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Massachusetts Gains Foothold in Offshore Wind Power, Long Ignored in US (nytimes.com)
New Bedford hopes to soon be the operations center for the first major offshore wind farm in the United States, bringing billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs to the town and other ports on the East Coast. The New York Times: On Wednesday, that effort took a major step forward as the State of Massachusetts, after holding an auction, selected a group made up of a Danish investment firm and a Spanish utility to erect giant turbines on the ocean bottom, beginning about 15 miles off Martha's Vineyard. This initial project will generate 800 megawatts of electricity, roughly enough to power a half a million homes. At the same time, Rhode Island announced it would award a 400-megawatt offshore wind project to another bidder in the auction.
The groups must now work out the details of their contracts with the states' utilities. "We see this not just as a project but as the beginning of an industry," Lars Thaaning Pedersen, the chief executive of Vineyard Wind, which was awarded the Massachusetts contract, said in an interview. Offshore wind farms have increasingly become mainstream sources of power in Northern Europe, and are fast becoming among the cheapest sources of electricity in countries like Britain and Germany. Those power sources in those two countries already account for more than 12 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity.
The groups must now work out the details of their contracts with the states' utilities. "We see this not just as a project but as the beginning of an industry," Lars Thaaning Pedersen, the chief executive of Vineyard Wind, which was awarded the Massachusetts contract, said in an interview. Offshore wind farms have increasingly become mainstream sources of power in Northern Europe, and are fast becoming among the cheapest sources of electricity in countries like Britain and Germany. Those power sources in those two countries already account for more than 12 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity.
Champagne Socialists (*cough*Ted Kennedy*cough*) have been fighting this for YEARS, afraid that it will spoil the precious views out of their sea-side mansions...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What little information I found on the subject when I looked into it pointed to lobbying by special interest groups interested in protecting birds.
Which is one of the more bullshit arguments one can make against wind power since wind turbines kill rather few birds. Cell phone towers actually kill far more birds than wind turbines do but I don't see people complaining about those. And cats kill orders of magnitude more birds than wind turbines.
From the link
"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental consulting firm West Inc."
I work for a company that have been installing offshore turbine since 1995, and the first turbines are still running.
The conditions inside a wind turbine nacelle is comparable to the conditions inside a machine room in a large ship.
When the turbine is operating, or have been within the last 48 hours, the temperature inside is higher than outside, and the dew-point.
The intake filters remove salt mists.
Dehumidifiers remove moist from the air when powered up after grid loss.
Surfaces are designed to withstand 6 months in salty conditions, without power.
The generator have a cooling circuit where nacelle air is separated from the windings.
Answer: Martha's Vinyard's attraction for wind power production is the combination of fantastic winds (capacity factors for similar new builds in Europe's offshore are in the 60%+ range, equal to coal generators), shallow waters even far offshore (i.e., easy construction), and its close geographic proximity to both the Boston and NYC demand hubs.
IOW: high wholesale prices, cheap install costs, and high capacity factors (i.e., high output per wind turbine) = profit!
Solar is dirt cheap, cheap enough for everyone's roof,
For values of "everyone" that excludes those who don't have a south facing roof, those who have trees, mountains or buildings around them, or those who live far enough from the equator that sunlight is weaker due to the atmosphere, and scarce in the winter half of the year.
offshore wind is a scam
Eppur si soffiare.
Denmark currently produces around 42% of all the country's electricity through wind, most of it offshore. By 2020, this is expected to pass 50%.
Better idea: Ask folks that lived under socialism what they think about socialism.
I've lived under socialism, and I really liked it. Free healthcare, free education, no one living on the streets. Quite substantial taxes, but you felt people got something back for the taxes, and especially those who needed it the most.
Of course, as you say, there are many flavours of socialism. This was a social democracy with the socialist worker's party having a clear majority for several decades.