By Steve Goreham
Several eastern US states are planning major investments in offshore wind. Wind turbines are touted as clean, green, and economically sound. But experience from around the world shows that offshore wind systems are both expensive and at high risk for early system degradation.
The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia have signed executive orders or passed laws to procure offshore wind systems valued at billions of dollars. Officials are eager to win leadership in what is perceived to be a new growth industry. The US Department of Energy has funded over $200 million in offshore wind research since 2011.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a law in 2016 requiring utilities to purchase 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind systems over the next 10 years. The law requires that wind systems be “cost effective to electric ratepayers.” But history shows that costs are likely to be far above the New England wholesale market price of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Massachusetts paid solar generators a subsidy of 25 cents per kilowatt-hour during the state’s solar build-out in 2013. Rhode Island’s Block Island wind system, the first offshore system in the United States, now receives over 27 cents per kW-hr, with an annual guaranteed rate increase of an additional 3.5 cents per kW-hr. New England residents must enjoy paying renewable generators more than six times the market price for electricity.
In May of last year, Maryland’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved electricity-rate increases to fund two wind projects east of the Ocean City shoreline. Maryland’s residents will pay an additional $2 billion over 20 years in increased electricity rates to support the projects. The Maryland PSC claims the systems will create jobs and spur economic growth, but analysis shows that rate payers will pay $200,000 for each of the estimated 9,700 jobs created.
Also in 2017, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced approval of the South Fork Wind Farm off the coast of Long Island, stating “This project will not only provide a new reliable source of clean energy, but will also create high-paying jobs, continue our efforts to combat climate change and help preserve our environment for current and future generations of New Yorkers.”
But are offshore wind systems reliable? Ocean-located turbines face one of the harshest environments on Earth. Turbines are battered by wind and waves, struck by lightning, and need to endure salt spray that is very corrosive to man-made structures.
In February, it was reported that Danish wind operator Ørsted must repair more than 600 wind turbines due to early blade failure. The blades are to be disassembled and brought to shore for repair after only five years of operation, at a cost on the order of $100 million.
Then in March, it was announced that wind turbines at the 175-turbine London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind system, would also need major repairs after only five years of use. Few offshore systems have made it to the end their specified 25-year lifetimes without a major overhaul.
Wind turbines sited off the eastern US coast must survive brutal weather compared to offshore turbines in Europe. From March 1 to March 22 of this year, four powerful extratropical cyclones, called nor’easters, battered our east coast from Virginia to Maine. These storms produced ocean storm surges, large snowfalls, wind gusts of up to 100 miles per hour, and even 20 tornados.
Specifications call for wind systems to withstand gusts up to 156 miles per hour, but this isn’t good enough for some of our Atlantic hurricanes. Last September, hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico with Category 4-strength winds and destroyed many of the wind turbines on the island.
Strong hurricanes occasionally collide with our eastern coastal states. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 brought Category 3 winds to New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 delivered Category 2 winds along the coast from North Carolina to Maine. Hurricane Carol in 1954 and Hurricane Gloria in 1985 brought Category 3 winds to the shores of the wind system-promoting states.
Finally, the Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane of 1821 passed through most of the proposed wind turbine sites with up to Category 4 wind strength. The expensive wind systems planned by Atlantic States could all be destroyed by a single well-placed hurricane.
Offshore wind turbines are expensive, prone to early degradation, and in the case of the US East Coast, at risk in the path of strong hurricanes. State officials should reconsider their plans for offshore wind systems.
Originally published in The Daily Caller, republished here at the request of the author.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.
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Our quest for increasingly expensive energy continues. Next step, tidal energy.
We are suffering from a great push to advance technology based upon “data-free” analyses. In the real world we call that “guessing”.
Is anybody at least collecting data on the failure modes and rates? With no memory how does one learn?
‘Once they lie, they must continue to lie.’
One important data point I‘ve not seen is the cost of these future marine perches per seagull.
Energy systems mandated and designed by politicians – depressing. Minimum reliability at maximum cost.
It’s not a case of data free analysis, it’s a case of ideology overriding logical thought and common sense. Blind Freddy can tell you it’s destined to fail, but the Green ideology doesn’t allow for dissenting opinions and it doesn’t care anyway, because the money is coming from a public purse they consider has no limits. When it does fail they will simply say the damage was the result of climate change and we need to build even more turbines, resulting in more inevitable failure.
Take global warming out of the picture….and would anyone in their right mind be putting up windmills?
……..hellno
Expensive, unreliable energy.
and very low density too. Lots of acres per MW are required whereas Nuclear produces MWs per acre
It is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that the marine environment will demand a range of additional engineering responses to any structure or vessel that operates there in general, let alone in an area prone to hurricanes. It is implicit in the fact that only the oil and gas industry has gone for offshore structures and they can cover costs (and then some) with a steady, high volume, constant flow of a very high energy density product that is an easily transported commodity.
Wind, wave and tidal are low density and intermittent.
We need a way to “weaponize” NIMBYism.
That way, we could just hook the Kennedy clan up to the power grid.
How about bicycle powered generators? They’ll have us peddling every night to charge up the communal electric vehicle.
Agenda 21 by Glen Beck.
It’s absolutely shocking how little energy peddling can produce.
South Australia excels here as well
https://indaily.com.au/news/business/2014/04/15/unsightly-3000-tonne-hulk-remain/
There is no ‘quest for expensive energy’ – these are subsidy farms; the generation of electricity is a byproduct of subsidy farming. This is shown to be true as mandates and subsidies are needed for these ‘farms’ to exist, If they were a good idea for profitable electricity generation all the State governors needed to have done was approve their construction and industry would be pestering to be allowed to build them without any subsidy. Windfarms particularly offshore windfarms are a loss making business without subsidies. As soon as subsidies stop the subsidy farms are abandoned to rot as monuments to the unbounded stupidity of politicians.
” law in 2016 requiring utilities to purchase 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind systems over the next 10 years. ” What in the world is this supposed to mean? megawatts is not a quantity of power, but an intensity of power.
Yes, it tells you a lot about the decision-makers be that they don’t know the difference between energy and power.
Do you expect miracles?? They don’t know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide or semi-automatic and automatic.
barryjo
I wonder if many of them know the difference between their @r$e and their elb0w.
Auto
Capacity factor of Danish offshore wind is less than 50%, so expect or get about <800 MW of capacity output
And, the same applies to storage systems. All of the announcements give us the number of megawatts that can be produced, but not the megawatt hours. Can I get those megawatts for 10 minutes or an hour? Makes a very large difference.
I presume that the intention was to indicate that they had to purchase the output of 1,600 megawatts of plate capacity from these pinwheels. Another note on MA rates is that when you net meter, you offset your total consumption at about a 25 cent/kWH all in price. https://www.mass.gov/guides/net-metering-guide
Random thought, here. What about the poor whales, dolphins and fish?
What about the smothered land and uninhabitable soil beneath those ‘solar arrays’?
Damn the plants & wildlife, full speed ahead!
I see that effect whenever I drive on I-91 in Southern Vermont. In 2014, they took over 12 acres of prime farmland.
Needless to say, here in New England, a clear sunny day can be a very seasonally oriented event. Not mentioned in the article is the enormous tax break given to the investors. by both the state and federal gubnuts. See https://recsolar.com/press/2-mw-in-brattleboro-vt/
That’s the next finger pointing game. The wishful dreamers will cry that they wanted wind energy without making noise…or slowing down the wind.
Of course one should also note it is many of the same individuals who think electricity magically emanates from a socket in the wall.
Electricity is magic. It’s invisible, works in ways no one but the really, really smart people get and no one can really understand it. Which is why it’s such a great scam!
Ahh, they are below the water, and besides, they aren’t bothered by a little infrasound, are they? (/sarc for those who need the indicator)
Government doesn’t invest; government spends.
Calling spending an investment is political trickery.
Kind of like calling tax credits a subsidy?
Steve,
No, tax credits are subsidies, in that the government is writing you a check; it is just deferred until the end of the year. If you had said “tax deductions”, then I would have agreed with you. There is a big difference between the two.
If and when an offshore wind farm is damaged by high winds, we will no doubt be assured that the storm was “unprecedented” and caused by “climate change”. Hence it could not have been predicted; climate change is getting changier and the solution will be to build more offshore wind farms to prevent it happening again.
Like when houses get damaged? Its wasn’t poor planning nor the fact that living in a hurricane area means your home can be ripped to pieces, it was climate change. Sure….
Then the insurance companies will only pay to have your house rebuilt to the same EXACTINGLY POOR standards as the original sub-par structure
You mean if I wreck my Honda, I can’t replace it with a Mercedes?
You can certainly replace your Honda with a Mercedes.
You just need to come up with the price difference between the wholesale blue book value of your Honda and the price of the new Mercedes (less your deductible and any outstanding balance on the Auto Loan for the Honda).
But then Auto insurance is different from Home Owners Insurance. Additional modifications to your home over and above the cost of a like for like replacement would be Out of Pocket expenditures and the Insurance Company would need to agree to the modifications (and likely need to see proof of your additional funding) before they will pay their portion and approve reconstruction.
SR,
It’s a feature, not a bug!
You obviously don’t understand the first thing about progressive economic theory. If a windmill gets destroyed by a hurricane, that’s a GOOD THING. It will generate millions of dollars of new economic activity and more and more high-paying green jobs. Key point, all of those folks vote.
Plus there is a huge multiplier effect. Somebody will have to manufacture the replacement blades from materials that some other company produced and that need to be transported and stocked in warehouses. Massive barges will be needed to transport back and forth to the site, everybody involved will be eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the local restaurants.
They should probably intentionally make windmill blades out of flimsier material, to ensure more frequent economic benefits. We should model the average track of historical storms and site the windmills in the highest probability areas for damage. Research grants will be needed to develop the models and make sure that they are not accurate. If hurricanes don’t come, new grants will be needed to create worse models. And to compensate, we can intentionally damage the windmills, so that new ones are needed, sort of like the old Cash for Clunkers program in the glorious Obama administration. Some of the replacements could be dropped into the sea as soon as they are finished, as long as that doesn’t cause any environmental damage.
As for the problem claimed about actual capacity factors being 50% or less, there is a simple government solution. Put a label on the turbine that says it will work at least 120% of the time and just make that a mandate. Mass production will overcome the laws of thermodynamics.
As for the problem with uneconomic prices for power, duh! Regulators just set the price at 2 cents per KW-h.
This is not some laissez faire economy. We have modern regulations.
It gets tiresome having to explain these things to you folks All rational people know about this stuff. How do you get by in life?
Rich: Thank you Sir may I have Another?
Frédéric Bastiat is rolling in his grave… Too many people simply refuse to learn his “Broken Window Fallacy”.
Wait a minute. I thought we were in for increasingly frequent and stronger hurricanes and n’easters due to global warming. Hasn’t anyone told these people these increased risks?
And in the winter, now that global warming is causing record breaking cold, what are they to do when these massive highs drop into the area and winds go to calm? Maybe they can just pipe in more NG.. oh wait.. maybe they can truck in more oil to run the diesel generators to stay warm.
Oh silly rabbit. They’re preventing bad hurricanes by installing wind turbines.
Of course. They’re reducing the wind hazards by siphoning off some of the wind energy to make electricity. Given sufficient turbines, that should drop those nasty hurricanes down to the tropical storm category.
You joke, but there are undoubtedly many who would believe that. All you need to do is make a conservation of energy argument. If kinetic energy is converting to electricity, the wind must slow down passing through the windmill. It’s basic science. Therefore it’s a significant effect. The same kind of fallacious thinking is employed every day in service of the CAGW theory.
The basic fallacy is that the scientific principle is valid, therefore the effect is significant.
Another example of this, consider when I walk through a room in my house during the winter time. My climate-destroying oil burner is in use. My body temperature, being around 37C and my room being around 21C, I am going to radiate heat more than my surroundings are going to radiate, and so I will warm the room. Therefore my house is warmed by body temperature during the winter. The oil burner doesn’t enter into it, right? Now I observe that the temperature varies between 20C and 22C roughly speaking. I can’t explain why it sometimes goes down, but I’m certain that 100% of warming from 20C to 22C must be due to my body heat. (now that’s the true definition of anthropogenic warming).
Just one small problem.When the wind blows over about 55 MPH, the blades are “feathered” and the nacelle is turned into the wind. The effect then being like a picket fence.
Well, at least it’s easy to fix the corrosion problem — just plate the whole thing w/gold.
Platinum would be more expensive though
The graphic is obviously fake! Cat 3-4-5 hurricanes could not occur when CO2 was 300ppm!
Right?
Why hully gee! A proposal for offshore wind power at only five times the cost of current supplies?
Why is an offshore oil drilling platform an eyesore but a forest of man made steel windmills isn’t?
There might possibly maybe one day be an oil spill. There will definitely be thousands of dead birds.
…and millions of dead flying fish.
Eyesore one, Eyesore a bunch
If some evil capitalist wish to build something of similar size and bottom impact but to make a profit they would never get the environmental permits approved. In fact this might be a way of stopping this idiocy; get a lawyer to sue using the same methods as the environmental community does. I once dealt with buying equipment or replacing equipment someone else had poorly purchased. The equipment was going to be subject to the trials and tribulations of being at sea 24-7. We often could not get through to people how destructive the ocean environment is. My guess relative to the politicians passing these mandates is they have done focus groups and polling which say their electorate fully support such mandates and construction but know nothing about the technology. They know that maintenance will be a major headache but not until they have retired from office. No body will come back and punish them for making really dumb policy decisions.
+100
That’s the biggest perk of government—people in large groups never get sued for really dumb policy decisions. Shared responsibility, safety in groups, etc.
To steal an inspriration from demotivators,
Edwin,
Too right.
The marine environment – salt, water, temperature swings, and variation – is not good for ‘kit’.
If it is properly ‘marinized’, it will have a decent lifespan of a decade or so [with reasonable preventive maintenance . . .].
If not, I regret that a nice bit of kit will be reduced to various iron oxides in a few months.
Now if it is on a ship – and at deck level – it can be replaced fairly easily [at a fairly modest cost].
If it is a hundred or more metres up, and weighs a tonne or more, replacement is more easily imagined than done.
You need a crane big enough to lift a tonne – or more – to a height of over a hundred metres – in a gentle seaway, where everything rolls and pitches and yaws. Otherwise the new widget impacts the surviving nacelle – to mutual detriment . . . . .
Bits of kit like that are not cheap to hire, and the professionals needed to drive them need paying respectably, too.
As many readers here would guess – or know.
So marine wind power [apart from its effect on local birds – making “seagull soup”] needs to be well designed and well-built [so – ‘NOT Cheap’] – and carefully installed.
Good luck with that!
Auto
It’s amusing that the northeast liberals will soon get a dose of the medicine they have been pushing elsewhere. I hope they love the increased price of electricity and the blackouts that will occur. I wonder if Cape Cod, Kennebunkport, and Martha’s Vineyard will have some of these within view of their precious towns. Bet that will make a big splash!
I recall that one off of Martha’s Vineyard was killed before it even got off the drawing board.
Sen. Ted Kennedy was opposed to it and helped kill it back in the day. Don’t know if it had since been revived or not.
It looks like a no lose plan. Any storm damage, any at all, can be labeled superstorm damage for federal bailout funds.
There are some limited cases where offshore makes sense. For instance, Block Island is an island with limited (non-existent I believe) interconnects to the main grid. Their electric power comes mainly from diesel, and so the competition is not with wholesale electric but with Diesel generators. In this case the math is pretty close.
New York and Long Island – Severely congested lines to the main grid. Adding higher cost electricity on the NYC side of the interconnect has the ability to lower prices overall since it does not require the massive upgrades and rights of way that would be required on the western side of that interconnect.
Overall though it is unlikely that offshore wind will compete with traditional power generation in terms of cost.
Chad, how will those “severely congested lines” serve load when the wind doesn’t blow?
The power company generally will have contract agreements with large users who will taper their usage during times of high congestion. If you have another supply of electricity downstream of the bottleneck even if the supply is intermittent the number of hours per year that the bottleneck is reached will be fewer.
Chad, the competition is not between wind and diesel, they are both required for a functioning system. And the diesel system must be maintained and ready to go at all times to accommodate sudden drops in the wind speed and accommodate long periods when there is no wind at all. The Spanish island of El Hiero has such a system and in addition has a pumped storage system to “save” some of the wind energy when the turbines are making too much electricity. See https://demanda.ree.es/movil/canarias/el_hierro/total for a continuous data on how much power is coming from wind, diesel and water. The site is spotty and sometimes does not work as well as it should.
Roughly half of the island’s electricity comes from diesel over a year. At times all does. See http://euanmearns.com/ for a series of reports on this system. Go to the El Hiero portal.
The El Hiero wind/water/diesel system produces electricity at a cost of somewhere between about $.80 and $1.23 per kwh, depending on who you wish to believe.
Yes, any such a system is freaking expensive. That is why in these cases offshore wind is viable. It is not trying to serve Dallas, Texas with some of the lowest cost electricity on the planet. Instead it is middle of nowhere Island where diesel is boated over and used to run generators. When that is the system the hurdle is pretty low.
” Their (Block Island) electric power comes mainly from diesel”
…
http://www.blockislandtimes.com/article/island-operating-wind-farm-power/49352
When George Orwell wrote “Animal Farm” he chose the windmill to represent the boondoggles that oppressive governments create in order to make an appearance of progress.
When George Orwell wrote “Animal Farm” he chose the windmill to represent the boondoggles that oppressive governments promote in order to create an appearance of progress.
+10
L.Frank Baum ( originator of The Wizard of Oz) and George Orwell (originator of 1984 and Animal Farm) are the 2 most prescient writers in history. More money and lives have been lost by adhering to the evil ways of thinking that those 2 authors demonstrated in their books than anything else in history except the money and lives lost by adhering to religious thought. So the 3 evils: Religion, Communism, and ECO thought(which includes the Ozone and global warming scams) have wrought by far the most damage to the human race.
It really is sad the way you have to ruin an otherwise cogent statement by your anti-religion bigotry.
The vast majority of so called religious wars were in reality plain old everyday politics. If they hadn’t had religion as an excuse they would have fought over something else.
MarkW I do not seek to offend you – your religious beliefs are your own and you are as entitled to them as anyone, but I notice many left wing folk use the same argument to distance themselves from Stalin (et al) *after* the fact. ‘oh no, that wasn’t communism fault, he was just a bad man doing bad things..’.
The Yazidi and Mandians live with an ongoing ‘kill on sight’ attitude from another group who base their murders on religious grounds. Cathars, Gnostics, Zarathustrians, Christians, Hindu, Islamists, Buddhists along with many others have faced persecution and death within their own communities by others identifying themselves and their causes on religious grounds.
In the case of any authoritarian division or structure, the authoritarianism creates the structure that permits the abuses. To my eyes religions with a deity create the ultimate form of authoritarianism. I know this is not the intent of any religion, but neither was it the intent of many left authoritarian political systems.
Again, please don’t take this as an attack on you personally or your beliefs, if you see it that way I apologize, I’m just stating what I see and the parallels are too strong to ignore. I don’t doubt you would call out and question any abuses that could possibly occur in the name of your religious group, but you are one person – with many other followers your voice could be perceived as the enemy as has happened before.
Is there a way to hold these governors personally responsible?
He left out “Superstorm” Sandy. That was only category 2 but caused widespread destruction due to poor building codes.
They should take a lesson from the UK, where offshore wind costs about four times that of conventional generators and is highly unreliable (not to mention short-lived and difficult to maintain). In other words – a financial disaster.
Philip,
Absolutely.
I still wonder what part of ‘offshore’ is understood by politicos, boosters, and mere subsidy miners.
Of course, if a person’s job depends on not understanding something, it is astonishingly difficult to make them understand!
[Not original, but I have idea of the origin!]
Offshore – at sea, is a very awkward – even hostile – environment.
Auto
I’ve recently read that windmills in Ontario is causing heavy metal containing black shale sediments to appear in nearby well water. How long before we find out vibrations from windmills endanger whales?
http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/
https://canadians.org/blog/stunning-14000-fold-increase-black-shale-particles-found-well-water-start-samsung-turbine
http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/chatham-kent-land-of-black-water-special-cbc-report/
http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/geologic-engineer-disagrees-with-moecc-on-well-water-contamination/
http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/2017/07/06/water-wells-first-continues-battle-with-c-k-and-moecc
http://www.windsorsquare.ca/archives/2018/well-water-issue-comes-to-windsor/111110
https://stopthesethings.com/2018/04/27/black-plague-wind-turbine-construction-turning-ontarios-water-supply-to-toxic-sludge/
Well, at the least, it should help cut down on the sea gull population.
I’d put what follows on the Tips page, but that page crashes my browser.
There have been some developments on the Peter Ridd saga. He’s been fired from John Cook University for essentially refusing to back down on the argument that much of the alarm about the ecological degradation of the Great Barrier Reef is the product of poorly audited and conceived scientific research by people emotionally invested in the idea that the reef is dying despite his employer’s instructions to keep quiet about his concerns and for speaking publicly about their attempts to keep him quiet.
He is fighting his termination. He has reactivated the gofundme campaign which Anthony previously publicized. I suggest everyone donate a some more money to legal fund; his legal bills are going to be substantial.
“The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia have signed executive orders or passed laws to procure offshore wind systems”
And yet, these same states (and probably these same governors) have passed laws to block drilling off their shores. hypocrite much.
“1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind systems over the next 10 years.” ?????
One 2 M watt wind turbine could deliver more than 1600 M watt hours of energy in one year under optimum conditions.
However it takes Eighty 2 M watt wind turbines to provide an average of 1600 M watts of continuous energy over ten years during 10 years of optimum wind and maintenance free operation.
Perhaps they mean to install 1600 M watts of nameplate capacity over the next ten years.
What is a pig in a poke?
When they get enough windmills, they will turn them into motors to speed up or slow down the earth’s rotation. Use that “wind chill factor” to offset global warming OR cooling.
Yay!