First US Offshore Wind Farm To Usher In New Era For Industry (ap.org) 188
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Associated Press: The nation's first offshore wind farm is set to open off the coast of Rhode Island this fall, ushering in a new era in the U.S. for the industry. Developers, federal regulators and industry experts say the opening will move the U.S. industry from a theory to reality, paving the way for the construction of many more wind farms that will eventually provide power for many Americans. Deepwater Wind is building a five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, Rhode Island to power about 17,000 homes. The project costs about $300 million, according to the company. CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said the Block Island wind farm enables larger projects because it proves that wind farms can be built along the nation's coast. Offshore wind farms, which benefit from strong winds because of their location, are being proposed near population epicenters that lack the space to build on land. Indeed, several states are pushing ambitious clean energy goals, which include offshore wind. Among them is California, which has a target of generating 50 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. Vermont hopes to hit 55 percent by next year and Hawaii has called for 100 percent renewable power by 2045.
a maintenance nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
As a former marine engineer I have doubts. Unless materials science has changed dramatically, things do not thrive in ocean environments. Those materials that last longest tend to be very expensive. Maintenance on land based windmills is expensive and dangerous ... out there it will be a serious problem.
Re:a maintenance nightmare (Score:5, Informative)
As a former marine engineer I have doubts.
This is a first for America, but Europeans started doing offshore wind 25 years ago [wikipedia.org]. We are building on that successful experience, not starting from scratch.
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Define cost-effective.
E.g. how much of the costs of fossil-fuel is externalized (pollution, fuel-generation, tax-breaks/incentives) vs included in the actual price? Ditto for wind, solar, wave (ahem), and nuclear.
A googling showed 300 incidents/year (ranging from ice-buildup on blades, to people falling off during construction) for wind-power, while the US alone have ca 30 deaths just from mining coal - shouldn't we include these when estimating costs? I notice pretty much every post here only looks at cons
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The prices end consumers pay has nothing to do with the costs of the windmills.
They are half taxes and a good deal is cost allocation to finance the transition from fossile to renewable.
Also: you forget that a typical german or danish household used a quarter or sixth power of an american household. So bottom line we pay less for energy than you do.
Offshore wind energy is the cheapest form of energy production we have on the planet right now.
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It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerpl
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It scales extremely well. Now that the technology is maturing and the cost is making it attractive (it's already cheaper than nuclear in Europe) it's starting to expand more rapidly.
Your comment reminds me of what people said about wind a decade ago or solar 15 years back. Too low output, poor capacity factor (in fact for offshore wind it's about .35), won't scale (?!?) and so on.
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The main problem with renewables right now is lack of energy storage, so simply scaling variable sources doesn't work at all. It's looking to be a fundamental problem that can derail the whole transition.
Re:a maintenance nightmare (Score:5, Informative)
It's already fallen very rapidly, especially from about 2000 to 2015. Projections are looking good, even the conservative ones.
http://www.resourcereports.com... [resourcereports.com]
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It isn't significant problem in the US with only 5% wind and less than 1% solar electricity.
It becomes significant in Germany that has higher share of wind/solar. They starting power-to-gas pilot plants, and scaling of power-to-gas is unlimited, and it can use existing natural gas infrastructure with minor changes. Of course it costs extra and for now it is expensive as everything at pilot stage. But you don't need to store all generated energy, just some of it.
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Well, first off all your 20% CF claim is ridiculous. ... you guess it: wind
Secondly: Denmark is flat. So for them it makes sense to have land based wind farms, to.
Thirdly: Denmark is producing about 50% of its power by
So what exactly is your argument?
It's mostly OK for Denmark because they export excess energy into Norway and Sweden which store it in hydroaccmulating powerplants. But that doesn't scale at all.
Of course it scales. It is a perfect combination.
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Offshore winds off of Scotland, the North Sea, and Spain are much stronger and more consistent than anywhere I know of in the U.S. Land-based wind typically hits about a 20-22% capacity factor, offshore in the U.S. around 30%-35%.
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Is it just me or does a 5 turbine wind farm sound a little underwhelming, water or not?
You misunderstand the significance. As a technical accomplishment, this is meaningless: The Europeans have been building offshore wind farms for decades. But as a political accomplishment, this is earth shattering. Despite the best efforts of all the NIMBYs and BANANAs, America is actually building something. When was the last time that happened?
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It's a good thing that you're a former marine engineer since you're obviously clueless about offshore wind farms. There are about 2500 off shore wind turbines.
List here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They seem to have solved your imaginary problems.
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Well, as a former marine engineer, I'm thrilled to discover that there is no need for maintenance required for these engineering marvels. But can you explain the high cost of maintenance of land based turbines in California? And please explain why the water based units are maintenance free.
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But can you explain the high cost of maintenance of land based turbines in California?
Old designs.
And please explain why the water based units are maintenance free.
If they made so many installations then they must have made some headway on maintenance in a salt water environment.
And having said that, I don't buy that the current proposed plant makes sense. It has too low revenue per initial cost to justify it, even if it should be low maintenance.
"Must" means a lot of things (Score:2, Insightful)
If they made so many installations then they must have made some headway on maintenance in a salt water environment.
Or they "must" be paying a ton of money to keep the white elephants spinning.
I've seen the future of wind farms, at the southern tip of Hawaii, in the plains of California... after fifteen to twenty years of playing with the toys they all end up as decaying eyesores once people realize they cost a lot more than they give back in power.
Re:"Must" means a lot of things (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen the future of wind farms, at the southern tip of Hawaii, in the plains of California... after fifteen to twenty years of playing with the toys they all end up as decaying eyesores once people realize they cost a lot more than they give back in power.
The problem here is that the technology of wind turbines changes. And one of the things that is changing is how much maintenance a wind turbine needs. For example, this link [windmeasur...tional.com] claims that average annual maintenance costs as a fraction of initial investment has gone from 3% for "older" wind turbines over their lifespan to 1.5-2% for current generation.
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Maybe you need to take a ride on the Øresundståget [wikipedia.org]. You'd see about 150 of these "toys" spinning merrily away, just as they've been doing for two decades or more.
As a bonus, you can—or so I hear—buy some really good hash in Christiana and get a pleasant buzz on for the ride back to Malmö and points north, if that's your thing.
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You can keep anything going forever as long as you are willing to pour money into it. The pipeline of money maintaining those things is what you do not see...
They are toys in the same sense a ultra-high end sports car is a toy. They look super impressive even while being utterly impractical and wasteful.
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And having said that, I don't buy that the current proposed plant makes sense. It has too low revenue per initial cost to justify it, even if it should be low maintenance.
From what I read, parts of the costs is additional infrastructure, that would likely be relevant even w/o the farm.
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From what I read, parts of the costs is additional infrastructure, that would likely be relevant even w/o the farm.
Unless the infrastructure isn't used without the wind farm.
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I didn't say maintenance free.
I did say that there are 2500 off shore turbines which seem to have solved the maintenance problem.
You could google it if you want more details to brush up your rusty skills.
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Fossil fuels are only cheaper if you don't count the cost of climate change.
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America's latest 500 year rainstorm is underway right now in Louisiana:
https://psmag.com/americas-lat... [psmag.com]
This tends to reduce agricultural output and habitable land.
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A rise in the Earths temperature of 2C (which is about the forecast at the moment) means a MASSIVE increase in agricultural output and expansion of habitat land.
Extremely unlikely. The seasons don't change, so everything that is ice free still has its long winter and long summer and no spring and no autumn.
Where should the land come from? We simply have no idea
o which areas will suffer from
a) more rain
b) more heat
o wich areas will gain from
c) more rain
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The important question here for any sort of meaningful comparison is how much do they cost to run over a period of time.
The other thing to consider is that these things fill a niche instead of the entire power basket so they have to be compared against little gas turbines instead of 1TW nuclear powered units. If you have nukes they run as close t
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Because anyone pushing
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That's very socialist of you but it's not how those wind farms are run.
The Australian example is apt because once again that is in setting where there is a market and not some socialist thing that you are pretending is at work and presumably want to inflict on all of us.
Mao is dead and central planning of everything with no niche for private enterprise is dead. Time to wake up.
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Not sold at cost (Score:2)
So the government should step in and stop the wind generators?
Lend me some roubles comrade, I need to line up for toilet paper in your perfect society.
All this naive charging at windmills would have your great-grandad laugh at you and smack you on the back of the head. There's a novel that's been out for centuries that shows how stupid this shit is.
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Again, look at the link and see that offshore wind is behind onshore wind and PVs. It only beats biogas in terms of costs. All other "green" energy sources (other than biogas) have a lower LCOE. So why push nearly the most expensive option?
Cost, as in the price of installed capacity, is not the only factor when considering how to generate the power we use. There are social, political, geographical, and other, factors that influence the decision.
Some reasons why we might, specifically, choose to install offshore rather than onshore wind:
1. There are no prime (reliable wind speed > 7 kph) onshore locations available for development.
2. Diversity in location leads to diversity in supply, leading to a more consiste
Re:a maintenance nightmare (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody disputes that offshore wind is more expensive than onshore when you ignore price of land.
But it should be obvious that densely populated areas don't have free land, and don't have many cheaper alternatives.
Look at the map on page 36:
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/f... [energy.gov]
Onshore wind resources are good in interior US. They are not as good in East and West.
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To be fair, you really need to add in the 2 to 3 trillion for the gulf war immediate expenses to protect the oil fields.
And probably some add on costs of radicalization because we repeatedly invaded middle eastern countries and killed tens of thousands of civilians to protect the oil fields.
There are many many dictatorships around the world... several committing genocide right now and much weaker militarily than Iraq was at the start of the gulf war. But they don't have oil. So their genocide's continue u
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The production cost per kWh with offshore wind farms is something around 3 euro cents. Land wind farms are somewhere around 4 - 5 cents.
The Danish wind farms mainly sell whole sales to bigger energy companies like Vattenfall and they get a fixed price of 4.2 cents per kW/h
Re:a maintenance nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes but that's very well known now and factored in. It's not as if demand is flat so it's not so hard to bring a tiny (in terms of generating capacity) unit offline until it can be fixed.
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I do not want to troll, but Iam very seriously interested in your opinion. Some friends of mine had a boat in a ocean. Every weekend they were scrubbing something here, scrapping off something there. Just to keep the boat seaworthy!
So I was thinking about offshore drilling rigs. What maintenance do they need? Do the oil companies just throw money at the problem . . . ?
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Well, back in the 1700's when you retired things were no doubt different. Here in the 21st century we have better than a century's experience operating complex mechanical and electrical systems are sea. We have over half a century's experience operating and maintaining things like drilling platforms, etc...
Rest well gramps, the younger generation has it well under control.
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So, Derek, tell me about your years at sea...
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Wind energy is texas is still less than 10 cents, and will be cheaper as
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Land is cheap in the middle of the US where strongest winds are blowing. Mid US doesn't even need as high turbines as Europe.
New Era In Buying Politicians (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.deepwaterresistance... [deepwaterresistance.org]
Lets see the company was banned from Narraganset
Promised hundreds of new jobs from the project which will actually only deliver 6
Last Project off Block Island will cost tax payers half a billion to fix.
Overall sounds like great return on equity. Maybe they will try investing at the federal level next.
It's slashdot not talk radio so how about UNITS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sure make some up. The original article didn't include any either.
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All generators used for the purpose of supplying power during times of peak load have a "low capacity factors" whether they are reliable or not because you take stuff offline when the peak is over and you don't need to use it!
WTF is it with these weasels?
Do you think you are being clever by badly misusing a term you do not understand in the hope that nobody else knows what it means?
I'm no fan of wind but I'm even less of a fan of
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Behold, the Underminer! (Score:2)
Putting wind farms near "population epicenters" (points on the earth's surface directly above the origin of the population?) makes me think of vast colonies of mole people...
Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle? (Score:5, Insightful)
it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back.
That is about a 6% ROI, at a time when banks get 3.5% on 30 year mortgages. Seems like a good investment to me.
Meanwhile, in England, Theresa May just semi-canceled the Hinkley Point nuclear project because the falling price of wind energy was making new nukes uncompetitive.
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Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle? (Score:4, Insightful)
you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan.
The "max 20 year lifespan" is something that Ravenshrike (the GPP) pulled out of his butt. There are offshore turbines in Denmark that already exceed that, and we have learned a lot about building offshore turbines since then. For instance, modern turbines are much bigger and installed much higher above the water than they were 25 years ago. These turbines will stand more than 100 meters above the sea. There is very little salt spray up that high. They will likely be active for much longer than 20 years.
Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle? (Score:5, Interesting)
So how long do they last? You castigate Ravenshrike for pulling things out of his butt, but you do the same and say they will be active for much longer than 20 years.
Additionally, direct spray isn't needed to corrode your metal. Ask anyone who lives near the ocean - direct exposure isn't needed, and most salt spray/salt fog tests do not need to directly spray saltwater at the object - just high salt content moisture in the air is damaging.
Lastly, given that Denmark has extremely high power rates (about 3X that in the US), perhaps they are the perfect example of why offshore wind is not really a good bet - the power generated is very expensive due to very high maintenance costs. What I see is that offshore wind maintenance costs [renewableenergyworld.com] are on par with the TOTAL cost of electricity for much of the US. Just maintenance alone costs more than the entire cost of power generation. That's not a good sign...
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So how long do they last? You castigate Ravenshrike for pulling things out of his butt, but you do the same and say they will be active for much longer than 20 years.
Well, its no more pulled out of his ass than the turbines around here, where they get shut down every so often, get some maintenance, and start right back up. These things are not built to be disposable, and capital depreciation and every single element that any other power generation method is in force. Wind power does not have special laws of business and physics that makes them unmaintainable and self destruct after whatever period you choose to have them self destruct at.
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So how long do they last?
The first wind turbines were installed in Denmark 25 years ago [wikipedia.org], and are still operational. So they last at least 25 years. Modern turbines are expected to last much longer, due to better materials, better design, and much greater height above the sea (100 meters for the Rhode Island turbines), which means less exposure to salt.
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The first wind turbines were installed in Denmark 25 years ago [wikipedia.org], and are still operational. So they last at least 25 years.
Putting aside the fact that the plural^W singular of anecdote does not suddenly become data just because... green, your very own link shows that "last" is a meaningless term in a vacuum:
In 2016, DONG Energy considered shutting down the wind farm, as it is well past its design life and had become uneconomical.
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Yes. I pulled it out of my ass. Interestingly, my ass now has a web address.
http://www.windmeasurementinte... [windmeasur...tional.com]
Found on my ass are significant amounts of text. Among them the following.
A modern wind turbines will be designed to work for 120 000 hours throughout their estimated life-span of 20 years. This would be the turbine operating for approximately 66% of the time for two decades. This is far more than modern car engine which is built to last for 4 000 to 6 000 hours of use. This equates to an average of 49 minutes driving a day over the same two decades.
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A modern wind turbines will be designed to work for 120 000 hours throughout their estimated life-span of 20 years. This would be the turbine operating for approximately 66% of the time for two decades. This is far more than modern car engine which is built to last for 4 000 to 6 000 hours of use. This equates to an average of 49 minutes driving a day over the same two decades.
Does it say why exactly why a wind turbine is impossible to maintain, or exactly why they fall apart after 20 years? And why you have to start over again on all aspects? Pretty scary, because that means a whole shitload here are going to fail at the same time, are halfway through their unalterable lifetime, and we better tell the people maintaining them that they are waisting their time. because there is no point. 20 years after installation, it invariably goes completely kaput.
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Note: it takes 17 years to recoup your initial investment; you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan.
In 20 years, when the accountants finally add up the sums . . . the folks who organized all this will be retired and drinking cocktails on the beach in the Caribbean. So it will not be a problem for them if the whole thing is later exposed as a scam.
The next generation of younger politicians will sweep the mess under the carpet . . . so that they can profit from a newer, more ambitious project.
And that assumes your maintenance costs are zero...
Flipper and Aqua Man have agreed to do the maintenance for free!
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Note: it takes 17 years to recoup your initial investment; you'll make profit only for the last 3 years of the 20 year lifespan. Assuming the annual income rate is (1/17 * 300 million) $17.6 million, you're looking to make $53 million on that investment, over a 20 year period. That's about a 0.82% rate. And that assumes your maintenance costs are zero...
Wrong-A-Rio. That 20 years maximum limit, after which the turbines are apparently going to blow up an all the parts will kill every puppy in teh world is maximus bullshit. It's the same sort of BS that people use to say that solar panels die immediately after the warranty period, or any of the other FUD they spout.
These devices are built to be maintained, and are capital equipment just like a Natural gas turbine of Nuc power generating plant. You don't abandon those plants 3 years after their payback now
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OK, so why is offshore wind about the worst source of electricity when you look at the levelized cost? It lags behind onshore wind and PV - significantly. Costs for offshore are very high - and maintenance is a big killer. Should you abandon after 20 years? Probably not - but the reality is your return is MUCH closer to what I posted (0.82%) than what the GP posted (6%).
Location location location. The alternative for the Island is diesel fuel. Diesel fuel has known problems, but is relatively compact. So you use what makes for the best source. A nuc plant would take up valuable resources like space. As well, the evacuation plans in case of an emergency would be a problem on a small island. And yes, a fair number of people don't like it.
So yeah - an offshore windfarm is a compromise. But all power sources are compromises. So we have an island that is about 9.7 square mil
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Power to the mainland, you say? So something like a "transmission line" will be built? Well then - put the turbines on land, run a transmission line - and you're done! No need for offshore, is there?
Land is the problem in this case. There is no doubt that an on-land set of wind turbines would be more economical and easy to service. But then you'd be running perhaps 17 miles of cables instead of 8 or so. (I'm not certain of the specific placement of the towers) But there's possibly a substation that can be eliminated.
But we are talking about Rhode Island, which is a pretty densely populated place. Land for Turbines doesn't just show up easily.
But yeah - obviously there will have to be transmission
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There is no doubt that an on-land set of wind turbines would be more economical
Your parents are idiots, and you start falling for them.
NO! Land based wind farms are not more economical. They are much more expensive because of their relatively low yield and relatively low capacity factors.
The exact same turbine installed offshore will probably produce 4 to 8 times the energy a land based will. Because: at sea is more wind! And you place them higher! Which again leads to _more wind_. And then again: you hav
I thought this was a tech site (Score:2)
No not every turbine is going to fail in 20 years. Some will fail sooner, some later and maybe one will fail at exactly 20 years, but I doubt it. Average means average. Why do you keep trying to bury yourself in this position? The original poster figured out the costs on this particular project were not very good. QED.
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No not every turbine is going to fail in 20 years. Some will fail sooner, some later and maybe one will fail at exactly 20 years, but I doubt it. Average means average. Why do you keep trying to bury yourself in this position?
I'm not arguig to say they are all going to fail. They will be a piece of capital equipment like all other peices of capital equipment. They'll be maintained just like any pice of capital equipment will. You don't get sarcasm? We've heard how Prious batteries were going to fail and leave the owners with a huge bill. Yet there is a 100 percent warranty of 100K miles or 150K miles i California. The biggest problem is that they aren't failing - you really want that battery pack to die at 99,999.99 miles so you
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You use all the positives and see none of the negatives. Again the OP used 16c/kwh RETAIL as their baseline. Do you know that means that probably the wholesale value, you know the value the juice is worth at the turbine, is probably around a nickel, meaning it will take 45 years to pay back. Even giving this project every possible break, it made no sense. Adding in a touch of reality puts it in crazy land.
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You use all the positives and see none of the negatives. Again the OP used 16c/kwh RETAIL as their baseline. Do you know that means that probably the wholesale value, you know the value the juice is worth at the turbine, is probably around a nickel, meaning it will take 45 years to pay back. Even giving this project every possible break, it made no sense. Adding in a touch of reality puts it in crazy land.
Only seing the positives? Every technology has positives and negatives. Wind isn't "on" at all times, but is pretty good environmentally. Oil is so volatile in price that its impossible to set a budget. But its tremendos as far as portability and energy density goes. It's also not renewable. Coal is cheap, but seriously dirty and environmentally a disaster, from mining to disposal. Nuclear power has the potential to be awesome, and clean but has the isue of incredible power density, and a serious credibilt
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Except you assume I am against wind. I am totally for wind, just not this wind. West Texas, california, and other places have commercial profitable wind projects. This one is not commercial and by the looks will not be profitable. You can say what you want, but based on the optimistic view of 15c/kwh wholesale, rates in RI will need to be 40-45c/kwh. That is Hawaii expensive. Cost is not just generation. Those guys that get up on poles in the middle of crap weather get paid too. Transformers need replacing
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You mean the reactor design that the company itself hasn't quite figured out how to get to work right in a full scale reactor instead of the smaller ones in Finland? That Hinkley Point? Not to mention that you managed to ignore the fact that it doesn't include maintenance costs. Or that a significant number of NG plants will have to be installed to spool up the extra electricity as needed given wind turbines uneven electricity generation, which means it'll take even longer than the 16.96 years assuming ever
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That is about a 6% ROI
No, it isn't. The asset is fully depreciated after 20 years. That alone eats your ROI.
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You must be one of those accountant types who believe that depreciation somehow means that something is worthless and needs to be thrown away.
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And you must be one of those idiots who keeps tools around after they become useless for their assigned task. These are offshore wind turbines. That means placement area is at a premium, they can't just erect more when their power output drops. Thus, if the turbines are needed to put out X amount of power, but because of their age have an output of X - Y, you can't just easily build more, you have to scrap the existing ones and erect new ones. Now, you can probably keep the tower, depending on corrosion, bu
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Power output dropping? Man you have no idea do you. Power output doesn't magically drop with age. You restore power generation equipment to as new condition with a simple bearing change. The only thing that causes output to drop is catastrophic failure. Hell the turbines we run at our plant are 40 years old and they have never been rewound, are on the original stators, one suffered a dislogged rotor bar at one point but even that has now a 20+ year old rotor in there. They still produce the same amount of p
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The wind turbines will fail way before 16.96 years have gone by and the company that put it in place would be just a memory.
Why? What makes them magically fail? Industrial gear lasting 17 years? hahahahahahahahahhahahaahahahahhahahahhaahh yeah we'd still be in the bronze age if that was true.
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I'm from California. We've been playing this game since the 70s. Every time the subsidies are pulled the project dies.
Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
So here is my answer going forward to any retard that says "oh but this time man its totally going to make money... we swear."... I say "well, good... then you don't need public funding because IF you're not either lying or retarded then you should be able to get private funding for your almost certainly retarded idea."
So that's the answer.
Now, still waiting for
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I wonder why it costs $300 million to build FIVE wind turbines. Are they built by a defense contractor or something? Really, wind turbines cost $10 million a piece,
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AAnd again where slashdot has eaten my smaller signs. I've meant to say "Really, wind turbines cost < $10 million a piece". $10 million is an upper bound, and very highly put (most turbines cost way less than that).
Re:Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle? (Score:4, Informative)
Building anything to handle a 100% salt spray exposure dramatically increases the cost. Have a boat on a lake? Takes some maintenance. Have the same boat on the ocean/saltwater harbor and required maintenance skyrockets. Saltwater is incredibly corrosive. What works in fresh water will quickly die in saltwater (even stainless steel will corrode away in saltwater [estainlesssteel.com]). Add in parts that have full 360 degree spins so open bearing races (sure, lubricated - but still open) and you're asking for a lot of trouble.
On land, you can use a lot of materials that simply will not hold up to constant salt spray exposure (like aluminum).
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They won't just be buying five turbines. They have to install them offshore which is more expensive than pouring a concrete foundation onshore. Plus they will be setting up the cables to transmit the electricity and data monitoring back to onshore. This will be expensive, especially for the closest mile or so to shore where any cables will need to be buried. But this cost is shared between the turbines and if they get permission to expand the wind farm in the future the only additional expense will for the
Some quick questions (Score:2)
At the average price for electricity(14.4 cents per kW/h) in RI at the average household electricity usage per month(602 kW/h) it will take 16.96 years to pay that $300 million back. That assumes no operating costs or maintenence costs. Which is obviously bullshit. Turbines have, at max, a 20 year lifespan. But of course, green energy is viable, blah blah blah. Oh, and all this assumes constant delivery, which is never the case for wind as well.
You seem to be knowledgeable in the field, so can you give us some more detail about Turbans(*)?
1) Will the cost be $300 million per 5 turbines for any number of turbines, or will there be an economy of scale when building bigger installations?
2) Will the cost be $300 million per 5 turbines forever, or will they get increasingly cheaper (or more expensive) in the future?
3) Will the average price for electricity go up, down, or generally stay the same over the next 20 years?
4) Will the costs of generating el
Re:Some quick questions (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the $300M is for building a grid to carry the electricity back to shore. This is a fixed cost for most wind farms. It doesn't matter if you have one turbine or 25 you are still going to have to build that connection in order to send the electricity back. So the more turbines you have in your farm the better you can spread this cost out per turbine.
Note that each turbine will have a cost associated with connecting it to the to the grid that makes up the wind farm. The more turbines that you have in the farm the larger this grid is and the more it will cost to connect them together. But the turbines are always going to be much closer together than they are from the shore so the cost to connect the turbines is going to be smaller than connecting the farm to the shore.
Wind turbines are getting larger all the time and when they get larger they get more expensive. However as the length, n, increases the power available goes up as a function of the area swept by the blades, n^2. Of course nobody is doubling the blade length but we are seeing turbines of 5MW and more where a few years ago it was 4MW. So yes the turbines are getting more expensive but that's because they are able to generate more electricity.
Thanks (Score:2)
Thanks for the info. I figured as much. In 20 years we can replace the turbines at $10 million apiece and get another 20 years of service for much less.
It seems lots of people on this site are four-square against any type of renewable energy, and try to rationalize their claims to the audience by making reasonable-sounding economic arguments.
The arguments just don't pass the sniff test, and completely ignore evidence from other countries and seem rather short-sighted, given that natural gas is a fixed resou
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You don't need constant delivery, you only need to make sure that electrical generation is always greater than electrical demand.
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Which is what I meant and exactly what wind turbines don't do. Which is why you have to supplement the with other sources, preferably NG plants.
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So in a multiple item auction, the only way to prevent more people from winning than there are items is to add more items as needed? That's funny!
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Even on land wind turbines are barely worth it because of the constant maintenance costs. You literally have to have men climb up them and oil them every few months. Don't forget to add in the cost of the men who fall off and die.
Wind is a trash method of generating electricity.
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Eh, no, in the US-of-A, externalized costs of fossil-fuel magically disappears and never has to get picked up by anyone.
(Evidence: See pretty much 90% of the posts in this thread)
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Two of my great uncles were killed in the coal mines. My granddad ended up with black lung eventually, even though he only spent about 10 years working there before he got out of Kentucky.
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When you're on an island electricity costs a whole lot more ($0.44/kWh) [blockislandtimes.com], plus a summertime surcharge.
This wind project also connects Block island to the mainland grid [blockislandtimes.com]
The initial agreed upon energy pricing is $0.244 per kWh [wikipedia.org], Thus the return will be ~10% per year.
Thus a check mark in the win column for all parties..
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The initial agreed upon price assumed a project cost of 200 million. It went up by 50% before they've even broke ground. Final cost is likely to be even higher.
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No, but as a European resident, I can say, "We've had these things for 20 years--where've you guys been, anyway?"
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Not to mention the fact that the lifespan of these things averages 20 years so you only get a few years of profitability. But in 20 years, the money will be worth less so the replacement cost will likely be about 50% more (using CPI). Sure, you make some 70 to 80 million in those three years (which won't get passed on to the customers, btw), but then the replacement cost will eat through that in a heartbeat. Basically, the project will lose money in perpetuity.
Re: Can anyone say wind turbine boondoggle? (Score:2)
arguably, even if the ROI was absolutely nihil, 300M to experiment with a non-carbon technology are still a reasonably good investment for the long term security of Americans. Better than, say, half a wing of one of these:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]