NYC Will Replace Its Largest Fossil Fuel Plant With Wind Power (electrek.co) 132
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: New York City's largest fossil-fuel plant, which powers 20% of the city, will be replaced with offshore wind power. Ravenswood Generating Station is the New York City fossil fuel plant that will become an offshore wind hub. It's a 2,480-megawatt (MW) power plant in Long Island City, Queens, across from Roosevelt Island, and it's the Big Apple's largest power plant. Rise Light & Power, a New York based energy asset manager and developer that holds Ravenswood as its core asset, is submitting a proposal today, with support from community and state leaders, to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) in response to the state's offshore wind solicitation.
In a nutshell, the 27-acre waterfront oil and gas industrial site is going to be converted into a clean energy hub that will power one-fifth of New York City with offshore wind power. The Ravenswood offshore wind project will reuse existing physical and electrical infrastructure, and that's going to save New York ratepayers money. An HVDC conductor cable will be brought onshore at the existing power plant site. The cable will interconnect via underground HVAC cables to the NYISO bulk electric system at existing substations adjacent to the site. It will also become an offshore wind operations and maintenance hub that will support the just transition of the existing fossil fuel plant workforce, and drive economic investment into a historically underserved community. Rise Light & Power states that the project will, with training programs and job opportunities, justly transition and upskill Ravenswood's current Local 1-2 UWUA union workers.
In a nutshell, the 27-acre waterfront oil and gas industrial site is going to be converted into a clean energy hub that will power one-fifth of New York City with offshore wind power. The Ravenswood offshore wind project will reuse existing physical and electrical infrastructure, and that's going to save New York ratepayers money. An HVDC conductor cable will be brought onshore at the existing power plant site. The cable will interconnect via underground HVAC cables to the NYISO bulk electric system at existing substations adjacent to the site. It will also become an offshore wind operations and maintenance hub that will support the just transition of the existing fossil fuel plant workforce, and drive economic investment into a historically underserved community. Rise Light & Power states that the project will, with training programs and job opportunities, justly transition and upskill Ravenswood's current Local 1-2 UWUA union workers.
Reopen Indian Point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reopen Indian Point (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to agree on this one; NYC likely needs baseload power close rather than an aggregated source of energy. That said, I have no issues with putting in the wind power, just that they might want to have an extra GW of power close by. A battery plant can help both of them operate more effectively as well.
I think Indian Point might be a good case study for NuScale repowering.
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Wish I had mod points right now, because I totally agree with ALL of this.
No problem putting in wind -- we're doing the same here off the Jersey shore. Back that with a Megapack battery plant.
And let's get some next-gen nuclear built too. Cleanest form of energy we've got by a wide margin.
extra GW of power close by (Score:2, Insightful)
https://newatlas.com/energy/fo... [newatlas.com]
The bigger issue is long term outages of wind or solar. Clouds can be present for a month, wind can stop for a month (in some locations, including NYC for solar at least). So if you do not want NYC to go without 20% of power for a month, how do you ensure that at a reasonable cost? Near term they could keep the coal plant operational (though complex machines that get limited use tend to fall apart, and it takes a long time to fire up a co
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The biggest one is interconnect. You get the power from somewhere else. Even if you do need some fossil fuel plants, they can be some distance away and shared between many areas.
For example, this week, France coped with a predicted drop in generation by asking for power from the UK, which meant that the UK had to warm up (but didn't actually use) coal power. Using coal is pretty rare these days in the UK, but the generators are still there.
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For example, this week, France coped with a predicted drop in generation by asking for power from the UK, which meant that the UK had to warm up (but didn't actually use) coal power. Using coal is pretty rare these days in the UK, but the generators are still there.
Keeping generating resources ready but offline is not an economical thing at all. Government can do this (and I'm sure the UK government is paying for this), but no private company would ever build and maintain a plant to only be used for some weeks out of the year.
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You are just silly.
but no private company would ever build and maintain a plant to only be used for some weeks out of the year.
Of course they do. They are required by law to do so. Oops.
Government can do this (and I'm sure the UK government is paying for this)
No, the people/companies/institutions connected to the grid, pay for this. With the base fee on their bill.
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but no private company would ever build and maintain a plant to only be used for some weeks out of the year. Of course they do. They are required by law to do so...No, the people/companies/institutions connected to the grid, pay for this.
ROFLMAO. So companies concerned about economics would never do it, but government forces them and makes the users pay? That is even more hilarious. Clown show level.
Guess that is why electricity prices in the UK are higher than virtually anywhere in North America.
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Hm, not sure, but somehow you are confusing me.
Does the United States have more than one New York City? The only one I know about is this one: https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com] (and assuming it has no wind offshore any time, is idiotic)
Hm, lets check how it looks in mid/late January: https://www.windy.com/?40.315,... [windy.com]
Indeed, only ~20 knots of wind atm ... sucks.
Re:Reopen Indian Point (Score:4, Interesting)
Indian Point can't be re-opened or have its reactors replaced by NuScale ones, because its spent fuel pools are full and will remain full during much of the decommissioning process. You can't just grab an old reactor with a crane and dump it in a hole somewhere, the decommissioning process takes decades and cannot be sped up because much of it is dependent on the half life of the spent fuel and contaminated materials.
You could build a new plant on the same site, with new spent fuel pools and all the other infrastructure needed. Given the cost and timescales, it doesn't seem worth it. It sounds nice to have a gigawatt of generation on hand, but somebody has to pay for it.
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Well stated. To add to that, you might still be able to use the turbines, or at least turbine buildings. It is a long-term strategy, but one without excessive complexity.
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It's a myth that aggregated sources of energy cannot supply baseload power. [skepticalscience.com]
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It's a myth that aggregated sources of energy cannot supply baseload power. [skepticalscience.com]
Nowhere in that article (nor int he handful of papers it linked to that I checked) do I see any mention of frequency stability, ramping, voltage control, VAR injection or any of the other parameters required for operating a stable grid. Its all fine to say we need this many GW so we just connect all these sources together and voila. It really is not that simple, and these people should know better. Adding more asynchronous sources requires a robust synchronous grid to support them. Here is a good overvi
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Oh, I agree that a large aggregated source can be baseload; the challenge is that it is not dispatchable, and using batteries for that function means that you have only solved the diurnal equation and not the high pressure systems. Transmission is also a buffer. The problem then becomes a 5-10% event where your grid becomes very weak. The responsible way to address this is with local dispatchable generation that can accommodate a reasonable portion of load. NYC is not set up to deal with power failures grac
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That's ok because baseload is not meant to be dispatchable.
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The best option we have is to reopen Indian Point.
Indeed. NY closed a working carbon-free energy source with no significant safety issues, and replaced it with new fossil fuel plants, while "environmentalists" cheered.
New LWR nukes are prohibitively expensive, but once they are built and operating they are very low cost. Shutting them prematurely is nuts.
The NRC recommended keeping Indian Point open until at least 2033. It was local politicians, especially Andrew Cuomo, who pushed to close it for political reasons. It is unfortunate that he was kicked out
Re:Reopen Indian Point (Score:4, Insightful)
"Working" is not really accurate. The newest reactor there was 50 years old, and the other two even older. Reactors don't last forever, and need increasingly time consuming and complex monitoring as they age. The operators naturally resist that as it costs them money.
So while it was generating electricity, the question of it was safe, and for how long it would remain safe, was very much open. To keep it going until this year would have required putting immense faith in the operators to do those checks properly, and be honest when the reactors failed them and had to be shut down.
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Re:Reopen Indian Point (Score:5, Insightful)
The best option we have is to reopen Indian Point.
No. The best option is definitely not running a 60 year old outdated piece of technology operating 30 years beyond its original design life. The best option would be building a new power plant.
Things wear out, and while nuclear is a great technology we absolutely should be building more of right now, we need to absolutely shutdown these ancient worn out pieces of shit before they cause an actual disaster.
The reliability curve is a thing which exists. Wear out is a thing which exists. End of life failures are a thing which exists. And all of them relate to design life.
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Besides the pumps wearing out you also have neutron embrittlement of the pressure vessel. That is a much bigger problem.
In principle you can anneal your way out of trouble. The reactor vessel is unlikely to have the same shape when you are done, so now you have to remachine the mating surfaces, and everything is radioactive, so yeah, it's easier to start over.
re: spent fuel (Score:2)
The spent fuel from these reactors that everyone calls "waste" and frets about how to get rid of is potentially useful in the near future to recycle to power a new generation of nuclear plants.
https://www.neimagazine.com/fe... [neimagazine.com]
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potentially useful in the near future to recycle to power a new generation of nuclear plants.
In the icy winter months, I often think they should vitrify it for aggregate in self-heating sidewalks! Alpha emitters are fine as long you don't have direct contact or ingest them. :)
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Batteries (Score:1)
A 2.4 GW wind farm needs a 0.8 GW gas peaker or 96 GWh of batteries if it is to be reliable. That's a lot of batteries, about 6% of global production in 2022.
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The battery really only needs to be rated at 2-4h-- something like 800MW and 2GWh should be plenty. A gas peaker might be a good idea for extrordinary situations though.
Completely wrong. (Score:2)
>> A 2.4 GW wind farm needs a 0.8 GW gas peaker or 96 GWh of batteries if it is to be reliable
Completely wrong.
A plant is never seen in isolation, as a separate island, but together in interaction with the whole grid.
Yes, storage is still needed, but nowhere to the level you cite respective to generation.
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Well sure if you just burn coal whenever the wind is not blowing, then you don't need storage.
But at that point it's just better to retrofit the coal plant with gas.
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The wind might not be blowing where you are, but it is almost always blowing somewhere. If everyone builds a little excess capacity, then areas with wind can sell power to becalmed areas.
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If by a little excess capacity you mean 200% excess capacity you will be close. Capacity factors of 30 to 40% are typical for wind.
And I expect you to have no trouble at all with the thousands of mile of HV transmission lines it will take to bring the power from "somewhere".
Actual data from Eastern Washington's Dec 23 dunkelflaute showed that wind produced 0.7% of its rated 2827 MW that day. Solar managed 1.9% of its rated 138 MW over the full day, hurt by heavy gloom and the 8 hours of daylight. Average P
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Have you seen the transmission lines coming out of a nuclear plant?
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Yes I have. I've also seen the ones coming out of Grand Coulee Dam, Chief Joseph Dam, Rocky Reach, Rock Island, Priest Rapids, Wanapum, Bonneville, John Day, etc, etc. I've also seen the Pacific Intertie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What's your point?
My point is you will something like those from every windfarm that is "somewhere" to the place where the power is needed this hour. And since the data I gave is from the BPA, that covers half of a decent sized state, you can see that it's not a matter of m
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That's not a problem because HVDC loses only about 3.5% per 600 miles of distance. [wikipedia.org]
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https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
If there is not much solar power installed, obviously not much is transmitted.
Also it helps to grasp what your link is actually saying, citation: The BPA Load does not include scheduled energy to other balancing authority areas.
Solar energy is usually consumed on the spot, aka "not scheduled" to be transported out of the grid or inside of the grid.
So: your link makes no sense to support any argument you want to make - assuming you wanted to ma
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A plant is never seen in isolation, as a separate island, but together in interaction with the whole grid.
Yes, and asynchronous sources like solar and wind need a robust synchronous grid to supply the required inertia for stability. They don't have to be right next door, but they have to exist.
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Solar used DC/AC converters, which have "the same inertia" like the rest fo the grid.
And claiming a wind mill has no inertia is kind of idiotic, or not?
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And claiming a wind mill has no inertia is kind of idiotic, or not?
Yes, windmills do not inherently operate at 60Hz (or maybe 50 where you are). Here is a good guide to grid basics. Best to understand synchronous and asynchronous for a start. Once you grasp this you can move on to reactive power demands.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20... [nrel.gov]
Not saying you can't add more highly variable renewables to a grid, just saying it is far from as simple as adding up GWs and running more wires as many people seem to think.
Size (Score:3, Interesting)
How. If will this wind farm be? I had a hard time coming up with a size for a 2.4 GW wind farm, but I found this:
Taking these factors into account, a wind farm would need an installed capacity between 1,900 megawatts and 2,800 MW to generate the same amount of electricity in a year as a 1,000-MW nuclear energy facility. Such a facility would require between 260 square miles and 360 square miles of land.
Source: https://www.nei.org/news/2015/... [nei.org]
Can that be right? 260 square miles? That seems kinda big...
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260 sq mi is only 16x16miles. But, with the larger turbines and towers they should be able to do about 15MW/sq mi.
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A single wind turbine is already in the 15MW range, the biggest once approach 20MW. See: https://interestingengineering... [interestin...eering.com]
I don't think you would only put one of them per square mile.
What your parent forgets: the land (in this case sea even) is not gone. It is still there, and can be just used like before.
Re:Size (Score:5, Informative)
Wind generation on this scale already exists : Last year the 2nd phase of Hornsea windfarm (in the North Sea, off the UK coast) was completed - phase 1 + 2 combined can generate 2.6 GW and it took about 2 years to construct each phase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (Hornsea Wind Farm wik article)
Obviously to cover the variable output the wind farms should be over-provisioned and combined with storage and transmission grid interconnects (the UK currently has a little over 7 GW of HVDC connections to other countries according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and is constructing more)
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How? They're lying and virtue signaling. That's why one of their conspirators modded you Troll - BS can't stand up to mathematics.
I'll bet 1 BCH, to the first taker, that NYC will not operate 2.5GW of available wind power by 2030.
Even if it's aspirational that's dangerous because opportunity costs will be incurred until the fantasy is discarded. This is an engineer's job - not a politician's.
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We are in the year 2023, not 2027. So 2030 is not a far sketch.
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It is actually not that much space...
that is stupid (Score:2)
another storm like sandy comes through and it will be lights out, possibly for months.
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Nope. The people doing these projects are not bloody amateurs. They actually look at the past and possible future weather conditions and take them into account. Stop pushing FUD.
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When a storm like Sandy comes, it is lights out anyway. Because of the catastrophic state of the rest of the grid. Power lines over land out side of houses, wow. You can do that in Thailand, where it is cheaper and quick to repair after a storm. But in a majour city?
Washington DC ought to consider this (Score:2)
There's so much excess wind in the immediate vicinity, after all.
Makes sense! (Score:2)
I'm surprised that Texas... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I'm surprised that Texas... (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever driven through the texas panhadle. Not much there except a wind farm larger than the eye can see. It goes on for miles and miles.
Make fun of Texas - but the wonderful thing about it is they won't get in your way of doing what you want, as long as you don't expect someone else to pay for it.
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It is not reliable, and the day ahead forecast is often off by GW's.
It would be interesting to know how much off they are in percentages.
Especially wind forecasts are usually very reliable, they must use a strange/incompetent forecasting service.
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Well, Texans have been pretty adept at getting other people to pay for school text books that whitewash the appalling racist history of the United States, and using billionaires' money to subsidize them into schools all across America.
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hasn't sued them for even proposing it.
The state of Texas is one of the largest producers of wind and solar energy in the world.
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I'm referring specifically to the Texas Public Policy Foundation. They have been promoting fossil fuel use nation wide, and have filed lawsuits to prevent the construction of windfarms in New England previously, ostensibly to preserve fisheries and wildlife, but they're being funded heavily by fossil fuel interests.
Well "Texas" and "the Texas Public Policy Foundation" are totally different things.
As far as the lawsuit you mention, lots of groups have sued to stop wind farms in New England. This is the lawsuit you referred to: https://www.texaspolicy.com/pr... [texaspolicy.com]
"The lawsuit, brought on behalf of six businesses whose livelihoods will be severely impacted, shows that approval of the project violated federal law by ignoring multiple legal protections for affected stakeholders, such as conducting environmental assessments a
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Need energy storage for this to work (Score:2)
There's no replacing a fossil fuel power plant with windmills because fossil fuels are stored energy and wind power is intermittent energy. I'll keep reading on how future cheap energy storage technologies will allow us to replace fossil fuels with intermittent renewable energy. The thing is we already have inexpensive energy storage in fossil fuels, so until we actually see this claimed future technology we aren't replacing fossil fuels with wind power but rather we are burning the fossil fuels in less e
Better (Score:2, Interesting)
Better get ready for the brownouts when the wind doesn't blow.
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Are you trying to execute a particularly clumsy troll, or are you really that stupid?
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Looks like the right wing retards with mod points are loose again. Look for as many sensible comments as they can reach to be modded down to sub-zero by the slimy little fascist a-holes.
poor decisions (Score:4, Funny)
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I believe that the plan to put a windmill on the Statue of Liberty's head and a pinwheel on her butt is somewhat misguided.
Just need to add some thigh-high boots in red white and blue leather, for consistency. Maybe a feather boa, though that might be too much.
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Hoooray! (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't this cross the Atlantic flyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah, they'll drop into the Atlantic.
On the other hand, I doubt it'll be much of a problem.
1. Placed decently well, it'll be off migration paths, which are primarily north-south. Presumably the offshore windmills will be located to the east.
2. Migrating birds any decent distance from land are going to be pretty high up, for the same reason planes fly high - less air resistance. Thus out of the windmill's paths.
3. We keep making them bigger. Bigger windmills actually have fewer problems with birds.
4. Most likely birds to encounter them would be seagulls, and fuck seagulls.
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Re:Doesn't this cross the Atlantic flyway? (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot one:
5. Birds aren't real.
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Plus even on-shore wind turbines kill fewer birds per MWh generated than nuclear plants. The gap isn't huge but still, they are one of the most bird-friendly forms of mass generation we have.
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https://energycentral.com/c/ec... [energycentral.com]
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1. Just turning the power off for a bit doesn't really satisfy terrorist urges. They'd rather bomb a cafe or such. Get some bodies.
2. As you mention, hurricane hits and such means that simply downing the power line won't actually put NYC in the dark.
3. Putting the cable underwater means that hurricanes won't touch it. Put the turbines out to sea a ways and "hurricane" turns into merely "strong wind" - you'll have the turbines rated for that, even if they have to shut down and turn sideways to the wind
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Think of that as a target rich [ifunny.co] environment.
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Maybe they will be using the vertical turbines that aren't as dangerous to birds?
Vertical turbines are less efficient and make little sense.
The "bird" issue is FUD. Birds are in far more danger from climate change than from wind turbines.
Cats kill a thousand times as many birds as wind turbines. If these pseudo-environmentalists are really concerned about birds, they would be lobbying for a ban on outdoor cats rather than opposing wind turbines.
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If these pseudo-environmentalists are really concerned about birds, they would be lobbying for a ban on outdoor cats
But, but, but, that's nature playing itself out!
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Cats are not Nature, they are a plague.
You're thinking of humans [youtube.com].
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Cats don't kill eagles and condors, windmills do. This isn't FUD, it might be overblown but it is not FUD. If wind power advocates really cared about the environment then they'd demand mitigation strategies to the deaths of endangered bird species rather than make silly claims about how cats kill more birds than windmills.
Some of these strategies are quite simple, such as painting one of the three blades of the windmill a different color as somehow this makes them more visible to the birds. Some strategi
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For a wind mill to be able to kill e.g. a Condor, it would need to be able to get close to a Condor.
So, the Condors you mention must have escaped from a zoo or something.
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What are they going to do with all the migrating birds this giant field of windmills will kill? Just drop them in the Atlantic to fertilize the algae, or gather them to compost for all the organic farms that will feed the Big Apple?
Why is that bad, when domestic cats that kill far more birds are ok?
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What are they going to do with all the migrating birds this giant field of windmills will kill?
Presumably nothing because they don't care about fake outrage generated by the ignorant?
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Did you also know solar panels don't work at night? Checkmate greenies!
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Solution: Charge up batteries and use them to power stadium lights over the solar panels.
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Re: Power outages when there is no wind? (Score:1, Troll)
Transition timeframe? How many years will it take to build an equal-sized off-shore wind farm to fully-replace the current fossil fuel plant's current output?
They are t just going to call-up Amazon and order a few Gigawatts of wind turbines and install them for next year.
And WTH? One-fifth of NYC electricity comes from burning fossil fuel? How long has that been the case?
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Of course not. You have to call up Alibaba, not Amazon.
According to the Internet, closer to 1/3 comes from burning fossil fuels, mostly gas or oil.
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And WTH? One-fifth of NYC electricity comes from burning fossil fuel? How long has that been the case?
No, one fifth of NYC electricity comes from this one powerplant that they are replacing. A significantly higher percentage than that (just shy of 60%) comes from "burning fossil fuels" in general, almost all of which is natural gas. For the record, "wind" curranty accounts for 1.3%.
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Will the remaining power plants be able to cover for this wind power when there suddenly is no wind?
They've planned for this contingency and will be providing all NYC residents all the beans they can eat, free of charge. There will be plenty of wind.
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Will the remaining power plants be able to cover for this wind power when there suddenly is no wind?
They've planned for this contingency and will be providing all NYC residents all the beans they can eat, free of charge. There will be plenty of wind.
They don't call it a Bronx Cheer for nothing...
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No, but they don't care. The poors will just have to cut back on their use of electric, all the way back to zero during times of high demand when the grid melts down for all but the important people.
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Them whales is good eatin. Just ask the Japanese.