hill to do this. They later let the water through a sluice and convert THAT to electricity.

And as you point out, hydrogen is a fine durable sink.

C//

Re:Maybe we should test it first?

[afidel]

I bet ~80% of the US population lives within 100 miles of a coastline with significant wind power potential, the east, west, gulf, and north coasts account for almost every urban area.

Forget Oregon, Check out Wyoming!

[H0p313ss]

Something like a 1/4 of the state is ideal for wind farming... It could even co-exist with the ranches! http://www.windpowermaps.org/windmaps/images/WYwindpower50_highres.jpg