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First US Offshore Wind Power Park In Delaware
Posted by
kdawson
on Tuesday June 24, @02:53PM
from the doesn't-get-much-greener dept.
from the doesn't-get-much-greener dept.
Dekortage writes "Offshore wind power company Bluewater Wind has announced an agreement to build America's first offshore wind turbine park off the coast of Delaware. 'Each turbine [will sit on] a pole about 250 feet above the waterline... the units are to be constructed to withstand hurricane-force winds. From the shore, the park will be visible only on clear winter days, and the turbines will be nearly invisible during summer months when Rehoboth Beach fills with vacationers. Each blade on the three-blade rotor is to be 150 feet long.' The wind farm will power 50,000 homes in Delaware, using about half of its capacity."
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The conspiracy continues... (Score:5, Funny)
The wind farm will power 50,000 homes in Delaware
Lies. There are no homes in Delaware. Ask yourself, do you know anyone from Delaware?
I thought not.
Delaware is a plot between the banking industry and the DuPonts to get a few free Senators. Don't believe the lies.
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Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
According to TFA there are also tourists.
But that only begs the question...who would go to Delaware for a vacation?
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
That alone makes Delaware worth a vist, if only to check out the brewery and then drink oneself into oblivion... to avoid having to face the reality that you did, indeed, got to Delaware for a vacation.
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
But that only begs the question...who would go to Delaware for a vacation?
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
> I was stationed at Dover AFB from 1971-1973 [...] I owned a motorcycle and a new 1869 Mustang.
After 102+ years, I don't think your horse was even alive, let alone "new".
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Never before or since I was there have I ever been so bored, and I owned a motorcycle and a new 1869 Mustang.
That's your problem ... the Mustangs were a lot more fun once they started making them out of metal and putting gasoline engines into them!
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Re:The conspiracy continues... (Score:5, Funny)
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Ocean view (Score:5, Interesting)
My family usually makes a trip every year to Bethany Beach, which is just a bit south of Rehoboth Beach. While I understand that it's better for most tourists if the turbines are not visible, it'd be cool if we could make it into a real-life science "field trip" for the kids sometime in the future.
Are there any plans for something like a small boat trip to see them up close? Maybe they could build a museum?
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Re:Ocean view (Score:5, Interesting)
If you ever have the chance, go to Tarifa, Spain. It's one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.
The beaches are nice and wide with fine sand. It makes for a perfect place to ride wind powered boards and of course kite surfing in the ocean.
All of this wind also makes for the perfect location for windfarms. The area around Tarifa is spotted with the turbines. Honestly that was my favorite view was to stand on the beach and watch all of turbines happily spinning up on the mountains producing nice clean energy.
If I had faster internet I'd find you some links for pics.
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Re:Ocean view (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just stupid. They're _windmills_. It would be a massive waste of money to guard them in particular over and above normal coast guard duties. The effort required to inflict any damage of real consequence is massively prohibitive. And trust me, industrial espionage? Not a problem here.
Yep, they're novel to see if you haven't before. But they're truly just really big steel towers with 3 giant blades at the top. They're building lots in Ontario these days, and there is nothing keeping anybody from getting reasonably close to them whatsoever...there's no point.
I do find it weird that they'd be building these out in the Ocean so that people can't see them. They're not unsightly, and the increased initial cost and access costs for maintenance seems counter productive. Ah well. It's a step in the right direction anyways.
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Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Informative)
Better visibility in the winter. All the water vapor freezes out of the air, basically.
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Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Informative)
I can't imagine that they're going to build wind turbines that can rotate into the wind. A vertical axis wind turbine wouldn't have that problem.
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Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Informative)
There is a motorized & computer-controlled 360 Degree bearing surface where the generator housing nacelle attaches to the vertical supporting column. The computers on-board each generator keep their own weather sensors for wind speed and direction as well as for power demands of the cluster of wind generators and they calculate how best to pitch their blades and what direction to point or if they need to feather their pitch because of an incoming storm, etc...
General Electric has a detailed drawing of one of their models here: http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_turbines/en/36mw/index.htm [gepower.com]
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Technical Details (Score:5, Informative)
Technical data here [udel.edu]...
Bluewater Wind agrees to build a 150 turbine, 450MW wind project 12-13 miles off of Rehoboth Beach. Delmarva Power agrees to buy up to 300MW at any one time. The cost to Delmarva ratepayers for energy and capacity will be 10.56 cents/kWh in 2007 dollars. Delmarva is also purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) associated with its energy purchases.
So evidently these are 150 x 3MW turbines. Generally turbines of this class have a blade space diameter of 100m.
It is interesting to note that while Delaware has no nuclear reactors, it is across the river from the Salem [nrc.gov] dual 1.1 MWe PWRs and the co-located Hope Creek [nrc.gov] 1.0 MWe BWR in New Jersey, for a total of 3.2 MWe of nuclear in the neighborhood.
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The two big questions.... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not answered anywhere on the company's website or in the article...
The answers to these questions are important when determining whether this project is worthy of support or not:
Who is paying to build the windfarm?
Who gets to keep the profit from the windfarm?
For the windfarm they wanted to build around here, the answers were "me" (through tax dollars), and "not me" (as in some private corporation got to keep the profit, even though they didn't pay for the initial investment). Luckily a sufficient number of people were able to see that they were getting screwed through the veil of "environmental responsibility" in order to get the project canceled.
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This was a huge political battle... (Score:5, Informative)
I actually live in Delaware, and for those fools who aren't in the know, Delaware has some of the lowest property taxes in the area, good rail transit, and good gun laws.
Now, the windmill battle in Delaware was an EPIC battle. On one side, you had the utility that wanted to build a gas turbine, and on the other side, you had the windmill people.
The backdrop is that the utility already doubled rates because of rising fuel prices, and the state was already importing a great deal of energy at spot (read high) prices. To work around this, the state needed its own generation.
Now, the utility wanted to build a new gas turbine facility, because the capital costs were pretty cheap and they had enterprise experience with both operating and constructing them. The windmill people wanted a windmill farm, and, they probably would have lost on merits of costs, because the windmills are nearly twice as expensive as a cheap gas turbine station. However, I think what's happened is that, between everyone being so spooked by the perpetually rising fuel costs, and, a newly enacted state sustainability law, they more or less had to build the wind mill.
It will be cool if it works, but I'm cynically betting on rolling blackouts on calm, hot summer days.
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Re:This was a huge political battle... (Score:5, Informative)
i'll take your bet.
Electricity is a grid of multiple sources, kept in tight balance at several geographic levels. The output of all of them fluctuate constantly, as does use.
When there's not enough wind, it'll come from somewhere else. The concept is to build a diverse portfolio of sources so that we're not as affected by situations in any one.
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Politics of Wind Power (Score:5, Insightful)
USA needs to be going full bore with wind power. So what if it only contributes a fraction of the power we need. Any additional source of power is good and worth it if the energy return is positive. Off-shore wind power strikes me as a great alternative to the concerns regarding land-based wind power. Concerns such as overcoming NIMBY resistance, ugly-ling up the landscape, discouraging tourism, etc.
So, what's the deal with the politiking? When you face a problem, you attack that problem on all flanks, which for this problem means investing in all forms of safe, eco-friendly energy. Sometimes that means legislating enticing incentives and direct funding by the government for solutions which cannot immediately generate profits, but would over time if initially invested.
F the politics.
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Re:1.6 billion for 50,000 homes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:1.6 billion for 50,000 homes? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have an excellent point...
However, electricity has tripled in the last 20 years from 5.3 to 16~ish cents. Assuming in the next 20 years, it does the same... then 1,280 would be roughly $430 adjusted for inflation- which will be a huge bargain.
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Re:1.6 billion for 50,000 homes? (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, this is only half the capacity. In theory they can sell their surplus to other utility companies.
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Re:Dela-Where?? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why make them hard to see? (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason people like to endlessly bitch that windmills are "eyesores", as if this in and of itself is reason not to use them. They don't look unsightly to me.
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