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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.
Take a dump? Srsly? If not four miles off shore, where exactly would you put them?
Fucking NIMBYs. Fucking billionaire NIMBYs that think they can afford to keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
Because they actually can afford it, and to hell with everyone else.
If it was 150 years ago they'd probably be whining about all the damn ships. With sails. Sailing through their view.
This was another good one:
The potential for offshore wind energy in the US is massive. If we build in all of the available ocean space, the winds above coastal waters could provide more than 4,000 gigawatts a year. That's more than four times the nation’s current annual electricity production.
So, gosh, all we have to do is use all the available coastal ocean space, and we'll get four times the annual electrical output. That's a bit like saying "If we covered every square foot of the contiguous US in solar panels, we'd have about 1300x the current electrical output." Technically true, but somewhat misleading in its sheer improbability.
Yeah, a good thing to start diversifying our energy needs, but let's not get carried away with over-optimistic nonsense like that.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'll agree. Those pictures are about as pleasing as a triptych of oil refineries in NJ.
If anyone wants to judge for themselves, just how foolish this particular statement is, check out:
New Jersey Oil Refinery vs Off Shore Wind Farms.
Sure, beauty is totally subjective, but few honest people rate an oil refinery as more beautiful than a windfarm.
My pics.
as if power-lines were not enough.
Just make a search on "birds killed by wind generators" and see images.
Can we use led lamps and live in modest homes; like not heating or air-conditioning ten thousand of square feet just to look prestigious? Or eat a bit less and drive normal size cars? Perhaps then there would be no need to make this wonderful planet's surface ugly with so many power-lines, wind turbines towers, and chimneys.
Hold on, I linked to two google images searches - both of which had hundreds of images of oil refineries or offshore wind farms.
You cherry picked two wind farms (and not off-shore ones at that), both of which are against a fairly unattractive landscape, but are still more attractive to me than any oil refinery I've seen.
Sure, beauty is totally subjective, but few honest people rate an oil refinery as beautiful as a wind farm.
How about you post side-by-side pictures of an oil refinery you consider as attractive as a wind farm?
My pics.
Allrightee, how about we just cut the bullshit & go back to your original statement - the one I'm calling out as dishonest:
If you meant ugly when you said stunning, I'll agree. Those pictures are about as pleasing as a triptych of oil refineries in NJ.
Sure, beauty is totally subjective, but few honest people rate an oil refinery as pleasing to the eye as a wind farm. Do you? How about you link to a picture (or three) of NJ oil refineries that you find of equal (or greater) pleasantness than one of the pictures in the article.
My pics.
Look at onshore wind turbines; they said the same thing about those a few years ago. But now they are pretty cheap and still getting cheaper, where in the past they needed subsidies to be viable. They got cheaper for a simple reason: thanks to the subsidies these things got built, and in the process we are learning how to build better ones. Compared to other sources of energy, there was and still is a vast upward potential in wind turbines to increase efficiency (in terms of kWhs generated per turbine), decrease production and installation costs, and greatly simplify maintenance which is another big cost driver. Newer turbines are higher, poking into a region where winds are more constant. The newest models do not even have to be stopped in heavy winds (current ones do, at some point the wind bends the turbine blades so far in they will strike the tower) which further increases overall production efficiency. The same applies to offshore wind farms. There's not many out there yet but already costs are falling rapidly due to innovations, like specially designed support ships and the use of inspection drones contributing to lower maintenance costs, a big factor in offshore wind.
Now is not the time to invest billions into large scale offshore wind farms. But an energy strategy aiming at replacing fossil fuels with renewables should, at this time, include subsidies for smaller offshore wind farms. See them as an investment into R&D to improve offshore wind farms and drive own costs, same as happened with onshore wind. This kind of R&D is not done in front of a blackboard or in a lab, it's practical engineering, making incremental improvements based on past experience.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Especially if it can be seen from one of the Kennedy's beachfront mansions.
How do you walk with your knees jerking like that?
If wind power proves to be profitable, the Koch brothers would invest in it. They're businessmen, not emotion-driven zealots for oil.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
He runs a solar power business in Maryland. Therefore, this is a competitor, he wouldn't even think of giving them a mention unless it was to talk about the negative aspects of this technology.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
No, they're capitalists. They just manipulate Libertarians, who tend to be rather useful idiots.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.