America’s First Offshore Wind Farm
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What's amazing is that only five wind mills are capable of providing power to 17,000 homes per this article. That's 3400 per windmill. Doing the math on 124,000,000 homes in the US. That's only 36,470 total windmills. Something can't be right here if that's ALL it takes.
Perhaps it's just that enough is enough, or rather, too much is too much.
This is the Mystic Generating Station in Everett, MA.
It is inside Boston Harbor, and receives liquified natural gas to generate electricity.
The arrival of gas ships in Everett is a big security event, and is greeted with a general closure of shipping lanes, chopper patrols over the harbor, and patrol cars at every point in the harbor that are close to the ship. Because each of those ships is a floating fuel-air bomb able to take out the whole city.
Every wind turbine, every solar panel, and every bicycle dynamo hooked to a hamster wheel in New England, lengthens to time between visits from these ships.
So yes, I do feel they are beautiful.
And anyway, yes, I would still feel that they're beautiful. There's something deeply satisfying for me when natural resources are harnessed in this sensible and attractive way.
I guess the avout of Arbre would refer to the distinction as"bulshytt" though, so take from it what you will.
edit: Ah, I see this was discussed below under another parent. Apologies if anyone takes umbrage to the distinction discussion.
(1) This is a 30megawatt plant. An average household consumes 2500watts (including heating). 30,000,000 / 2500 = 12,000 homes ... it's in the same ballpark. But only when the wind farm is operating at 100% capacity. That may be only 25% of the time, with lesser being the norm and zero being a thing at some times.
(2) Homes are not the only energy consumers. US electricity consumption per person = 13,246.27kwh / 2088 hours per year = 6300watts per person. 30,000,000/6300 = 4750. ... These five mills can produce enough power for around 4750 people. But that is only the electricity and doesn't include non-electrical energy such as hydrocarbons burnt for transport/heat. If we all start driving teslas, or switch to electric heat, those five turbines will cover far less than 4750 people.
But let's say this plant does cover 5000 people. 320,000,000/5000 = we need 64000 of these plants, or 320,000 turbines[1]. And again, only when running at capacity. The real number is perhaps triple.
[1]Thanks to dmoy for correcting my decimal error.
* "2500watts (including heating)"
* "That may be only 25% of the time, with the lesser being the norm"
* "US electricity consumption per person = 13,246.27kwh"
* "The real number is perhaps triple."
http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow...
Nuclear power provides about 20% of the US consumption, and there's no need to shut down existing nuclear plants as wind comes online. So just increasing wind output by 15x would more or less cover America's needs. With lots of untapped shoreline and lots of untapped Midwestern plains (not to mention new tech making previously unviable locations viable), it doesn't seem outrageous.
The missing key here is energy storage, not energy generation. Storage is how you optimize utilization. When plants produce excess power, capture and store, and release when the wind isn't blowing. Even with thermal losses, this gets us in the ballpark of 100% utilization. And there's a ton of investment in this field right now.
As for this plant, it wasn't built to make money on electricity. It was built to learn how to build offshore wind in the US, to deal with the technology and political pressures. The goal is to be able to build a thousand times this capacity, or more.
No. That is getting to 100% by changing the measurements. I was talking about utilization of the turbines, total power production, not how the plant regulated its power output. A plant with storage will still generate more or less power as the wind changes. That they use storage to regulate their output doesn't alter the fact that the turbines are not running at capacity 100% of the time. So the math as to how many turbines are needed to generate a specific amount of power holds.
They don't belong in Yosemite, or peppered on & around Mt Shasta. They'd be pretty awful if they carpeted the entire Great Plains.
But, in isolated groups, I agree they can look pretty cool when set against a barren landscape.
They're also a source of light pollution at night, an army of distant flashing red lights. Definitely put a damper on the Perseid shower when I went out into the Plains for skygazing.
They pretty much do in many areas.
And yes, the lights are the worst part. I think the risk of striking a windmill in the Great Plains is low enough that they could probably remove the lights in many areas.
Some better options than brilliant lights shining into the sky in all directions:
1. Use aircraft transponders to turn on lights selectively. 2. Establish a minimum flight level in wind farms, and provide pilots with locations of the towers in the event of an emergency descent. 3. Install reflectors to ensure that the lights are only visible from very far away on the ground. This doesn't solve the light pollution problem, and it's only really useful for pilots above the lights who don't need to worry. 4. Install reflectors to ensure that the lights are only visible below the level of the tower. This would improve the light pollution situation with regards to astronomy, but probably make it worse for viewers. 5. Network the lights so they fade in and out synchronously, rather than random noisy blinking.
or so that they would follow some "visual symphony" or make some other nice image or may be spell some marketing phrase visible from distance/space/planes
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/hawaii-solar-indust...
In many places, the utilities aren't allowed to charge different rates over time (or if they do, it has to be in the form of a discount/incentive vs. the single-rate price, it can't be punitive) even though power costs more to produce at some times. Smoothing out demand by pushing storage out to the edges of the grid seems like it would be a benefit to them.
It might make a little more sense for some consumers due to the excessively high retail rates for electricity in some regions.
The more expensive the peaker, the faster the payback time.
This wouldn't be so bad in places with non-profit power companies, but the for-profit power companies are going to feel some pressure.
A neighborhood can share a neighborhood sized grid in a much cheaper way than an utility managing city-sized one. Even more if the only function of the grid is connecting into the nearby big battery and sharing some energy when one of the houses has a problem.
I'll admit that I didn't think windmills would ever catch on, but I'm very happy to be wrong here.
I also caught the start of an interview yesterday about how the state of the national grid is a major limitation in our ability to consume these forms of energy (http://www.npr.org/2016/08/22/490932307/aging-and-unstable-t...). Hopefully our elected official will start working on that problem soon rather than bickering about bathrooms and building walls...
Also, land windmills is already taking off slowly as mentioned in the article:
> If that sounds ambitious, consider that the country has installed some 50,000 wind turbines on land over the past two decades. They now supply roughly 5 percent of the nation’s electric power, a figure that reaches double digits in particularly windy states like Kansas and Iowa.
> The technology has been proved in Europe, where offshore wind farms as large as 300 turbines are being developed, with each turbine costing up to $30 million to build, install and connect to the power grid.
Because of that 75 74.999999 of it is too deep to be practical. The cause of so much conflict is the need for these turbines to stand in the relatively shallow water, often within sight of expensive ocean-viewing residential properties. If we could place them just anywhere, they'd be just over the horizon from everywhere.
The real issue isn't lack of viable location but the legions of old people for whom a windmill in their view is an ugly reminder that times change. In europe they are part of the landscape. Where I am (BC Canada) they are fought against tooth and nail by retired landowners who blame them for everything from night terrors to cancer. Vancouver has _one_ visible turbine and even that rarely actually turns. It's more disney ride than power generator.
I would so love it for the US to adopt them more, but we have reality-star presidential candidates that are telling us their an eyesore with huge applause.
Incidentally, this is not far from the site of another offshore wind farm which a certain Donald Trump waged a lengthy legal battle to try to prevent, because he thought it would spoil the view from his golf course[1].
Bear in mind that you can already see large numbers of offshore oil rigs off the coast of parts of north east Scotland.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/16/worlds-l...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Golf_Club_...
Also, the Block Island project is 50% more expensive than EIA's numbers assume (It was $10,000 per KW while EIA assumes $6,331 per KW for the first few offshore facilities).
Can we expect much reduction in cost?
[edit] also, isn't 7 miles offshore pretty much close to out of site?
That's not to say that it's a bad idea to put them there, and the overall public good may make it worth it, but to brush off the concerns of the actual residents (who I would guess is not you) as stupid is not very productive.
edit: for some reason I cannot respond to the child of this comment, but I recommend reading this if you think Bay Area NIMBYism is omnipotent:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-brown-housing-pla...
State and Federal governments override local concerns all the time.
Property deeds give you the right to a piece of land, that's it.
Santa Barbara has some of the most expensive coastal real estate in the US and they have line-of-site of numerous oil platforms. Santa Cruz beachfront homes have tripled in value since I moved to the Bay Area in 1994 even though they have line-of-site to a PGE plant with huge smokestacks. etc etc
Location trumps minor annoyances.
Even more beautifully, one of the proposed uses of the site of the demolished power station is as a launching site for offshore wind turbine construction.
It's a weird feeling the way it plays with your perception of scale, like forced perspective in reverse.