First Offshore Wind Farm In US Waters Delivers Power To Rhode Island (arstechnica.com) 196
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, energy company Deepwater Wind announced that its wind farm three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, has the all-clear to sell electricity to the regional power grid. The Block Island Wind Farm is the first offshore wind energy plant in the U.S., and it's expected to produce 30 MW of electricity at full capacity. Deepwater Wind is slowly ramping up energy output and still must provide additional paperwork to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, but the executive director of that organization, Grover Fugate, told the Providence Journal, "we don't anticipate any major issues" to getting the wind farm fully online. The one hitch in the Deepwater's plan is that one of the five turbines was recently damaged when a drill bit was left in a critical part of turbine. According to the Providence Journal, "the bit had caused damage to an unspecified number of the 128 magnet modules that line the circular generator and are critical to producing energy." Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them. For now, four turbines capable of churning out 6 MW of power each are operational. The Providence Journal notes that National Grid will pay Deepwater Wind 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour of power, with the price escalating over time to 47.9 cents per kilowatt hour. Because the residents of Block Island have some of the most expensive electricity rates in the nation, they will actually see energy savings, despite the price. Mainland Rhode Islanders, on the other hand, will pay an extra $1.07 per month on average.
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It's more of a Wind Small Holding...
Kansas, Illinois (Score:2)
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Yeah, sitting in Germany and can see ... well, it's foggy so they're kinda blurry today. I think it's usually 20-30 on the field about a mile away from where I live. Not even offshore.
I'm surprised windmills are increasing the price of power for the mainlanders, though. What's that about?
Re:Farm? Hardly (Score:5, Informative)
The US is very, very far behind on off-shore wind and the first installations are always expensive. Given 5-10 years they should be able to get to where Europe is and get the price down too, although of course Europe will have moved on in that time as well.
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I don't know about the oceans/seas in the America's, but I do know that the North Sea once was land. The North Sea isn't deep and there are plenty of "underwater hills" that can be used as a base to build a wind farm. That alone makes it less expensive to build wind farms. How deep is the ocean around the American shorelines? I don't think it is cheap to build a wind farm when the bottom of the sea/ocean is like 500 meters deep. But again, I don't know anything about the geology of the American oceans.
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We have a high amount of on shore wind farms, though. Far beyond what most of Europe has installed.
Offshore wind in the US coastal waters (Score:4, Informative)
The west coast is pretty much useless with an extremely short continental shelf.
About 58% of US wind resources off shore are in waters too deep to mount to the sea floor. Fortunately a lot of work is going into developing floating wind turbines so this should become a non-issue in due course.
According to the DOE the US has over 2,000 gigawatts [energy.gov] of available wind power offshore which is more than enough in theory to supply the entire current electricity consumption of the US. Frankly we are being foolish to not take full advantage of offshore wind.
The east coast does not have reliable wind patterns for efficient wind generation.
That's evidently not true at least as a general proposition since they are installing wind farms on the east coast including the one discussed here near Rhode Island. I'm sure it's focally true for some areas but clearly not for the entire eastern seaboard.
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Frankly we are being foolish to not take full advantage of offshore wind.
As opposed to being foolish for using land based wind?
The problem of course, is that while the US has a good bit of coastline, we have a lot of real estate that is a long way from the ocean. So we've put in wind power in areas that will be served by it. As well, in comparison to small European countries where there is not much available real estate and much or all of the country can be served by offshore wind, we have space. And working on the things is a lot easier when they are on land. Offshore is go
Population close to shore (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem of course, is that while the US has a good bit of coastline, we have a lot of real estate that is a long way from the ocean.
Of course we do. We also have the ability to transmit electricity there. And don't kid yourself. A huge percentage of the population of the US lives within two hundred miles of the ocean. This includes the entire populations of New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, Jacksonville, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and plenty more. Counties directly on the shoreline account for 40% of US population [noaa.gov]. All of these cities could easily be supplied by off shore wind power. We're idiots for not taking advantage of this power source.
The east coast of the US is prone to some serious weather excursions in the form of hurricanes. A lot of them. Even in Rhode Island. So an offshore wind facility has to be designed with that in mind.
They are [quora.com]. My understanding is that they stop the turbines from spinning above a certain wind load (somewhere around 125kph currently). They have a hurricane mode where the blades are pitched to neutral so it doesn't spin and then locked down facing the wind. Of course if the wind gets high enough damage is likely to result from a hurricane on land or off shore. Cuba had some wind farms survive hurricane Sandy which had winds of 110mph.
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The wind on the ocean also almost never stops. In fact in the area these turbines are installed the wind literally never stops and it's high enough speed that it's rated as one of the best locations on the planet. These Turbines will likely be generating power 90+% of the time greatly reducing the power than needs to be pulled from diesel generators on the island. Diesel generated power is awful cost wise, it's easily the most expensive power generation in the country.
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The wind on the ocean also almost never stops. In fact in the area these turbines are installed the wind literally never stops and it's high enough speed that it's rated as one of the best locations on the planet.
It tends to change direction in morning and evening, but that's no big deal. For this island, offshore wind power is a no brainer solution.
These Turbines will likely be generating power 90+% of the time greatly reducing the power than needs to be pulled from diesel generators on the island. Diesel generated power is awful cost wise, it's easily the most expensive power generation in the country.
And that is why it is a no brainer. Diesel is indeed one of the worst methods of generating power.
I'm all about wind power. The places where it is built tend to have pretty steady winds. What annoys me about this whole subthread is that people keep trying to frame this as the ever smarter Europeans build their superior offshore facilities, fwhile us 'Murricans, when
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All of these cities could easily be supplied by off shore wind power. We're idiots for not taking advantage of this power source.
Why? Is ocean based wind power somehow superior? Or just the concept of whatever America does is categorically wrong and stupid?
I can personally go up to visit a Wind turbine site along the Allegheny front. People doing maintenance on these turbines drive a truck to the site, unlock the gate and do their work. What you are saying is that it is idiotic to use a ready location, easy to get to instead of a place that is feasible, yet much more difficult and expensive to access. It isn't that ocean based sites are bad, it's that they are a compromise that you need make only if it makes good sense to build them offshore.
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The geography of the US is not nearly as "welcoming" to off shore wind farms. The west coast is pretty much useless with an extremely short continental shelf. The east coast does not have reliable wind patterns for efficient wind generation. We have a high amount of on shore wind farms, though. Far beyond what most of Europe has installed.
We have the available land, which Europe doesn't have.
The biggest thing that offshore wind power has is the wind source. But for getting that power anywhere, it is way inferior. Sinking cables to the bottom of an ocean to carry the power is a logistical issue. Repairing them is a bigger one. Somewhere in here some nunclehead was asking why the US was so far behind in offshore wind. The answer is that in most cases, we can get our wind power from much better locations.
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While I imagine cables for transmitting power are obviously going to be considerably different than telecommunications cables, the fact is that we've been laying cables on the ocean floor for 150 years, so I hardly think it's that much of a technical challenge. Obviously there will be some loss due to distance, but overland transmission cables can easily transmit at similar distances with fairly manageable loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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While I imagine cables for transmitting power are obviously going to be considerably different than telecommunications cables, the fact is that we've been laying cables on the ocean floor for 150 years, so I hardly think it's that much of a technical challenge. Obviously there will be some loss due to distance, but overland transmission cables can easily transmit at similar distances with fairly manageable loss
Manageable of course. But if there is a problem, there is a big difference between working on land and working hundreds to thousands of feet deep.
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And yet we have been doing it with other kinds of transmission cables for 150 years. What problems do you envision that would be different with an electrical transmission cable than with a copper telecommunications cable?
In fact, it looks to me like whatever problems you are imagining have already been solved [wikipedia.org]. NorNed is 360 miles long and has a loss of 4.2%.
In other words, there is no real problem.
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And yet we have been doing it with other kinds of transmission cables for 150 years. What problems do you envision that would be different with an electrical transmission cable than with a copper telecommunications cable?
Yes we have. Here is the main issue. How much is it going to cost you to fix it.
In fact, it looks to me like whatever problems you are imagining have already been solved
So underwater cables are 100 percent failure free? That's a solved problem. We don't even have aboveground transmission lines solved yet.
You are trying to turn this in to an argument that stupid Ol Olsoc hates underwater power cables. Stupid Ol Olsoc don't hate underwater power cables. Then again, stupid ol Olsoc has a pretty fair inkling that sending a diving team down to repair an underwater cable will likely not cost th
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The US is very, very far behind on off-shore wind and the first installations are always expensive. Given 5-10 years they should be able to get to where Europe is and get the price down too, although of course Europe will have moved on in that time as well.
There are a couple reasons that this is news, and a ready explanation for the paucity of US offshore generation.
First up, that this small installation offshore even exists is half a miracle. This was heavily opposed by the Koch brothers, who though various shadow organizations, fought it tooth and claw. So anything at all built in that location is notable. Chalk it up to a win for alternative energy.
Now the other thing. A big reason that the US doesn't have much of anything in the way of Offshore powe
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Just yesterday there was a new contract signed by Shell for a new windturbine field, where they offered 5.45 cents a Kw/h. The Danes have just signed contracts for a new field with 4.99 cents per Kw/h.
That's pretty close to the price of coal, if you ignore the radioactive waste from coal, the issues and risks associated with mining it, the pollution and last but not least, the CO2 contribution. If you factor in those little tidbits, wind energy is now cheaper than coal, which is the cheapest conventional me
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We're not "very, very far behind" in anything. We just don't need to foot the extra cost of shifting wind farms off shore, we like to do things correctly. Here is a local example from my own backyard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . There are dozens of sites just like this one all over the Great Lakes. Why would we swim out into the ocean to get what is more easily had in our backyard?
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You can, you know, have multiple types of energy generation, right?
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In Australia apparently they cause storms that knock down transmission lines. They probably give cats fleas as well.
It's about a ridiculous habit of charging at windmills that for extra hilarity is hundreds of years after a satire about idiots charging at windmills was written. Idiots seeing the new as a monster to be opposed is apparently a plot that never gets old.
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But that was charging AT windmills, not charging FOR windmills!
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Re:Farm? Hardly (Score:4, Funny)
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Whatever the subject, you can always find one scientist who'll say anything.
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It's always fun to watch pseudo-skeptics basically work in nothing but red herrings in non sequiturs. It's almost as if they know they have no real argument, so just automatically go to fallacies.
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That's the mainlanders subsidizing the power for the islanders. Typical, really - claim that the Islanders will get cheaper electricity as a result of "New Thing", though the only reason they're getting cheaper electricity is that the majority of the population of the State is paying a bit more to allow the islanders to get it cheaper than they've been getting it (but not "cheap", just "cheaper".).
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I don't think that's quite how it works.
More likely the islanders have been paying overprice until now to get power generated on the mainland out to the island, but now that a wind farm is built close to the island they can get that power cheaper than what they're getting right now, and it's the people on the mainland that end up paying more because now THEY are doing the long import.
Or maybe you could do a little research instead of assuming. They did not have a mainland connection, so they paid for high price diesel. This project included a mainland connection as part of the agreement, because wind power can't work by itself, it needs a grid with traditional sources to offset its intermittency.
What is not talked about is the fact that power culd have been less expensive overall had they just build the mainland connection and built more on-shore wind.
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We just don't have offshore wind production (not really needed)
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It's also the 3rd largest country (by area) in the world, and second in terms of energy consumption, so it's not that great a surprise. Not to knock the US, but it lags in terms of wind as a percentage of energy consumption - 4.7% compared to Spain (19%), Germany (13.3%) and the UK (11%) - but ahead of China (3.3%).
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That site is a propaganda site.
But they have good links, perhaps you like to follow them and read them?
If you have problems comprehending them you likely have friends who can help you. You do have friends, right?
USA is #1 in many things ... but not energy production from wind, or growing installations of such power plants.
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The US is #1 in the world in wind: http://www.awea.org/MediaCente... [awea.org] We just don't have offshore wind production (not really needed)
And that is the plain and simple truth. We'll probably have wind energy for offshore islands on the east coast, but not much else.
Re:Farm? Hardly (Score:5, Informative)
I can probably see a hundred or so from my house in the UK. Is Amercia really so far behind with renewables?
Nope. America is ahead of Britain in both total capacity and per capita wind power generation. Texas alone has more installed wind capacity than all of the UK. However, China has us both beat in total capacity, and Denmark has us both beat in per capita generation.
Re:Farm? Hardly (Score:5, Interesting)
Britain is not the best comparison for Europe. First off, Britain is always a laggard when it comes to clean power - it was a laggard just in cleaning up its act with sulphur emissions with the coal plants. The UK is also not really Europe and generally doesn't subscribe to Europe's more progressive policies when it comes to energy. Expect a lot of backsliding on this once Brexit is complete and EU regulations are no longer pulling the UK kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Re:Farm? Hardly (Score:4, Interesting)
total renewables by country [wikipedia.org]
Different countries face different challenges so there isn't really point in comparing wind by itself, you need to look at their entire energy production. A country like Iceland is much greener than the US for energy production but doesn't have wind production at all. If you look at all renewable resources the US is well behind most of Europe. Also China is not ahead of the US in wind production but they have much more hydopower.
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I can probably see a hundred or so from my house in the UK. Is Amercia really so far behind with renewables?
Nope. America is ahead of Britain in both total capacity and per capita wind power generation. Texas alone has more installed wind capacity than all of the UK. However, China has us both beat in total capacity, and Denmark has us both beat in per capita generation.
Damn, are we going to hand out trophies?
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Texas is 3 times larger than the UK.
The only place in the UK with population densities lower than what we find in the USA is the Pitcairn islands. The inhabited area of Texas is far smaller than that of the UK, especially if you don't count whole cattle ranches as residences. People tend to be clustered around sources of water, as you would expect in a big-arsed state with so much of it essentially uninhabitable even before you calculate for the redneck factor.
Population density of Texas vs UK (Score:3)
The inhabited area of Texas is far smaller than that of the UK, especially if you don't count whole cattle ranches as residences.
Texas is very close in size to France (696,241 km^2 vs 643,801 km^2) but has roughly 40% of the population (26 million vs 66 million respectively). The UK population is roughly the same as France but an area of 242,495 km^2. So the population density of Texas is lower but if you take the rural areas of Texas out of the equation (most of West Texas) the population density isn't too far off from the UK. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are all in the eastern half of the state and together account f [wikipedia.org]
Re: Farm? Hardly (Score:2, Funny)
Two Texas's is nearly one Alaska. Alaska is 547 times larger than Rhode Island. 12,000 RI's would fit on the moon. There is not much wind on the moon.
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Is Amercia really so far behind with renewables?
Only in places where hypocritical NIMBY "wind turbines will disturb my pristine ocean view" left-wingers live. In solid, Trump-voting Oklahoma and Texas, wind farms dot the landscape.
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Off Shore Wind and NIMBYs (Score:2)
Only in places where hypocritical NIMBY "wind turbines will disturb my pristine ocean view" left-wingers live
Plenty of right wing NIMBYs too. The only difference is the reasons. They tend to dislike it for political rather than aesthetic reasons. Usually due to connections to the fossil fuel industries.
In solid, Trump-voting Oklahoma and Texas, wind farms dot the landscape.
Not a lot of ocean front property in Oklahoma and in Texas the shorelines are already dotted with oil rigs. Last I checked oil companies weren't big fans of wind power. (pun slightly intended) Yeah they have on-shore wind but that's not the same thing.
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Not a lot of ocean front property in Oklahoma and in Texas the shorelines are already dotted with oil rigs. Last I checked oil companies weren't big fans of wind power. (pun slightly intended) Yeah they have on-shore wind but that's not the same thing.
It's not as if there are so many oil rigs in Texas that there isn't enough room for wind turbines. The ocean is really big and the Gulf a Mexico is relatively shallow. Most of the oil rigs are built far enough offshore that they aren't visible from the shoreline.
Why no off shore wind farms in Texas (Score:2)
It's not as if there are so many oil rigs in Texas that there isn't enough room for wind turbines.
Of course there is room. But nevertheless there isn't a single off shore wind farm on the Texas coast. The only reasonable conclusion is that some form of NIMBY must be at work if there is adequate wind to justify installation of a wind farm.
Most of the oil rigs are built far enough offshore that they aren't visible from the shoreline.
More than enough are visible from shore that obviously people aren't getting bent over the appearance of them.
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Nor would I build one on Nantucket Sound, which is exactly what the company Energy Management is trying to do with its Cape Wind project.
Doesn't that put you solidly on the side of the Koch brothers and their shadow organizations?
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How I love statistics!
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
and so forth.
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Number of turbines isn't a useful measure. What's important is total capacity.
Just a few miles from here is Altamont Pass, where there is a very large wind farm, but the turbines there are old, small and inefficient.
Apart from Texas, there is very little new investment in wind power taking place.
America is conflicted (Score:3)
Is Amercia really so far behind with renewables?
Yes and no. The answer like most things having to do with America the answer is complicated. America actually has quite a lot of wind and solar power installed with more coming all the time. But America also has some pretty entrenched fossil fuel interests and a climate denying political right and some NIMBYs that makes installing renewable power more difficult than it should be. America is pretty far behind on off-shore wind power in particular. Sad given that America is in many ways a maritime nation [wikipedia.org]
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America is pretty far behind on off-shore wind power in particular. Sad given that America is in many ways a maritime nation with some of the longest coasts in the world.
There's quite a bit of difference between running a ship across the top of the ocean and building a wind turbine anchored to the bottom.
The entire West coast is not very useful for current wind turbines, because the continental shelf is very small. Until floating turbines become practical, that takes a very big chunk of coastline away. The Gulf coast and East coast do not have that continental shelf problem, but the wind in those areas is far more variable.
So instead we built a ton of on-shore wind turbin
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What I would honestly like to know is how much energy a windmill takes out of the air.
I mean, look at a storm that literally rips through an entire city without so much as slowing down. There is a LOT of energy in the atmosphere, and I'll be the first to admit I haven't the faintest clue how much is generated on a daily basis.
Re: Farm? Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
What I would honestly like to know is how much energy a windmill takes out of the air.
Probably much less than the heat a coal plant puts into it.
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If that's true that gives me a great idea, we can put a coal plant next to a windmill farm and fire that bad boy up to keep the windmills turning when the wind dies down. Genius! :P
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For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.... adding resistance to the wind traveling around our earth, and you don't think this will have any long term repercussions?
I must ask you first. What do you know about where and how wind come from? If you can answer that, you would understand why wind farming should not have any significant impact or repercussion on anything. **hint: wind is not created by the region where it is going through**
To be closed Jan 21st? (Score:2)
Re:To be closed Jan 21st? (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully not. They'll make a damned good profit with all the hot air that'll be blowing.
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Perry, who once promised to shut down the dept. for which he will become secretary...errr...well, he did sort of forget what dept. that was but we presume it was Energy, has actually promoted wind and some renewables in Texas...something about jobs he said. He also supported oil and gas....which will be a bit funny for him as another part of the incoming administration tries to get coal use up. It is important to get coal use up so that the coal industry can make more use of machines in place of people to p
Insane prices (Score:2)
Re:Insane prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I am the first to ridicule USA, but in this case, I won't. It is their very first installation, it is obvious that it will be expensive - they lack infrastructure to mass produce offshore windparks. The next windpark will be far cheaper.
Americans, you have my congratulations for the first step! Took you long enough but you'll get there eventually.
Re:Insane prices (Score:5, Informative)
About half the U.S. West coast (California) has practically no continental shelf. You go a kilometer offshore and the water is already deeper than the European continental shelf. Go a few more kilometers offshore and the water is 1-3 km deep. Northern California to Washington does have a slight continental shelf, but (1) practically nobody lives along the coast north of San Francisco, and (2) the bulk of U.S. hydroelectric power is there giving the region the cheapest electricity in the country. So in the geographic region of the U.S.which is most analogous to Europe in terms of strongest winds, offshore wind farms are unfeasible due to underwater topography, (lack of) population, or economics.
The U.S. East coast has a large continental shelf, but due to the direction of the prevailing winds, you have to go far offshore to find winds stronger than what you'd find onshore. The focus of most offshore wind in the U.S. has been just south of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, where the shoreline turns almost directly east-west [goo.gl], allowing wind speeds to pick up relatively close to shore. It's still nowhere near as good as the offshore winds west of Europe though. The wind farms off Scotland enjoy some of the highest capacity factors on earth - higher than 60%. Typical offshore wind capacity factor in the U.S. is closer to 30%-35%.
But what do I know. I'm just an ignorant American.
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That's the nice thing about statistics - they can show completely contradictory things depending on how you count.
If we go for wind capacity per capita, USA would barely be among the top 10 - yet you have far far more uninhabited land than any European country, more than enough room to build stuff. If we go for wind power as a percentage of electricity produced, then, well, duh - EU wind power share is about twofold (although, to be honest, a part of it is the generally far lower power usage in the European
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Thank you. With all those idiots here making ignorant comparisons, its nice to see that someone actually thinks about the "why" part.
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47.9 cents/kWh? That's insane
It's 0.50-1.50kWh here in Ontario. [powerauthority.on.ca] This is what Feed in Tariff programs do, drive the price of electricity through the roof. It is now [nationalpost.com] so bad in Ontario, [nationalpost.com] that people [nationalpost.com] are going broke [financialpost.com] trying to pay for electricity bills. The federal Liberals, are now looking at this *exact* policy. If it passes, you can be assured that you'll likely see mass protests and riots in the streets here in Canada. People can't afford 0.18/kWH(which is the peak price in Ontario) already. Top this off with the provincial Libera
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Perhaps you should figure what is going wrong in your energy market?
Germany also has "absurd high" feed in tariffs for wind and solar, but the end user prices don't sky rock through the roof.
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Germany also has "absurd high" feed in tariffs for wind and solar, but the end user prices don't sky rock through the roof.
You mean like 0.30kWh [europa.eu] isn't expensive and sky high? That's not counting regional fluctuations but an averaged price. Where prices can hit over 0.44kWh.
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0.18/kWh peak price? My heart bleeds for them.
My current peak price in CA is $0.44/kWh, with the lowest price $0.12. In fact, the high price works in my favour, because that's what the power company is paying to buy the power that my solar panels are producing.
More typical in this area is the E1 tariff [pge.com], which varies from $0.18 to $0.40 for a kWh, depending on total usage, not time of use.
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AKA you're not paying +42% of wages directly into taxes. Then pay another 13% on top of that with "sales tax" and that's also not counting property taxes. Once all totaled up we're pushing 60-70% [nationalpost.com]
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Your reading comprehension is poor.
The article includes sales taxes and property taxes in the "42%", making that number quite typical for a western nation that provides universal health care.
And your point is?
Insane ideology (Score:3)
LOL an Ontario Conservative shill on Slashdot, whodathunkit!
Not sure if you don't read, or just like spouting ideology but pretty much everything you said is in error, other than the fact that you posted some op ed pieces of conservative based newspapers about Ontario people mad about energy bills. I'll concede that the Liberals "green" direction of a few years ago hasn't produced the results they wanted, and it likely has resulted in slightly higher energy costs. You could also say that (subtracting the "g
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You want to know what the kicker is? In Ontario "green energy" accounts for under 1% of total generation and over 55% of the total price sold to consumers.
So when I looked this up [www.ieso.ca], I found the following breakdown: Nuclear 36%, Gas/Oil 28%, Hydro 23%, Wind 11%, Biofuel 1%, Solar 1%. That's 36% of total energy generation.
People can't afford 0.18/kWH(which is the peak price in Ontario) already.
Looking this one up, I found that they only pay peak rate for 6 hours out of the day. Then they pay "mid-peak" at
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Or to go off grid and double the production you need and feed in.
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Post to undo bad moderation (Score:2)
30 MW lol (Score:2)
Really, a half dozen turbines and 30MW? How is this seen as anything but a failure. That is at the scale of a singular solar farm.
I've been to a 300+ MW wind farm with 85+ turbines, and those were terrestrial.
That said, those were produced using the same subsidies more less as those above, which have problems. The subsidies were to drive the sector, to not only create energy, but to create jobs. However as seen above it isn't really the case when all these things are made overseas and shipped here. That is
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The average commercial solar "farm" in the US in 2016 is around 500MW, not 30.
A typical "trial" install of wind turbines is 5. This is a proof of case install. The turbines are installed in one of the highest most consistent wind patterns in the US (the eastern coast winds that blow warm air north into the arctic. These winds are rated as some of the best in the world (strongest, most consistent). Turbines installed in these areas are expected to be turning 90+% of the time and considering the islands only
Holy shit. (Score:2)
Some perspective here, as someone who has done work in the power industry.
30 MW is a very, very small amount of generation capacity. I have been to a generation facility where a 25MW diesel generator was the thing used to jump-start the rest of the plant...which was only about a 450 MW facility. 30 MW is pocket change in the power industry, a rounding error. Even small "peaker" CT plants typically produce at least 10x that amount when in service.
Now, for the cost per KWh. The price cited above is what N
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Are you factoring in the long term costs of continuing to use coal-fired power plants?
The best part of my day (Score:2)
Reading this:
Although the magnet modules can apparently be replaced easily, Deepwater needs to have the components shipped from France, where General Electric, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, makes them.
Offshoring is wonderful!!! **head/hand-desk laughter**
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So shall we look at subsidies to the fossil fuel sector, which dwarf all the renewable energy subsidies put together?
Re:meanwhile (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
- http://www.bbc.com/news/busine... [bbc.com]
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
And don't get me started on the subsidies nuclear has received since its inception because... strategic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
4 links to articles asserting that fossil fuels get subsidies, and the only subsidy actually named is, hilariously, the cap on liability for nuclear accidents. If you had doubts about the neutrality of Wikipedia before, ask yourself why that would be included in a section titled "Impact of fossil fuel subsidies".
One article also links to another article that mentions production expenses for drilling, and loss of value of a field. These may sound familiar to people who have ever done business taxes, becaus
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The only government subsidy specific to fossil fuels is a home heating oil subsidy available to consumers; it is targeted at those too poor to afford winter heating to prevent them from freezing to death.
Democrat party congressmen rant on about how terrible are fossil fuel subsidies then they all turn on a dime and vote for that one with perfect reliability. The point is not that home heating oil subsidies are either good or bad, but instead that critics of fossil fuel subsidies are absolute hypocrites.
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Unfortunately, those people you are sick and tired of are talking about a simple, direct, easily-proven phenomenon, whereas the so-called fossil fuel subsidies are indirect, complex, and are generally bog-standard tax credits available to all industries. Sorry the world is the way it is.
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If you're interested in reality, be careful and do some fact checking on that list. I looked at the wikipedia article and 2 big problems immediately jump out. First, the fossil fuel subsidies include "consumer subsidies." It references a study by the "Global Subsidies Initiative." I found the paper and here's what is included in consumer subsidies:
In electricity markets where end prices are regulated and electricity sector companies are not able to fully pass
through cost increases to consumers, losses may begin to accumulate in the sector. To avoid the risks of power
outages or financial collapse of the sector, the government may decide to step in to provide direct funds to bridge the
gap between costs and revenues.
Now I don't know about you, but to me that is not actually a subsidy on fossil fuels. It applies to all electricity sector companies, and it is a result of regula
Re: (Score:2)
The searches I've had to do have been more granular...specific federal and provincial subsidies/tax breaks to corporations operating the Alberta's tar sands. Not being US-based, they're pretty much useless in forums like this...and trying to remember what I did with them would be more brain exercise than I feel like having at the moment.
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How about factoring in the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. I suggest to you that coal may actually be the most heavily subsidized energy source of all time, since we're basically pushing the costs of using such power plants down the road decades, so our grandchildren can pay hundreds of billions, if not trillions, so we can have cheap electricity now.