The offshore wind industry faced another setback as Vineyard Offshore announced the withdrawal of an 800 MW wind energy project from Massachusetts’ procurement process. The decision follows Connecticut’s refusal to participate in a tri-state wind energy agreement, leaving Vineyard unable to secure contracts for the full 1,200 MW Vineyard Wind 2 project. This development underscores the ongoing difficulties of aligning state-level cooperation with the financial realities of large-scale renewable energy initiatives.
The Background: A Fragmented Approach to Regional Cooperation
Vineyard Offshore had planned to develop the Vineyard Wind 2 project as part of a coordinated New England solicitation involving Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Massachusetts provisionally awarded 800 MW of the project, contingent on Connecticut purchasing the remaining 400 MW. However, Connecticut opted for solar and electric storage projects instead, citing its renewable energy priorities. This left the Massachusetts portion of Vineyard Wind 2 in limbo.
Massachusetts has struggled with earlier offshore wind commitments as well. Of the 3,200 MW of offshore wind capacity previously secured, 75% was recently eliminated when projects such as Commonwealth Wind and SouthCoast Wind were deemed financially unviable under their original agreements.
Economic Viability: The Achilles’ Heel of Offshore Wind
The economic conditions driving Vineyard Offshore’s retreat mirror broader struggles within the offshore wind sector. Rising costs and inflation have forced developers to renegotiate contracts, often with little success. Massachusetts, for instance, has faced repeated delays and price increases for its wind projects, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the sector’s ability to deliver affordable energy.
While Vineyard Wind 1 remains under construction, it has experienced its own share of delays and challenges, reflecting the turbulence that accompanies large-scale offshore wind developments. Without a stable economic foundation, the feasibility of expanding this industry to deliver consistent energy remains questionable.
Implications for Renewable Energy Efforts
Vineyard Offshore’s withdrawal leaves Massachusetts with only 2,678 MW of offshore wind capacity in its pipeline, far short of its anticipated needs. The state plans to issue another solicitation in 2025, but ongoing delays and cancellations are complicating its ability to advance new projects.
The fragmented approach among states also highlights the difficulty of coordinating renewable energy strategies across jurisdictions. Despite shared interests, differing priorities and economic considerations have hindered efforts to create a unified regional framework for offshore wind development.
Looking Ahead: Lessons and Challenges
The offshore wind sector’s current trajectory raises critical questions about its future. Policymakers and industry stakeholders must address the disconnect between renewable energy ambitions and the financial realities facing developers. Enhanced regional cooperation, realistic cost assessments, and flexible contracting mechanisms may offer pathways to a more stable model for offshore wind, but the likelihood that an industry built on hype, fantasy, and a firehouse of government subsidies can resolve this, is slim.
For now, Vineyard Offshore’s withdrawal emphasizes the challenges of financing and implementing large-scale offshore wind projects. As a new US administration, openly hostile to the industry, is about to take power, the viability of the industry as a significant player in the energy market remains bleak.
Facts are a problem.
One may predict with some certainty that, in 20 years, wind turbines or PV (Connecticut’s option?) will be no longer be in operation anywhere on Planet Earth. That is the operational life of the systems being built from today to five years in the future.
At the same time, the general populace will be poorer by at least 30 $trillion and the ‘in-crowd’ will be correspondingly richer and living on the Riviera with their pet politicians.
Livermore’s Altamont Pass has been running wind turbines for as long as I can remember. 30-40-50 years or so. I imagine they’ll still be around for as long again.
The field has been in operation that long. The mills themselves have been swapped out at least once.
The original mills have all been decommissioned but still sit as an eyesore. They were replaced at 15-20 yrs of age. The replacements are not starting to be replaced at again 15-20 years of age. I believe I saw a number posted that there are over 5000 of the original mills abandoned and in numerous states of collapse/deterioration.
Altamont Pass: What’s the Story With Those Windmills? | Mobile Ranger
California has a second, less well-known wind eyesore — the Indio field out in the desert east of L.A., Interstate 10 runs right through the middle. It is like a museum of wind turbines, all sizes. About half are apparently dead, some of the little ones are missing blades.
Pretty well known if you live in the Inland Empire. I remember going to Indio/Banning/Palm Springs and seeing only a small handful of them turning.
It’s been 16 years since I was there. They’re still around? Are ANY of them turning anymore?
Was through there in July trying to avoid the I-40, I-15 quagmire in the Mojave from the battery fire. It looks like there a bunch of larger ones out to the east along the freeway that are probably operating. But they’ve just left the dead ones to rot in the desert sun.
One may predict a lot of things. I would predict that in 20 years time there will be more solar panels operational than there are today. In many areas of the world they work extremely well and can significantly reduce a household’s energy bills or supply more power than the current grid in much of the developing world.
LOL.
Delusional !!
A large proportion of the current solar panels probably won’t be operating at all in 20 years time.
Did you know.. they only work during a short period each day, particularly in winter, and do not work at peak demand time.
Or hadn’t that occurred to you. !
Local home or business use perhaps, but they cost a lot and the ROI is not really there yet.
I’m recently retired, my panels are very useful during summer when I want to run two air-conditioners during the day.
Not so much use in winter, when the sun goes down much earlier and I need heating in the afternoon and evening.
And no one will remove the forever eyesores
Everywhere rooftop solar has become very large it causes fits for the people trying to keep the grid running properly. Rooftop solar that is not connected into the grid is another matter but without expensive and dangerous personal storage it can not be useful most of the 24 hour cycle.
Most people work during the day when roof-top solar is actually providing energy.
If grid companies put a halt on feed-in, or even start charging a feed-in tariff so can, maybe, balance the grid ….. it will all be just wasted anyway.
Define “extremely well”, troll.
In some parts of the world they can provide cheaper electricity to homes than other sources. This would be true across much of Australia for instance. If you can afford the upfront costs of solar panels plus batteries then that is the cheapest long term way to get electricity for a house. The break even point is about 15 years while the lifetime of a solar panels is about 25.
Clearly the further from the equator you go the economics of solar panels gets worse. They are never going to provide sufficient power to be economical in Iceland for example but for a town like Alice Springs they would work “extremely well”
Don’t assume that being close to the equator improves solar output. It gets cloudy there.
https://euanmearns.com/wind-and-solar-on-thursday-island/
30N in the Sahara is sunnier than 10S in the Torres Strait.
Cheap requires three qualifiers. First is recurring fuel costs. Plus for solar, when it works. Second is maintenance, either scheduled or on demand. These costs must be included. Third, and this is the biggie, installation costs.
If one only considers recurring fuel costs, one is not addressing the total cost of ownership and therefore is misrepresenting the cost of the energy supplied.
There are also the consequential costs. The grid in South Australia has to cope with over-voltages at local transformers because people aren;t at home to consume the surplus power. Prices get driven negative in summer during the day, forcing other generation offline. Yet the grid must meet the winter dark demand, or the peak sundown demand on a hot summer day. The costs are diluted over fewer grid kWh sold. Those without solar installations are lumbered with subsidising those who have them.
Any form of energy that isn’t base load doesn’t work “extremely well”, troll.
Puerto Rico tried solar panels and they had a very high failure rate
after hurricanes Maria and Irma. The island is now using LNG
power and it’s cleaner and less expensive than the oil power it
used earlier. There are two solar panel farms in my area in the 20-30
acre size. I predict that next month there will be an Arctic Outbreak
and these panel farms will be covered with snow during this critical
time and completely worthless just like the wind farms during those
windless critical energy periods. So curious that the local media never points
this out.
Just look to Florida and Oklahoma to see what unpredictable weather can do to solar farms. Not a good sight to see while talking about energy security.
They only work well in areas with lots of sun and not much sand.
The number or areas where solar works at all, is a lot less than you want to believe.
While it is possible that there will be more solar in 20 years, it will only be because the subsidies are even greater than they are now.
The only time when you sell more in electricity that those PV units cost, is when the utility is forced to pay way more than the electricity is worth.
wind and solar only work with lots of subsidies, says Warren Buffett
How many PV modules in use today will still be operating 20 years from now?
Let’s run the climate models to see how many tornadoes will take them out. Or hail storms. Or wind storms.
Wind and solar energy systems are niche technologies. There are places where they can be economically applied, but not wholesale or grid level.
It may be, in the future, every house, every parking lot, and a few other well imagined applications will cause a growth, but it will still be niche applications and primarily solar.
Significant is an unquantified word. For one person a 1% reduction is significant. Hence your prediction could come true, given the appropriate definitions are applied to make it true.
“Realistic cost estimates” Yeah, how about the reality that the true energy cost of these offshore wind turbine projects exceeds the energy produced over their lifetimes?
They only exist as subsidy farms, and will generate more CO2 than if they were never built.
Nonsense. Energy return on investment for wind turbines is about 18. See:
Hall, C., Lambert, J., Balogh, S., (2013). EROI of Global Energy Resources: Status,
Trends and Social Implications. DOI: 10.13140/2.1.2419.8724
But nothing can be done about the horrendous pollution during their making…
nor the environmental and ecological damage to large areas during their installation and use…
nor their eventual disposal and land-fill requirements after their short life span.
The Energy return on investment nonsense ignores the fact that they need 100% back-up by a reliable source of electricity. It is a fake metric. !
If they have such a great EROI, then they should be able to function without any need for subsidies..
… just installation LOANS to be paid back from “energy produced when needed”
That seems fair, doesn’t it ? .
Then why all.the !massive taxpayer subsidies? If the ROI is so good investors should be funding it not me.
You have to realise,
Izzy is not really capable of thinking past “very simple”.
Try not to confuse the poor child. !
Now add backup, storage, curtailment, extra pylons, grid stabilisation kit and recalculate.
and replacement costs
and negative ecological impacts
And disposal fees for the old blades and nacelle.
Hang on. You haven’t made other windfarm manufacturers pay for the ability to get their electricity to the market why pick on me? 🙂
Wow, you just proved my point. That analysis excludes most of the issues leading to a net negative ROI. Even land based systems incur crushing CO2 negative add-ons, like transmission lines, maintenance, intermittancy backup, and true disposal costs. Add on the additional items for offshore systems, and the 18 X ROI falls apart.
Prove me wrong, show me a single wind turbine manufacturer using the output of their systems to produce more wind turbines.
If they truly had an ROI of 18X, it would be criminally irresponsible to their company shareholders to use anything else. I’ll wait.
Why are you citing non-peer-reviewed reports as evidence?
The UK government commissioned and paid for the report to support UK policy.
The authors even acknowledge their figures could be widely off the mark by stating:
3 out of 10, must fact-check before posting garbage
Then why has this happened ?
Vattenfall halted its planned Norfolk Boreas 140 turbine offshore wind farm in July 2023
Orsted scrapped plans for two large projects off New Jersey
Shell pulled out of two other projects off the US coast and also its South Korean
projects
Equinor axed its offshore wind plans in Spain and Portugal in August this year having previously shut down its operations in Viet Nam and said it was considering exiting other markets.
GE Vernova said in October it was slimming down its offshore wind business in an attempt to return the company to profitability whilst noting that their competitors were facing similar problems
Because there are cheaper ways to produce electricity, not because wind turbines have a negative EROEI. Wind turbines can produce far more energy than is required to make them. But that doesn’t mean that they are cheaper than other energy sources.
Huh, maybe you should read your comment again and think about that a bit.
Think about what? What is surprising about the fact that some ways of producing energy are more expensive than others. The fact that wind turbines cost more than coal doesn’t mean that they don’t produce electricity or that they provide a positive return over their lifetime.
Izaak, any chance you could provide some examples of cost per MWh generated by the different types of power sources? Specifically the total MWh generated over the lifetime of the generator vs. the total cost of construction and operation?
That’s really the only way to determine the relative actual costs.
It doesn’t matter how many times this study is refuted, the trolls keep dragging it up.
Just like the 99.99999999% consensus noise.
Did you include the costs of the coal and petroleum needed to put them up?
Not going to bother. When the title includes “Social Implications” it raises a red flag that it is propaganda, not engineering.
Back in the early 20th Century a bank robber could receive the death penalty, even if no one was harmed during the commission of his crimes. Hopefully, one of the changes in energy policy from the incoming Trump Admin will be to institute execution as an option for those knowingly killing large numbers of rare or endangered animals for personal gain. Even better would be to make it retroactive; I’m looking at YOU, Tom Steyer!
The alarmists will squawk and screech, but they are much like babies birds; stretching their necks up to receive a Motherlode of propaganda and hoaxes from the corporate media that fuels their outrage and ignorance! A question for the delusional; where has large scale implementation of wind and solar led to lower rates for the public? Just asking for a few billion friends!
Killing large numbers, or just one, for personal gain, would keep the executioner very busy, plus that should be applied to other heinous crimes as well.
The criminal class, a pox on civil society, would be exterminated in just a few years
Green crap demands a lot of money. Yet when your economy is showing modest growth it isn’t de-industrialising… That circle cannot be squared.
Britain on brink of recession after growth revised away Living standards fall after GDP flatlined – Telegraph
recession made in Downing Street’ – Daily Mail
Growth-focused’ Labour’s Net Zero policies may well achieve the opposite
Another unnecessary inflationary tax will add to voters’ gloom – the Sun
Look out Germany….
Green crap is like an invasive disease, far worse than COVID.
It spreads into all nooks and crannies and freezes free will, and kills private enterprise, which is its goal. Merry Christmas
It’s “neck-and-neck” to the Finish Line!
Just a thought, if wind energy was so cheap, we could use the cheap electricity to manufacture more wind turbines. Which would of course allow the new wind turbines to be sold at a lower cost. Gosh, at that rate, wind energy could be permanently at zero cost.
Must be something wrong in my logic, I must seek the advice of Ed milliband, he’ll know all the answers.
If at first it does not work out, just do more of it?
Impressive picture of a jack-leg crane barge !!!
And another one bites
And another one bites the dust…
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/12/20/totalenergies-halts-offshore-ny-wind-farm/
They have $800m tied up in the lease premium for 85,000 acres for a 6 year build, 33 year operate lease. The prospect that subsidies would be eliminated has eliminated the project. Hard toeee it being resurrected at the end of the Trump presidency.
No Subsidies = No Windmills.
Windmills cannot operate without government subsidies. Warren Buffet says the only reason to invest in a windmill company is for the government subsidies.
I don’t think Trump will be subsidizing many windmill projects.
The future for wind may be bleak but Biden BOEM keeps churning out project approvals making it harder for the Trumpers to stop them.
https://renews.biz/97834/boem-approves-southcoast-wind/
Ya gotta love the picture of the crazy lady running BOEM.
Insanity is a resume requirement for all Bidenistas.
Trump will stop the subsidies, and redo environmental studies.
The projects will not get financing and insurance.
“Amid Economic and Policy Challenges…” aka Donald J Trump.
Ban the Expensive, Dysfunctional Offshore Wind Turbine Fiasco
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/ban-the-dysfunctional-offshore-wind-turbine-fiasco
by Willem Post
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Eliminate all subsidies of any kind for all industries, etc.
Federal government spending would be reduced by several hundred $billion each year
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Rotor Blade Test Requirements
Regarding the disintegrating rotor blades in Cape Cod, ultrasonic testing is fine, radiological testing is fine, but field testing of fully instrumented, 351-ft long, rotor blades on a mast, in a windy area of the North Sea, for at least one year, is the most important and vital part, which Quebec GE executives decided to “omit” to expedite delivery of rotor blades.
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These rotor blades are about three times as long as an airplane wing of a Boeing-747.
Nobody with a sane mind would ever “omit” field testing, including bend and torsion testing.
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Torsional Failure Issues Date Back to 1997
LM Wind Power, formerly LM Glasfiber, is a Danish manufacturer of wind turbine blades, had blade cracking issues, due to torsion, as far back as 1997
Blade cracks signal new stress problem, preventative investment needed on turbines with large LM blades
That was 27 years ago.
That involved Danish-built, 19 m blades at that time
The Cape Cod blades are 107 m
A rotor with 107 m blades scribes a circle of about 600 ft diameter
The wind speeds significantly vary from top to bottom, and from side to side
That 107 m blade sees all sorts of wind speeds, as it rotates, bends and twists, unlike the much smaller airplane wing of a 747
General Electric Bought LM Wind Power in 2016
The 107 m prototype, GE-LM blade,
never had a one-year field test in a rough ocean environment, and
never had a torsion test at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, because it was cut in two parts to fit in the building.
Torsion testing predicts a material’s behavior under twisting forces as one unit.
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107 m Rotor Blade Failure
On July 13, 2024, a Vineyard Wind blade broke off Nantucket sending 60 tons of microfibers, fiberglass, and balsa wood into the ocean and onto beaches, damaging fisheries and tourism for many months, if not years
.
Static testing is wholly inadequate for a rotor blade that sees variable torsion and variable bending forces WITH EACH TURN, because wind speeds significantly vary from side to side and top to bottom of the 800-ft diameter circle scribed by the rotor thousands of times per day.
During strong winds, say 30 to 40 miles/h, those dynamic forces are very high, and can only be measured by fully instrumenting a blade on a mast in the North Sea, for at least a year to cover all weather conditions.
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What were these GE executives thinking?
How in hell did they get into these top positions?
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Falsifying Test Records
GE Quebec personnel falsified rotor test data, to expedite delivery, instead of admitting the design is a Rube Goldberg
The falsified test records endangered people, the environment, ocean fauna, fisheries, and tourism.
All these are felonious offenses.
Governments bureaucrats likely were involved as well.
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Treasonous Government Bureaucrats
Bureau of Safety and Environment Enforcement, BSEE, (what a name for a useless bureau) wants to establish facts on the ground, by building wind turbine projects without rotors, so projects will be harder to cancel by sane people in early 2025.
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High Costs/kWh of Offshore Wind Foisted onto a Gullible Public
Forcing utilities to pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems, and
forcing utilities to pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind systems
is suicidal economic insanity.
Excluded costs, at a future 30% wind/solar penetration on the grid, the current UK level:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement, about 2 c/kWh
– Traditional plants counteracting wind/solar variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, about 2 c/kWh
– Traditional plants providing electricity during 1) low-wind, and 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar conditions, about 2 c/kWh
– Wind and solar electricity that could have been produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
.https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
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The insanity and environmental damage it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth economy is in such big do-do
I hear the whales love the calming hum/grind of these things (rolls eyes).
When will Connecticut’s electric storage plan fall apart with debt and recriminations?
Shortly after the current politicians retire.
Is Connecticut planning on having enough storage to get them through the long COLD Connecticut winter?
The storage is up their sleeves, follow the queen of spades.
With snow-covered panels, like two of my neighbors here in Vermont.
It is still snowing, as I look out of my window
More good news. If just one of these states would wise up they could build a nuclear plant, generate far more energy than the proposed wind farm ever could and sell what they didn’t need to their neighbors for a nice profit.
New York State prohibits a new gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to Connecticut
Trump will put an end to that nonsense
There’s a good idea!
Hopefully this is what happens to US Wind’s MarWind (300MW) and Momentum Wind (800MW) projects off of Ocean City, Maryland. Although Delaware approved the beach landfall and dredged inland bay route for the power cables, Sussex county DE said no to the rezoning required for the substation. Hopefully that holds things up enough that US Wind gives up. They are already trying to renegotiate their prices upward.
I think all these windmill companies are having the same problem: Their costs are getting too high. The economic realities are causing them to cancel projects.
High Costs/kWh of Offshore Wind Foisted onto a Gullible Public
Forcing utilities to pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems, and
forcing utilities to pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind systems
is suicidal economic insanity.
Excluded costs, at a future 30% wind/solar penetration on the grid, the current UK level:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement, about 2 c/kWh
– Traditional plants counteracting wind/solar variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, about 2 c/kWh
– Traditional plants providing electricity during 1) low-wind, and 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar conditions, about 2 c/kWh
– Wind and solar electricity that could have been produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
.https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
.
The insanity and environmental damage it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth economy is in such big do-do
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Europe is Not Our Ally
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Europe wants to foist high electricity prices onto the US, using the ruse of global-warming/climate-change, so the US will also be in big do-do, to preserve Europe’s extremely advantageous trade balance with the US.
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Why in hell is GE, a US company, in cahoots with a French company, building several hundred experimental rotor blades in Quebec, Canada, and have them transported from Quebec to Cape Cod, and, because of defects, from Cape Cod to France and back to Cape Cod, using European-owned, specialized ships, to a French rotor blade production facility, which happens to have a more suitable testing lab?
Why is field testing not done after lab testing?
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US Government and Democrat Cabal Screwing American Workers
How low can a US company and US government go by screwing US workers out of jobs?
The Inflation Reduction Act was sold to the gullible/misinformed public, because “it would create jobs in the US”
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The Socialist/Obama-holdover cabal, using demented BIDEN/word-salad HARRIS as its puppets for 4 years, did its Offshore Wind thing, and its Open Borders thing, its DEI/Woke thing, etc., and drove US society of its tracks, and ran up huge federal deficits and grossly increased the size of federal government and national debt.
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The cabal “things” ended up screwing the American people, and fattened the treasure chests of:
1) the traitorous cabal and associated entities, and
2) Europe, the reason the European elites like Biden/Harris so much.
Was cabal thinking the American people would just put up with this crap forever?
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Now you see why the American people finally had to take revenge by voting the cabal idiots out.
Now you see why former Democrats Trump, Gabbard, Musk and RFK, Jr. became Republicans
Now you see why the Amish, who normally do not vote, finally went to the polls and voted for Trump.
Now you see why Christians turned out to vote for Trump, en masse, to preserve Christianity.
Now you see why European elites hate Trump, because Trump puts America first, unlike two-faced, obstructionist RINOs, like Senators Collins, Murkowski, etc.