By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Respectfully, the future of the Town of Ocean City cannot be bought [by offshore wind interests] and we intend to continue to do what is necessary to protect the interests of our residents, property owners and future generations.” – Mayor Rick Meehan, Ocean City, Maryland
The $2 million bribe was turned down–flatly, by the Mayor of Ocean City, Rick Meeham. This “opportunity” spread out over 20 years came with this request from US Wind: “local government officials… [refraining] from making any negative comments or objections.”
Here is the story reported in UtilityDive:
“In December 2023, I received an email from Jeff Grybowski, Chief Executive Officer for US Wind, offering Ocean City the same opportunity that has been extended to the Delaware Beach Towns,” [Ocean City Mayor] Meehan said. “My response was, ‘Respectfully the future of the Town of Ocean City cannot be bought and we intend to continue to do what is necessary to protect the interests of our residents, property owners and future generations.’” …
The story continued:
Meehan said he found the idea “unconscionable.” ….
That leaves US Wind as the only company currently developing a wind project offshore near Ocean City, and the town’s only opponent in its “battle of the proposed construction of wind turbines off our coast,” according to Ocean City’s official website. “As of January 2024, The Town of Ocean City does not support any turbines built off our coast,” a release from the town said. “As of January 2024, US Wind is the only company with proposed plans to build turbines off the coast of Ocean City.”
Ever the crony, US Wind tried to paint a happy face on the situation.
Nancy Sopko, US Wind’s senior director of external affairs, said in an email that while Ocean City chose not to discuss a community benefit agreement, the company wants to continue to work with the city as “good neighbors.” … “As a member of this community, we believe it’s important to do what we can to help it thrive,” Sopko said. However, she added, “Ocean City’s position on community benefits has no impact on our project plans.”
Final Comment
Nancy Sopko is quoted at the end of the story: “We’re very confident that we will build Maryland’s first offshore wind farm and deliver clean energy to the people of Delmarva for years to come.”
Nope. Real environmentalists are standing up, knowing also that the electricity rate increases from offshore wind will be substantial, even after U.S. taxpayers get soaked via the U.S. Department of Energy grants and the Production Tax Credit.
Wind power anywhere is a bad idea, and offshore is worse. Instead of birds and bats, they also kill whales.
Some years ago we redid the erroneous EIA onshore wind LCOE using ERCOT at then 10% wind penetration for backup and transmission costs. Turned out was about 2.5x CCGT. The biased EIA says offshore wind is ‘only’ 3x onshore. That makes offshore wind at least 7.5x dispatchable CCGT. Really bad deal.
For something so “economical”, wind sure jacks up electric rates.
Wind is free. It’s the utilization of wind that makes it uneconomical.
Same with coal and oil. And much more economical.
WORLD’s LARGEST OFFSHORE WIND SYSTEM DEVELOPER ABANDONS TWO MAJOR US PROJECTS AS WIND BUST CONTINUES
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-s-largest-offshore-wind-system-developer-abandons-two-major
EXCERPT
New York State had signed contracts with EU big wind companies for four offshore wind projects
Sometime later, the companies were trying to coerce an additional $25.35 billion (per Wind Watch) from New York ratepayers and taxpayers over at least 20 years, because they had bid at lower prices than they should have.
New York State denied the request on October 12, 2023; “a deal is a deal”, said the Commissioner
Owners want a return on investment of at least 10%/y, if bank loans for risky projects are 6.5%/y, and project cost inflation and uncertainties are high
The about 3.5% is a minimum for all the years of hassles of designing, building, erecting, and paperwork of a project
The project prices, with no subsidies, would be about two times the agreed contract price, paid by Utilities to owners.
The reduction is due to US subsidies provided, per various US laws
All contractors had bid too low. When they realized there would be huge losses, they asked for higher contract prices.
It looks like the contract prices will need to be at least $150/MWh, for contractors to make money. Those contract prices would be at least 60% higher than in 2021
Oersted, Denmark, Sunrise wind, contract price $110.37/MWh, contractor needs $139.99/MWh, a 27% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 1 wind, contract price $118.38/MWh, contractor needs $159.64/MWh, a 35% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 2 wind, contract price $107.50/MWh, contractor needs $177.84/MWh, a 66% increase
Equinor, Norway, Beacon Wind, contract price $118.00/MWh, contractor needs $190.82/MWh, a 62% increase
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/liars-lies-exposed-as-wind-electricity-price-increases-by-66-wake
NOTE: Empire Wind 2, 1260 MW, near Long- Island, was cancelled.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinor-bp-cancel-contract-sell-offshore-wind-power-new-york-2024-01-03/
Offshore Cancellations in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island
BP (BP.L) and Oersted (ORSTED.CO) have announced hefty writedowns , and US offshore project cancellations, in recent days, in the face of high inflation, high interest rates, and lack of the timely availability of specialized ships.
In Rhode Island, in March 2023, a procurement for offshore wind drew only one bidder – an 884 MW proposal from Eversource and Ørsted.
In August, Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper warned the company could walk away from unprofitable projects in the US amid the turbulence in pricing and supply chain issues.
From the US Wind website, part of the CV of Jeff Grybowski:
Jeff previously served as Chief of Staff to the Governor of the State of Rhode Island and practiced corporate law at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder in Providence, Rhode Island and at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, New York.
Jeff earned an A.B. with Honors in Public Policy from Brown University and a J.D. with High Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.
Story tip:
Arctic sea ice extent might have hit its maximum for the year on March 14. At more than five million square km, it was highest of this decade, the average of which for 2021-24 is higher than for the decade 2011-20. Should this prove true for the whole decade 2021-30, where does that leave the shrinking Arctic sea ice meme?
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
We’ll see where the summer minimum finishes. So far this decade, two years have been well above the 2011-20 average low, and one a bit below it.
“At more than five million square km”
umm.. don’t you mean 15 million km²
Yes.
Well, 15 is more than 5
Recovery from the extreme high of 1979 has basically stopped…
It remains at an extent far greater than for most of the rest of the Holocene.
Especially with regard to minimum, which has most alarmed alarmists.
The record low of 2012 and other low years, eg 2007, 2016 and 2020, all suffered august and.or September cyclones, spreading out and piling up the floes.
September low levels really depend on those storms and how much ice is free to easily pushed out into the upper Atlantic, where, being slightly warmer, it melts.
There is a lot of evidence showing periods of the early to mid Holocene, even up until the late MWP had significantly less summer and winter sea ice.
“Good neighbors”
Wind farms are NEVER good neighbors. Ugly, infrasound, expensive, intermittent…Pretending that they are is something only a wind company could say after their neighborly bribe got rejected.
Also the investment tax credit paid before any juice is generated. It is a whopping 30% of cost plus 10% if minimal domestic content requirements are met.
Warren Buffet’s Iowa utility is a big owner of midwest wind farms. IIRC about $5 billion worth. Some years ago at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting he said the only reason for the wind investment was big tax credits reducing Berkshires total tax liability.
When you have a lot of expensive wind and solar systems, that produce expensive wholesale electricity and need a lot of subsidies, eventually, you will need large-scale battery systems to counteract the ups and downs of wind output and the midday bulges of solar, especially after the climate know-nothings, with basket weaving and rioting degrees, cause the closure of traditional power plants, as they did in dysfunctional Germany and California. Those traditional plants have proven for about 100 years, they can function on their own, without any need for wind and solar systems, at much lower cost per kWh, and requiring no subsidies.
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
EXCERPT
Example of Turnkey Cost of Large-Scale, Megapack Battery System, 2023 pricing
?itok=lxTa2SlF
The system consists of 50 Megapack 2, rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, 4-h energy delivery
Power = 50 Megapacks x 0.979 MW x 0.926, Tesla design factor = 45.3 MW
Energy = 50 Megapacks x 3.916 MWh x 0.929, Tesla design factor = 181.9 MWh
Estimate of supply by Tesla, $90 million, or $495/kWh. See URL
Estimate of supply by Others, $14.5 million, or $80/kWh
All-in, turnkey cost about $575/kWh; 2023 pricing
https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/tesla-hikes-megapack-prices-commodity-inflation-soars
Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume a system rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, and an all-in turnkey cost of $104.5 million, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan for 50% of $104.5 million at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.484 million/y
Pay Owner return of 50% of $104.5 million at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.765 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.484 + 6.765) = $183.7 million
Assume battery daily usage for 15 years at 10%, and loss factor = 1/(0.9 *0.9)
Battery lifetime output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh to HV grid; 122,950,926 kWh from HV grid; 233,606,676 kWh loss
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183.7 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 184.5 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, depreciation in 5 years, deduction of interest on borrowed funds) is 92.3c/kWh
At 10% usage, (Bank + Owner) cost, 92.3 c/kWh
At 40% usage, (Bank + Owner) cost, 23.1 c/kWh
Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 1.5%/y, 3) 19% HV grid-to-HV grid loss, 3) grid extension/reinforcement to connect battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites. The excluded costs add at least 10 – 15 c/kWh
NOTE: The 40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charging above 80% full and not discharging below 20% full, to achieve a 15-y life, with normal aging
Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the Owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia. They excessively charged/discharged the system. After a few years, they added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and added more Megapacks to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION
Regarding any project, the bank and the owner have to be paid, no matter what.
Therefore, I amortized the bank loan and the owner’s investment
If you divide the total of the payments over 15 years by the throughput during 15 years, you get the cost per kWh, as shown.
According to EIA annual reports, almost all battery systems have throughputs less than 10%. I chose 10% for calculations.
A few battery systems have higher throughputs, if they are used to absorb midday solar and discharge it during peak hour periods of late-afternoon/early-evening.
They may reach up to 40% throughput. I chose 40% for calculations
There is about a 20% round-trip loss, from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid, i.e., you have to draw about 50 units from the HV grid to deliver about 40 units to the HV grid, because of a-to-z system losses. That gets worse with aging.
A lot of people do not like these c/kWh numbers, because they have been repeatedly told by self-serving folks, battery Nirvana is just around the corner, which is a load of crap.
From Ron Clutz’ “Science Matters” website
Furthermore:
(Source: https://manhattan.institute/article/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-a-reality-check )
See also, ‘The Hard Math of Minerals’ by Mark P Mills – a comparison of the resources required to replace a single 100MW natural gas fired turbine by wind or solar.
Wind would require 20 turbines each about 500 feet tall and covering some 10 square miles of land. and collectively needing 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tonnes of concrete, 1000 tons of metals and minerals (copper, chromium, zinc etc).
Solar would require only one third as much land as wind but the aggregate tonnage of cement, steel and glass would be about 150% greater.
The unreliables would also require about 10,000 tons of battery storage
The gas turbine, by contrast is the size of a large residential house and requires around 300 tons of iron ore and 2000 tons of concrete.
https://issues.org/environmental-economic-costs-minerals-solar-wind-batteries-mills/
Too bad reality doesn’t matter for Ron Clutz.
You are expressing the fantasy of perpetual motion.
If a wind turbine made using fossil fuels could provide enough energy to dispense with fossil fuels and build even 100.001% of a new wind turbine, no one would ever need to work again.
Unable to counter the REALITY and FACTS of the situation.
Try to slime.
Ron has several magnitudes more intelligence and knowledge than you will ever have.!!
He may or may not. So he’s either ignorant or lying.
See my remark above. You’re unable to refute the assertions.
Useless troll.
Counter an argument that the eroi of wind is < 1? That was debunked 20 years ago. I wonder how that nonsense could survive so long.
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098
That’s great! All we need is one wind turbine, and we can manufacture the thousands of new turbines with its output.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544213000492
Try refuting the EROEI statistic of windpower.
Oh, you can’t.
(EROEI stands for Energy Return On Energy Invested).
Not to mention dismantling and disposing of them.
Also, maintaining.
I’m not suggesting this Ocean City can be “bought”, but 2 million is pretty measly. Imagine if the bribe were 2 million per resident… I’m not sure the mayor would have much say in it.
That notion reminds me of a situation up on Owen’s Lake, CA. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power got sued into performing dust mitigation, due to them accelerating the late Holocene drying up of the “lake” by diverting the Owens River inflow. Really costly, $400 million I think. Some DWP official, or LA politician, can’t remember, said it would just be cheaper to buy out the residents of the “town” of Keeler by giving them a million each. While that might have been attractive to the Keeler folks, it caused an indignant uproar because it really wasn’t them suing LADWP.
The dust that came off Owens Lake didn’t affect Keeler all that much – they were usually on the up-wind side. It was the wild north winds that really made a plume. Down south here in Ridgecrest and China Lake got the so-called (we named it) “Keeler Fog”. BTW, I think all that mitigation work got wiped out by flooding last year. Ah LA and the Mulhollan legacy.
If this were the FIRST off shore wind farm ever attempted anywhere on the planet, the proponents might be able to make an argument due to ignorance of the actual outcome, but knowing what we know now about these environmental and economic disasters, I hope they chase all of them out of the country and put a stake in the heart of this insane idea once and for all.
So why do China and Europe build more of it?
Cui bono
China is expanding power generation as much as possible to meet manufacturing demand from places that are busy closing factories, but has to import fossil fuels to meet demand, so wind makes up the difference. Europe is all-in on climate idiocy.
Because they are an authoritarian, communist state perhaps?
Take a look around. The west is heading the same way at a rate of knots.
You have two choices. Conform and accept it, or resist it.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”
Christiana Figueres. Former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
What fools like Luser don’t realise, is that while they are on the bottom rung now….
and will always be… it is their choice to be there…
… but under leftism they espouse, that bottom rung gets deeper and deeper into their own self-made sewer.
“So why do China and Europe build more of it?”
China will get energy where-ever it can MOSTLY from COAL and HYDRO.
Europe.. virtue-seeking stupidity and a moronic anti-science CO2 hatred…
… combined with an incredibly stupid ideology of self-destruction.
“So why do China and Europe build more of it?”
One reason might be that the Chicoms want to put up a good front in order to keep the Europeans thinking windmills are a good idea and more should be bought from the Chicoms.
If the Chicoms don’t build windmills for themselves, it might set a bad example for the climate alarmists from the Western democracies.
The Chicoms want Western democracies to build as many windmills as possible. It’s good for the Chicom’s “Big Picture”, because it weakens its Wester democracy customers while strenthening the Chicom position. The Chicoms say: What’s not to like?
China also builds lots of coal powered stations as does India. The IEA expect China and India to account for more than 70% of global coal consumption by 2026.
IEA ‘Coal 2023 Analysis and forecast to 2026’ (December 2023)
China’s coal production reached a record 4.66bn tons in 2023 according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.
Coal plants are invisible to the likes of MUN as long as they are in China, elsewhere they must be shut down.
The attached graphic was sufficiently “eye catching” as I was idly browsing the Wibbly Wobbly Web sometime last July that I copied it to my local hard disk.
I’m sure that with a minimum of effort even you could find a similar, but more up-to-date, version with China’s annual “electricity production by source” up to 2023.
It’s a civic leadership test in addition to a math test and consumer/enviro test.
Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors could provide cheap safe and abundant electricity……much preferable to the windmill stuff.
The $2 million bribe was turned down–flatly
Why not quote the offer instead of just telling us about it? Was the bribe intended for the whole community or just offered to local government officials to keep them on board? Why should I have to go chasing links just to find out key information that should have been included in the article? I’m too lazy for that.
The president of the USA seems to believe he will become as revered as Washington and Lincoln by removing Carbon Dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere. I do not detect any other consistent policy coming from the White House and all the executive agencies. That includes his late climate czar.
Physics, chemistry, and biology will destroy his dream. At his age and health – he will never know. His granddaughter – who cannot be named – will be the best remembered family member.
“The president of the USA seems to believe he will become as revered as Washington and Lincoln by removing Carbon Dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere.”
The current president, of course, is delusional. Much to our detriment.
Joke Biden is a man of constant mendacity……a destroyer of worlds….he must be gone ….soon.