First US Offshore Wind Farm To Usher In New Era For Industry (ap.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Associated Press: The nation's first offshore wind farm is set to open off the coast of Rhode Island this fall, ushering in a new era in the U.S. for the industry. Developers, federal regulators and industry experts say the opening will move the U.S. industry from a theory to reality, paving the way for the construction of many more wind farms that will eventually provide power for many Americans. Deepwater Wind is building a five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, Rhode Island to power about 17,000 homes. The project costs about $300 million, according to the company. CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said the Block Island wind farm enables larger projects because it proves that wind farms can be built along the nation's coast. Offshore wind farms, which benefit from strong winds because of their location, are being proposed near population epicenters that lack the space to build on land. Indeed, several states are pushing ambitious clean energy goals, which include offshore wind. Among them is California, which has a target of generating 50 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. Vermont hopes to hit 55 percent by next year and Hawaii has called for 100 percent renewable power by 2045.

Comments

Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

At the average price for electricity(14.4 cents per kW/h) in RI at the average household electricity usage per month(602 kW/h) it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back. That assumes no operating costs or maintenence costs. Which is obviously bullshit. Turbines have, at max, a 20 year lifespan. But of course, green energy is viable, blah blah blah. Oh, and all this assumes constant delivery, which is never the case for wind as well.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ShanghaiBill]

it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back.

That is about a 6% ROI, at a time when banks get 3.5% on 30 year mortgages. Seems like a good investment to me.

Meanwhile, in England, Theresa May just semi-canceled the Hinkley Point nuclear project because the falling price of wind energy was making new nukes uncompetitive.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[NotInHere]

I wonder why it costs $300 million to build FIVE wind turbines. Are they built by a defense contractor or something? Really, wind turbines cost $10 million a piece,

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to guess, there's additional infrastructure like the bases and the transmission lines that probably survives beyond the life of the initial turbines. I'm assuming it will eventually be profitable, especially as energy costs increase and maintenance costs go down. There are also costs to get permission to build the turbines, which can be quite significant. Offshore wind energy is quite expensive for now. Maintenance is more expensive, too, than for onshore wind turbines. That said, any type of electricity generation is a long term investment that won't produce returns for several years. It's quite speculative, no doubt, but I think it could end up being viable.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[NotInHere]

AAnd again where slashdot has eaten my smaller signs. I've meant to say "Really, wind turbines cost < $10 million a piece". $10 million is an upper bound, and very highly put (most turbines cost way less than that).

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Note: it takes 17 years to recoup your initial investment; you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan. Assuming the annual income rate is (1/17 * 300 million) $17.6 million, you're looking to make $53 million on that investment, over a 20 year period. That's about a 0.82% rate. And that assumes your maintenance costs are zero...

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

You mean the reactor design that the company itself hasn't quite figured out how to get to work right in a full scale reactor instead of the smaller ones in Finland? That Hinkley Point? Not to mention that you managed to ignore the fact that it doesn't include maintenance costs. Or that a significant number of NG plants will have to be installed to spool up the extra electricity as needed given wind turbines uneven electricity generation, which means it'll take even longer than the 16.96 years assuming everything works perfectly. Or that no studies have been done on the lifetime of wind turbines exposed regularly to saltwater, but the probable result is a shortened lifespan.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about molten salt nuclear reactors

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ichijo]

Oh, and all this assumes constant delivery, which is never the case for wind as well.

You don't need constant delivery, you only need to make sure that electrical generation is always greater than electrical demand.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Building anything to handle a 100% salt spray exposure dramatically increases the cost. Have a boat on a lake? Takes some maintenance. Have the same boat on the ocean/saltwater harbor and required maintenance skyrockets. Saltwater is incredibly corrosive. What works in fresh water will quickly die in saltwater (even stainless steel will corrode away in saltwater). Add in parts that have full 360 degree spins so open bearing races (sure, lubricated - but still open) and you're asking for a lot of trouble.

On land, you can use a lot of materials that simply will not hold up to constant salt spray exposure (like aluminum).

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[sexconker]

Even on land wind turbines are barely worth it because of the constant maintenance costs. You literally have to have men climb up them and oil them every few months. Don't forget to add in the cost of the men who fall off and die.

Wind is a trash method of generating electricity.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ShanghaiBill]

you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan.

The "max 20 year lifespan" is something that Ravenshrike (the GPP) pulled out of his butt. There are offshore turbines in Denmark that already exceed that, and we have learned a lot about building offshore turbines since then. For instance, modern turbines are much bigger and installed much higher above the water than they were 25 years ago. These turbines will stand more than 100 meters above the sea. There is very little salt spray up that high. They will likely be active for much longer than 20 years.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Note: it takes 17 years to recoup your initial investment; you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan.

In 20 years, when the accountants finally add up the sums . . . the folks who organized all this will be retired and drinking cocktails on the beach in the Caribbean. So it will not be a problem for them if the whole thing is later exposed as a scam.

The next generation of younger politicians will sweep the mess under the carpet . . . so that they can profit from a newer, more ambitious project.

And that assumes your maintenance costs are zero...

Flipper and Aqua Man have agreed to do the maintenance for free!

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[tomhath]

If you factor in the 3.5% they could earn on that $300M the pay back time is closer to 50 years. Plus, as you say, factoring in less than 100% output all the time, maintenance, and operations it's clear the this will never be cheaper than current sources of electricity. I suppose one selling point is that subsequent offshore wind farms will be cheaper to build as they get more experience.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the average price for electricity(14.4 cents per kW/h) in RI at the average household electricity usage per month(602 kW/h) it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back. That assumes no operating costs or maintenence costs. Which is obviously bullshit. Turbines have, at max, a 20 year lifespan. But of course, green energy is viable, blah blah blah. Oh, and all this assumes constant delivery, which is never the case for wind as well.

they charge you twice, once for supply and once for delivery. you're quoting half the actual cost. i know full well because i live in ri and pay twice for each kwh used

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

So how long do they last? You castigate Ravenshrike for pulling things out of his butt, but you do the same and say they will be active for much longer than 20 years.

Additionally, direct spray isn't needed to corrode your metal. Ask anyone who lives near the ocean - direct exposure isn't needed, and most salt spray/salt fog tests do not need to directly spray saltwater at the object - just high salt content moisture in the air is damaging.

Lastly, given that Denmark has extremely high power rates (about 3X that in the US), perhaps they are the perfect example of why offshore wind is not really a good bet - the power generated is very expensive due to very high maintenance costs. What I see is that offshore wind maintenance costs are on par with the TOTAL cost of electricity for much of the US. Just maintenance alone costs more than the entire cost of power generation. That's not a good sign...

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[tomhath]

That is about a 6% ROI

No, it isn't. The asset is fully depreciated after 20 years. That alone eats your ROI.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean molten salt solar?

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're also not considering the annual price increase that national grid generously hands it's consumers. it increased %23.6 in 2014 and just increased another %20 this summer from what i can remember. at the annual rate increase, they will be profitable in a lot less time than you estimate.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

Which is what I meant and exactly what wind turbines don't do. Which is why you have to supplement the with other sources, preferably NG plants.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[FirstOne]

When you're on an island electricity costs a whole lot more ($0.44/kWh), plus a summertime surcharge.
This wind project also connects Block island to the mainland grid

The initial agreed upon energy pricing is $0.244 per kWh, Thus the return will be ~10% per year.
Thus a check mark in the win column for all parties..

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[khallow]

That is about a 6% ROI, at a time when banks get 3.5% on 30 year mortgages. Seems like a good investment to me.

You ignored the huge caveat:

That assumes no operating costs or maintenence costs.

It's 6% revenue on investment, not return on investment. With those other costs and who knows what other unknown costs the business will experience in the future, it's a lousy investment with some sort of subsidy.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[jerryjnormandin]

The wind turbines will fail way before 16.96 years have gone by and the company that put it in place would be just a memory.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[bigtreeman]

Australia gives gas and coal power generators billions in subsidies per year, they are not viable either.
Maybe we have to look at the other side of the equation - our over consumption.
We've lived the good life at the cost of the planet, time for us all to get real

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[hackwrench]

The lesser than sign is also the opening character of an HTML tag. Try <

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't forget to add in the cost of the men who fall off and die."

You do realize that our primary method of generating electricity, coal, has its own cost in terms of lives right? In the US alone it is estimates to shorten the lives of 25,000 people, mining directly kills about 29 people per year on average and likely hundreds of deaths when you add to it transportation, plant construction/maintenance, etc. No energy source is perfect but there are much worse ones than wind that we use without a second thought.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#a1a758349d22

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lastly, given that Denmark has extremely high power rates (about 3X that in the US), perhaps they are the perfect example of why offshore wind is not really a good bet - the power generated is very expensive due to very high maintenance costs.

Well, at least you presented it as speculative, but, no, sorry, but Denmark collects a relatively high tax rate on electricity, so nope, you really can't tell about the maintenance or production costs. And no, before you ask, the money isn't all dumped back into environmental programs, so you can't even wave your hands and ignore it. Some of it goes into general revenue.

You really need to be more informed about how things actually work in other countries before you start using them as examples.

Either that, or you'll have to find someone who has done the work to give you real numbers that are effective at cost comparison.

Otherwise, you might as well be going to buy something in one county, and losing money on it because you didn't factor in the higher sales tax, let alone the gas costs.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[hackwrench]

The project costs $300 million. As stated elsewhere on this thread, the project consists of more than just 5 turbines.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

Yes. I pulled it out of my ass. Interestingly, my ass now has a web address.

http://www.windmeasurementinte...

Found on my ass are significant amounts of text. Among them the following.

A modern wind turbines will be designed to work for 120 000 hours throughout their estimated life-span of 20 years. This would be the turbine operating for approximately 66% of the time for two decades. This is far more than modern car engine which is built to last for 4 000 to 6 000 hours of use. This equates to an average of 49 minutes driving a day over the same two decades.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

The initial agreed upon price assumed a project cost of 200 million. It went up by 50% before they've even broke ground. Final cost is likely to be even higher.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[CanadianMacFan]

They won't just be buying five turbines. They have to install them offshore which is more expensive than pouring a concrete foundation onshore. Plus they will be setting up the cables to transmit the electricity and data monitoring back to onshore. This will be expensive, especially for the closest mile or so to shore where any cables will need to be buried. But this cost is shared between the turbines and if they get permission to expand the wind farm in the future the only additional expense will for the new turbine and base and the connection to their new grid.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

On land, you can use a lot of materials that simply will not hold up to constant salt spray exposure (like aluminum).

Unless, of course, acid rain became a serious problem, in which case, bad things would happen.

Which is why expensive efforts have been made to address that problem.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

Note: it takes 17 years to recoup your initial investment; you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan. Assuming the annual income rate is (1/17 * 300 million) $17.6 million, you're looking to make $53 million on that investment, over a 20 year period. That's about a 0.82% rate. And that assumes your maintenance costs are zero...

Wrong-A-Rio. That 20 years maximum limit, after which the turbines are apparently going to blow up an all the parts will kill every puppy in teh world is maximus bullshit. It's the same sort of BS that people use to say that solar panels die immediately after the warranty period, or any of the other FUD they spout.

These devices are built to be maintained, and are capital equipment just like a Natural gas turbine of Nuc power generating plant. You don't abandon those plants 3 years after their payback now do you? Abandon the Nuc plant instead of changing out the fuel? Probably not. You maintain and continue to use them.

The offshore wind plants are more expensive to build, obviously And while we've been building a lot of the turbines here in the US - we've had the advantage of having a lot of open land and windy places to put them, unlike Europe where things are a little more crowded.

But they are doing just fine, a capital investment just like any other type of power generation method.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

throughout their estimated life-span of 20 years.

You are moving the goalposts. You said "max" of 20 years, but your citation says "estimated life-span" of 20 years, which is not the same thing.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

OK, so why is offshore wind about the worst source of electricity when you look at the levelized cost? It lags behind onshore wind and PV - significantly. Costs for offshore are very high - and maintenance is a big killer. Should you abandon after 20 years? Probably not - but the reality is your return is MUCH closer to what I posted (0.82%) than what the GP posted (6%).

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

So how long do they last? You castigate Ravenshrike for pulling things out of his butt, but you do the same and say they will be active for much longer than 20 years.

Well, its no more pulled out of his ass than the turbines around here, where they get shut down every so often, get some maintenance, and start right back up. These things are not built to be disposable, and capital depreciation and every single element that any other power generation method is in force. Wind power does not have special laws of business and physics that makes them unmaintainable and self destruct after whatever period you choose to have them self destruct at.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ShanghaiBill]

So how long do they last?

The first wind turbines were installed in Denmark 25 years ago, and are still operational. So they last at least 25 years. Modern turbines are expected to last much longer, due to better materials, better design, and much greater height above the sea (100 meters for the Rhode Island turbines), which means less exposure to salt.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

No, Morton Salt reactors, in the Utah.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

A modern wind turbines will be designed to work for 120 000 hours throughout their estimated life-span of 20 years. This would be the turbine operating for approximately 66% of the time for two decades. This is far more than modern car engine which is built to last for 4 000 to 6 000 hours of use. This equates to an average of 49 minutes driving a day over the same two decades.

Does it say why exactly why a wind turbine is impossible to maintain, or exactly why they fall apart after 20 years? And why you have to start over again on all aspects? Pretty scary, because that means a whole shitload here are going to fail at the same time, are halfway through their unalterable lifetime, and we better tell the people maintaining them that they are waisting their time. because there is no point. 20 years after installation, it invariably goes completely kaput.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that they can't do that at wholesale electricity prices. They can't even do it at retail electricity prices. Rhode Island simply passed a law to set their rates at like 3x the current retail rate.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ichijo]

So in a multiple item auction, the only way to prevent more people from winning than there are items is to add more items as needed? That's funny!

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

OK, so why is offshore wind about the worst source of electricity when you look at the levelized cost? It lags behind onshore wind and PV - significantly. Costs for offshore are very high - and maintenance is a big killer. Should you abandon after 20 years? Probably not - but the reality is your return is MUCH closer to what I posted (0.82%) than what the GP posted (6%).

Location location location. The alternative for the Island is diesel fuel. Diesel fuel has known problems, but is relatively compact. So you use what makes for the best source. A nuc plant would take up valuable resources like space. As well, the evacuation plans in case of an emergency would be a problem on a small island. And yes, a fair number of people don't like it.

So yeah - an offshore windfarm is a compromise. But all power sources are compromises. So we have an island that is about 9.7 square miles, and a population of 1041 (2010 census) Apparently the Turbines are going to power about 17,000 homes, so obviously there will be power goint to the mainland as well.

So what is your solution?

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

What would you need to see to concede the investment is poor?

Here is what I'd need to see... Total private investment.

If it is ACTUALLY a good investment then the government wouldn't need to fund it. Private interests would be happy to invest with ZERO public money. At most you'd offer a tax break/cut on the investment... that is not a tax Credit... it is a break. Aka you offer to NOT collect taxes on the project.

That is MY condition for believing this is a good idea... convince investors to build this with their own money.

We can do that currently with coal, gas, hydroelectric, and depending on regulations we can do it with nuclear. I have yet to see any wind project get funded by people that actually expect it to make money... I mean... honestly.

So that is what I need. What would you need to see to concede you are wrong?

Warning... if you answer "nothing" you're in creationist territory.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hinkley Point is up in the air for two reasons:

1. One of the shareholders of the Chinese consortium is being chased by the US govt over nuclear espionage. Read that again.

2. It's China who will will build it, and the new sane PM doesn't trust them yet. - See #1.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[GNious]

Eh, no, in the US-of-A, externalized costs of fossil-fuel magically disappears and never has to get picked up by anyone.

(Evidence: See pretty much 90% of the posts in this thread)

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Zontar The Mindless]

No, but as a European resident, I can say, "We've had these things for 20 years--where've you guys been, anyway?"

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Two of my great uncles were killed in the coal mines. My granddad ended up with black lung eventually, even though he only spent about 10 years working there before he got out of Kentucky.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[thegarbz]

You must be one of those accountant types who believe that depreciation somehow means that something is worthless and needs to be thrown away.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[thegarbz]

The wind turbines will fail way before 16.96 years have gone by and the company that put it in place would be just a memory.

Why? What makes them magically fail? Industrial gear lasting 17 years? hahahahahahahahahhahahaahahahahhahahahhaahh yeah we'd still be in the bronze age if that was true.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly simplistic. You need to include all of the externalized costs that traditional fossil fuel power had. Money is a horrible way to measure the value of something. It is very common that infrastructure related costs return more value than they make.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

The first wind turbines were installed in Denmark 25 years ago, and are still operational. So they last at least 25 years.

Putting aside the fact that the plural^W singular of anecdote does not suddenly become data just because... green, your very own link shows that "last" is a meaningless term in a vacuum:

In 2016, DONG Energy considered shutting down the wind farm, as it is well past its design life and had become uneconomical.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[RogueWarrior65]

Not to mention the fact that the lifespan of these things averages 20 years so you only get a few years of profitability. But in 20 years, the money will be worth less so the replacement cost will likely be about 50% more (using CPI). Sure, you make some 70 to 80 million in those three years (which won't get passed on to the customers, btw), but then the replacement cost will eat through that in a heartbeat. Basically, the project will lose money in perpetuity.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[bestweasel]

Another reason is that the electricity it produces will cost more than twice the standard price.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Power to the mainland, you say? So something like a "transmission line" will be built? Well then - put the turbines on land, run a transmission line - and you're done! No need for offshore, is there?

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

Power to the mainland, you say? So something like a "transmission line" will be built? Well then - put the turbines on land, run a transmission line - and you're done! No need for offshore, is there?

Land is the problem in this case. There is no doubt that an on-land set of wind turbines would be more economical and easy to service. But then you'd be running perhaps 17 miles of cables instead of 8 or so. (I'm not certain of the specific placement of the towers) But there's possibly a substation that can be eliminated.

But we are talking about Rhode Island, which is a pretty densely populated place. Land for Turbines doesn't just show up easily.

But yeah - obviously there will have to be transmission lines going to both places.

Near us, along the Allegheny front, there are a lot of turbines going up, and more are being built. Only a few are complaining, and they seem to have a back to the caves mentality. You know, back when we only had woodburning computers, and we were grateful for them.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting aside the fact that the plural^W singular of anecdote does not suddenly become data

A single anecdote does not become data, but a single example is enough to disprove bullshit.

If someone claims that a wind power plant can't last more than 20 years it is enough to show a single one that lasted 21 years to disprove that statement.
If someone claims that it isn't economically feasible it is sufficient to show a single example where it is economically feasible to disprove that statement.

If someone says that something is possible and another person claims that it isn't the safe bet is to go with the one who claims that it is possible.
After all you can prove that something is possible but you can never prove that it isn't.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[angel'o'sphere]

There is no doubt that an on-land set of wind turbines would be more economical
Your parents are idiots, and you start falling for them.
NO! Land based wind farms are not more economical. They are much more expensive because of their relatively low yield and relatively low capacity factors.
The exact same turbine installed offshore will probably produce 4 to 8 times the energy a land based will. Because: at sea is more wind! And you place them higher! Which again leads to _more wind_. And then again: you have more windy hours in a year on sea than on land, which means: even more air passing thru your turbines! Off shore wind farms have CFs between 40% and 120% in single cases even close to 150% (EnBWs BALTIC I and BALTIC II plants e.g.) The same turbines that where used in the BALTIC wind farms placed on land would idle a good deal of time because: no wind. And they would produce much less energy when not idling because the wind speed on land is much lower.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[ravenshrike]

And you must be one of those idiots who keeps tools around after they become useless for their assigned task. These are offshore wind turbines. That means placement area is at a premium, they can't just erect more when their power output drops. Thus, if the turbines are needed to put out X amount of power, but because of their age have an output of X - Y, you can't just easily build more, you have to scrap the existing ones and erect new ones. Now, you can probably keep the tower, depending on corrosion, but that's one of the cheaper parts. Not to mention depending on how they build them it might just be more economical to scrap what's there than to try and retrofit everything in place.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[brasselv]

arguably, even if the ROI was absolutely nihil, 300M to experiment with a non-carbon technology are still a reasonably good investment for the long term security of Americans. Better than, say, half a wing of one of these:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[thegarbz]

Power output dropping? Man you have no idea do you. Power output doesn't magically drop with age. You restore power generation equipment to as new condition with a simple bearing change. The only thing that causes output to drop is catastrophic failure. Hell the turbines we run at our plant are 40 years old and they have never been rewound, are on the original stators, one suffered a dislogged rotor bar at one point but even that has now a 20+ year old rotor in there. They still produce the same amount of power with the same efficiency rating as they day we bought it. ... Could use a coat of paint though.

But hey don't take my word for it. The oldest offshore windfarm in the world is 25 years old. It still produces as much power today as it did on the first day it was turned on. The only reason it's shutting down is because it was an experiment to prove a concept using older technology that relied on government subsidies which have been withdrawn this year.

The only reason something like this becomes "useless" is if the external economics changes significantly from the design criteria.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go buy a new car. It was fully depreciated on the company books 5 years ago and as such you just pointed out to me that it has become useless, and I don't want to own a useless car.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the place to watch would be the UK as the subsidies are being withdrawn, although potentially choppy economic waters might curtail building of large privately funded infrastructure projects in general.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because of subsidizes. There may be government support for new construction but not for the old ones.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine they spoke of averages. Just a guess but something to consider.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

I'm from California. We've been playing this game since the 70s. Every time the subsidies are pulled the project dies.

Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

So here is my answer going forward to any retard that says "oh but this time man its totally going to make money... we swear."... I say "well, good... then you don't need public funding because IF you're not either lying or retarded then you should be able to get private funding for your almost certainly retarded idea."

So that's the answer.

Now, still waiting for what you people would accept as evidence for YOU being wrong.

I cited my criteria which I feel are sensible, self consistent, and reliable.

Please please... give me your criteria.

My experience is that no criteria will be offered because the precept that wind energy is a good idea is ultimately a tautology of belief and not in any way based on any empirical reality.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

So then do you carefully shop around to ensure that you are only using electricity generated by coal, gas, or oil? Because nuclear power never would have gotten off to a start without heavy government investment. The Atoms for Peace program was a huge part of this, and the first nuclear reactor that generated power was a government investment.

Similarly the overwhelming majority of hydroelectric dams are government projects.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

1. Care in shopping for power is irrelevant. The power is competitive or it is not.

2. Nuclear power is mostly government involved because of regulation and fear of misuse of the technology for purposes other than power generation. It also has massively inflated costs in current times due to anti nuclear activism that has made it impossible to store spent fuel despite all reasonable precautions being addressed. A better assessment of the economics of nuclear power would be looking at Russia or China where you can see they find the technology to be vastly more cost efficient due to not having to deal with the same political interference.

3. Hydroelectric dams are actually very cost efficient and break even with investment rather rapidly. The only reason you get government involvement is because you're reshaping mountains, eminent domaining entire valleys, and changing water rights through the rivers. The regulations involved with moving rivers, reshaping valleys, and voiding the deeds to entire populations is why it goes government... not because of the money.

With solar you have none of the problems of nuclear or hydro electric dams. In fact, your situation is much more comparable to coal or natural gas in that your technology isn't dangerous and doesn't need to deal with huge amounts of red tape because of zoning... So conflating your needs with that is not rational.

If you want solar, the best method is to encourage more people to put solar panels on their roofs... not fund giant solar plants. Look at all that unused roof space. In many parts of the US, solar on roofs is being discouraged... fees are being charged to people that install these on their roofs because the local utilities are losing money. Effectively, solar installers are being fined for being efficient.

The same thing should happen with wind. Rural and suburban America should have solar and wind on their own property as they see fit. The suburbs and rural areas should be able to self supply to a large extent on that basis. Urban areas should get over their irrational fears of nuclear and just accept it as the best form of energy for the cities... which is what it is and shall remain until we get something better. Solar and wind ain't it.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Care in shopping for power is irrelevant. The power is competitive or it is not.

Not in your case, it is not. You claimed that the government should never be involved in power generation. You agreed that the government is heavily involved in nuclear power, so if you are purchasing power that comes from a nuclear plant then you are with your money endorsing the government aspect of nuclear power. You have the ability to select power companies that don't use nuclear, if you pass on that then you no longer have an argument to make.

Nuclear power is mostly government involved because of regulation and fear of misuse of the technology for purposes other than power generation.

I'd ask what you mean by that, but it is rather clear that the statement has no actual meaning.

It also has massively inflated costs in current times due to anti nuclear activism that has made it impossible to store spent fuel despite all reasonable precautions being addressed.

With the sole exception of every single nuclear plant in the US which has some agreement for how much waste they can store, how, and for how long. Do you really know that little about nuclear power?

A better assessment of the economics of nuclear power would be looking at Russia or China where you can see they find the technology to be vastly more cost efficient due to not having to deal with the same political interference.

I'm guessing you were born well after Chernobyl. There is a key difference in the design of a Russian reactor than an American one, and the Chinese use the Russian design. Yeah, they're cheaper but that comes at a serious cost.

That said, you really ought to look at an actual power bill in this country before you go running around pretending to be knowledgeable on what consumers pay for power from a nuclear plant in this country. Do you even know the units by which electric power is sold?

Hydroelectric dams are actually very cost efficient and break even with investment rather rapidly.

Then why have we shut down so many of them rather than refitted them? Why have there been almost no applications for new ones in the past 2-3 decades?

The only reason you get government involvement is because you're reshaping mountains, eminent domaining entire valleys, and changing water rights through the rivers.

First of all, that is not required every time. The reshaping comes in play most often when you want a reservoir and a hydro dam at the same time . You can build a hydroelectric damn with little to no environmental impact if you so choose, it has been done a great many times on this continent.

Second, domain is not a verb.

With solar you have none of the problems of nuclear or hydro electric dams. In fact, your situation is much more comparable to coal or natural gas

Sure, solar is great except that a lot of places that have open space for it don't have enough predictable sunlight to warrant the investment. It is also great except for the cost - financial and environmental - of creating and installing the solar panels.

If you want solar, the best method is to encourage more people to put solar panels on their roofs.

Several problems with that. One, populations in cities are now increasing faster than populations outside of cities, meaning fewer people have their own roofs. Second, of the people who have their own roofs not all of them are in places where it is useful to put up panels - for a number of reasons. We can go on but I'd just be throwing more dirt on you down there in the hole you are so adamantly digging for yourself.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

1. I addressed the nuclear power issue.

2. The hydro issue is again a conflation of environmental politics with economic viability. Politics is not economics or logistics.

3. Solar is generally good on 99.9 percent of roofs. Fly over a suburb and spot the roofs that are not totally exposed to the sky. Its very very very few.

4. Cities have increasing populations because of subsidies. The housing is subsidized, the food is subsidized, the medical care is subsidized, the education is subsidized... and the birth rate in cities is shit... and has always been shit. We hear endlessly about how people want to improve the economy and improve birth rates... well... consider not subsidizing stupid urban planning. Just a thought. The higher the urbanization the worse it gets. Consider that it is a false correlation to associate urbanization with modernity. That was a context of the industrial revolution which is not prescriptive on future logistical paradigms.

5. As to examples of the fees utilities charge solar installations... well known and easily found... anyone that can use google will find many examples of it. Here is one:
http://www.scientificamerican....

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I addressed the nuclear power issue.

How did you do that? Previous comment showed key points where you lacked understanding of nuclear power both as a science as well as an industry.
 
 

2. The hydro issue is again a conflation of environmental politics with economic viability. Politics is not economics or logistics.

You are entitled to your opinion, though the previous comment raised points that you are completely ignoring.
 
 

3. Solar is generally good on 99.9 percent of roofs.

Then you should go contact google and tell them that project sunroof has it all wrong. That project was even discussed here on slashdot almost a year ago today. If you understand solar better than the engineers at google they might like to talk to you about a job.
 
 

Cities have increasing populations because of subsidies.

No. You can make that claim but you cannot support it. People are moving to the cities because the good jobs are in the cities. The economies of the suburbs and beyond are based on a model that doesn't apply any more, and as people are finding that they move in to the cities looking for work or looking to be closer to their jobs in the cities.
 
 

5. As to examples of the fees utilities charge solar installations

That is a good source. However that is for a customer who wants to be both on and off the grid. They want to be able to generate solar power when the sun is out (and hopefully sell excess to the grid) and then use power from the grid when the sun is not visible. The utility company that would be providing power back to them is still providing them a service. Does the power company not have a right to recoup their costs for that service?

The customer could, after all, attempt instead to acquire their own giant battery array and function completely off the grid 24x7. That would leave the utility company with no leg to stand on. On top of that, the story is about people living in Hawaii. Everything is more expensive down there.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

1. Nope. You simply ignored everything and made the same dumb argument people like you always make. The issue was addressed. Nuclear is entirely competitive outside political interference by anti nuclear activists.

2. Your lack of agreement that 1+1=2 is not required for 1+1=2

Politics is not economics or logistics.

3. Anyone that walks around in the suburbs or rural areas and just has eye balls can see it.

4. Jobs exist in places where labor is... its a dynamic relationship. Cut the subsidies and the labor won't be there and the jobs will follow the labor. You can't evaluate economics if you don't understand economics.

5. I made a claim and I substantiated that claim when asked for a citation. Your goalpost move is noted for what it is and ignored.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Nope. You simply ignored everything and made the same dumb argument people like you always make. The issue was addressed. Nuclear is entirely competitive outside political interference by anti nuclear activists.

Sorry kid, but you're simply wrong here. Your whole spiel about "anti nuclear activists" is just that, a spiel (at best, really - more accurately just simply ignorant FUD). You completely and utterly failed to address the aircraft carrier-sized holes in your "argument".

And to get back to the point that was raised against you earlier that you have been repeatedly attempting to skate around, you are indeed a hypocrite to purchase electricity from nuclear power plants if you feel the government should have no involvement in the power industry. If you are paying your electric bill you have the right to choose a provider that is nuclear-free (or free of any other particular source for that matter) if you so choose. If your parents are paying for the electricity you use, then you don't have an argument on this matter at all.
 
 

2. Your lack of agreement that 1+1=2 is not required for 1+1=2

That makes absolutely no sense in the context of this discussion. Previous comment gave numerous solid examples where your assumptions about hydro simply don't hold water. You can blame it on whatever you want if it makes you feel better, but your lack of understanding is nobody's fault but your own.
 
 

3. Anyone that walks around in the suburbs or rural areas and just has eye balls can see it.

So you distrust goolge now? Are they in cahoots with the government or something? Try entering your address in there and see what it tells you about how good your roof would be for solar installation. Enter your neighbors, your employers, etc; see where they come up. Not all the world is a great place for solar. You can pretend otherwise if you want but that won't change the reality of the situation.
 
 

4. Jobs exist in places where labor is... its a dynamic relationship. Cut the subsidies and the labor won't be there and the jobs will follow the labor.

Do you understand that there is more to economics than just supply? There are reasons why certain jobs exist in certain places. Ever notice how many fortune 500 companies have their headquarters in big cities rather than in suburbs, exurbs, or beyond? There is a reason for that. If you passed high school economics, or ever read a newspaper, you shouldn't need that reason spelled out for you - I'll give you a hint though it has nothing to do with whatever you think "subsidy" means.
 
 

You can't evaluate economics if you don't understand economics.

So then you're going to stop trying to evaluate economics? Granted your grip on it is so awful that if you didn't tell me you were trying to evaluate it, it would not have been clear.
 
 

5. I made a claim and I substantiated that claim when asked for a citation.

Do you understand how a dialogue works? You responded to a question, and then a response was given to your response. There are problems in your claim that your response was a solid support of your earlier claim. In fact your response does not actually support your claim, for the reasons already stated. Your petty line of

goalpost move

Is, to be kind, non sequitur.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

1. Negative, it is competitive outside of that interference as you yourself conceded. End of story. The only difference is that you think that interference is legitimate. That's a different discussion and one I'm not interested in right now. You've already conceded the point. You're just not clever enough to see it.

2. Hydro cannot be conflated with solar as one requires government involvement for damming rivers where as putting some solar panels on the ground does not. Your unwillingness to concede the obvious is not required.

3. As to who I trust, cite your source if you want to play the citation game. I'll make you very sorry for doing this but if you want to be punished for acting like an idiot, I am happy to do that. Cite your source please. Direct citation. This is a very stupid move on your part. But if you want to do it. Do it.

4. You say "reasons" but don't say what any of them are... I gave reasons because ironically, it is you that is ignorant and not myself.

5. You asked for a citation and I gave you one. Your distress as being contradicted with a citation is not my problem and if you goal post move, I'll note the goal post move because I'm not an intellectual lightweight.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Negative, it is competitive outside of that interference

Why are you moving the goalpost for nuclear in such a specific way? You said you don't want the government to interfere with utilities. Nuclear power would not exist were it not for the government work that brought it into being. Hence when you purchase power that is generated from a nuclear power station you are explicitly endorsing the government work that went in to the creation of nuclear power. This inarguably makes you a hypocrite.
 
 

You've already conceded the point

You are dancing so wildly around the point - and at such a great distance from it - that it is impossible to tell what point you think was conceded. You can't seem to be bothered to extrapolate on this matter yourself, which makes you plainly guilty of declaring victory far too early and with vastly too little support to validate such a claim.
 
 

Hydro cannot be conflated with solar as one requires government involvement for damming rivers

Except for the collection of examples that do not. Did you know that the Niagara River - upstream of the famous falls - is itself used to generate electricity? This did not create a giant reservoir or alter the waterfall. There are numerous other similar examples around as well, if you could be bothered to read up on the matter.
 
 

As to who I trust, cite your source if you want to play the citation game. I'll make you very sorry for doing this but if you want to be punished for acting like an idiot, I am happy to do that. Cite your source please. Direct citation.

Number three here was most recently about solar, so I will assume that you are rational enough for it to still be about that (although that seems like a pretty giant assumption). On the matter of solar, the links that were offered up before had the source in them. Google has worked with solar engineers to write an algorithm that takes into account tree cover, weather, roof orientation, and other factors to give an estimate of the usefulness of placing solar panels on a given roof. If you think you know better than google, you should really talk with them about a job as they certainly can pay you more money than you make sitting around cursing at people on slashdot.
 
 

You say "reasons" but don't say what any of them are.

Number 4 here was about economics in the past comment. The comment mentioned your clear lack of understanding on economics. If you cannot look at the job market beyond the supply side of the equation than it is a good thing nobody trusts you to make any kind of corporate or hiring decisions.
 
 

You asked for a citation and I gave you one.

Number 5 was about solar power and your claim that utility companies are trying to levy huge fines against home owners to prevent them from installing solar power. Your source however did not support the totality of your claim; the case in the article - as a previous comment already pointed out very plainly - is someone who wants their house to be both on and off the grid. That is not a trivial thing to set up. If - as was stated before - the home owner instead set up their own backup power system so they would have power when solar was not available, then they could fully unplug from the grid and the utility company would not be able to do anything. The customer instead chose to be both on the grid and off the grid, so they need to pay for how they use the grid.

No goal posts were moved in this discussion by anyone other than you.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Karmashock]

1. You're making the Somalia argument... I think I'll call this argumentum ad somalia.

2. Your dam rebuttal makes no sense in the context of dams. You're now arguing that the regulatory burden of daming a river and creating artificial lakes is the same as putting solar panels on the ground. This is literally stupid. And since you made this argument you're either fail trolling or are yourself stupid. Either way your point is not acceptable on any logical basis.

3. No citation from your google source... so I can ignore that now. Thanks.

4. Failing to give reasons means you simply referring to an argument that you didn't actually make. Absent you making an argument about economics that has any falsifiable component, I can't address it because it is not actually an argument. You're just saying you have an argument... but you're not defining it so its a null argument until defined. I can as easily respond that I have a rebuttal to the argument you're not making.

5. A goal post move will remain a goal post move indifferent to how badly you need to move the goal post. The problems with your own argument are not my problem.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You're making the Somalia argument... I think I'll call this argumentum ad somalia.

If that is how you acknowledge your hypocrisy, then go ahead and do it. There is no obvious connection here to Somalia...
 
 

2. Your dam rebuttal makes no sense in the context of dams. You're now arguing that the regulatory burden of daming a river and creating artificial lakes is the same as putting solar panels on the ground.

Regulatory and environmental burden are not intrinsically the same thing. Why you can't recognize that they are different is puzzling but that problem hangs on you and you alone.
 
 

3. No citation from your google source... so I can ignore that now.

So on what basis are you declaring yourself to be smarter than google engineers? Just because their conclusions contradict your fact-free assumptions? Or are you trying to make a fact-free claim of google being in the pocket of big electric?
 
 

4. Failing to give reasons

Reasons were plainly given. it was plainly stated that your assumptions are based on blindly clinging to only supply-side economics, which simply doesn't work in the real world. Anyone who has passed high school economics knows that you have to consider supply and demand before you can even begin to evaluate the situation. You not only ignored demand entirely, but you also ignored the other costs that go with being a consumer of labor.

As the earlier commenters already said, there is a reason why large companies are headquartered primarily in large cities and your bullshit about "subsidies" has nothing to do with it.
 
 

5. A goal post move will remain a goal post move

So we are in agreement that you moved the goal posts then. At least we're getting somewhere. Now if you would just set down the goal posts maybe we could have a discussion. Alternately you could just admit to being catastrophically wrong about numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and look for a different discussion elsewhere if you can't handle processing information on this topic.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that the energy derived from fossil fuels in the US is propped up by gutting money from health care, education and other vital fields? Not to mention the knock on effect that the burning of those fuels has on the environment and health (hint: the added health care coasts run into the hundreds of billions per year). You may be saving at the socket, but you are paying for it elsewhere.

Sure, the Danes are paying more for their power. But they also enjoy an affordable, top-tier health care system, well-funded educational institutions, one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world and an overall higher standard of living than in the US.

Enjoy your cheap electricity, buddy.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

$10 million sounds like a really good deal. Hell, the engines in indy cars cost that much.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

You got me thinking, given they don't just blow up, that we should consider the cost of having to dismantle and remove them as there service life comes to an end.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Ol Olsoc]

You got me thinking, given they don't just blow up, that we should consider the cost of having to dismantle and remove them as there service life comes to an end.

I suspect no one has taken that into consideration.

If I were to hazard a guess, it will end up being a "George Washington's original Axe - with three new heads and four new handles" sort of thing.

The output of wind turbines has been constantly going up. The towers probably are essentially permanent - perhaps the blades may need replacement. over time.

But for the most part, if we repair or replace as parts wear, and do regular maintenance, I would surmise they would last a long time. Certainly longer than the 20 years quoted by so many. I'm guessing that unless the main stalk gets fatigue cracked by the pushing of the turbine, 50 plus years is not out of th question

Another thought. How much of the cost of a wind turbine farm is buying the land, cutting the roads, and pouring the bases? Even a total replacement of the arial part of the structure will probably cost less than starting over again.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Gussington]

Your argument makes no sense unless you are comparing with the alternatives. ie what are the comparable costs for Coal, Nuclear, Steam, Hydro, Solar etc?
I personally have no idea, but a 17 year pay back sounds awfully good for this type of project.

Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear still, and always will, kick wind turbines' ass.

Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, before wind turbines the grid was totally safe:
 
... the Electrical Safety Foundation International reports that an average of 133 workers die each year due to contact with power lines. In addition, most authoritative sources on electrical incidents report that approximately 400 general industry workers, including power plant workers, die each year from electrical shocks. When combined, these figures represent one or two deaths daily due to electrical incidents.

a maintenance nightmare

[swell]

As a former marine engineer I have doubts. Unless materials science has changed dramatically, things do not thrive in ocean environments. Those materials that last longest tend to be very expensive. Maintenance on land based windmills is expensive and dangerous ... out there it will be a serious problem.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[ShanghaiBill]

As a former marine engineer I have doubts.

This is a first for America, but Europeans started doing offshore wind 25 years ago. We are building on that successful experience, not starting from scratch.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former marine engineer... surely you must be aware that there are many, many, many offshore wind farms? Just this is the first one in the US? US water isn't more corrosive than other water.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

but, it's on the internet....whoops, i mean, but it's on the WATER!

Is it just me or does a 5 turbine wind farm sound a little underwhelming, water or not? There's a hundred on the hill to my parents house, putting a few of those in the water doesn't sound very earth-shattering to me. It's not like we never built anything in water before.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[mspohr]

It's a good thing that you're a former marine engineer since you're obviously clueless about offshore wind farms. There are about 2500 off shore wind turbines.
List here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They seem to have solved your imaginary problems.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

What are the costs for that offshore wind electricity? Germany is about 3X that of the US and Denmark, the leader in offshore wind generation, pays even more. So yeah - they can do it, but it's quite expensive. Perhaps there are more cost effective means of generating power?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[swell]

Well, as a former marine engineer, I'm thrilled to discover that there is no need for maintenance required for these engineering marvels. But can you explain the high cost of maintenance of land based turbines in California? And please explain why the water based units are maintenance free.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

How much does offshore wind power cost, per MWhr? Perhaps, as a former marine engineer, he realizes that whilst it can be done, it cannot be done affordably, and when you consider the prices that places like Denmark and the UK (which leads the world in offshore wind generation) charge three to four times the rate as in the US, it suddenly loses a lot of its luster, doesn't it? Not a surprise given that offshore wind is a lot more expensive than alternatives, when it's levelized, even against fossil fuels...

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[khallow]

But can you explain the high cost of maintenance of land based turbines in California?

Old designs.

And please explain why the water based units are maintenance free.

If they made so many installations then they must have made some headway on maintenance in a salt water environment.

And having said that, I don't buy that the current proposed plant makes sense. It has too low revenue per initial cost to justify it, even if it should be low maintenance.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[mspohr]

I didn't say maintenance free.
I did say that there are 2500 off shore turbines which seem to have solved the maintenance problem.
You could google it if you want more details to brush up your rusty skills.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[mspohr]

Fossil fuels are only cheaper if you don't count the cost of climate change.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does offshore wind power cost, per MWhr? Perhaps, as a former marine engineer, he realizes that whilst it can be done, it cannot be done affordably, and when you consider the prices that places like Denmark and the UK (which leads the world in offshore wind generation) charge three to four times the rate as in the US, it suddenly loses a lot of its luster, doesn't it?

There'a problem in your reasoning. Well, several. Why? Because you're asserting that Denmark and the UK have much higher rates for electricity, but not establishing the actual level of costs, let alone the causes. A country, could, for example, charge the clean-up for energy production in a variety of tax methods, rather than directly on the electric bill. And, of course, you aren't considering the actual power production in the respective countries.

This is something you have to factor, since wind is only around 10% of the UK's production, and even in Denmark, it's not even a majority of the power yet. But since they can't switch to other options as easily, it might not be any cheaper. Neither Denmark or the UK necessarily have vast supplies of fossil fuels that they can access.

You'd also want to look at historical pricing trends, because if even as the make-up of power generation changes, the price ratio remains the same, something else may be going on.

It's not as simple as going to McDonald's, and finding out how much a Big Mac costs versus a Whopper at Burger King. Which even then, is a grossly poor comparison.

And you don't have to worry about the Burger King deciding to declare War on Queen Wendy either.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[dbIII]

How much they charge is a bit of an anti-capitalistic tack to take isn't it? They will profit from a high market price instead of selling at cost will they not?
The important question here for any sort of meaningful comparison is how much do they cost to run over a period of time.


The other thing to consider is that these things fill a niche instead of the entire power basket so they have to be compared against little gas turbines instead of 1TW nuclear powered units. If you have nukes they run as close to 24/7/365 as you can due to ramp up times, how long the fuel rods will last etc, so comparing the little windmills that fill in the gaps to those is very misleading.

My Sig spits 40 cal lead ... be a grown-up

Oh yes, very grown up :)
How about taking a mature approach instead of railing against people who see a business opportunity here? The days of central socialist style state control of power systems are gone and there is a niche for small companies with small units of gas, wind, solar or whatever makes money.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[dbIII]

As a former materials engineer (now computer type) I can tell you there is a lot of epoxy in those windmills and they've been running in coastal environments for decades since that's where a lot of wind is. Those expensive materials are already in use and the lifetime of parts in a full marine environment isn't likely to be much less than some existing coastal units that get a huge amount of salt water sprayed over them already.

Maintenance on land based windmills is expensive and dangerous

Yes but that's very well known now and factored in. It's not as if demand is flat so it's not so hard to bring a tiny (in terms of generating capacity) unit offline until it can be fixed.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I do not want to troll, but Iam very seriously interested in your opinion. Some friends of mine had a boat in a ocean. Every weekend they were scrubbing something here, scrapping off something there. Just to keep the boat seaworthy!

So I was thinking about offshore drilling rigs. What maintenance do they need? Do the oil companies just throw money at the problem . . . ?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[DerekLyons]

As a former marine engineer I have doubts.

Well, back in the 1700's when you retired things were no doubt different. Here in the 21st century we have better than a century's experience operating complex mechanical and electrical systems are sea. We have over half a century's experience operating and maintaining things like drilling platforms, etc...

Rest well gramps, the younger generation has it well under control.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

Take a look at the graph in my post; PV and onshore wind are much lower cost than offshore wind. Offshore wind simply has really high startup costs that hamper it on a levelized cost over time. It comes out behind everything save biogas.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[fermion]

I have not seen any definitive data that is not 10 years old, and a lot of the current stuff is biased toward coal and nuclear and create astronomical number for the cost of wind. In reality as scale increases and data is gathered on how to best run the turbines maintenance costs are becoming predictable and not that outlandish. Texas which has the largest installation and the most experience also has some of the lowest O&M costs.

Wind energy is texas is still less than 10 cents, and will be cheaper as it allows us to decommission old inefficient coal power plants.

The biggest expense in my lifetime was paying for a nuclear power plant that never fully realized it's production goals and we had to have a special tax to pay for it.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

Then take a look at the levelized cost of electricity and you'll see that offshore wind is well behind onshore wind and PV. Why would someone champion the most expensive, highest maintenance source of energy?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Cyberax]

Even in Europe the installed offshore wind capacity is pretty much a rounding error. If we look at Denmark then they have 1.2GW of installed offshore generation with a capacity factor of about 20%. So that's just 300MW of average generation without guaranteed capacity. I.e. less than one block of a modern thermal power plant or 1/4-th of one reactor in a modern nuclear power plant.

It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerplants. But that doesn't scale at all.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[dbIII]

To take a look at how nonsensical your argument is apply it to coal fired power generation in Australia. According to the amount charged to consumers it must be far less effective than wind and everything else in the USA and Europe - but it's a false metric and a ridiculous one to use because electricity generating costs using coal are very low but the consumer is getting screwed over by other factors.

Why would someone champion the most expensive, highest maintenance source of energy?

Because anyone pushing "one true energy" is either trying to scam you or a deluded fanboy. Wind has a place in the same niche as gas turbines. When gas prices are high it's no longer "the most expensive" even if it is when gas prices are low.

How about taking a "grown up" approach instead of a dumbed down assumption that demand is constant and large units can do everything? We need tiny units to fill in the gaps. Wind is just one of many of those things that do not scale well but are useful to have when everyone gets home and turns stuff on.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Rest well gramps, the younger generation has it well under control.

Surely you jest; the millennials can't even wipe their own asses without whining about it.

Having served with some in the military, I've never seen a bigger group of cowards and dullards.

Having worked with some in the electrical engineering field, I've never witnessed a whinier more academically lazy group of special snowflakes. We now have a policy against hiring anybody under 30, no joke.

Back to the point: yes Derek, they'll reinvent Facebook 15x over, but as far as systems at sea, my money says your estimate is bullshit....
but then again, you're a millennial, aren't you?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[ShanghaiBill]

Is it just me or does a 5 turbine wind farm sound a little underwhelming, water or not?

You misunderstand the significance. As a technical accomplishment, this is meaningless: The Europeans have been building offshore wind farms for decades. But as a political accomplishment, this is earth shattering. Despite the best efforts of all the NIMBYs and BANANAs, America is actually building something. When was the last time that happened?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, what is nonsensical is you ranting about coal in Australia. Again, look at the link and see that offshore wind is behind onshore wind and PVs. It only beats biogas in terms of costs. All other "green" energy sources (other than biogas) have a lower LCOE. So why push nearly the most expensive option?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[swell]

So, Derek, tell me about your years at sea...

Re: a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is for sure: I can't explain the high maintenance costs for land-based windmills in California with the salinity of the water outside Rhode Island. Only a former marine engineer can do that.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[dbIII]

What is nonsensical is using the metric of a charge to the consumers and pretending that it is equal to the costs to the producer.
That's very socialist of you but it's not how those wind farms are run.
The Australian example is apt because once again that is in setting where there is a market and not some socialist thing that you are pretending is at work and presumably want to inflict on all of us.

Mao is dead and central planning of everything with no niche for private enterprise is dead. Time to wake up.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerplants.

Electrical energy is fungible. It's like you are complaining that your boss pays you extra cash from time to time and you have to put it into banks or spend it on things.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[GNious]

Define cost-effective.

E.g. how much of the costs of fossil-fuel is externalized (pollution, fuel-generation, tax-breaks/incentives) vs included in the actual price? Ditto for wind, solar, wave (ahem), and nuclear.

A googling showed 300 incidents/year (ranging from ice-buildup on blades, to people falling off during construction) for wind-power, while the US alone have ca 30 deaths just from mining coal - shouldn't we include these when estimating costs? I notice pretty much every post here only looks at consumer price, with no questions about how they got there, or concerns for human lives.

Note: Wind power is not completely safe, and several ongoing cases over here are about workers being subjected to severe toxins during construction of the blades.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[GNious]

And having said that, I don't buy that the current proposed plant makes sense. It has too low revenue per initial cost to justify it, even if it should be low maintenance.

From what I read, parts of the costs is additional infrastructure, that would likely be relevant even w/o the farm.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Solandri]

Electricity in Europe is nearly 3x the price of electricity in the U.S. So they can charge a lot more money per kWh generated there while remaining competitive, to offset those pesky maintenance expenses and to pay for the construction of underwater power transmission cables.

Offshore winds off of Scotland, the North Sea, and Spain are much stronger and more consistent than anywhere I know of in the U.S. Land-based wind typically hits about a 20-22% capacity factor, offshore in the U.S. around 30%-35%. There are offshore wind farms off Scotland and in the North Sea hitting 65%-75% capacity factors.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[AmiMoJo]

It scales extremely well. Now that the technology is maturing and the cost is making it attractive (it's already cheaper than nuclear in Europe) it's starting to expand more rapidly.

Your comment reminds me of what people said about wind a decade ago or solar 15 years back. Too low output, poor capacity factor (in fact for offshore wind it's about .35), won't scale (?!?) and so on.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Cyberax]

I've been hearing this since 2000-s and the price for wind did come down. But the cost of offshore generation also is not coming down. There's a reason for this - sea is a hostile environment and turbines have to be built to withstand much more aggressive weather.

The main problem with renewables right now is lack of energy storage, so simply scaling variable sources doesn't work at all. It's looking to be a fundamental problem that can derail the whole transition.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Whibla]

Again, look at the link and see that offshore wind is behind onshore wind and PVs. It only beats biogas in terms of costs. All other "green" energy sources (other than biogas) have a lower LCOE. So why push nearly the most expensive option?

Cost, as in the price of installed capacity, is not the only factor when considering how to generate the power we use. There are social, political, geographical, and other, factors that influence the decision.

Some reasons why we might, specifically, choose to install offshore rather than onshore wind:
    1. There are no prime (reliable wind speed > 7 kph) onshore locations available for development.
    2. Diversity in location leads to diversity in supply, leading to a more consistent generation of power.
    3. "Riskier" technology investments give higher ROI.

This is barely scratching the surface. There are plenty of possible reasons, some of which apply generally, some of which might or might not apply depending on the specifics of the planned investment / project.

With regards to the LCOE of Biogas, as given in the report you indirectly linked to, it's worth pointing out that the report itself specifically states that those plants (well, the subset it considered anyway) all function as CHP plants, but since the report was about the cost of electricity generation the 'heat' part was simply ignored. Cost is a slippery concept when we can ignore whatever externalities we like in arriving at the final figures (and this applies just as much to the cost of the coal plants in the study).

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[AmiMoJo]

It's already fallen very rapidly, especially from about 2000 to 2015. Projections are looking good, even the conservative ones.

http://www.resourcereports.com...

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium oxide is not very toxic. They should be building nuclear devices instead.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[LynnwoodRooster]

So we see that the costs of electricity to consumers in Denmark and Germany and the UK are much higher than in the US. We see that Denmark and the UK have lots of offshore wind capacity (most in the world). We see that offshore wind is much more expensive (LCOE) than other options in the US. And it's nonsensical to draw a conclusion that they may be related? Logic fail...

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[khallow]

From what I read, parts of the costs is additional infrastructure, that would likely be relevant even w/o the farm.

Unless the infrastructure isn't used without the wind farm.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[rch7]

It isn't significant problem in the US with only 5% wind and less than 1% solar electricity.
It becomes significant in Germany that has higher share of wind/solar. They starting power-to-gas pilot plants, and scaling of power-to-gas is unlimited, and it can use existing natural gas infrastructure with minor changes. Of course it costs extra and for now it is expensive as everything at pilot stage. But you don't need to store all generated energy, just some of it.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[rch7]

Land is cheap in the middle of the US where strongest winds are blowing. Mid US doesn't even need as high turbines as Europe.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[rch7]

Nobody disputes that offshore wind is more expensive than onshore when you ignore price of land.
But it should be obvious that densely populated areas don't have free land, and don't have many cheaper alternatives.
Look at the map on page 36:
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/f...
Onshore wind resources are good in interior US. They are not as good in East and West.
 

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Maxo-Texas]

To be fair, you really need to add in the 2 to 3 trillion for the gulf war immediate expenses to protect the oil fields.

And probably some add on costs of radicalization because we repeatedly invaded middle eastern countries and killed tens of thousands of civilians to protect the oil fields.

There are many many dictatorships around the world... several committing genocide right now and much weaker militarily than Iraq was at the start of the gulf war. But they don't have oil. So their genocide's continue unabated.

So the trillions spent were to protect oil. And the 4,000 lives lost were to protect oil. And the thousands permanently crippled were to protect oil.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[angel'o'sphere]

The prices end consumers pay has nothing to do with the costs of the windmills.
They are half taxes and a good deal is cost allocation to finance the transition from fossile to renewable.
Also: you forget that a typical german or danish household used a quarter or sixth power of an american household. So bottom line we pay less for energy than you do.

Offshore wind energy is the cheapest form of energy production we have on the planet right now.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, first off all your 20% CF claim is ridiculous.
Secondly: Denmark is flat. So for them it makes sense to have land based wind farms, to.
Thirdly: Denmark is producing about 50% of its power by ... you guess it: wind

So what exactly is your argument?

It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerplants. But that doesn't scale at all.
Of course it scales. It is a perfect combination.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[angel'o'sphere]

The production cost per kWh with offshore wind farms is something around 3 euro cents. Land wind farms are somewhere around 4 - 5 cents.

The Danish wind farms mainly sell whole sales to bigger energy companies like Vattenfall and they get a fixed price of 4.2 cents per kW/h

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerplants. But that doesn't scale at all.

When looking at power production in Sweden for last week about half of it was nuclear and then about an even split between wind and hydroelectric.
Hydroelectric is great at dealing with the variations and complements the wind power pretty well.
I don't see how it would be a problem to generate a third of the energy with wind power as long as you have hydroelectric to manage the wind and load changes.

That is hardly marginal. Saying that it isn't scalable isn't far from saying that any other power source isn't scalable because you can't output more than 100%

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

So we see that the costs of electricity to consumers in Denmark and Germany and the UK are much higher than in the US. We see that Denmark and the UK have lots of offshore wind capacity (most in the world). We see that offshore wind is much more expensive (LCOE) than other options in the US. And it's nonsensical to draw a conclusion that they may be related? Logic fail...

Yes, it is nonsensical to think of it as a conclusion. Well, maybe nonsense is too strong a word. Premature might work better, or hasty. A conclusion requires substantiation, what you have is conjecture, speculation, hypothesis, which needs evidence to be proven.

Maybe you should go back to your class and ask for your teacher to define the terms for you.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Cyberax]

Power-to-gas has a roundtrip efficiency of about 15% right now. The renewable plan for 2050 will require natural gas generation backup for about 60% of all installed capacity so it's quite obvious why power-to-gas is being pursued. It's a good window dressing.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Cyberax]

Nope. Just google it. Here's EIA: https://www.eia.gov/electricit... - pick the lowest monthly number because you actually have to build out with it in mind.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[dbIII]

There is another - put it at zero since it over-rides the lot.
Practical considerations.
Demand is not a square wave so there is a place for small units.
Arbitrary grade school level comparisons such as many of the ranters use are not relevant. What is relevant is comparing generation methods in the same niche with each other.
The ranters go on about how wonderful nukes are without understanding that since demand is not constant even a perfect nuke in an ideal world is not going to be able to cover all supply needs. The things are huge and we need other sources to fill the gaps.

As for gas, prices historically have varied a lot (even doubling or halving) and will in the future which certainly adds to that slippery concept.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[rch7]

Where did you get that 15%? It is far from true.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content...
"enabling large-scale electricity storage with a round-trip efficiency exceeding 70% and an estimated storage cost around 3 kW1 h1"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And it is not necessary to burn hydrogen in inefficient gas turbines. Fuel cells have better efficiency, are advancing rapidly, and some pilot fuel cell plants using industry byproduct hydrogen already exist.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Cyberax]

We are talking about natural gas, not hydrogen. You can burn natural gas in solid oxide cells but so far none exist that are practical (otherwise all those gas turbines would have switched). And the _real_ (not proposed theoretical) numbers are miserable. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - that's with cogeneration (i.e. waste heat is also reused).

This is nothing more than a window dressing to greenwash increasing dependency of Germany on natural gas.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[angel'o'sphere]

Pretty meaningless chart.

Where do those numbers com from? How big is the install base?

AFAIK the USA has not much wind power. If you only have two plants obviously you half the CF if one is offline ...

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Gussington]

As a former marine engineer I have doubts. Unless materials science has changed dramatically, things do not thrive in ocean environments. Those materials that last longest tend to be very expensive. Maintenance on land based windmills is expensive and dangerous ... out there it will be a serious problem.

And you think this project hired no engineers beforehand and didn't even think about this?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Gussington]

What are the costs for that offshore wind electricity?

I always wonder how people come up with an appropriate price for things. eg An American growing up under 50c/litre petrol thinks $1/litre is a rip-off, while a European who pays $2/litre might think that is normal price?
How much should petrol really cost?
If you ask yourself how much worse off you would be if there was no petrol, then most people would probably pay $10/litre for the privilege. Because as an energy source, petrol is still way under-priced or the value it gives
I think the same about electricity. 10c/kwh is cheap, 30c/kwh is expensive. But if someone said for 50c/kwh I'll resolve all energy generation issues forever, I'd probably take it. And if the choice was electricity for $1/kwh or nothing, I'll still pay it.

So in summary, existing prices are not a suitable guide for what something is worth, or therefore could/should cost in the future. A lot of people found this out the hard way with real estate.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[burni2]

As an engineer currently working on onshore as well as offshore wind turbines - I have to call your comment mostly FUD. Because, you just bring things up, without presenting arguments nor logical reasoning nor do you let your emperical knowledge shine through by examples (for critical parts, ..). You just claim doubts.

I did work in development and currently working in non-confirmity (which also means hands-on solving problems) for 8 yrs. I do have knowledge about how a wind turbine is layed out, how components get specified and developed, built together, installed, tested, maintained and last but not least fixed.

Claim: .. things do not thrive in ocean environments ..

Arguments against the claim:
I have seen so many differently aged wind turbines onshore as well as offshore, however I will not detest that wind turbines are problem free hence the "conformity", but it is far .. far .. far from being as dramatic as you suggested.

From all what I saw with my own eyes the offshore turbines, that have reached a certain age now, are withstanding the offshore enviroment quite well.

Yes, a rusty screw now and then, that needs to be replaced, a coating that needs to be renewed and a bit more. Corrosion protection in critical areas works.

When on-site I watch out for signs signaling problems, because I want wind turbines to be a success and not a fail just by negligence.

Claim:
Maintenance on land based windmills is .. dangerous ..

Arguments against claim:
Every maintainance work on installations is considered dangerous, because without safety rules and gear it is.

However as long as safety rules are followed and safety gear as well as mechanisms are used and not tempered with the danger is controlled and it is safe.

You assess the risks, secure by shutting-off, locking-out, inform, ground, and/or short before touching or entering. These rules apply to maintainance on electrical as well as parts mechanical. And this is the whole industry standard, nothing out of the ordinary.

Only persons that are medically checked, instructed and equiped are allowed to enter a wind turbine.

Claim:
Maintenance on land based windmills is .. expensive ... out there it will be a serious problem.

Arguments against claim:
Expensive, in contrast to what? In another post you commented on high maintainance cost of wind turbines in california. But you failed to supply a certain manufacturer or a link or source for example.

Perhaps the manufacturer had "a" problem with a big component? Everything that is built in a series will be affected from a component problem in series. Again this is common in every industry, this is why every company of a certain size has a dedicated department handling aftersales problems.

Yes, doing maintainance offshore costs more than doing maintainance onshore, you need transfer to the turbine by a CTV which is indeed expensive, and when necessary you transfer by helicopter a turbine that is out of operation is much more expensive.

In general maintainance is not expensive, however under certain circumstances it can be, but than it is a limited effect in contrast to a general problem.

However offshore-wind is a relatively new part of the industry, the first offshore wind farm, that was just some turbines put in the water two decades ago did rot away and needed to be fixed - they got fixed. And such light headed undertakings were abandoned for good a "long" time ago.

Along with that, GE is not a backyards operation but a serious company.

My conclusion
Wind turbines do work, onshore they are "well known serial industry products" (the Hippies are on the brink of extinction). Offshore wind turbines are "serial industry products"

Problems are a challenge and not a cause for giving up.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

It still doesn't match the density of a Coal or Nuke plant.

Sorry, folks, this is a boondoggle just like it is with solar- with the added benefit (dubious at best) of altering the climate over actually observable periods of time.

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

It happens every day in the private sector, despite an overbearing, tyrannical government.

When's the last time you actually worked?

Re:a maintenance nightmare

[swell]

Great arguments.

You are too late to the party to get modded up, or for anyone to notice our comments, but I want you to know that I appreciate your thoughts.

I still wouldn't invest my money in wind generators just yet. The major windfarms in California typically have a certain percentage not functioning. I wouldn't prefer a maintenance job that requires me to climb a ladder 40 stories to a windy platform in a remote area. We still have the storage problem- many theoretical solutions but none in place for large installations. And I've seen enough corrosion that I'm skeptical of marine installations of any sort. Presumably there will be no ferrous, aluminum, magnesium or copper materials (oops, no copper in an electrical generator?) employed.

Corrosion engineering is a relatively new discipline. According to Wikipedia: "Corrosion to metals as an example of corrosion had cost the U.S. economy nearly $300 billion per year in 1995 [4]." I foresee a bright future for a high school student who prepares to enter the field. My structural engineer friend tells me that there are many hundreds of bridges in the US that desperately need maintenance or replacement, largely due to corrosion.

But after about 100 years we've accomplished much with the evolution of remarkably reliable and safe automobiles; and eventually we'll have reliable windmills, assuming something better doesn't come along.

bianca filha da puta, agora eu sei teu número

[Anonymous Coward]

and that little shit takes a shot in her face and don't know why. gvfs is hosting THE SHIT here, and worse, jessie non-free is full of packages that makes your debian in a new server... for what? save the world with nakes kids? or to frustrate developers messing with their source codes? hmm? I'm more psycho than You, did You know that? You may not quit trolling my life and my family, but I can seiously get a gun and shot that retard in the ANUS.

final da história: vai dar teu cuzinho que passa o ciúmes que tu tem de familias estáveis. as pessoas não culpa se o teu pai te estuprou.

Some quick questions

[Okian Warrior]

At the average price for electricity(14.4 cents per kW/h) in RI at the average household electricity usage per month(602 kW/h) it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back. That assumes no operating costs or maintenence costs. Which is obviously bullshit. Turbines have, at max, a 20 year lifespan. But of course, green energy is viable, blah blah blah. Oh, and all this assumes constant delivery, which is never the case for wind as well.

You seem to be knowledgeable in the field, so can you give us some more detail about Turbans(*)?

1) Will the cost be $300 million per 5 turbines for any number of turbines, or will there be an economy of scale when building bigger installations?

2) Will the cost be $300 million per 5 turbines forever, or will they get increasingly cheaper (or more expensive) in the future?

3) Will the average price for electricity go up, down, or generally stay the same over the next 20 years?

4) Will the costs of generating electricity using current technology (95% el-gen is natural gas in RI) go up as natural gas reserves are depleted?

5) Will the average 20 year lifetime of turbines get better for future turbines?

6) You mention assumptions ("assumes constant delivery") in your post. Are there any other assumptions that I should be asking about?

(*) Yes, it was on purpose. See here.

Re:Some quick questions

[CanadianMacFan]

Part of the $300M is for building a grid to carry the electricity back to shore. This is a fixed cost for most wind farms. It doesn't matter if you have one turbine or 25 you are still going to have to build that connection in order to send the electricity back. So the more turbines you have in your farm the better you can spread this cost out per turbine.

Note that each turbine will have a cost associated with connecting it to the to the grid that makes up the wind farm. The more turbines that you have in the farm the larger this grid is and the more it will cost to connect them together. But the turbines are always going to be much closer together than they are from the shore so the cost to connect the turbines is going to be smaller than connecting the farm to the shore.

Wind turbines are getting larger all the time and when they get larger they get more expensive. However as the length, n, increases the power available goes up as a function of the area swept by the blades, n^2. Of course nobody is doubling the blade length but we are seeing turbines of 5MW and more where a few years ago it was 4MW. So yes the turbines are getting more expensive but that's because they are able to generate more electricity.

New Era In Buying Politicians

[Crashmarik]

http://www.deepwaterresistance...

Lets see the company was banned from Narraganset

Promised hundreds of new jobs from the project which will actually only deliver 6

Last Project off Block Island will cost tax payers half a billion to fix.

Overall sounds like great return on equity. Maybe they will try investing at the federal level next.

Sad to see what the Republicans are doing to RI

[Anonymous Coward]

They hate us so much, and they are destroying our ocean views with this garbage because they hate us so much.

Re:Sad to see what the Republicans are doing to RI

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tears are delicious.

It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS

[dbIII]

It's slashdot not talk radio so how about numbers in megawatts instead of "enough to power X homes" or volkswagens per libraries of congress or similar utterly useless descriptions?

Re:It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS

[Anonymous Coward]

Units of capacity (peak power) are also useless when comparing unreliable generators with low capacity factors. Units of energy (kWh, etc.) should be used instead, and only include energy that is actually meeting demand, not excess production that the grid must dispose of.

Re:It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS

[dbIII]

are also useless when comparing unreliable generators with low capacity factors

All generators used for the purpose of supplying power during times of peak load have a "low capacity factors" whether they are reliable or not because you take stuff offline when the peak is over and you don't need to use it!
WTF is it with these weasels?
Do you think you are being clever by badly misusing a term you do not understand in the hope that nobody else knows what it means?
I'm no fan of wind but I'm even less of a fan of people who have decided to attack anything with the slightest tinge of "green" for the sake of being good little party comrades.

Re:It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS

[thegarbz]

Sure make some up. The original article didn't include any either.

Re:It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's journalism and journalists are much more stupid than talk radio.

Re:bianca filha da puta, agora eu sei teu núm

[Anonymous Coward]

Please ignore this person, for they are obviously retarded!

We'll see how often the turbines are locked

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in New England. There are many idle wind turbines due to mechanical failure. When there a failure the turbine is locked and does not spin... does not produce electricity. The largest rip off in the area was the huge wind turbine for the town of Portsmouth, RI. It always needed to be serviced due to mechanical failure. Eventually the company that built and maintained the turbine went out of business. Now it's being torn down and another one is going up in it's place. On the ride down the Cape. Off 195 just before you hit 25 there are 5 wind turbines, 4 spinning and one already failed. Have you ever been out at sea ? The windmills off the coast of RI are going to be exposed to very high winds. I am willing to bet there will be a failure within 6 months. I'm not against renewable energy. I am against lame companies overcharging for renewable technology and under engineering.

Other shore generation

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'm on vacation in NJ this week, the big deal is BL England just got approval to keep running on oil while the coal plant is repowered to run on natural gas. The gas conversion costs $400 million to power 480,000 homes.

In other news . . . .

[reboot246]

Most species of seabirds will soon be extinct, but our benevolent government assures us that it's not due to offshore wind farms.

"Must" means a lot of things

[SuperKendall]

If they made so many installations then they must have made some headway on maintenance in a salt water environment.

Or they "must" be paying a ton of money to keep the white elephants spinning.

I've seen the future of wind farms, at the southern tip of Hawaii, in the plains of California... after fifteen to twenty years of playing with the toys they all end up as decaying eyesores once people realize they cost a lot more than they give back in power.

Re: "Must" means a lot of things

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen the present in coal mining, coal burning, and even nuclear plant construction?

Or perhaps the current results of fracking? Or maybe the consequences from a variety of hydroelectric projects across the world.

Or perhaps we can plow another few tens of billions into fusion research.

Re:"Must" means a lot of things

[khallow]

I've seen the future of wind farms, at the southern tip of Hawaii, in the plains of California... after fifteen to twenty years of playing with the toys they all end up as decaying eyesores once people realize they cost a lot more than they give back in power.

The problem here is that the technology of wind turbines changes. And one of the things that is changing is how much maintenance a wind turbine needs. For example, this link claims that average annual maintenance costs as a fraction of initial investment has gone from 3% for "older" wind turbines over their lifespan to 1.5-2% for current generation.

Re:"Must" means a lot of things

[Zontar The Mindless]

Maybe you need to take a ride on the Øresundståget. You'd see about 150 of these "toys" spinning merrily away, just as they've been doing for two decades or more.

As a bonus, you can—or so I hear—buy some really good hash in Christiana and get a pleasant buzz on for the ride back to Malmö and points north, if that's your thing.

Re:"Must" means a lot of things

[SuperKendall]

You can keep anything going forever as long as you are willing to pour money into it. The pipeline of money maintaining those things is what you do not see...

They are toys in the same sense a ultra-high end sports car is a toy. They look super impressive even while being utterly impractical and wasteful.

Are YOU counting the costs?

[SuperKendall]

A rise in the Earths temperature of 2C (which is about the forecast at the moment) means a MASSIVE increase in agricultural output and expansion of habitat land. Why do you not factor in these huge benefits? In a sense if wind turbines are reducing CO2 (even if you believe the fantasy CO2 has anything to do with warming) then they are actually costing the world a lot of money and starving billions.

Re:Are YOU counting the costs?

[mspohr]

America's latest 500 year rainstorm is underway right now in Louisiana:
https://psmag.com/americas-lat...

This tends to reduce agricultural output and habitable land.

Re:Are YOU counting the costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

A rise in the Earths temperature of 2C (which is about the forecast at the moment) means a MASSIVE increase in agricultural output and expansion of habitat land. Why do you not factor in these huge benefits? In a sense if wind turbines are reducing CO2 (even if you believe the fantasy CO2 has anything to do with warming) then they are actually costing the world a lot of money and starving billions.

Funny, I haven't heard of billions of people starving anywhere. Even where there is starvation, I'm not sure that you can directly attribute it to a lack of food production that would be remedied by your proposed solution. The world isn't suffering from food deprivation in production, but transportation. It might be made worse, as you disrupted the local economic infrastructure without relocating people to more habitable climes.

Besides, as we all know, an increase of supply causes an reduction in costs, so if you really cared about the money, you'd set about cooling the Earth instead. Set off a few volcanoes, it's proven to work.

Oh wait, you can't even grasp how the greenhouse effect works, no wonder you can't understand economics or agriculture. Really, you probably aren't even considering the coal miners your warming trend will put out of work. The mild winters the past few years in the US have lead to a glut in the coal supply, to the point where even more mines are closing.

Seriously, cold is the way to go. Freeze the planet! Snowballs!

Think of the sales of winter coats!

Re:Are YOU counting the costs?

[angel'o'sphere]

A rise in the Earths temperature of 2C (which is about the forecast at the moment) means a MASSIVE increase in agricultural output and expansion of habitat land.
Extremely unlikely. The seasons don't change, so everything that is ice free still has its long winter and long summer and no spring and no autumn.
Where should the land come from? We simply have no idea
o which areas will suffer from
    a) more rain
    b) more heat
o wich areas will gain from
    c) more rain
    d) more heat

The idea that with 2C temperature increase we have more food is idiotic at best.

even if you believe the fantasy CO2 has anything to do with warming
Believes are for religion not for science ...

Re:Are YOU counting the costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a scientific article that came out recently that did say that food production will increase due to the increase of CO2 available for plants. The authors did say, that the CONs of the increased CO2 emissions outweighed this benefit however.

onshore wind is a good renewable energy

[Anonymous Coward]

A onshore wind turbine in a good location, is the best form of renewable energy today. Of course fossil fuel are great, with great storage, portability, and easy to use, but fossil fuels are finite, especially oil, so we should get used to using cruddy renewable energy, and use fossil fuel for special things, like cars, and airplanes.

Behold, the Underminer!

[havmerci]

Putting wind farms near "population epicenters" (points on the earth's surface directly above the origin of the population?) makes me think of vast colonies of mole people...

california's goal

[Anonymous Coward]

could easily be reached, exceeded even, if only they could figure out a way to turn the manure coming out of hollywood into a biofuel. talk about a renewable resource.

Thanks

[Okian Warrior]

Thanks for the info. I figured as much. In 20 years we can replace the turbines at $10 million apiece and get another 20 years of service for much less.

It seems lots of people on this site are four-square against any type of renewable energy, and try to rationalize their claims to the audience by making reasonable-sounding economic arguments.

The arguments just don't pass the sniff test, and completely ignore evidence from other countries and seem rather short-sighted, given that natural gas is a fixed resource.

I've often wondered if the Koch brothers or other moneyed interests actually pay people to troll Slashdot with political bias. Tesla bashing is another one.

That would be an awesome hacker leak or insider interview, don't you think? An insider view of a sock-puppet factory, how people get paid to post political opinions on high-traffic newsfeeds.

Re:GPL: Intellectual Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

A BSD licence would probably work better for your organization, it's the strategy Apple uses to base their products.

Shared Source is the name of Microsoft's latest Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy.

I thought this was a tech site

[stabiesoft]

No not every turbine is going to fail in 20 years. Some will fail sooner, some later and maybe one will fail at exactly 20 years, but I doubt it. Average means average. Why do you keep trying to bury yourself in this position? The original poster figured out the costs on this particular project were not very good. QED.

Re:I thought this was a tech site

[Ol Olsoc]

No not every turbine is going to fail in 20 years. Some will fail sooner, some later and maybe one will fail at exactly 20 years, but I doubt it. Average means average. Why do you keep trying to bury yourself in this position?

I'm not arguig to say they are all going to fail. They will be a piece of capital equipment like all other peices of capital equipment. They'll be maintained just like any pice of capital equipment will. You don't get sarcasm? We've heard how Prious batteries were going to fail and leave the owners with a huge bill. Yet there is a 100 percent warranty of 100K miles or 150K miles i California. The biggest problem is that they aren't failing - you really want that battery pack to die at 99,999.99 miles so you can get that new battery pack for free. Same with Solar electrical power. The solar cells only have a X number of years lifetime, and we hear it a lot in here.

The biggest problem at the moment is the decision of when to install them, as solar electric is in a mild form of what happened in teh mid 90's with computers. Buy one, and next week there is a better model.

The original poster figured out the costs on this particular project were not very good. QED.

As for the costs - How is that calculated? Is the cost figuring that after 20 years (yeah - give or take) that the entire structure will need to be replaced? From the mooring to 100 percent of the structure? For a land based unit will the roads have to be recut, the footings repaired and thelines to and from the towers need replaced - in other words starting completely over again every 20 years, give or take.

Now it's pretty obvious to you that I'm a dumfuk, but I suspect not. I suspect that it will become over a period of time that parts will be replaced. And that period of time will be a lot longer than 20 years.

I took a tour of a natgas power generating facility recently. They have a jet engine-like turbine that they use. While not super efficient in herently, they use the residual heat from the echaust to cerate steam for heat and get 80 percent of the energy out of the natgas. Very cool and impressive technology. But I digress. The point is, they have replaced capital equipment now twice in the last ten years, and may do it again in 5 more. Some times for efficiency, sometimes for power, some times forgeneral wear and tear.

And that is my point overall. You don't just put up a plant of any other mode of power generation than coal or nuc or natgas, and have maintenace while coal and nuc or natgas have no maintenance. They all have maintenance. Putting in the new turbines did not require leveling the building and starting over. And unless a nuc plant goes kablooey, (a technical term) you don't completely rebuild or write them off. We've seen that their licenses are often extended, and they do maintenance on them. Just like anything else. My final point is that this 20 year number is not only too short, but is very vague. It seems to assume a specific lifetime, then assumes a complete starting over. None of these methods have such a stringent set of parameters. Unless of course, another agenda is being pushed. I wonder what that would be?

Re:I thought this was a tech site

[stabiesoft]

You use all the positives and see none of the negatives. Again the OP used 16c/kwh RETAIL as their baseline. Do you know that means that probably the wholesale value, you know the value the juice is worth at the turbine, is probably around a nickel, meaning it will take 45 years to pay back. Even giving this project every possible break, it made no sense. Adding in a touch of reality puts it in crazy land.

Re:I thought this was a tech site

[Ol Olsoc]

You use all the positives and see none of the negatives. Again the OP used 16c/kwh RETAIL as their baseline. Do you know that means that probably the wholesale value, you know the value the juice is worth at the turbine, is probably around a nickel, meaning it will take 45 years to pay back. Even giving this project every possible break, it made no sense. Adding in a touch of reality puts it in crazy land.

Only seing the positives? Every technology has positives and negatives. Wind isn't "on" at all times, but is pretty good environmentally. Oil is so volatile in price that its impossible to set a budget. But its tremendos as far as portability and energy density goes. It's also not renewable. Coal is cheap, but seriously dirty and environmentally a disaster, from mining to disposal. Nuclear power has the potential to be awesome, and clean but has the isue of incredible power density, and a serious credibilty issue based on ground truth. Humans and their vested interests make safe nuc power very difficult to obtain. It's too bad we rushed to install it too soon. As well, teh paradigm og mega mega plants exacerbates the problem. In my nuc powered world, w'd have modern versions of the SL-1, obviously without the ancient probalematic technology. But small enough that we wouldn't create huge exclusion zones when one does go kablooey.

Smaller nuc plants make a stratregic improvement as well. If I were going to war with another country, my biggest hope would be that they have as few power plants feeding as many people as possible. You can save on ordnance that way, and much bang for the buck is achieved, and very quicly with as little loss of my own people. and if they were nuc plants, I could hammer them very hard indeed.

I've spent a lot of time studying power options, and I gotta tell ya, youe back of the envelope off the cuff calculations are simply skewed toward people wanting other options than wind.

Re: I thought this was a tech site

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, oil is a renewable resource. It is just on an order of the geological scale.

Re:I thought this was a tech site

[stabiesoft]

Except you assume I am against wind. I am totally for wind, just not this wind. West Texas, california, and other places have commercial profitable wind projects. This one is not commercial and by the looks will not be profitable. You can say what you want, but based on the optimistic view of 15c/kwh wholesale, rates in RI will need to be 40-45c/kwh. That is Hawaii expensive. Cost is not just generation. Those guys that get up on poles in the middle of crap weather get paid too. Transformers need replacing from time to time etc. That all rolls into rates.

Re:I thought this was a tech site

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, shouldn't we start by mocking the fine article? Check out this gem:

Each Block Island turbine can generate 6 megawatts of energy during its life cycle

Wow, they make it sound like it'll hit 6 megawatts once in its life instead of 2-15% of the time. Garbage In, Garbage Out...

SunEdison Is In Backruptcy And ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Apple Energy LLC recently got its permission to sell excess electricity to the California (and Nevada) electrical grid (Apple Energy LLC's long-term goal is to control private homes electricity usage, how much and when) other solar projects are non-functional without Federal subsidies and then there are the ones already banckrupt like SunEdison, Solyndra, Beacon Power, Abound Solar and many more ($150 billion gone and counting).

Only 5 months to go for Obama's Federal Fraud gravy-train then the money stops.

Ha ha

Re:SunEdison Is In Backruptcy And ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Apple Energy LLC recently got its permission to sell excess electricity to the California (and Nevada) electrical grid (Apple Energy LLC's long-term goal is to control private homes electricity usage, how much and when) other solar projects are non-functional without Federal subsidies and then there are the ones already banckrupt like SunEdison, Solyndra, Beacon Power, Abound Solar and many more ($150 billion gone and counting).

And then you look at the details of the bankruptcies, and realize that SunEdison was engaged in highly speculative and reckless acquisitions, Solyndra had the problem of a product that was expensive to make, that ran into Chinese dumping of their cheaper systems, Beacon Power is engaged in Flywheel systems that their new owners are still building, and Abound Solar had the same problem as Solyndra, solar prices plummeted on them.

The latter of which shows something you don't want to admit, though. That there are tons of solar panels being manufactured sold, and installed. All you have is isolated examples of failure at most.

Sorry, but the facts don't support you.

Only 5 months to go for Obama's Federal Fraud gravy-train then the money stops.

Ha ha

Not one instance of actual fraud has been proven in the above, unlike say, Enron, or even Exxon. Solyndra, never proven to engage in fraud, despite the GOP hysteria. They built their factory. I'm sure some of the contractors skimmed money, but they built a factory, and had products. Even Abound Solar can't be proven to have deliberately put toxic materials in their panels. Sorry, but no evidence around. What there is, and what you willfully ignore, is evidence that China's government dumped billions to subsidize their own companies, even as they produced lower-quality panels.

Besides, the DOE Loan program was from the Bush era, and as such, you should examine the full return. It's still in the black.

Go Bernie!

[martinfb]

Vermont targeting 100% by 2017?! Way to go, Bernie! You should run for president!

Re: GPL: Intellectual Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Shared Source is hardly new. It is probably older than you. Yeah, you can see the Windows source, in part. You have been able to for many years.

Not sold at cost

[dbIII]

Not sold at cost - you really don't get this capitalism thing do you?

So the government should step in and stop the wind generators?
Lend me some roubles comrade, I need to line up for toilet paper in your perfect society.


All this naive charging at windmills would have your great-grandad laugh at you and smack you on the back of the head. There's a novel that's been out for centuries that shows how stupid this shit is.

Can anyone say proudly uninformed troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You gave a nice itemized list of things that you are sorely lacking understanding of. How long would the list be if it were unabridged? How short would a list be of topics that you have even a basic understanding of?

But on the topic at hand...

Your item #1 was you attempting to level a claim that nuclear power is somehow hindered by the boogiemen "anti nuclear activists". You came up with various things that you blamed this vaporous group on, and those things were roundly discredited in previous posts. It appears that you walked yourself into this problem after someone called you out as a hypocrite for consuming electricity that comes from nuclear power stations while you try to attack wind power generation; this is indeed true that you are a hypocrite for this as your argument is based on the faulty reasoning that government involvement in one kind of power is A-OK and in another kind it is the end of the damned universe.

Your item #2 was apparently just you showing that you don't know shit about hydroelectric. Well done, we are in agreement that you don't know shit about hydroelectric.

Your item #3 is you showing that you don't understand how solar power works. Why you would want to do that is anyone's guess. You were given a high quality source for information on where solar works well and where it does not. You may want to try entering your parent's address and see if it makes sense for them to put solar panels on their roof; then try entering some other addresses you know (maybe start with your school, your favorite MacDonald's, your local Wal-Mart, and go from there?) and see how they are rated for solar installation. Shoving your fingers in your ears and claiming to understand solar power better than google engineers because you can see the sun when you climb out of your parent's basement is not a valid argument.

Your item #4 just shows that you really don't understand even basic economics. Here's a hint, kid - just because your parents give you an allowance for doing chores doesn't mean you understand the labor market. There is a lot more to it than just wages and bodies.

Your item #5 was you failing to see how a single case is a terrible example of an entire market. You also doubled-down on hypocrisy on that one, as the customer mentioned in your source was seeking services from a company without compensating said company. There is a strange tendency for companies to not stay in business long when they give out their services for free.

Re:Can anyone say proudly uninformed troll?

[Karmashock]

1. Baseless insult.
2. Nuclear power operates very efficiently outside their influence. Thus the impact of the influence is prescriptive on efficiency.
3. Cite your source for why I'm wrong or this is just posturing.
4. Baseless insult.
5. I could use the same argument against people using the Great Depression as the singular economic example and yet everyone seems to do it. This is just more posturing on your part.

We can go into things if you're at all able to do more than posture and insult. But I rather suspect that's all you've got.

Re:Can anyone say proudly uninformed troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Baseless insult.

That is a rather epically bad misspelling of factual observation. You should check the dictionary that your spell check uses and see what other words are wrong. Considering some of the other terrible mis-application of words you have employed in this thread, there is reason to believe your dictionary is full of errors.
 
 

2. Nuclear power operates very efficiently outside their influence. Thus the impact of the influence is prescriptive on efficiency.

Previously nuclear power - and your boogiemen that you liked to talk about in the context of it - was item 1 on your list. #2 was hydro. Are you changing the subject of #2 in light of realizing that you don't know squat about hydro?
 
 

3. Cite your source for why I'm wrong or this is just posturing.

The source has been given numerous times now. You can use the google site as well as anyone else. If you can't be bothered to use it, that is the problem of nobody but yourself. We'll just agree at this point that you don't understand enough physics to realize that there are a lot of places where solar doesn't work well enough to warrant the investment.
 
 

4. Baseless insult.

You could counter by showing some basic understanding of economics. You have so far shown less comprehension of economics than an average high school student. You can claim offense at the remark if you want but it won't make up for the fact that you plainly don't understand the topic.
 
 

5. I could use the same argument against people using the Great Depression as the singular economic example and yet everyone seems to do it. This is just more posturing on your part.

If you want to wander further from the topic you could go for that, I suppose. Being as one of the common veins of 1-4 with you here is your enthusiasm for quickly getting away from topics you are not well informed on, that would not be a surprise tactic from you here. Or you could behave like an adult, and admit that your source fails to support the argument that you thought you were making.