Offshore wind potential in the US is huge but untapped
theverge.com
theverge.com
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-nepa-works
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...
"The Jones Act, passed by Congress in 1920, says that only U.S.-flagged ships can move cargo from one point in the United States to another. The ships must have been built in the U.S. and be crewed by Americans. The offshore wind industry uses big, specialized ships to assemble the turbines miles out at sea, but there is not a single U.S.-flagged ship right now that can do that work."
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/03/t...
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
The time is in tens of months, routinely.
I've mostly been convinced that, at least for now, the harms that NEPA is preventing are smaller than the goods it's preventing. That probably wasn't true in the past and might not be true in the future though. My hope is that by rabble rousing enough, someone smarter than I can find a good solution that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Manchin had a bill with some support.[0]
The problem is Conservatives want to make sure fossil fuel projects are prioritized in any sort of reform while Liberals want to make sure they're excluded.
[0]https://www.energy.senate.gov/2023/5/manchin-moves-ball-forw...
That is astonishingly disappointing. Why is that?
China and Europe have both more than 25 GW offshore windpower installed.
Second, the Jones act and other regulations prohibit using most of the knowledge and infrastructure that Europe has built up over two decades. We can't use their ships or sailors. We can't use many of their products while being eligible for federal subsidies. So rather than let their industry build up ours we have to start from scratch. No economies of scale, high risk, less competition, etc.
The size of the subsidies available are so large that it'll probably work eventually, and there are some discussions happening about improving permitting. But it's a bit like one department is spending a lot of money to put concrete barriers in the road and then another department is spending a lot on subsidies to install tank treads to be able to drive over the barriers. "But think of all the jobs created in the tank tread installation industry!"
And, for the rigs, they are actually substantially closer to shore than turbines would be on the other coast, because, as you say, the ocean gets real deep, real fast there.
People do dislike the rigs, but new ones are banned and the ones off Santa Barbra are I think tapping a source that bubbles up on its own and washes ashore. So perhaps they are helping.
it's not that rich people don't mind oil rigs, it's that the power gradient goes oil companies -> rich people -> clean energy companies.
Either prospect smells strongly of malfeasance to me.
[1] https://owcltd.com/the-case-of-california-757m-auction-close...
[2] https://www.times-standard.com/2022/06/04/challenges-face-wi...
Better still: do both and put up more wind power.
Europe never had that luxury. Offshore wind is our only option.
This kind of depends on where in Europe. The North of Sweden (i.e the top 2/3 of the country) is very sparsely populated, and well-suited for installing on-shore wind power.
NIMBYs keep on NIMBYing though, and many projects get killed because of their protesting.
Restricting yourself to offshore wind is a choice, not a necessity.
Yes, from start to finish in well under a year in some locations depending on whether or not they can set up a nice pipeline and start producing as soon as one of the turbines is completed. The time consuming parts: permitting, infrastructural changes to the grid, environmental assessments + possible delays, foundation work. Once the foundation is in the ground I've seen operational turbines six weeks later.
For a whole windpark from start to finish the times vary from two to eight years, with off-shore the longer part of that. There is a new option called a floating windfarm, which is self evident from the name, that cuts deployment time to an absolute minimum but has some long term risks and maintenance pros and cons. Still, it is a very interesting development.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_State...
We treat the ocean like a big dump place.
Everything thing in the ocean seems to LOVE structure. They build on our detritus as easily as rocks
Apart from the energy, an offshore wind farm would be a great sanctuary for fish. If you need to visit regularly for maintenance, bringing along a few extra FADs and the occasional marine biologist isn’t going to break the bank.
* https://www.ecowatch.com/marine-animals-offshore-wind-farm-h...
* https://energytransition.org/2022/02/in-europes-north-sea-wi...
at this point the ocean temperature is a much greater risk
My point is relying on that trend continuing is akin to relying on the promise of fusion. Worth pursuing. But unlikely to yield to brute effort the way cleaning up primary production and transport can.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/energy...
Evidently light bulb installation is significantly lower than I expected. I was unaware you could trivially acquire incandescent bulbs any more.
>In 2009, 58% of all households used at least one energy-efficient bulb indoors. In the 2015 RECS, which was administered from August 2015 to April 2016, 86% of households reported using at least one CFL or LED bulb. Nationwide, 18% of households responding to the latest RECS reported that they had no incandescent bulbs in their homes.
Also noteworthy that household consumption was based on electricity sales. Homes with installed solar/wind/battery would be under-represented in the stats, meaning overall consumption is higher than reported.
I hadn’t considered this. Thank you.
There are NIMBYs for offshore, but land transmission lines go through people’s literal backyards and over longer distances.
Only half-joking. I suspect that transmission may be a large part of the total cost, and it could be more efficient to build turbines in less windy places but closer to a major transmission station and / or major consumers. Coastal cities have a lot of electric infrastructure in place, and are hungry for more electricity.
By one estimate there's about 250TW of "extractable" power (after which you can add turbine capacity but the whole ensemble doesn't produce more power, and the global wind speeds after saturation would be 50% lower). Humanity uses roughly 10TW, so even if we used wind for everything, it would only be a small fraction of the energy in the moving air.
That paper also has calculations of the effects of a single wind turbine averaged across a 5km area (tl;dr: sub-0.5% downstream wind speed change)
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/SatW...
In eastern WA, we have special trees planted to block wind (mostly to reduce erosion), I wonder if those could be turbines instead? (Although, as long as water isn’t a problem, we should probably still use trees)
I suppose if there is anywhere in the world where wind power installations can cause a significant reduction in wind speeds, it would be there.
In highschool we would go to them, although technically illegal.
You stand on the ground, with the windmill churning away 100 feet above your head. It would obviously still be windy as hell near the ground.
I have a feeling that if you had 10 units of wind, and placed windmills in a linear line for a linear mile as tightly as you could... Just a small distance away you would still have 9.99 units of wind.
The density of wind capture devices relative to the overall mass of wind in the general area is so low I don't think you could make a big difference.
If anything, I'd worry more about solar farms that cause massive heat soak by placing black solar panels near ground level, where instead it would be light color dry dirt and dry greens that are a lot more reflective.
Betz basically says you won't be extracting more than 59.3% of the power in the moving air so the remainder will always be available just behind the turbine. Close to the ground wind isn't laminar so what you'll see is that the 'rolling' air will draw in new air from higher layers just behind the machine, a short way inland you'll have a hard time proving there is a windfarm upwind other than through sound and visuals. There is a lot of air moving around (if you could visualize it try thinking of 1 kg bricks spaced out 1 meter in every direction, and all of them are moving except for when there is absolutely no wind) and the tiny little layer that we siphon off some power from is utterly insignificant compared to the whole.
Isn’t this sentence backwards?
Politicians shouldn't promise things they won't be around to deliver on.