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The US's First Offshore Wind Farm Will Cut Local Power Prices By 40%
merbs writes: The U.S. is finally getting its first offshore wind farm. Deepwater Wind has announced that its Block Island project has been fully financed, passed the permitting process, and will begin putting "steel in water" this summer. For local residents, that means a 40% drop in electricity rates. The company has secured $290 million in financing, with funding from the likes of Key Bank and France's Société Générale, in part on the strength of its long-term power purchase agreement with US utility National Grid. Block Island has thus surpassed the much-publicized Cape Wind project, long touted as "the nation's first offshore wind farm," but that has been stalled out for over a decade in Massachusetts, held up by a tangle of clean power foes, regulatory and financing woes, and Cape Cod homeowners afraid it'd ruin the view.
Headline is misleading. It is not the turbines, but the link to the national grid that is making power cheaper for the island.
Until now, they depended on small local diesel generators.
You can bet that the 30MW wind plant is a lot more expensive than the diesel generators were.
I'd be interested to know the economics of the plant, but supplying cheaper power to the island will be an utterly trivial component.
Other opponents have included Senator Ted Kennedy,[57] Sen. John Kerry, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and businessman Bill Koch,[58] who has donated $1.5 million to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind
But after more than a dozen years, the $2.6 billion proposal remains on the drawing board, thanks in large part to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, of which Mr. Koch is chairman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...
Lying by omission is still lying. Just saying.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Read the article a bit closer, they're talking about a 40% electricity drop for the 1800 or so residents of "Block Island", who are currently serviced by diesel generators(mostly). Additionally, part of the project would be running a power line to the mainland, that could transmit power not only from the wind farm to the mainland, but bring energy back when needed.
Between the two, I can easily see a 40% drop. Diesel for electricity is expensive.
I don't read AC A human right
Except the summary is compeltely misleading on the 40% price cut, let's rephrase it slightly:
Electricity rates for a small island that is not connected to the national grid and relies on diesel generatiors for power will drop by 40% once it is connected to the grid via the new wind farm.
It's not the wind farm that's dropping the prices, it's dropping the reliance on diesel generators where all the fuel has to be transported over from the mainland.
Wow, way to not link to a study, but rather a Smithsonian blog talking about a Wordpress blog talking about a study. You clearly love your primary sources!
FYI, the study is just one of many. The study itself cites others, including:
20,000 birds/yr (Sovacool, 2012)
10,000–40,000 birds/yr (Erickson et al., 2001 and Manville, 2005)
20,000–40,000 birds/yr (Erickson et al., 2005)
440,000 (Manville, 2009)
573,000 (Smallwood, 2013).
The latter two include lattice towers, which are largely being decommissioned as unsafe to birds.
But hey, having varied numbers clearly means that if you can find a blog linking to another blog linking to a study that shows high numbers (among many different studies), then clearly the GP is "plain wrong", right?
And yes, even if we go with your choice study's mean of 234,012 annual bird deaths, that's still orders of magnitude less than many other types of human activities.
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.