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First Offshore Wind Farm In US Waters Delivers Power To Rhode Island (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, energy company Deepwater Wind announced that its wind farm three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, has the all-clear to sell electricity to the regional power grid. The Block Island Wind Farm is the first offshore wind energy plant in the U.S., and it's expected to produce 30 MW of electricity at full capacity. Deepwater Wind is slowly ramping up energy output and still must provide additional paperwork to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, but the executive director of that organization, Grover Fugate, told the Providence Journal, "we don't anticipate any major issues" to getting the wind farm fully online. The one hitch in the Deepwater's plan is that one of the five turbines was recently damaged when a drill bit was left in a critical part of turbine. According to the Providence Journal, "the bit had caused damage to an unspecified number of the 128 magnet modules that line the circular generator and are critical to producing energy." Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them. For now, four turbines capable of churning out 6 MW of power each are operational. The Providence Journal notes that National Grid will pay Deepwater Wind 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour of power, with the price escalating over time to 47.9 cents per kilowatt hour. Because the residents of Block Island have some of the most expensive electricity rates in the nation, they will actually see energy savings, despite the price. Mainland Rhode Islanders, on the other hand, will pay an extra $1.07 per month on average.
Does 5 turbines really make it a farm?
http://english.rvo.nl/subsidie...
How long will it take before the proceeds from the power generated create enough revenue to cover operational costs? Show this development to be cash-positive and investors will beat a path to your door.
As soon as the new Legion of Doom take office.
47.9 cents/kWh? That's insane. The newest offshore turbine parks in Europe will deliver for less than 10 cents / kWh. Mind you, that's Eurocents. Cheapest one will be built for the Danish coast, 400 MW of power, 4.99cents/kWh.
> Only in places where hypocritical NIMBY "wind turbines will disturb my pristine ocean view" left-wingers live.
HAH.
Ha ha, except Trump complained bitterly about the planned offshore wind farm on his scottish golf course...
"Donald Trump's legal challenge to a planned offshore wind farm has been rejected by the UK's Supreme Court. Developers hope to site 11 turbines off Aberdeen, close to Mr Trump's golfing development on the Aberdeenshire coast...The Trump Organisation said it was an "extremely unfortunate" ruling and it would "continue to fight" the wind farm proposal."
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-35106581
That's the golf cours he claims in US election documents, makes a $3 million profit, but actually makes a loss of $1.5 million in the real actual accounts that we can read, only because he has to file them in Companies House. Just note that, ALL of the accounts we can read, ALL turned out to be far far worse than the numbers he claimed in his election filing.
I think he's building up excuses for when he reveals how his "$300 million" golf course failed despite claims (lies) it was profitable. He'll blame the wind farm.
Real figure including all licensing rights is not $300 million, but rather $150 million. His claim of $300m is a lie. It's difficult to locate all the investors in that, but so far *more* than $150 million has been accounted for by outside investors, so he's duping investors, spending *some* of their money on the actual investment, skimming the rest off to cover losses elsewhere. Keeping it all secret....
Find next investors, defraud them of money... use some of their money to prop up previous failing projects earnings, to keep the bonds and loans from defaulting.... i.e. an investment Ponzi scheme.
And soon he fill be able to put his mafia into the FBI, and use dipolmats to promote his ponzi scheme.
How much is a good view worth? I didn't stop to think about that, until the Trump Scotland wind farm dispute. I thought that a wind farm is more important than some low income farmers out in the country. But what about a bunch of rich people packed together, in a single luxury resort? I guess scenic beauty could be taxed, instead of selling the wind off.
It does. Just a small one. Do you have a problem with calling it a farm? In which case, what is it and why is it problematic? Calling it a windfarm is quicker than calling it an installation consisting of 5 wind turbines.
Really wish there was an "undo" button. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
don't mind subsidizing the rich people on Block Island. How enlightened.
"He steals from the poor, gives to the rich, stupid bitch!" -- Monte Python
About time. Sincerely, Europe.
Is Amercia really so far behind with renewables?
Yes and no. The answer like most things having to do with America the answer is complicated. America actually has quite a lot of wind and solar power installed with more coming all the time. But America also has some pretty entrenched fossil fuel interests and a climate denying political right and some NIMBYs that makes installing renewable power more difficult than it should be. America is pretty far behind on off-shore wind power in particular. Sad given that America is in many ways a maritime nation with some of the longest coasts in the world.
The west coast is pretty much useless with an extremely short continental shelf.
About 58% of US wind resources off shore are in waters too deep to mount to the sea floor. Fortunately a lot of work is going into developing floating wind turbines so this should become a non-issue in due course.
According to the DOE the US has over 2,000 gigawatts of available wind power offshore which is more than enough in theory to supply the entire current electricity consumption of the US. Frankly we are being foolish to not take full advantage of offshore wind.
The east coast does not have reliable wind patterns for efficient wind generation.
That's evidently not true at least as a general proposition since they are installing wind farms on the east coast including the one discussed here near Rhode Island. I'm sure it's focally true for some areas but clearly not for the entire eastern seaboard.
The inhabited area of Texas is far smaller than that of the UK, especially if you don't count whole cattle ranches as residences.
Texas is very close in size to France (696,241 km^2 vs 643,801 km^2) but has roughly 40% of the population (26 million vs 66 million respectively). The UK population is roughly the same as France but an area of 242,495 km^2. So the population density of Texas is lower but if you take the rural areas of Texas out of the equation (most of West Texas) the population density isn't too far off from the UK. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are all in the eastern half of the state and together account for most of the population. So the density of the "inhabited" parts of Texas (the eastern half mostly) is actually pretty close to the UK.
Only in places where hypocritical NIMBY "wind turbines will disturb my pristine ocean view" left-wingers live
Plenty of right wing NIMBYs too. The only difference is the reasons. They tend to dislike it for political rather than aesthetic reasons. Usually due to connections to the fossil fuel industries.
In solid, Trump-voting Oklahoma and Texas, wind farms dot the landscape.
Not a lot of ocean front property in Oklahoma and in Texas the shorelines are already dotted with oil rigs. Last I checked oil companies weren't big fans of wind power. (pun slightly intended) Yeah they have on-shore wind but that's not the same thing.
Really, a half dozen turbines and 30MW? How is this seen as anything but a failure. That is at the scale of a singular solar farm.
I've been to a 300+ MW wind farm with 85+ turbines, and those were terrestrial.
That said, those were produced using the same subsidies more less as those above, which have problems. The subsidies were to drive the sector, to not only create energy, but to create jobs. However as seen above it isn't really the case when all these things are made overseas and shipped here. That is the problem with the subsidies, they essentially take all the risk out of the picture for the company, at which point it is simple math about getting a 20 year loan, and making profit on it because it's all set out before hand in contract, however there are no strings attached about actual jobs (of which very few are required post construction to run the facility), or where material comes from, it's all just assumed that by existing the invisible hand o' the market will sort all that out, which so far has shown not to be the case.
Some perspective here, as someone who has done work in the power industry.
30 MW is a very, very small amount of generation capacity. I have been to a generation facility where a 25MW diesel generator was the thing used to jump-start the rest of the plant...which was only about a 450 MW facility. 30 MW is pocket change in the power industry, a rounding error. Even small "peaker" CT plants typically produce at least 10x that amount when in service.
Now, for the cost per KWh. The price cited above is what National Grid is paying; it's wholesale. Do not compare it to your final KWh price from your electric bill; those rates are not equivalent, as the one on your bill includes T&D fees, some profit for the power company that serves you, and other things. According to the New England ISO (the regional authority that includes Rhode Island), a good example is (scroll down to see it) a bit more than four cents per KWh. So, this electricity is about 10x the cost of current generation.
Now...why am I pointing this out? Context. People in Slashdot have been going on and on like renewable energy is all good to go, and they can't possibly figure out why power companies aren't letting everyone just build turbines and solar panels all over the place. They see how the cost of solar panels is going down, but don't take into account the anti-islanding gear that is mandatory, the most expensive part of a solar installation, and which is static in price. They think about how windmills can generate power like crazy, but don't think about problems like VARS support needed to move the electricity from far away...since wind farms are noisy, real estate-intensive, and distant because reliable wind is often not near population centers. They want everyone to just put solar panels on their homes, but don't take into account what Hawaii found out...that doing so, even under the very best of circumstances, can be incredibly destabilizing to the power grid due to the need to balance sink and generation.
Yes, these technologies are needed. Yes, they will be improved. But for God's sake, please do keep in mind that they are NOT ready to supplant nuclear or fossil generation capabilities just yet. And you have to consider the whole situation...you don't just stand up a wind turbine and plug it into the grid. It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that and it's crazy expensive.
On a brighter and final note...if it turns out to be a truly viable product, I'm planning to get a Tesla solar roof in the next 5-10 years. When you consider the fact that it serves a dual purpose of both roof and solar generation unit, the cost impact flips from being more expensive than simply buying all my power to cheaper than buying both a roof and all of my power. This is the kind of innovation that will make things work. As for the destabilizing effects, power companies are rolling out WAMPAC (which is a small constellation of technologies and capabilities) that help with that by providing better visibility into grid operations along with automation to manage issues as they arise. So we are headed in the right direction, and will get there.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
LOL an Ontario Conservative shill on Slashdot, whodathunkit!
Not sure if you don't read, or just like spouting ideology but pretty much everything you said is in error, other than the fact that you posted some op ed pieces of conservative based newspapers about Ontario people mad about energy bills. I'll concede that the Liberals "green" direction of a few years ago hasn't produced the results they wanted, and it likely has resulted in slightly higher energy costs. You could also say that (subtracting the "green" bit) about just about just about every political party in Ontario for the last 20 years, Conservatives included. That privatization stuff that Harris and his Conservatives did for the only reason to try and make their budget look balanced was BS. At least the "green" plan actually had some positive environmental benefits if not anything else!
OK, so exactly what did you get wrong? Let's start!
First:
"The FIT Program is open to projects with a rated electricity generating capacity greater than 10 kilowatts (kW) and generally up to 500 kW." is located right in the website your cited if you actually took 5 seconds to read it. Do you know what 10-500KW is? This is the home generation, typical solar, basically when someone puts a couple PV panels on their roof and calls it a day. The FIT program is not for a 20MW solar farm, or a 200MW wind farm, which is where the actual generation occurs, and the those Liberal subsidies kick in. So you are not even talking about the correct thing.
Second:
"Most conservative estimate is that it will raise the cost of goods across all sectors by 20%". I think the emphasis here is "Conservative", in political party spin. I note you cite nothing here, and I can only assume you made up that value off the top of your head. It's nice and round, and ridiculous. For one, "across all sectors" is obviously false, as not all sectors produce pollution, or consume a lot of energy. Not going to bother looking it up, feel free to actually cite something.
Third:
In Ontario "green energy" accounts for under 1% of total generation". Also a totally made up number. I know for a fact, so I did look it up:
In summary, not including Hydro, Wind/Solar/Bio probably make up about 18% of total generation... a far cry from 1%
https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/o...
Anyway I'm sure you consider these all to be Liberal lies or something, but for anyone else reading, do the 30 seconds of google searches when you see these kinds of made up numbers and nonsense in posts...
It's not as if there are so many oil rigs in Texas that there isn't enough room for wind turbines.
Of course there is room. But nevertheless there isn't a single off shore wind farm on the Texas coast. The only reasonable conclusion is that some form of NIMBY must be at work if there is adequate wind to justify installation of a wind farm.
Most of the oil rigs are built far enough offshore that they aren't visible from the shoreline.
More than enough are visible from shore that obviously people aren't getting bent over the appearance of them.
The problem of course, is that while the US has a good bit of coastline, we have a lot of real estate that is a long way from the ocean.
Of course we do. We also have the ability to transmit electricity there. And don't kid yourself. A huge percentage of the population of the US lives within two hundred miles of the ocean. This includes the entire populations of New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, Jacksonville, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and plenty more. Counties directly on the shoreline account for 40% of US population. All of these cities could easily be supplied by off shore wind power. We're idiots for not taking advantage of this power source.
The east coast of the US is prone to some serious weather excursions in the form of hurricanes. A lot of them. Even in Rhode Island. So an offshore wind facility has to be designed with that in mind.
They are. My understanding is that they stop the turbines from spinning above a certain wind load (somewhere around 125kph currently). They have a hurricane mode where the blades are pitched to neutral so it doesn't spin and then locked down facing the wind. Of course if the wind gets high enough damage is likely to result from a hurricane on land or off shore. Cuba had some wind farms survive hurricane Sandy which had winds of 110mph.
The article briefly mentions it, but this results in a modest savings for BI residents and an increase in rates for RI residents. The project was expensive, created few jobs, and in the long run will result in profit for Deepwater Wind rather than savings for the majority of RI.
I'm all for clean energy, but as a resident of RI I'm not a fan of this deal.
Reading this:
Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them.
Offshoring is wonderful!!! **head/hand-desk laughter**
Near Wichita, Ks, and near Bloominton/Normal, Illinois there are HUNDREDS of them. 5 is a big deal I guess, because the elitist in that area, including Walter Cronkite when he was alive, put up a big stink about placing them out there because they might "ruin the view".
Just yesterday there was a new contract signed by Shell for a new windturbine field, where they offered 5.45 cents a Kw/h. The Danes have just signed contracts for a new field with 4.99 cents per Kw/h.
Yeah that's only slightly above what I now pay for household electricity, exclusive of distribution costs. WTF is going on in RI with the "24.4 cents per kilowatt hour of power, with the price escalating over time to 47.9 cents"?