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United States Power The Almighty Buck

US To Hold Largest-Ever Offshore Wind Farm Auction Next Month (techxplore.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the renewable-energy dept.
The US government announced Wednesday it will auction more than 480,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey to build wind farms as part of its campaign to supply renewable energy to more than 10 million homes by 2030. Tech Xplore reports: Offshore wind developers will bid February 23 on six areas in the New York Bight -- the most lots ever offered in a single auction -- which could generate between 5.6 to seven gigawatts of energy, enough to power two million homes, the Interior Department said. The auction will be the first under President Joe Biden, whose administration aims to build as many as to seven major offshore wind farms and review plans for at least 16 others along the US coasts. The effort is part of Washington's fight against climate change, and the Biden administration says the wind investment would cut 78 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and create tens of thousands of jobs.
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US To Hold Largest-Ever Offshore Wind Farm Auction Next Month More

US To Hold Largest-Ever Offshore Wind Farm Auction Next Month

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  • This is terrible (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What about migrating dolphins that get caught in the blades and die? - AOC

  • Northeast- lots of wind, not a lot of wind power (Score:5, Informative)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @10:48PM (#62169119) Homepage
    This is good because the Northeast has a lot of wind off the coast, more so than many other coastal areas, as you can see from the map https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/324 [energy.gov]. Also, in general, the Northeast doesn't currently have that much wind power, so the grid will be less stressed than some areas from adding more wind. Currently, much of the Northeast has comparatively low carbon electric power, but it varies from area to area. See data here https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/28/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state-election.html [nytimes.com]. There's also a fair bit of natural gas power right now, which actually works pretty well with wind power since natural gas has very fast spinup if the wind dies. Connecticut for example now has a bit over 40% of its power from nuclear and about the same amount with natural gas. This would of course work even better if we weren't also turning off nuclear plants which provide good baseload. New York turned off the Indian Point plant https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-power-plant-closing.html [nytimes.com] and Massachusetts shut down the Pilgrim nuclear plant https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Pilgrim-shuts-down-for-the-final-time [world-nuclear-news.org]. The carbon resulting in these two being shut down is massive. We don't necessarily need new nuclear plants, but if we keep shutting down the existing ones, then it really undoes a lot of the good done from building more wind and solar.

    • This would of course work even better if we weren't also turning off nuclear plants which provide good baseload.

      wat [electricityinfo.org]

      We don't necessarily need new nuclear plants, but if we keep shutting down the existing ones, then it really undoes a lot of the good done from building more wind and solar.

      Shutting down the existing ones stops more evil being done in the form of creating more waste that we have no plan for handling. That's part of the good done by building more renewables.

      • Huff and puff more, please. Keep those wind turbines cranking.

        • Huff and puff more, please. Keep those wind turbines cranking.

          Huff and puff would seem to imply uselessness, only the nuclear actually is getting shut down so clearly this line of thinking is dominant.

          We do need to keep the wind turbines cranking, but what would really help is if we could get all the nuclear fanboys to put the energy they spend promoting nuclear into something useful and productive.

      • Re:Northeast- lots of wind, not a lot of wind powe (Score:4, Informative)

        by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday January 13, 2022 @10:57AM (#62169681) Homepage
        The primary argument there seems to be about turning off nuclear power plants when there's a lot of wind power. But in order for that to be an issue, you need to either have massive quantities of wind, or massive quantities of nuclear power. Since the North-East has very little wind power right now, the baseload isn't an issue. It also isn't help to label nuclear waste as "evil"- it is waste nothing more. And yes, we have a lot of plans for handling it, nor is it nearly as dangerous as some people seem to think. Climate change and CO2 is far, far bigger problem than anything related to nuclear waste. And most nuclear waste from a power plant is comparatively low level waste from the reactor itself, not spent fuel rods. Those items, like most of the pressure vessel, are radioactive shortly after startup, and remain radioactive regardless of how long the plant itself runs for.

        • It also isn't help to label nuclear waste as "evil"- it is waste nothing more.

          What I said was that creating more waste, the implication being for profit, is evil. I didn't say the waste was evil. Learn to English before you criticize what someone says in it.

          most nuclear waste from a power plant is comparatively low level waste from the reactor itself, not spent fuel rods

          NOT SELLING IT

          Those items, like most of the pressure vessel, are radioactive shortly after startup, and remain radioactive regardless of how long the plant itself runs for.

          STILL NOT SELLING IT

          Your argument boils down to "there is more waste than just the fuel rods so that's OK" which is a seriously dumb thing to say to someone who's opposed to creation of nuclear waste. The longer we operate the reactors, the more radioactive that stuff is, and the longer we have to store it.

          Nuclear re

          • You wrote:

            Shutting down the existing ones stops more evil being done in the form of creating more waste that we have no plan for handling.

            You are now asserting that

            What I said was that creating more waste, the implication being for profit, is evil. I didn't say the waste was evil. Learn to English before you criticize what someone says in it.

            Putting these two statements side by side, I'm not sure why you think there was any implication of the sort you are asserting there was. For that matter, even taking your new statement as intended, it doesn't make much sense either. There's nothing intrinsically evil about making nuclear waste to sell electricity for a profit. We have industries that make things we have to deal with all the time which people make a profit from.

            Your argument boils down to "there is more waste than just the fuel rods so that's OK" which is a seriously dumb thing to say to someone who's opposed to creation of nuclear waste.

            It is true that if your entire concern is the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The real issue with nuclear is the cost. It can't compete with renewables or fossil fuels on cost. Obviously we need to stop using fossil fuels, so if we absolutely must have nuclear then we are looking at some eye watering costs.

          Fortunately I don't think we do need nuclear. We would be better off spending the money on improving the grid for long distance transmission, on storage, and on even more renewable energy.

          • It is true that new nuclear is very expensive, but the vast majority of the costs of nuclear once built are already in. We don't save money by turning it off. Also, the main reasons nuclear is expensive is twofold: First, the US has not made many new reactors, to economies of scale aren't kicking in. Second, the US has the ALARA rule (which for example France and South Korea do not) which means that any cost savings in building reactors essentially has to get plowed back into making them safer and even less
    • Last I googled offshore wind is $.22 per kilowatt hour and onshore wind is about eight cents per kilowatt hour. Big difference there. Looks like electricity bills are going up!

      • Seems you are somehow mixing up construction costs with production costs.
        There is no way offshore wind wind power has higher production costs than onshore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smithmc ( 451373 )
      But we would need new nuclear plants, if we want to continue to have a significant fraction of nuclear power in the Northeast. The nuclear plants in the Northeast, such as Indian Point and Pilgrim, are old and obsolete.

  • Wait! You can grow wind? :-)

  • The auction will be the first under President Joe Biden, whose administration aims to build as many as to seven major offshore wind farms and review plans for at least 16 others along the US coasts. The effort is part of Washington's fight against climate change, and the Biden administration says the wind investment would cut 78 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and create tens of thousands of jobs.

    Quick, calculate how much concrete required for twenty-three wind farms, and how that'll factor into cutting carbon emissions.

    • Re:A little from column A, a lot from B. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @10:58PM (#62169137) Homepage
      Concrete is a one-time carbon expenditure. And conventional fossil fuel plants also involve massive amounts of concrete. We are working on getting better low CO2 concrete. See e.g. https://zeroenergyproject.org/2020/11/09/low-carbon-concrete-starting-from-the-ground-up/ [zeroenergyproject.org]. Given the timeline for these projects, it might even be used for some of these projects.
      • Nuclear is actually cleaner than wind and solar, when factoring all costs (including construction) over lifetime of the plant (source [ourworldindata.org]). Why not build more nuclear, which is reliable and lower CO2 emissions? A single nuclear plant would provide all the power in this sale (5-6 GW capacity wind is around 1.5-2 GW actual - a good sized nuclear plant).
        • A) Cleaner depends on what metric you are using. B) Nuclear plants take a long time to build and we need to reduce CO2 production now. C) Everything else aside, nuclear is extremely politically now in the US. So from a practical standpoint, focusing on wind and solar makes more sense. I do agree that in the long-term nuclear makes a lot of sense. If we had done what France did in the 1980s and made a lot of nuclear plants then we would be having a lot fewer problems.
          • I posted a link showing the CO2 output per GWh of output, over the lifetime from construction to decommissioning. Nuclear has lower total CO2 output per GWh output than solar or wind. To deny that is to accept that low CO2 isn't the goal.
            • I'm agreeing with you, but the point which you are missing is that reducing time CO2 is time sensitive. Lots of reduction now is more important than slightly more reduction later (especially given how many nuclear plants in the US get not just delayed but sometimes outright canceled mid-construction).
              • Most of the "goals" for CO2 reduction are 20-30 years out; nuclear plants would be working fine by that time (15-20 years into their life), and we'd be dealing with the waste disposal and replacement of the solar and wind plants.
                • To be blunt, most of those goals are wildly insufficient, and we are likely to not meet most of them. Part of the problem is that goals of the form "X by date Y" make people think that if we stop by some specific date everything is automatically ok. But that's not how that works. The total amount of CO2 produced is the relevant matter, and that's essentially the sum total of how much we emit each year. As for waste disposal of solar and wind, that's a pretty tiny problem compared to climate change. (In the

            • Perhaps, low CO2 isn't the ONLY goal.

    • Re:A little from column A, a lot from B. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @11:13PM (#62169159)
      You first!

      Don't expect people to spend more time debunking it than you did making it up, which would appear to be approximately none.

    • By the time they start to build, they could use the floating turbine tech

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Budenny ( 888916 )

      The problem isn't the concrete. The problem is, if its to be part of a fight against climate change, how effective will it be?

      I assume that the 78 million tons are per year. The US currently does around 5 billion tons a year, and the world is doing around 37 billion and rising - the rises being from China, India and the developing world.

      I also don't know how the savings are calculated. Usually the way this is done is to just assume that the output is all savings. But its not, because of intermittency.

      • You're assuming that electricity demands will remain the same. What do you think people & companies will do when the super-cheap electricity during windier times becomes available? Do you think that people are incapable of adapting in creative & ingenious ways?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          You're assuming that electricity demands will remain the same. What do you think people & companies will do when the super-cheap electricity during windier times becomes available? Do you think that people are incapable of adapting in creative & ingenious ways?

          There are EV chargers you can set to "economical" charging modes. Basically if you have rooftop solar, they monitor the output of the solar and charge your EV at the excess rate your panels are producing, so you're charging "for free". NO port

        • You're assuming that electricity demands will remain the same. What do you think people & companies will do when the super-cheap electricity during windier times becomes available? Do you think that people are incapable of adapting in creative & ingenious ways?

          No assumptions necessary.
          Every era of human history shows that humans consistently increase their demand for resources and energy. Humans inherently do not "live in balance with nature" because the human creature is the only creature capable of infinite wants. Dogs will routinely gorge themselves on food they don't actually need, but a dog's stomach has a concrete size limit. We have seen no limit to the amount of comfort and entertainment humans crave, because the human mind quickly adapts to new input lev

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gmack ( 197796 )

            The bulk of power usage is still heating and cooling and we are getting better at doing that with less power input. When I look at all of the big ticket power items in my apartment, they all use less power than older models.

            I don't know where you got 2-5 years from, several of my smart bulbs are much older than that and all of those bulbs use less power than even the florescent bulbs that came before. Those chips really don't use much power.

          • Do you mean human nature (fundamental attribution bias) or do you mean a capitalist, market-driven consumer system that encourages over-consumption?

      • Wind can just vanish in the space of hours, so you have to be able to switch in other capacity rapidly, which usually means gas.

        Wind does stop, however that is normally a local situation and can be largely solved with distributed wind and transmission. For example, during the recent problems in Germany where they had to burn extra gas, there was plenty of spare capacity in Scotland but just too few transmission links between the two places. The UK grid has shown that wind coming into the grid is now very much predictable on a multi day basis using current weather models. This means that much slower to react solutions than gas (fo

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Budenny ( 888916 )

          No. Look at the annual chart of wind production in the UK here:

          https://gridwatch.co.uk/WIND [gridwatch.co.uk]

          However much people who are alarmed about climate change may want it to be a reliable and useful source of energy, it just isn't. It may be that as a supplementary addon to a reliable non-intermittent system it is cost effective. I doubt it, I have never seen any studies showing it to be that, but maybe. But in itself its not.

          Every winter in the UK, for a period of usually 10 - 15 days in a row, there is a blockin

          • As it does across all of Northern Europe. All you had to do to see this in action was read the news in September - October 2021. It even made Bloomberg.
            If it even made Bloomberg, it is most likely not true :P - A no brainer.

            If you need information about wind, then check:
            http://www.windy.com/ [windy.com]
            and/or
            http://www.windfinder.com/ [windfinder.com]

            There are no "no wind over all Europe" in winter times: physically impossible.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          In the UK there is no need for anything other than pumped storage and batteries for peaker power. There is already significant pumped storage capacity and there are at least two shovel ready pumped storage schemes in Scotland that are stuck on getting finance.

          There I believe a great potential for a hybrid pumped storage/battery plant, where a battery which can react instantly (like in one cycle or less) to bridge the gap till the turbines spin up. Means you would not need to do the whole turbines spinning i

        • For example, during the recent problems in Germany where they had to burn extra gas,
          There were no recent problems in Germany were we needed to burn extra Gas.

          Electricity production from Gas is a very very low percentage in Germany.

          Wind turbines can start and stop production faster even than a gas peaker system
          Simply no.

          And it would make sense of talk about Gas, to actually mention the technology. In the energy business we are not really talking about peakers. The term does not exist.

          I assume you mean gas t

          • For example, during the recent problems in Germany where they had to burn extra gas,
            There were no recent problems in Germany were we needed to burn extra Gas.

            Electricity production from Gas is a very very low percentage in Germany.

            German emissions from electricity generation increased in the first half of 2021 by one-quarter, or 21 million tons, according to German think tank Agora Energiewende. Gas-fired power plants increased 15%, [...] But the increase was also due to the lack of wind.
            from Forbes [forbes.com]

            It's true coal went up more, however I've got a more than reasonable justification for my comment. Remember this increase in gas use was into a market where gas prices had increased considerably, so the effective spend was even worse.

            Wind

            • The increase in gas use is, not existing.
              We buy more gas (than about 6 month ago). That is all
              a) we did not get much gas during summer, so we could not replenish our stocks
              b) now is winter: and the gas is used for heating traditionally Germany has not many (and dit not build many recently) gas electricity plants.

              Where are you getting your information from?
              Either common knowledge or if in doubt: https://energy-charts.info/?l=... [energy-charts.info]

              Peaking power plants, also known as peaker plants, and occasionally just "peaker

      • Consequently planners are forced to install gas or other rapid backup which equals the size of the wind generation they are planning on getting.
        That is nonsense. And you know it.
        So why post this bullshit?

    • Or don't bother and read one of the many studies which have already done so, you empty headed wanker

    • Quick, calculate how much concrete required for twenty-three wind farms, and how that'll factor into cutting carbon emissions.

      No fair! You can only calculate road access and construction costs for nuclear plants.

    • Concrete reabsorbs the CO2 later again.
      In the long run it is CO2 neutral.

      Wind mills are not made from concrete anyway ...

  • 8 years? (Score:2)

    by kenh ( 9056 )

    The US government announced Wednesday it will auction more than 480,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey to build wind farms as part of its campaign to supply renewable energy to more than 10 million homes by 2030.

    Can we hold the auctions, draw up the wind farm plans, submit them for approval, defend the plans against the environmental impact lawsuits, and then actually build them and get them on line by 2030? That's only 8 years from now...

  • Put the windmills and solar panels where the electricity is consumed, in the cities. Every roof gets panels and every yard, including parks, a windmill.

    • Turbines not suited to urban areas like cities plus there is more reliable wind out at sea at the heights they put them. I also think that every roof, car park, railway etc should be covered with solar panels, keep the power as local as possible and create microgrids using battery storage too.

    • You have to have even a microturbine minimum 20' above rooftops or other obstacles in order to reach peak efficiency because they only reach it in laminar airflow.

      Only a percentage (forget what it is but below 40%) of rooftops are suitably oriented for solar, so your whole idea about every roof having solar is obviously unworkable on its face. Of those which are correctly oriented only a smaller percentage are good candidates for it based on other factors, like the condition of the roof, the slope of the ro

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        Yes, and it also creates a better experience for users by shielding them from inclement weather, and it provides a ready source of power for EV charging.

      • The question with solar is: what you do with it.
        The orientation does not really matter.

        E.g. if you simply feed it into the grid, a straight south east point solar roof will produce its peak power around 9:00 - 10:00 in the morning. Which is perfect.

        One that points to north West, will have its peak output around 15:00 - 17:00, which is also perfect.

        You can as well, take a pocket calculator, draw some schematics and calculate if it makes sense for you to store it in batteries.

        It is a stupid myth that a solar

        • It is a stupid myth that a solar panel has to point south

          Which exact way the panel has to face depends on local conditions. But what that means is that some roofs not considered suitable are, and some roofs considered suitable aren't.

          • Does not really matter on the roof.
            It is basically only a question of cost.

            As you can tilt the panel more or less whee you want them. With the drawback is the roof side is east, it might be in shadow in the afternoon.
            However the point is: can you make enough money - or can you store enough energy - to go for such a scheme.

            Most people do not even consider it, as they never thought about it. In Germany due south pointing solar arrays get no subsidies since ages (except for cheap credits, which everyone gets).

  • Isn't it cool how the government can just auction off the ocean for money because they have the biggest guns? Isn't it fun to think about?

    • Re:Isn't it fun to think about? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday January 13, 2022 @02:34AM (#62169375)
      It's good. We're very lucky to live in a time and place where the government can out-violence anybody else as needed, and is fairly democratic. It could be more democratic but by historical standards it is very good. Auctioning off RF spectrum or land or territorial sea to the highest bidder with the proceeds going to the public through the government is much better than a free-for-all.

      • with the proceeds going to the public through the government is much better than a free-for-all.

        This part is so oversimplified it hand-waves away potential concerns and critiques.
        The proceeds don't "go to the public". They go to the government.
        The government is not "the public" any more than an HOA is the houses on your street, or a school district administration is the kids in the classroom.

        Back in the 70s and 80s, Americans were extremely charitable and would donate money to anyone who popped up with pictures of malnourished children or crying mothers, or some folksy preacher on TV asking for help "

        • This will probably only weaken my point above in the eyes of most, but I think the US public has been oversold on the idea that tax money basically goes into a bottomless pit with no benefit to taxpayers. Everybody has expenditures they don't like, but in fact most money goes right back out the door as healthcare for millions, social security benefits, and yes of course defense, too. True, just paying into the general fund doesn't allow people to target the needs they feel most passionately about, like ta

  • Don Quixote... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Thursday January 13, 2022 @05:44AM (#62169481)
    ...to the rescue!

  • ConEdison will show some mercy and lower their ridiculous prices after these farms are up and running.

  • OK, I get that this is a stupid question but....

    100+ years ago, they dumped all sorts of toxic shit into the oceans. I mean, they're practically infinite, right? This is never going to hurt anyone.
    50 years ago (I'm thinking of the Mad Men episode where they were picnicking and he crushed an empty beer can before whipping it into the bushes) people didn't really give a crap about dumping trash in all sorts of places, I mean, the earth is HUGE right?

    Is there going to be a time when we've planted power gene

  • I vaguely remember a very qualified and respected person argue that windmills cause cancer. Can someone help me find that study?

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