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America's First Offshore Wind Farm In Pictures (businessinsider.com)
Last week, an anonymous Slashdot reader submitted a story from the Associated Press, detailing the United States' first offshore wind farm that is set to open off the cost of Rhode Island this fall. Business Insider issued a report today with some additional specifications and stunning pictures of the Block Island Wind Farm: "GE and Deepwater Wind, a developer of offshore turbines, are installing five massive wind turbines in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They will make up the first offshore wind farm in North America, called the Block Island Wind Farm. Over the past several weeks, the teams have worked to install the turbines 30 miles off the cost of Rhode Island, and are expected to finish by the end of August 2016. The farm will be fully operational by November 2016." Fun fact: GE's offshore wind farm has turbines that are twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. You can view the slideshow of images here.
They are 4 miles off shore; who gives a shit.
You are wrong. It worked. The subsidies have brought down the costs of installing wind power to the point that it is becoming competitive with (and perhaps cheaper than) other forms of generation.
These 6MW turbines are actually small. 8MW turbines are being installed now. The effective cost will be higher because only a small number of turbines are being installed.
This is a recent article from someone who has been very skeptical about alternative energy
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Spreading FUD? Got an agenda? David Koch, is that you?
http://www.aweablog.org/fact-check-about-those-abandoned-turbines/ (Yeah, yeah, it's on the Internet, so it must be true.)
One failed wind farm is hardly a reason why wind farms are necessarily a bad thing.
I'll agree. Those pictures are about as pleasing as a triptych of oil refineries in NJ.
The core of the argument is sound though. It costs ~$500k to put up a 100kW wind turbine. With energy at about 12c/kWh, each hour at full power would generate only $12 and would thus break even after 5 years of full-time, full-power wind however the largest turbines catch wind only 20% of the time and are only 30-45% efficient, smaller ones even less. So you're looking at 50 years before they break even. That is off course if they never needed maintenance, these turbines are specced for 20-30years of service WITH maintenance but most of them last only half that long.
Wind power is a loss at this point in time unless we jack the price of energy like Germany does, we need way lower costs and way higher efficiencies but for that we need rare earth magnets and the like. Solar is better (less maintenance) but it still doesn't compare to a well-maintained nuclear plant or other forms of clean energy.
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Wind turbines worldwide kill less than half a million birds per year; house cats kill over half a billion per year.