Guest post by David Middleton
Deepwater Wind LLC is on the verge of completing the first offshore wind farm in U.S. waters, a milestone for an industry that has struggled for a more than decade to build in North America.
Workers have installed blades on four of the five 589-foot turbines at the site off the coast of Rhode Island and construction may be complete as early as this week, according to Chief Executive Officer Jeff Grybowski. The 30-megawatt, $300 million project is expected to begin commercial operation in early November.
“We will finish in advance of our original schedule,” Grybowski said in an interview at a dock on Block Island. “And we are in-line with our budget.”
After years of false starts, the offshore wind industry appears to be gaining momentum in the U.S. The federal government has awarded 11 leases to companies to develop projects along the East Coast, off New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia. This month, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a bill requiring utilities to buy 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms over the next decade. And in the coming weeks, New York State plans to release a long-range plan to develop wind farms off the coast of Long Island.
[…]
$300,000,000 / 30 MW = $10,000,000/MW
Nuclear power plants can be built for less than $6,000,000/MW. Combined cycle natural gas power plants cost less than $1,000,000/MW. And… nuclear and natural gas can operate at 85-90% of capacity. While offshore wind turbines can only be expected to operate at less than 50% of capacity.
The economics of offshore wind don’t make any sense at all unless electricity prices are well over 20¢/kWh… like they are in much of Europe.
Fortunately for the owners of the Block Island Wind Farm, they will be getting Euro-sized electricity prices…
Under the contract, National Grid will pay Deepwater a maximum of 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity in its first full year of operation. After that, the price will increase 3.5 percent per year – theoretically to 25.3 cents in the second year, 26.1 cents in the third year, etc.
One difference between the agreement approved Wednesday and the one the PUC rejected in March is that the new deal is “open book,” which means any cost savings Deepwater achieves while building the wind farm will be passed on to ratepayers in the form of a lower electricity price.
Onshore wind power is relatively cheap and works very well in some places, like Texas, where the physical geography enables fairly high capacity factors. Texas has more wind generation capacity than most countries, yet the average residential electricity rate is only about 11¢/kWh. New Englanders are already paying over 19¢/kWh… Why would they want to pay more?
Oh yeah… I forgot. They want to fight climate change. Which, if there actually was a need to fight climate change and they were serious about fighting it, they would be pursuing an N2N strategy (natural gas to nuclear). The fastest, most cost effective, way to reduce carbon emissions would be to transition from coal to natural gas and nuclear power.
It’s a bit curious that people are willing to spend $300,000,000.00 on three wind towers, but no one has made the minimum $10,000 bid on an iconic lighthouse in the general area.
http://thescuttlefish.com/2014/08/hms-friday-the-lighthouse-that-nobody-wants/
Really, grid scale storage is avaiable. Other than pumped hydro what is it?
For Mike Borgelt,
Yes, there are multiple technologies in several sizes installed around the world. DoE has a website with a searchable database.
Viable grid-scale storage includes conventional pumped storage hydroelectric with two fresh water lakes, the Okinawa-style storage with the ocean as the lower reservoir and a seawater lake elevated onshore, the MIT underwater spheres in shallow coastal waters, rail gravity systems in the low hills, and the new HPA batteries (Halogenated Poly-Acetylene) patented by BioSolar.
Exists and proven
Pumped storage – massively expensive on any grid-sized scale and locally environmentally catastrophic
Mooted concepts
MIT underwater spheres in shallow coastal waters – conceptual only, huge engineering challenges
rail gravity systems in the low hills – massively expensive on any grid-sized scale (ARES is for balancing only), huge maintenance costs
HPA batteries – not commerically available and still massively expensive on any grid-sized scale
and many more – please specify
Something does not make sense here. How could it be this far off base.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/dbnl-awr081716.php
Easy.
All currently operating US wind farms are onshore, mostly in places with abundant wind resource potential.
Easy for some, not so easy for these captive ratepayers
It’s easy on ratepayers in Texas. Although, it is kind of rough on the owners of nuclear. coal and natural gas plants. ERCOT puts the burden of failed wind power delivery on them.
For one thing, there’s no mention of the federal subsides to build the turbines and the Renewable Energy Credits that can be sold for generated power. Those are the main things that makes wind power economic to build.
Also, most turbines are out in the plains on flat land. Easy to build, though they need low wires. Farmers think it they’re a good deal at first. but learn otherwise later.
Turbines in New England are a lot more expensive, build on mountain ridges, a lot of people impacted, and rather inhospitable conditions.
It’s the Grapes of Wrath for the middle class and poor in the northeast. Give the out-migrants aid as they pass your area and show them your utility bill, housing costs, tax rates, and savings rates. Show them the job opportunities in your area also. Do the same for small business owners as they exit for the same reasons.
It’s interesting that people are willing to spend $300 million on five tall wind turbines but in five years no one has made the minimum $10,000 bid on a picturesque lighthouse that’s in the general area.
http://thescuttlefish.com/2014/08/hms-friday-the-lighthouse-that-nobody-wants/
Seeing the above picture brings a question to mind.
I know there is a wind speed difference from top to bottom, but has anybody worked out the difference in rotor speed taking into account all that water impacting the blades?
Just a thought.
SteveT
Just for information, the operating wind speed of the units is 6.7 mph to 56 mph.
That’s the norm 48% of the time at the location of the Block Island Wind Farm.
Good. So they can “operate” over a wider wind speed band than other models.
Now, over a year’s operation, can they actually dispatch more than 20% of their theoretical rated capacity? If so, they’d be better than any other facility worldwide.
Whether or not these off shore wind farms produce much electricity is a moot point. They will slow down the wind and provide excellent shore protection for the residents and a place for barnacles to grow.
(Do I really need a tag on the above? ;-D )
Sailors will find there is no more wind to fill the sails and more use of fossil fuels and the earth will warm.
Perhaps Massachusetts is trying to emulate Ontario with all it’s wind energy and policies that have resulted in 226,000 people not paying their 2015 power bills. 567,000 customers are in arrears. When the choice is between food and electricity, food wins every time. Guess who gets hurt the most? The poor, especially the rural poor in Ontario where distribution costs for rural customers are huge.
http://globalnews.ca/search/hydro/
That means about 17% of that utilities customers are having trouble paying their bills. Winter is coming. Folks will be cutting more wood, using less utility power making costs for those still using it more expensive. A never ending rabbit hole.
I live in Ontario and even I am thinking about shutting off the grid supply and generating my power with natural gas. It will be interesting to see how much it costs per month. I only need about 5KW to run my house as the water heater, stove and furnace are all gas.
I live in Ontario as well. The Liberal government’s restructuring of the hydro shell game here, has put me at upper limit of my sustainability for electrical power at home. Simply, as newly retired individual, I cannot afford further increases in electrical utility cost. As this juggernaut expands, the demographic that is being priced out of the electrical market, a serious matter in climates where winter temps regularly drop to -25C, will expand as well. The increasing power costs are not borne simply in electrical bills to the consumer – they are also passed through the entire supply chain. EVERYTHING gets more expensive. In Ontario, the exodus of industry with high electrical demand continues. For a good many Ontarioans who are feeling the energy pinch, there is little alternative choice. Capital expenditures on the home to use currently cheaper alternates is already problematic for those individuals cash strapped now for hydro payments and may not be able to satisfy debt service ratios to pay for home improvements.
The increasing defaulting consumer base will increase debt service cost to the hydro industry, leading to further demands for even more price increases to offset. Ontario already has a massive debt service cost in it’s hydro utility monopoly. Government’s response will have to be a further subsidization of consumers and/ the utility monopoly or societal collapse is inevitable. Canada is not a country in which you can park your butt under a bush for 12 months of the year to lower costs like you can in many tropical and subtropical countries.
It’s regularly forgotten by the greenies that Canada, for example, exists in the societal size and complexity that it does because of cheap energy. First it was the forests, then the coal and petroleum products, all with relatively high efficiencies compared to wind and solar. The net benefit of “sustainable” energy to Canada is negative. No amount of lipstick on that pig will change that unless we reduce infrastructure and population to that of the nation before the arrival of the Europeans. Ask the indigenes how comfortable this place was back then…
I wonder what the acoustic signature is going to be. Has anyone studied it? I suspect there could be an impact on marine fauna.
The more I look at these kinds of contraptions the more I think that, in the end, this really isn’t about the environment at all, but instead these are typically bureaucratic (hence unoriginal yet complex) vehicles to enable the rent seeking, crony capitalist, globalists to increase their multi-billion dollar portfolios on the backs of the little people.
Windmills are a fool’s errand and a dead end. They are a diversion, a deadly diversion, from what we should really be doing to secure our energy future.
It’s the “Don Quixote Complex”. Something about “chasing windmills”.
As an EE engineer working with power systems in off-shore areas it has been my observation that the maintenance costs of off-shore systems are about 10x the cost of onshore systems. The overall environmental factors & the salt water environment conspire to degrade offshore installations at a very rapid pace. So assuming that one can keep the wind turbine/generators running long term – there is the maintenance factor to consider. Failures are to be expected in the worst of conditions & then you need to call on your maintenance crew to resolve problems and get things back on-line. I’m just glad that I don’t have to work in their eng. maintenace group. I don’t think I’d get much sleep.
If these things are standing in 5 years, I’ll be amazed. We are so overdue for a large hurricane in the Northeast it’s approaching absurd. When it happens, these things will be on the bottom of the ocean and become artificial reefs.
Remember “The Perfect Storm”? Same neighborhood…..good grief.
The Perfect Storm really didn’t become perfect until it headed out to the north Atlantic, but it was a nearly perfect storm before then. This summary is decent, though it doesn’t mention the damage in Maine too.
It does make me wonder if a rogue wave could reach the bottom of the turbines’ rotors. Probably not, but that would be neat.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/perfect-storm-hits-north-atlantic says in part:
Being overdue for a hurricane doesn’t increase the probability that we will have one. If anything, it suggests that long term climate change is reducing the hurricane risk.
You’d do better drawing an analogy with the hurricanes of the 1950s during the end of the last warm phase of the AMO.
Please please, get the terminology correct. There is nothing agricultural about a conglomeration of wind turbines. But I would accept wind plant.
The word “farm” is used because a field of turbines is harvesting wind power… It actually makes more sense to call this a wind farm than it does to call atmospheric retardation of radiative cooling a greenhouse effect.
Harvesting tax funded subsidies rather.
Just like real farmers… 😉
You jest?
FARM definition :
NOUN
1.an area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals, typically under the control of one owner or manager.
synonyms: ranch · farmstead · plantation · estate · family farm ·
[more]
VERB
1.make one’s living by growing crops or keeping livestock:
“he has farmed organically for five years”
synonyms: work the land · be a farmer · cultivate the land ·
[more]
2.(farm someone/something out)
send out or subcontract work to others:
“it saves time and money to farm out some writing work to specialized companies”
synonyms: contract out · outsource · subcontract · delegate
3.historical
allow someone to collect and keep the revenues from (a tax) on payment of a fee:
“the customs had been farmed to the collector for a fixed sum”
Nothing about a wind facility, wind operation system, wind generator, wind plant, wind turbine, wind , wind, is a farm. Nothing.
Full Definition of farm
1
obsolete : a sum or due fixed in amount and payable at fixed intervals
2
: a letting out of revenues or taxes for a fixed sum to one authorized to collect and retain them
3
: a district or division of a country leased out for the collection of government revenues
4
: a tract of land devoted to agricultural purposes
5
a : a plot of land devoted to the raising of animals and especially domestic livestock
b : a tract of water reserved for the artificial cultivation of some aquatic life form
6
: a minor-league team (as in baseball) associated with a major-league team as a subsidiary
7:
an area containing a number of similar structures or objects (as radio antennas or storage tanks)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farm
Okay Mr. Middleton,
I’ll expand my thoughts just a bit.
I propose we just delete every agricultural farm and replace them with JUST Wind Turbine ‘Farms’. ( you know,) the ones that will ‘free us’ from fossil fuels.
We’re on our way to doing that right now, I can’t wait ! I’m so excited !
We can then, harvest all the dead birds, bats, bees, butterflies, worms, and the scavengers of those dead, whom feed very well, – until the amount of nature is killed off to extinction. Also, we can just clear those agriculture area’s and buy our food from China. Yep, sounds great to me.
Take that to your grocery store, please and thank you. : )
If we did that, what would vegans eats? 😉
If we did that, what would vegans eats? 😉
Unicorns and Pixies of course.
At least they would be eating their primary energy source rather than converting food into fuel.
Enjoyed your article Mr. Middleton. Good day
Wind turbines may be planted, but they aren’t plants. I generally use “wind project.” It’s a reasonably neutral term.
It would simplify our data comparisons if, instead of lengthy 1,000,000/MW and similar data we recognize that “M” stands for million and thus the cost of power plants can be in simple $/W.
Speaking of capital (investment) costs it should be indicative of the actual annual (or longer) average output, that is power TO THE GRID. Here is an example of what I mean.
The second unit at the Millstone Nuclear Plant Complex cost 0.5 $/W nameplate in 1975 which amounts to 4.45×0.5 = 2.2 $/W when adjusted for inflation to 2015. Adjusted for the downtime over the 40 years of operation leads to 2.4 $/W. That’s the number other power plants should be compared to. Then include longevity – in this case to 60 years before major re-built is required. The plant is still running today, 40 years later, at full capacity and CF of 88%.
The nameplate rating is useful for comparing among nuclear plants but it is, of course, irrelevant when comparing with various other energy sources, such as solar that delivers only 1/7th of the nameplate power on the average and lasts 20 years. To match nuclear power plants, three sets of the solar or wind plants would need to be erected.
So I believe that power plant projects should specify not just the nameplate power but also the “power to the grid” averaged over a year or more. Furthermore, unlike nuclear or fossil fuel plants, solar plants of the same nameplate will deliver better CF in one location (dry, sunny) than another (humid and cloudy). The same for windmills with their 1/4th of the nameplate power; their output also depends on location and elevation and so will deliver higher or lower percentage of the nameplate rating and that not just over a year but also from one year to the other. Higher power output in offshore locations do not necessary have any different $/W for the higher installation and maintenance costs. And like any aerodynamic structure, their life is relatively short in comparisons with nuclear.
And let’s not forget the operation expenses, a unit watt/employee (or employee per watt) the watt being the actual power to the grid averaged over several years. Anyone has such numbers? I understand the new Georgia plant will be at 2000 kW/employee.
W, kW, MW, GW, TW… When you use W, the $$$’s shrink, but the W’s expand. When you use GW, the $$$’s expand, but the GW’s often drop below 1. I like using MW because it seems to be a happy middle ground.
It appears that the common and understandable way of expressing this is KW for nameplate capacity since this is the common rating for commercial power sources whether a 5KW gasoline generator or a 2,000KW reactor. A one KW nameplate power source operated at full nameplate capacity yields 8,766 KWh per year, i.e. one KWh for 8,766 hours per year. This is easier to express as 8.766 GWh.
Again, per California’s Energy Almanac, nuclear operates at 90.97% of nameplate capacity and wind at 21.6% of nameplate capacity. The problem is that wind is not constantly generating 21.6% all year long, but that it generates nameplate capacity occasionally and no or very low power oftentimes. This defines the concept of baseload power and intermittent power.
This is based on California state government numbers and I feel secure that they are not understating the amount of wind derived power.
The daily power output from the South Australia wind farms demonstrates the variability of power availability from this source.
References:
California
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_capacity.html
Australia (Non-Governmental Source)
energy.anero.id.au/
energy.anero.id.au/wind-energy/2016/august
Wind, onshore, works well where it works. California is a long way from the wind “sweet spot.”
http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/images/windmaps/us_windmap_80meters_820w.jpg
That said, wind will always be nondispatchable and unsuitable for baseload without dispatchable backup.
Really? 1,000,000 $/MW expands to 1 M$/1,000,000 W? Come on David.
I still have a problem trying to resolve whether the likes of Roger Sowell are totally deluded individuals, out & out Liers or a mixture of the two.
Meanwhile….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/14/britains-vast-national-gamble-on-wind-power-may-yet-pay-off/
Documents falling costs for installation…
and…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/16/hornsea-project-two-windfarm-second-phase-grimsby
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/17/massive-substation-andalucia-sets-sail-350-mw-german-offshore-wind-farm/
All grid connected wind power, is, by definition, a wasted duplication of resources as it has to have a back-up. No modern society can forego that back-up. Falling costs or not, it is still an unnecessary wasteful duplication paid for by taxpayers.
Meaningful wind power generation can only make sense off-grid or within the margins of balancing consistent with normal grid management ( < 10% ?)
The only grid scale back-up that works for more than a few hours is pumped storage, but this is not possible for the vast majority of wind power production (cost, environment, geographical opportunity).
Oh, and no Roger, we don't want to see your list of fantasy grid-scale storage methods again!
SteveT
“All grid connected wind power, is, by definition, a wasted duplication of resources as it has to have a back-up.”
No Steve, you just made that up. Wind reduces the amount of primarily natural used to make electricity. The fossil plant is already there. Depending on the long term availability of the fossil fuel resource, wind can actually make the fossil plant last longer.
The flaw in the renewable energy argument is that fossil fuels are needed to make it work.
Places that have run out of fossil fuel use nuclear designed for load following.
Albatross Blenders. I predict they will encounter, “bad luck.”
If you google “ei-a-guide-to-an-offshore-wind-farm.pdf” you can see some British costs for typical offshore wind farms. They itemise everything….
$10 million a megawatt!?!
No. That assumes 100% capacity factor. They’ll be doing extremely well if the hit 30-40%. So figure $30million a megawatt or so.
Offshore wind and long power cables (included in the 300 M$) ain’t cheap.
Wind is free – it’s just that converting and piping the energy is expensive. 🙂
It’s $10 million per MW irrespective of the capacity factor.
Capacity factor affects the MWh, not the MW.
Okay, but given they’ve paid 300 M$ and will average 10 MW out of it over time (your MWh for you), it’ll feel like $3-/MW and will generate about as much power as 2% of a decent sized natural gas plant.
Below is an excerpt from previous post on land-based wind power.
The real issue is not Capacity Factor – it is Substitution Capacity, due to intermittency.
Forcing expensive intermittent wind and solar power into the grid ahead of less expensive reliable (and dispatchable) power from gas turbine generators is part of the game to artificially bias the alleged economics in favour of wind and solar power. Without this charade, wind and solar power would cost much more than is alleged.
The concept of forcing non-dispatchable wind power into the grid while idling much cheaper dispatchable power is simply a way to fool and defraud the public.
Regards, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/27/exxon-stands-up-to-the-green-bullies/comment-page-1/#comment-2154602
[excerpt]
On Grid-Connected Wind and Solar Power:
Wind Power is what warmists typically embrace – trillions of dollars have been squandered on worthless grid-connected wind power schemes that require life-of-project subsidies and drive up energy costs.
Some background on grid-connected wind power schemes:
The Capacity Factor of wind power is typically a bit over 20%, but that is NOT the relevant factor.
The real truth is told by the Substitution Capacity, which is dropping to as low as 4% in Germany – that is the amount of conventional generation that can be permanently retired when wind power is installed into the grid.
The E.ON Netz Wind Report 2005 is an informative document:
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
(apparently no longer available from E.ON Netz website).
Figure 6 says Wind Power is too intermittent (and needs almost 100% spinning backup);
and
Figure 7 says it just gets worse and worse the more Wind Power you add to the grid (see Substitution Capacity dropping from 8% to 4%).
The same story applies to grid-connected Solar Power (both in the absence of a “Super-Battery”).
This was obvious to us decades ago.
Trillions of dollars have been squandered globally on green energy that is not green and produces little useful energy.
I’m in the wrong business! How can anyone produce something for 10 times the competitor’s cost and get paid more than market price?
Madness. That so few see anything wrong with this reveals the deep cost of ignorance and the lack of return on our trillion dollar education system!
What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_30259170/final-state-budget-shaved-almost-630-million-from
A 48% capacity factor seem a bit high to me. Here in the windy UK, most of the offshore farms are in the high 30s, not the high 40s.
http://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors
R
Agreed.
The CF is supposed to be the average of several years existence (not just “performance”) and not selectively the best year as is often done. The CF in the 30th is correct. Then ad also the 5 % line loss before you get the true “CF to-the-grid” in the low 30s.
Reverse Robin Hood at work. Robbing the poor to pay the rich.
You mean that arch-villain Nibor Dooh?
Eventually the pink monkeys gave up on windmills and commercialized
the taxpayer funded Gen III and Gen IV nuclear reactors ..