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Plans Submitted for 1,000-Megawatt Offshore Wind Farm

By Renewable Energy World Editors
October 10, 2011 | 21 Comments

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New Hampshire, U.S.A. -- Deepwater Wind has officially submitted plans to develop a 1,000-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Deepwater Wind says its massive project, dubbed the Deepwater Wind Energy Center (DWEC), represents the “second generation” of offshore wind farms in the United States. No wind farms have yet been built off American waters. However, those that have been proposed and approved — such as Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound — are much smaller.

The project was among those hailed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a visit to Rhode Island in August. Salazar and other Obama administration officials have worked to draw developers into the nation's nascent offshore wind industry.

With as many as 200 wind turbines, the project would serve multiple East Coast states and would require a regional transmission system. According to the company, DWEC would be sited in the deep ocean waters of southern Rhode Island Sound, where it would be barely visible from the shore. Most of the turbines will be located 20 to 25 miles from shore. No turbine will be located any closer than 13.8 miles from inhabited land, with only a few turbines located at that distance. Construction is planned to begin in 2014 or 2015, with the first wind turbines in operation by the end of 2016 or 2017.

“This ‘second generation’ of offshore wind farms will be larger and farther from shore, and will produce lower priced power, using more advanced technology than any of the offshore projects announced to date,” said William M. Moore, Deepwater Wind CEO.

Deepwater Wind is also developing a regional offshore transmission network, the New England-Long Island Interconnector (NELI), connecting DWEC to southern New England and eastern Long Island. NELI will allow the wind farm to send power to multiple states in the region. Deepwater Wind plans to market power from DWEC to several states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut.

Deepwater Wind will base its manufacturing and construction operations at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, where the company has more than 100 acres under lease option. Deepwater Wind is also exploring port and other facilities in Massachusetts to complement its Quonset base.

Wind Power

21 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

This will be an even bigger boondoggle than Cape Wind. Article didn't mention the taxpayer subsidies required. Or the price for the erratic power. Or as that great folk refrain, "When will we ever learn?"

Comment
2 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Silly statement Rolf. Every kWh generated by wind is a kWh not generated by fossil fuel. That means less CO2 spewed into the atmosphere. You may not care, but the rest of us do. Or would you rather have a nuke built at 3x the price and have our descendants worry about spent fuel for 10,000 years.

Comment
3 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

Actually every kwh produced by wind requires a natural gas plant backup kwh hour because wind is so erratic. And EIA and Xcel Energy reports show that wind and solar are the most expensive fuel sources. Nuclear plants total operating cost including fuel is about 2 cents/kwh. Cape Wind requires over 20 cents/kwh to be viable even with hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies.

Comment
4 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Rolf, that's baloney. All forms of energy require some measure of back up (maintenance, emergencies, human error, transmission line failures). Wild variations in demand require spinning reserves way in excess of those required for renewables. In the analyzes you cite, the externalities of conventional power are ignored. Fossil power is allowed to ignore its health and climate-change mitigation costs. Nuclear is allowed to ignore the near-perpetual costs of tending to radioactive waste. Both are allowed to ignore the massive taxpayer subsidies they have enjoyed for decades and continue to enjoy.

Comment
5 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

Nuclear plants in the U.S have a capacity factor in excess of 90%. The 8 or 9% down time is a scheduled period every 20 months or so for fuel replacement and maintenance.
Wind farms in 2009 and 2010 had a U.S. capacity factor of 27%. That means that most of the time they don't contribute, and we don't know when they are up or down.
When I bring my classes to tour power plants, and the students ask control room personnel about wind, the reaction is either despair or laughter.
Industrial wind is a noisy erratic tax payer funded scam.

Comment
6 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Rolf, I wonder if your students appreciate the bias you are injecting. Consider educating for the future rather than the past.

The grid had to respond to the following "noisy erratic tax payer funded scam" in three seconds.

Perry nuclear power plant shut down http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/05/perry_nuclear_power_plant_shut.html "Perry's reactor operators manually powered down the reactor late Tuesday night after pressure dropped in key safety equipment designed to "scram" the reactor in an emergency, shutting it down in three seconds or less."

Comment
7 of 21

barbara-durkin-58707

October 12, 2011

The driver is not public interest served by reliable and economically viable energy sources.

Institute for Energy Research
Another Offshore Wind Project in Trouble Due to High Costs Wind
Posted October 5, 2011

"...Five wind developers submitted proposals to develop an offshore wind farm on Great Lakes Ontario and Erie in the range of 120 to 500 megawatts. The lakes are thought to be one of the most reliable sources of electricity generated by wind in New York State because the wind blows uninterrupted. According to the New York Power Authority, a 150-megawatt wind farm would cost between $1.2 billion and $2.0 billion to build and would cost the Authority between $60 million and $100 million annually in power purchases.[i] That translates into a per kilowatt cost of $8,000 to over $13,000, much higher than the estimated cost of an offshore wind farm by the Energy Information Administration of $5,975 per kilowatt.[ii] In fact, the lower figure is over a-third higher..."

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2011/10/05/another-offshore-wind-project-in-trouble-due-to-high-costs/

Follow the money, ours, now theirs:

Meet your wind developers UPC First Wind, DeepWater Wind, Cape Wind Associates, LLC, EMI, IVPC:

http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2010/12/30/5737860-meet-your-wind-developers-upc-first-wind-deepwater-wind-cape-wind-associates-llc-emi-ivpc

Comment
8 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Barbara, I suppose you would prefer some more coal plants and the pollution and mountain-top removals associated with keeping them fed. Or do you prefer natural gas and its emissions and the fracking and polluted aquifers associated with the present (and comical) glut. No? Well how about nuclear at 3x the construction costs? Or is developing a rational energy policy simply to complex and better left for our grandchildren to confront?

Comment
9 of 21

barbara-durkin-58707

October 12, 2011

I would prefer we concentrate on energy efficiency, retool conventional energy plants and focus on conservation measures first, Cliff. A rational energy policy escapes the Obama Admin.

Wind energy has a massive industrial footprint so its environmental damage is extensive. Wind is a redundant energy source, thus is a complete waste of tax and ratepayers' dollars and natural resources.

Green Mountain Power wind turbine project has violated Vt's Lowell Moutain habitat and its Clean Water Act permit when it failed to comply with the Clean Water Act.

Jack Lifton:

"...To make the most efficient, lightest weight, lowest service wind turbine generator of electricity takes one ton of the rare earth metal, neodymium, per megawatt of generating capacity. This to to build the neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnet necessary for the generator to function.

The current production of neodymium is around 20,000 metric tons a year, and all of it is produced in China…"

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/65370-jack-lifton/3363-rare-metals-investment-news-updates-today-s-edition-rareminutes-050709-neodymium

"Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste."

'There's not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html

Increasing our dependence on China where US dollars for renewables create jobs is not rational energy policy.

Comment
10 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

Actually we want those giant windmills with their tons of concrete and steel and all the pollution and green house gases involved in their production. And no fossil fuel plant on earth has been replaced by wind turbines. But many gas plants have to be built to back up those turbines which operate about a fourth of the time.

Comment
11 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Barbara, you'd prefer US dollars be spent on imported fossil fuel? Good luck in your advocacy.

Rolf, more concrete is used in nuclear plants and their containment than the in the wind turbine foundations associated with equivalent output. The energy involved in building and installing wind turbines are recovered in 4 to 8 months depending on the local wind speeds.

You clearly know little about energy in general and renewables in particular yet you keep ranting. Why?

Comment
12 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

The Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) said electricity is currently about nine times more expensive to generate from wind farms than gas-powered plants.
Mike Salter, the SCC chairman, told the organisation's annual dinner that Government energy experts predict greater reliance on "very expensive" renewables will lead to consumers' electricity bills doubling.
He warned this would hold back the Scottish economy and lead to businesses going under. If this is the consequence, he questioned whether Mr Salmond's "total commitment" to green energy is "misguided".

Comment
13 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

I'm the teacher, Cliff. You are the student. Instead of trashing me with cheap shots, just ask questions. that is the way you learn.

Comment
14 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

Last winter around christmas time, a big cold high pressure system settled ovr the UK. Electric demand soared, and 3,000 wind turbines wen quiet, running at less than 10% capacity. Fortunately the UK nuclear plants and imports of nuclear from France were there. Those plants run rain or shine, night or day, wind or calm. It's called base load power, something wind turbines can't provide.

Comment
15 of 21

barbara-durkin-58707

October 12, 2011

You mention two of the EPA top generation sources of harmful emissions. Vessels are needed to transport massive components and this source of harmful emissions tops concrete and steel processing. Wind energy sites are future junkyards and wastelands, Rolf. Fiberglass, football field-sized wind turbine blades can't be recycled.

Courtesy of a Danish friend:

http://borsen.dk/nyheder/investor/artikel/1/209112/vindmoellevinger_er_et_enormt_miljoeproblem.html

Translation (by Google) as:

Wind turbine blades are an enormous environmental problem

By Dagbladet Børsen (Denmark's leading business newspaper)

10-06-2011 06:01 As the wind becomes a central part of energy supply, growing a huge waste problem with similar speed.

Wind turbine blades are completely impossible to recycle, and therefore they end up in the ovens in CHP plant or landfill. Minister warms up for an intervention. ....writes Børsen.

As the wind industry is to fill an increasing share of Denmark's energy needs, towers there is a gigantic mountain of scrap blades up.

They can not be recycled, but can only be incinerated or disposed of in landfills and therefore constitute an enormous environmental problem.

"When a turbine is operating, it produces green energy. But when it is worn, so is it suddenly a problem. There is currently no concrete solution to reusing blades from wind turbines," says senior development engineer Tom Løgstrup Andersen from Risø DTU. He has two decades researching the fiberglass and composites.

'Lalamilo Another Hawaii Wind Energy Junkyard'

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/5179/Lalamilo-Another-Hawaii-Wind-Energy-Junkyard.aspx

Comment
16 of 21

rolf-westgard-67277

October 12, 2011

Exactly, Barbara. The relatively short life of these turbines is creating a big junkyard problem. Nuclear plants last 60-80 years and produce huge amounts of energy while they are running. All that concrete and steel in a wind monster is maybe good for 20-25 years.

Comment
17 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Rolf, you wrote, "I'm the teacher, Cliff. You are the student. Instead of trashing me with cheap shots, just ask questions. that is the way you learn."

That may be your pedagogical style, but things are a little different out here in the real world. Open your mind, that way almost anyone can learn - maybe even you.

Barbara, the same can be said for nearly all composite structures. Must you dig to such obscure levels to fault renewable energy? Have you ever been on a beach when oil is washing up? Have you visited an open-pit coal mine. Do you know the groundwater radiation levels surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation? Few things we humans do have no impact.

You say, "I would prefer we concentrate on energy efficiency, retool conventional energy plants and focus on conservation measures first." So you like the sound of "Clean Coal" or "sequestering" CO2 for future generations?

Comment
18 of 21

Cliff_Goudey

October 12, 2011

Rolf, you crack me up. You wrote, "All that concrete and steel in a wind monster is maybe good for 20-25 years." Time will tell, but at least those materials can be recycled to make new turbines. Materials from a retired nuke becomes hazardous waste.

Comment
19 of 21

Anonymous

October 12, 2011

Rolf writes in comment #14: "The Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) said electricity is currently about nine times more expensive to generate from wind farms than gas-powered plants."

It seems a bit disingenuous to cite such an obscure source. The EIA gives levelized costs of energy (LCOE) here: ttp://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

From this table we see onshore wind estimates at 9.7 cents/kWh; offshore wind at 24.3 cents/kWh, and combined cycle natural gas at 6.6 cents/kWh (but peaker plants can be much higher). Wind is higher than natural gas in this table, but not by anything close to a factor of 9.

A more reasonable critique here would be to focus on why we are thinking of offshore wind in the US at this stage. The Europeans are stuck doing this because they have exhausted many of the good onshore locations, but in the US we have plenty of onshore resources that could be exploited at a much cheaper cost than offshore resources (if only we built a more robust grid). The article claims this venture will be cheaper than usual offshore wind, but it is quite vague about how much cheaper. Even a very significant drop from EIA offshore LCOE estimates would still make this venture pretty pricey. If I lived in Rhode Island I'd be concerned my electricity prices would be going up after this is brought online (and the price of electricity there is already well above the national average).
Steven

Comment
20 of 21

jajagabor

October 22, 2011

barbara-durkin-58707: "I would prefer we concentrate on energy efficiency, retool conventional energy plants and focus on conservation measures first, Cliff."

Funny, I thought that is what alternative energy advocates have been doing from the start - recommending that we go for the "low hanging fruit" of efficiency (think Amory Lovins) at the same time as we use cleaner technologies to produce energy. But apparently Barbara has never heard of Amory Lovins, or straw bale construction or evacuated walls (read: insulation writ large), or South facing glass, or Trombe walls (thermal mass): all very cheap and effective methods that practically all wind/solar users advocates both use and advocate to lower the base need for energy. She has never heard of radiant floor heating, solar chimneys (cupolas), super-efficient refrigerators (such as Sunfrost).

In other words - like the rest of the endless stream of wind and solar power haters - she has no real desire to reduce energy consumption at all, or learn more about it, which is why they never have any concrete recommendations or actions of doing so. They think that just by saying, "I'm all for energy conservation" and the like they've said or done something interesting or constructive.

And naturally, she makes no mention of things like the new Cal Tech design of wind turbine

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/10/tech-notes5?cmpid=WindNL-Wednesday-October19-2011

or of any of the many other exciting innovations that continue to advance efficiency in alternative methods that you see either here on REW or in the press. Nor does she (and those like her) ever talk about mercury emissions form coal burning . . . or the endless series of radiation leaks and other accidents, near misses, and incompetence that has always plagued the nuclear industry . . . or its costs.

But she and those like her are able to get us to waste our energy arguing - they certainly accomplish that!

Comment
21 of 21

mmaeng2013

November 2, 2011

Not to bring up an old story but I am a student at a maritime academy. I am currently doing a project which incorporates proposing an offshore wind turbine near the school. While researching the fact that offshore winds are steadier and contain more energy that can be transferred shows that while a wind farm on land may go dead that doesn't mean a wind farm on the ocean will go dead.

With some of the floating platforms being designed it is possible to harness wind energy from every direction. I have not looked into the depths of water in the proposed site of this wind farm but the European farms are in fairly shallow water and not far off the coast.

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