First US Offshore Wind Power Park In Delaware 363
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."
Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:1, Informative)
they already have a few of these in Lake Erie just south of Buffalo: http://www.buffaloniagara.org/Home/About_BNE/PressRoom/2007Archive/June/WindmillPoweraReality [buffaloniagara.org]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:The conspiracy continues... (Score:3, Informative)
"Delaware, what state is that in?" is an actual question I've heard when mentioning it.
Well, it must have been a very early plot as it was the first state to sign the Constitution, and DuPont must have managed it from France, anticipating starting a gunpowder company a dozen years later.
Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:1, Informative)
The heads on windmills constantly adjust to the wind conditions. They do in fact turn all the way around.
Re:West Coast Jealousy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Those specs don't make sense... (Score:3, Informative)
The hub is 250 feet up.
The blades are 150 feet long.
Therefore the tip of the blades will be 150 feet from the hub...At the low point it will be 100 feet above the water. At the high point it will be 400 feet above the water.
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]
Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:1, Informative)
A little science assistance from Canada - you don't really get very big tides on the great lakes...(4 cm is about 1.5 inches)
According to the Canadian Hydrologic/Hydrographic Service, the Great Lakes experience tides from 1 to 4 cm, the strongest being on Lakes Superior and Erie. These tides are often masked out by meteorologically induced phenomena, such as a seiche (pronounced "sayshe"). When wind pushes down on one part of a lake, the water surface rises in another part, producing waves (most noticeable on Lake Erie because the lake is so shallow).
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.
Re:This was a huge political battle... (Score:3, Informative)
Europe gets like 20% of its power from wind, and doesn't have these kind of issues.
The wind farm will be on the coast, and when the most energy is used (summer and winter), the ocean temp is conveniently the most different from the land. Plus it is windy 250' above the ocean several miles off the coast a lot more often than it is standing on land.
How many times have you been to the ocean when there are no waves (which are caused by wind out at sea), or it isn't windy?
Re:This was a huge political battle... (Score:5, Informative)
That is sort of odd, considering that gas turbines and wind power fill two separate niches.
Wind power provides good support to base-load power, while gas turbines can fill demands during "peak" periods.
Also, there are fairly extensive atmospheric/climatic studies performed before sites are selected for wind farms. Given the height of the turbines, it's probably a pretty safe bet that there'll be some wind virtually all the time.
Re:The two big questions.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Environmental Impact (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ocean view (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of wealthy and powerful people have bought homes in places that look out over the ocean, and they want to see the ocean, not a bunch of wind turbines or oil rigs or boat people. These people will say anything do stop the project, so if the area gets money from tourism, they say that tourists will stop coming. I agree with you, I don't see anything wrong with it. While I like looking at mountains or the ocean, if I was going to buy a home because of the view it would be a view of the Chicago skyline.
Also, the web site and the submission didn't mention why it would only be visible in winter. I thought that it would be visible in summer and not the winter, if anything. Does anybody understand why?
In the summer the humidity is higher and the air holds more water which reduces visibility. In the winter there is less humidity and visibility improves. It isn't stated in the summary, but it is implied that they are referring to clear, sunny days (which probably occur less often during the winter, but do still occur occasionally).
Re:West Coast Jealousy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, I've been to Delaware... (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the hijack, but I'm going to attempt to insert some of the backstory here. See, I've lived in Delaware for the last 4 years (I'll gladly accept your pity)
Getting this deal done was a seemingly never ending political nightmare. Delmarva, the recently deregulated power company has fought against it tooth and nail. They seemed to have been under the impression that signing a 25 year power deal at a fixed price was a bad idea because you know, the price of oil might go down in the future...
Our governor was initially pushing a "clean coal" plant and against this deal. Blue Water Wind finally got the deal done due, in a large part, to netroots action pressuring the state legislature to force a deal down Delmarva's throat if they didn't start to negotiate in good faith. Delaware doesn't have ANY power generation, and buys all of it's power from other states. Delmarva wanted to continue to do this in spite of the rediculous congestion on our power infrastructure.
Tommywonk [blogspot.com] has been doing a fantastic job covering this issue, and if anyone wants anymore information I'd suggest they head there. (Surprisingly he doesn't have an update about the deal being inked yet)
Anyway, a warning to green power advocates, if this case is any indication, expect the entrenched interests to fight you every step of the way.
Re:This was a huge political battle... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it just doesn't need to build a second gas turbine, which was the alternative to building these windmills. They can't throw out the original one, but that was never the plan. The idea was always one gas turbine + wind farm would be better than two gas turbines.
Obligatory wind map... (Score:5, Informative)
It's interesting to note that most of the wind maps agree that offshore is the best place to stick a wind turbine. If you've ever stood by the ocean, there's always a stiff sea breeze coming from the ocean onto the land.
Re:Cool; Now to expand to the great lakes (Score:5, Informative)
The winds are much, much, much, much more constant and also stronger off shore than on.
Re:Transparent when warm? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The conspiracy continues... (Score:1, Informative)
delaware was the first state in the united states and best of all has no sales tax.
we also rule cause we charge you 4 bucks to drive like 20 miles on our stretch of 95.
ha ha.
I'm from Delaware! (Score:3, Informative)
I grew up there (and now live in Houston -- from a job I got on Slashdot no less).
Rehobeth is a beautiful area -- Delaware's #1 industry is tourism believe-it-or-not -- and it's just plain smart of them not to have them visible. Since the state is geologically a sand bar, the beaches are extremely nice and it's not a huge tourist hotspot like Florida or Jersey. They've got a decent sized park nearby (Cape Henlopen) where you can walk from forest to beach and take a dip if you want without all those pesky tourists.
Just reminds me of driving home from my last job and having a reasonably priced pint at Arena's.
Re:1.6 billion for 50,000 homes? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why make them hard to see? (Score:1, Informative)
That's because you're not a Kennedy. If you were a member of the blessed royal family of Massachusetts, you'd know that a windmill six miles offshore is so loud and so ugly that it will cause the value of your home on the shore to drop so far it will go negative.
The noise alone will be causing permanent hearing problems for your children. Won't somebody please think of the children? When did saving the environment become so important that it justified making my children look at something ugly? Nooooooo!
Re:The conspiracy continues... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This was a huge political battle... (Score:3, Informative)
And the bonus is that in 10 years time, the wind turbines will have broken even and, barring maintenance costs, will be producing very cheap electricity.
Whilst the gas turbine would be paying over the odds for Russian natural gas.
Short termers and NIMBYs are ruining the environment. Wind turbines are a good investment.