The energy implosion set in motion by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act) continues to unfold slowly. This week we have gotten a few more new data points. If you can read between the lines of wild spinning by the Governor and her team of bureaucrats, you will find that the scope of offshore wind projects moving forward with accepted bids has decreased by about two-thirds, while the price has just jumped by over 30%.
First, some background. The Climate Act sets several unachievable and impossible targets, the first of which is 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030. How to get there? The bureaucrats in charge of meeting the targets have no idea what they are doing, but they have established as a first goal to have some 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines (nameplate capacity) up and running by some point in the 2030s. Does that sound like a lot? Current average demand in New York State is about 17,000 MW per this NYISO 2023 Report (at page 26), meaning that New York consumes about 150,000 [G]Wh of electricity in a year. (17 x 8760 (hours in a year) = 148,920). 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines operating at a 30% annual capacity factor will generate 23,652 [G]Wh in a year (9 x 8760 x 0.3 = 23,652). That’s less than a sixth of current consumption. And did I mention that they are also planning to increase demand by 50% or more by forcing the electrification of all automobiles and home heating and cooking? So the 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines will provide maybe 10% of our electricity needs in the 2030s, at random and often useless times — and that’s assuming that the turbines actually get built.
Forging ahead with its nonsensical and unworkable plan, in 2018-20 New York conducted a series of solicitations for bids from offshore wind developers to put up turbines in various sites off the coast of Long Island. Those solicitations resulted in accepted bids for close to half of the 9,000 MW goal. The big projects were named Sunrise Wind, Beacon Wind, and Empire Wind 1 and 2. Here is a map of where the turbine farms are to be located:
As I reported in this post from October 5, 2023, the prices that the State agreed to pay the developers after the auction were $110.37 per MWh for Sunrise Wind, and $118.38 per MWh for Empire Wind 1.
But then in July 2023 essentially all the developers with accepted offshore wind development contracts backed out of the deals, and demanded price increases averaging about 50%. The Chair of the New York Public Service Commission, Rory Christian, reacted with outrage. My post of October 15, 2023 covered a report of Mr. Christian’s reaction that had appeared in the New York Times. Excerpt:
Mr. Christian added that the state’s ratepayers, who would have borne the cost, could not serve as an “unlimited piggy bank” for companies to tap. “We have a deal,” he said to the developers, calling on them to stand by the terms they agreed to.
Sure. Here was my reaction to Mr. Christian:
Well, Rory, I’ve got news for you: the developers aren’t going to honor the deal. You’re going to have to hold a new auction. And the prices that will be bid will be as high or higher than those just demanded by these developers.
And, as I predicted, they proceeded to hold a new auction. By January, there was word that new bids had been received, but there was no information as to bidders or prices or awards.
Which brings us to the latest news. Last Thursday, February 29, the big announcement appeared on the website of Governor Kathy Hochul, headline “Governor Hochul Announces Two Offshore Wind Project Awards, to Deliver Clean Power in 2026.” From the introduction:
Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the State has conditionally awarded two offshore wind projects from its fourth offshore wind solicitation – a planned 810-megawatt project, Empire Wind 1, (developed by Equinor) and Sunrise Wind, a planned 924-megawatt project (developed by Orsted and Eversource). The competitively selected projects will create more than 800 near-term family-sustaining construction jobs and invest $2 billion in near-term enhanced economic development statewide, including developer-committed investments to support disadvantaged communities. The projects, totaling over 1,700 megawatts of clean energy, will be the largest power generation projects in New York State in over 35 years once they enter operation in 2026, and will continue progress towards achievement of the State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) goal to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035.
Yes, it’s all happy talk about how great this is. Here’s some more:
“I promised to make New York a place for the renewable energy industry to do business, and we are delivering on that promise,” Governor Hochul said. “Offshore wind is foundational to our fight against climate change, and these awards demonstrate our national leadership to advance a zero-emissions electric grid at the best value to New Yorkers.”
And how about getting President Biden in on the credit:
“Today’s announcement is the latest step forward as President Biden continues to deliver historic progress on growing the American offshore wind industry, creating good-paying union jobs, and advancing our ambitious climate and clean energy goals,” said White House Deputy National Climate Advisor Mary Frances Repko.
Dare we ask how much is actually getting built and at what cost? If you can get past the introductory happy talk, you will finally come to this:
The weighted average all-in development cost of the awarded offshore wind projects over the life of the contracts is $150.15 per megawatt-hour which is on-par with the latest market prices.
And yet you will not find anywhere in this press release any mention of the prices of the previously accepted bids. But you read Manhattan Contrarian, so you know that the previously accepted prices were $110.37/MWh for Sunrise Wind and $118.38/MWh for Empire Wind 1. In other words, despite Mr. Christian’s outrage, the prices have gone up by in excess of 30%. And this is for only 1700 MW of capacity. Previously they had accepted bids for 4300 MW of capacity, and plans for 9000 MW. 1700 MW of offshore wind capacity operating at a 30% +/- capacity factor might provide 2% or so of New York’s electricity needs in the 2030s, and at mostly uselessly intermittent times. What’s happening with the rest of their big plans? No word here.
And what does the cost here mean for consumer utility bills? You can divide the $150/MWh by 1000 and quickly figure out that they are planning to pay $0.15 per kWh as a wholesale price for intermittent electricity at the source. Nothing is included in that for transmission upgrades, backup, or storage to make for a reliable 24/7/365 grid. By the time you add in those extra costs, as the percent of electricity from the wind turbines gets to around 50% it would be amazing if you could get electricity to the consumer for less than $0.50/kWh. And if the percentage of electricity from the wind turbines goes well above 50%, then all bets are off. $1.00/kWh? $2.00? Easily.
Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration reports here in 2023 (page 6) that the “levelized cost” of electricity from a new combined cycle natural gas plant is under $50/MWh — for dispatchable power with no transmission upgrades, backup or storage needed. That translates into electricity to the consumer of well under $0.20/kWh.
Governor Hochul’s press release actually includes a line as to the costs to the consumer of the newly accepted offshore wind farm bids:
The average bill impact for customers over the life of these projects under these awards will be approximately two percent, or about $2.09 per month.
Talk about deceptive. They give no methodology or assumptions as to how they came up with the cost figure. But it is obvious that it includes just the cost of blending into the grid the new power from these particular turbines, and otherwise using existing transmission lines and existing fossil fuel plants for the backup role. There is no effort whatsoever here or anywhere else in New York’s propaganda to figure out how much it will cost the consumer for electricity when the grid has been converted to all renewables plus massive amounts of some kind of backup or storage that hasn’t even been invented yet.
Memo to Attorney General James: If you have any real interest in prosecuting people who lie about plans to supposedly achieve “net zero” carbon emissions, here is the worst offender of all right under your nose.
Letitia James believes in affordable renewable energy, objective real estate prices with no reference to the market, and the Tooth Fairy.
Why not move target dates up from 2030 to 2026 or 2025? Get this fiasco over with.
Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy don’tcha know.
I humbly suggest a target date of 2200 . . . perhaps by then humanity will have developed deuterium-based controlled nuclear fusion as a commercial energy source.
“Renewable energy” is NOT the cheapest form of energy, due to its intermittency, when one properly accounts for the necessary backup energy sources whether they be fossil-fuel based or based on (imaginary) massive battery packs.
Plus extra expensive transmission costs plus very expensive cost of converting wind energy from the unusable form in which it is produced to the form it needs to be for the grid plus the very expensive cost of keeping voltage and frequency in the range it needs to be for the grid, which the previously mentioned every expensive costs do not cover.
Big savings at night with no wind.
You don’t get any electricity
Reduces electric bill
Which obviously means another large service charge necessary to keep profits to an acceptable level because no delivery means the charge can’t be for electricity per se.
The charge will be for “Access” only, delivery isn’t guaranteed but access is
Francis,
I think there is an annual escalation to the negotiated prices/MWh.
Could you please verify that?
How does Hochul, and co-conspirators sleep at night, when they know, their outrageously expensive, environment-damaging, whale-killing “solutions” will have zero impact on the greenhouse effect of CO2?
The CO2 from mine to hazardous landfill, and from wind/solar support systems, is significantly greater than all other sources of energy, except maybe coal
‘How does Hochul, and co-conspirators sleep at night…’
They’re psychopaths.
What was it Charlton Heston shrieked by the statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes? Oh yes,
“”You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell”
Seems fitting.
https://twitter.com/MichaelWarbur17/status/1754095170864206209
Start viewing at offset 1:00
A silent beautiful woman, h’m.
Careful now!
It’s all right, she’s French, most New Yorkers couldn’t get over the language barrier!
The costly part of renewable energy is the unreliability of the free energy source and the constant demand of a modern society.
Society can’t simply change demand times to meet supply when supply becomes available.
Supply must be available to meet demand times. This means either redundancies in generation sources which further increases costs/end pricing or massive storage capacity with additional dedicated renewable sources for backup storage recharging which again further increases costs/end pricing
Nuclear is a far less costly option with an over 90% capacity factor requiring no additional storage and significantly less redundancy. In fact the entire offshore bids at 1700MW can be handled by 2 1100MW units with power to spare at a single generation plant
From the above article’s second paragraph:
“The Climate Act sets several unachievable and impossible targets, the first of which is 70% of electricity from ‘renewables’ by 2030.”
Heck, New York ain’t got nothing on California!
California governor Gavin
NewsomGruesome set benchmarks for the state to reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 and 95% by 2040, moving toward California’s previously established statute (SB 100, passed in September 2018) to have 100% renewable energy by 2045. This means that by 2045 all energy used in the state would have to come from renewable sources, like solar, wind and hydroelectric, and from zero-carbon emission sources like nuclear.I cannot speak to how much New York state residents were mislead by their politicians and governmental bureaucrats in their case, but I can speak to how such happened—and currently is continuing—in California. Just look at this quote from one of the state-sponsored, currently active websites:
“Many factors affect utility bills. Costs associated with electricity generation is one key component; even now, clean renewable and zero-carbon energy like solar and wind energy are cheaper than natural gas, coal, nuclear, or almost any other option. So we know that at least that component of utility bills will go down as a result of SB 100.”
— source: https://focus.senate.ca.gov/sb100/faqs
IMHO, that is an outright lie being perpetuated upon the residents of California.
As numerous WUWT and other independent science- and economics-based articles have documented, the levelized cost-of-energy (LCOE) for the above-mentioned “renewable” energy sources is much more expensive than it is for natural gas and coal, when one properly accounts for the intermittency of wind and solar (and the resulting costs of their needed backup energy source(s)) and adjusts to offset all governmental subsidies/tax breaks given to each energy source.
Nor do you ever see the real “carbon footprint” for a single wind turbine calculated.
Nor do you ever see how the ludicris impossible plan will affect the Global Average Temperature, nor do you see the life expectancy of the generating equipment.
Michigan’s is 60% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.
I can’t imagine how manufacturing will operate under these dates. How do you heat treat tool steel to 65 Rockwell with intermittent energy or put a titanium nitrate coating on something? It will be a nightmare.
<b>BIG</B> Batteries. Lots of them.
Won’t be cheap. But it’s something we actually know how to do today … Something of a rarity in the magical quest for Net Zero. They don’t have to be Lithium based BTW. They won’t need to move about much, so energy density isn’t a huge concern. (Caveat: Huge Sodium-Sulfur batteries — a current favorite for that sort of thing — are most definitely something most folks are NOT going to want in their back yard. Permitting just might be a problem.)
“California Governor Gruesome set benchmarks for the state to reach 90% clean electricity by 2035″
After observing the save the planet proclamations of Governor Gruesome and NY Governor Hockum, our Michigan Governor Witless has pledged 155% clean energy by a week from tomorrow, as revealed in a 187 page Vision Statement. Michigan will then have so much clean energy we will sell so much electricity to other blue states that our electricity will be free. The Nut Zero timing may be delayed if Ms. Witless finally decides to fix the potholes she promised to fix when running for Governor in 2018.
Can an implosion unfold?
Shouldn’t the state now be liable to a law sut for fraud, even without the levelized cost con?
Ideology cannot accommodate rationality.
These Francis Menton posts are a must-read for me.
Thank you!!
BTW, my latest electric bill here in rural CNY just pushed past $0.15/kWh all-in. Buckle up. For a long time, the upstate region has been getting about 80% of its electricity consumption from hydro and nuclear according to NYISO. Yet we will all be paying dearly for this terribly misguided plan pushed by Albany and NYC.
In Communist Vermont 23.7 c/ kWh, all- in
Wow.
In Utah, the per kWh cost is just under $0.08, but after all of the taxes and surcharges (including five cents a month for “electric vehicle infrastructure”), it comes to just over $0.13.
Renewable. What a term.
And, when in 5 years, major repairs/maintenance/replacements are needed, is that how they are renewed?
Reminds me of Logan’s Run. Renew! Renew!
A 2018 report (https://spectrum.ieee.org/this-power-plant-runs-on-co2) on a natural gas steam turbine electric generator facility (https://netpower.com/) reconfigured to recycle CO2 and achieved zero emissions.
Given the assumption that report was not a hoax, then why pursue this (wind) convoluted and excessively expensive and dangerous and unreliable approach.
The EPA is currently being sued for not doing adequate environmental impact assessment for offshore wind farms (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/06/cfact-says-offshore-wind-violates-clean-air-and-clean-water-acts/).
News Tip – John Kerry thinks (first problem) that Russia’s excursion into Ukraine would be better accepted if Russia would reduce it’s GHG emissions. I wonder if he could pass a drug test…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-kerry-says-people-feel-033105338.html
I believe the term “non sequitur”** applies to Kerry’s comments.
**… often used for comedic purposes. It is something said that, because of its apparent lack of meaning relative to what preceded it, seems absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing. [Wiki]
Is it any wonder the US government is so little respected?
If you look up the term “gormless numpty” online, and click on ‘Images’, the whole page loads with this –
A horse and John Kerry walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Hey, why the long faces?”
His brain has been retired some years ago, his body retired a few days ago
Likely his brain feels as though it has been left in the lurch
Whatever brains he might have once had have leaked out over the years – he has just enough to read what’s put in front of him and not much more. Certainly no understanding of what he says.
I believe that’s referred to as Anal Leakage
I see what you did there – “lurch” for the Adams family butler.
My research on windmill breakdowns, maintenance and lifespans. I assume most studies are biased in favor of windmills. I picked a Chinese study for onshore windmills since they don’t seem to be Net Zero / windmill cheerleaders like the US, EU and UK
The data for offshore windmills could be biased in favor of those windmills … BUT even if there is pro-windmill bias, the failure rate is still very high
.
Leftists claim offshore windmills have a 20 to 30 year lifespan … so you can assume the real number is really under 20 years.
Perhaps 15 years … with a lot of maintenance along the way.
A pilot project for offshore windmill lifespan lasted 25 years ONLY because they were relatively small windmills with all equipment in a controlled humidity environment by using AIR CONDITIONING. There is no evidence that a non-air conditioned offshore windmill will last 20 or more years.
Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm was the first offshore wind farm in the world, erected in 1991 off the coast of the town of Vindeby on the Danish island of Lolland. It has lasted a long time because the equipment is in a sealed air conditioned environment NOT used for other offshore windmills. It was decommissioned for cost reasons in 2017 after 25 years of useful life.
The developers had contracted Bonus Energy to supply 11 wind turbines (450 kW each) for the project, placed in shallow waters. The annual power was equivalent to 2-3,000 Danish households. The turbines were modified for offshore use by sealing the towers and controlling the humidity inside with air conditioning, extending the life of the machinery.
WINDMILL FAILURES AND MAINTENANCE
OFFSHORE FIXED WINDMILLS
The studies tend to be over 5 years old as if the bad news led to people trying to ignore the offshore windmill reliability problems for the past few years.
A typical study concluded:
“The average failure rate for an offshore wind turbine from this analysis is 8.3 failures per turbine per year.”
SOURCE:
(strath.ac.uk)
OFFSHORE FLOATING WINDMILLS
A study I read of offshore floating windfarm failure rates had a very small sample size and used too much computer modelling. The result was suspiciously similar to off shore fixed windmills:
“Overall, the failure rates of the floating offshore wind turbine are 8.34 failures/wind turbine/year with the MTTF of 1050 hours
ONSHORE WINDMILLS
It was easier for the authors to get data on the number of failures than on the hours required for failure analyses and repairs. It’s possible the repair data not available for this study were worse news than the data that were available.
“This analysis includes 423 failures of 76 multi-MW (Megawatt) collected from wind turbines operating in four wind farms in China.”
“The Operation and Maintenance (O&M) cost of wind turbines takes up to 20% of the overall energy cost, and such a proportion becomes bigger when referring to floating offshore wind”
Source of quote is at a link below
NOTE: Onshore windmills need a lot less maintenance than offshore windmills and the time for failure analyses and repairs is shorter.
The engineering study I read provided these data
Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)
The failure rate of the 76 wind turbines is 2.57 failures/turbine/year with an MTTF of 3,409 hours.
Reaction Time (RT) To Failure
The average RT of the 375 failures was 41 hours
.
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
The MTTRs of 266 failures of wind turbines were an average of 3.6 hours, with a maximum of 23 hours and a minimum of less than one hour.
SOURCE:
JMSE | Free Full-Text | Failure Rate Assessment for Onshore and Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (mdpi.com)
This late 2022 study is Chinese, which some people will not trust. It is titled: “Failure Rate Assessment for Onshore and Floating Offshore Wind Turbines” … The title is deceptive — they could not get enough data analyze the newest floating wind farms:
“Floating offshore wind turbines, representing the next step in the wind energy market, are new concepts with limited installations. Failure, risk, reliability, availability, and maintainability investigations of such equipment are restricted by unavailable failure and operation data.”
NOTE: As of 2023, there were only 4 operational floating wind farms, at a combined 193 MW.
I doubt if the Liar’s Cost of Electricity (LCOE) includes the full costs for windmill maintenance, power losses during failure analyses and maintenance, or a reasonable lifespan for windmills not based on wishful thinking.
Windmills belong in museums
This appears to be a good aggregation of data. I am a little surprised at the failure rate. That seems unacceptably high – except that no one expects them to be reliable.
The salt water offshore environment and metal parts and electronics are a bad combination. The 25 year lifespan Danish windmills were small blades compared to today and had interior air conditioning to control interior humidity.
The fixable failure rate seems about right. I did a similar thing with the data for the Danish windfarms and got a non-fixable failure rate of 12% pa, averaged out over the lifetime of the windfarm. You’ve also got to factor in that after 5 or 6 years that model of turbine will no longer be made so replacements/spares will be impossible to source and the only way to keep some turbines running is to cannibalise one or two of the others.
One factor obscures the lifetime data, many windfarms are being “re-powered” ahead of their stated lifetimes because newer turbines have larger outputs and improved efficiencies. So we do not get to really see what their lifetimes are.
One other factor: About once every ten years or so a major hurricane comes up the Atlantic and hits the areas where the wind turbines will be put in place. The hurricane will largely destroy the turbines.
Manufacturers claim windmills are able to withstand a Cat. 3 hurricane.
My engineering analysis:
No data
Just an opinion
Wishful green dreamer thinking
How much does it cost to insure a wind turbine?
A typical warranty lasts for two years with an option to extend the warranty up to five years. Typically, extending the warranty on equipment is a good investment, if available, and you should incorporate this into your business plan. Insurance. Insurance costs range from $8,000-$15,000 per year for each turbine.
The actuaries evaluating risk at insurance companies use data. The windmill suppliers may claim they can withstand a Cat. 3 hurricane but I bet the insurance companies will play it safe and say their insurance only applies to Cat. 2 and Cat. 1 hurricanes.
How many hurricanes hit the U.S. every year?
On average, 10.1 named storms occur each season, with an average of 5.9 becoming hurricanes and 2.5 becoming major hurricanes, Category 3 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson scale.
When there is a windmill failure, it usually takes longer to diagnose and get spare parts than the actual repairs.
The claimed 20 to 30 year lifespan was not proven by the 25 year lifespan of the air conditioned small windmills in Denmark .
The frequent need for maintenance for offshore windmills suggests the lifespan will be shorter than 20 to 30 years.
Maintenance will only increase as the windmill ages and the extremely large blade modern windmills will put more stress on metal parts than old smaller windmills
An addition issue could be obsolescence of existing windmills.
After 10 or 15 years of use there may be more efficient wind turbines, generators, controls and gearboxes available to buy. There is no reason to believe every windmill will be used for as long as possible.
As I’ve also mentioned above, most manufacturers only make that model of turbine and spare parts for a few years then move on to a different model. The choice becomes then, do you cannibalise the turbines you’ve got for spare parts or upgrade them to newer models?
And don’t forget.. extreeeem hurricanes will also be much more frequent and 10 times as stronger… 😉
According to my RCP9.4 model, that is….
Very nice Francis. This is all you need to know, government needs to be removed from energy production and transmission. They are liars and cheats. Can you imagine what the government would do to a private firm for lying like this? This crap has to stop.
That would be an impressive achievement. No other significant jurisdiction has managed that. The regions that have achieved better than 30% WDG are above USD0.5/kWh at retail level. And none have done it independently on an isolated grid.
If they really believed the crap NY is peddling, then they’d be talking to the Koreans and cutting a purchase order for 17 reactors, all starting construction simultaneously – and then they might just be able to reach weed-enhanced CO2 free grid. But they would have to drop the electrification plan and declare martial law to keep the environmental activists/terrorists and lawfare attorneys at bay.
Sound workable?
NY is screwed 🤬
Seems so and NY is not alone because it aint just about electrifying gas appliances and transport-
US is facing risk of rolling blackouts as predicted electricity demand DOUBLES with AI data centers and crypto mines presenting ‘staggering challenge’ to the outdated grid (msn.com)