US Approves Massive Windfarm Project Off the Coast of Virginia (apnews.com) 72
Tuesday Orsted cancelled two wind farms near New Jersey that would've generated about 2.2 gigawatts of energy. But the same day America's Interior Department approved plans to install up to 176 wind turbines off the coast of Virginia with an estimated capacity of about 2.6 gigawatts of clean energy.
Located approximately 27 miles from the shores of Virginia Beach, the project will be America's largest offshore wind project, capable of powering over 900,000 homes. In just its first 10 years it should save customers $3 billion in fuel costs, Dominion Energy told the Associated Press: Dominion expects construction to be completed by late 2026... Construction of the project in Virginia is expected to support about 900 jobs each year and then an estimated 1,100 annual jobs during operations, the Interior Department said. The initiative has gained wide support from Virginia policymakers and political leaders, including Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who last week attended a reception marking the arrival of eight monopile foundations for the windfarm.
Two pilot turbines have already been in place since 2020, the article points out. And when finished the new wind farm "would bolster and eventually replace the mostly natural gas-powered electricity that is contributing to costly climate change," reports MarketWatch President Biden, early in his first term, announced a goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes and prevent the spewing of 78 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions... U.S. offshore wind has been helped along by nearly $8 billion in investments since Biden signed his signature, climate-heavy Inflation Reduction Act a little over a year ago... Biden's team has projected that the U.S. could install 110 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050, a major jump considering there is less than 1 gigawatt installed today. Land-based wind farms across the U.S. already produce more than 140 gigawatts of energy, contributing to about 10% of the nation's energy portfolio...
When measured by announced plans and pledges, the country has been barreling toward its offshore goal. To date, the Department of the Interior has approved four New England-based projects that, together with the new Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, promise to deliver 5 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.75 million homes with average power use. A total of more than 51 gigawatts of wind power capacity is in the works off U.S. shores and the most ambitious 10 coastal states have combined offshore wind goals of generating more than 81 gigawatts.
Located approximately 27 miles from the shores of Virginia Beach, the project will be America's largest offshore wind project, capable of powering over 900,000 homes. In just its first 10 years it should save customers $3 billion in fuel costs, Dominion Energy told the Associated Press: Dominion expects construction to be completed by late 2026... Construction of the project in Virginia is expected to support about 900 jobs each year and then an estimated 1,100 annual jobs during operations, the Interior Department said. The initiative has gained wide support from Virginia policymakers and political leaders, including Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who last week attended a reception marking the arrival of eight monopile foundations for the windfarm.
Two pilot turbines have already been in place since 2020, the article points out. And when finished the new wind farm "would bolster and eventually replace the mostly natural gas-powered electricity that is contributing to costly climate change," reports MarketWatch President Biden, early in his first term, announced a goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes and prevent the spewing of 78 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions... U.S. offshore wind has been helped along by nearly $8 billion in investments since Biden signed his signature, climate-heavy Inflation Reduction Act a little over a year ago... Biden's team has projected that the U.S. could install 110 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050, a major jump considering there is less than 1 gigawatt installed today. Land-based wind farms across the U.S. already produce more than 140 gigawatts of energy, contributing to about 10% of the nation's energy portfolio...
When measured by announced plans and pledges, the country has been barreling toward its offshore goal. To date, the Department of the Interior has approved four New England-based projects that, together with the new Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, promise to deliver 5 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.75 million homes with average power use. A total of more than 51 gigawatts of wind power capacity is in the works off U.S. shores and the most ambitious 10 coastal states have combined offshore wind goals of generating more than 81 gigawatts.
140GW? (Score:1)
"Land-based wind farms across the U.S. already produce more than 140 gigawatts of energy"
ITYM 140 gigawatts max in theory if they all have enough wind blowing past them.
Wind power is a great idea but you have to be realistic - the wind doesn't always blow hard enough and when you get summer blocking highs which can last for days or weeks the turbines will produce nothing so there needs to be a plan B. Maybe solar+batteries partly but you also need a non renewable source such as nuclear or gas turbine.
Re:140GW? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why you build them in places with near constant wind, and also build them out in a geographically distributed way. These people are smart, you know.
The nameplate capacity of a generator is very rarely ever realized, no matter what the energy source is. Wind isn't radically different than hydro, solar, nuclear, or whatever else in that respect.
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"That's why you build them in places with near constant wind"
Sorry, no such thing even at sea. You never heard of sailing ships being becalmed for days in the past?
"These people are smart, you know."
Never said they weren't so save the straw men for someone else.
"Wind isn't radically different than hydro, solar, nuclear, or whatever else in that respect."
Wind and solar are very different from other sources. The max you're going to get is whatever nature is offering up that moment, with nuclear, fossil fuels
Re: 140GW? (Score:2)
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"You never heard of sailing ships being becalmed for days in the past?"
Yes, it happened, but it was rather rare. Remembered chiefly because it was rare, and calamitous when it did happen. A huge shipping industry was built around thousands of ships moving cargo and passengers. Why? Because the winds blew and the ships got where they were going to.
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Sorry, no such thing even at sea. You never heard of sailing ships being becalmed for days in the past?
Yes, we have heard. And that is at completely different places.
There are places where the wind never stops and there are places were over a course of a year the wind ALWAYS stops for 4 to 6 weeks, at a specific time in the year.
You could read that up. And also fix your high pressure zone myth on that way.
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The nameplate capacity of a generator is very rarely ever realized, no matter what the energy source is. Wind isn't radically different than hydro, solar, nuclear, or whatever else in that respect.
Actually Wind and Solar are very different from many others in that regard, especially nuclear power. I mean this should come as no surprise to you since for sources of constant energy (water movement, steam temperature and pressure) you can select equipment to optimise generation, and the optimisation in that regard includes sizing equipment to try and achieve maximum efficiency at the known operating point. Wind and Solar on the other hand are optimised to maximise total generation across a wide range of
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> Capacity factors for wind vary from 20-60% of the nameplate rating. If you designed a nuclear, coal, gas, or hydro installation like that you will be fired from your job.
The capacity factor of coal and natural gas are both near 50%, with coal slightly below and gas slightly above.
Capacity factor calculation includes time, not just the ratio of nameplate to actual output. If you run a coal plant at 100% nameplate output but only for 6 months, that's a 50% capacity factor for the year.
=Smidge=
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You're describing the difference between dispatchable and non-dispatchable power. Fact remains that coal and gas powerplants have ~50% capacity factor.
> Wind can drop to 5-10% of nameplate, just when you need it most.
Onshore vs offshore wind makes all the difference. I invite you to browse some data [globalwindatlas.info].
=Smidge=
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Pumped hydro has 50% CF. If it is 100% utilized ... sounds odd, right?
Half the time it pumps uphill. The other half it lets water flow downhill. And now adjust to: it is actually idle and does nothing.
River Flow water hydro plants depend on water hight. So most certainly not close to 100%.
Hydro Dams also depend on water height, and on for what else the water is used, irrigation, level control on the river/creek below etc. So: also not 100%.
Coal is usually used for load following. So quite a few plants do no
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If wind is not blowing at place A that delivers 70GW, it is still blowing at place B that delivers 70GW. Therefore, wind delivers 140GW.
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That's what offshore excels at. The wind never stops out there, it just varies. And you have a massive area to distribute the windmills over.
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But you're right 91% of the time.
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Some Europeans think the North Sea sea is huge but sorry, the places where wind farms are build can easily simultaneous all be suffering similar winds.
Luckily there is also a lot of wind power installed on the Atlantic side of Scotland and some east of Denmark.
For both the US and EU the solution is storage, at the moment that would be batteries, a pa
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For both the US and EU the solution is storage,
Storage can mean a lot of different things to lots of different people.
at the moment that would be batteries
No, at the moment that would be big steel tanks of natural gas, piles of coal, and for a few lucky parts of the USA and EU pumped hydro.
a partial exception is Norway where they have some pumped storage in reservoirs.
Yes, indeed, Norway is one of the exceptions.
Fuel is stored energy, and because it is stored energy we use it for, wait for it... energy storage! We already store energy without batteries but there is a large difference on energy return for batteries versus most fuels. For batteries the energy we get b
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Yes nuclear is part of this equation.
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"You forget one little thing, we (the vast majority of the world) want to get rid of CO2 meaning fossil fuels are a big no no."
Wrong. A small activist and sympathizing section of the population of the English speaking countries wants that. No-one else does.
China, India, Indonesia... etc don't want it at all. In fact, they are raising emissions as fast as necessary to max their economic growth.
China approved in the first six months of this year more coal generation plant than the whole of the generating p
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You forget one little thing, we (the vast majority of the world) want to get rid of CO2 meaning fossil fuels are a big no no.
What makes you believe I'm forgetting that? I pointed out the use of fossil fuels currently as the primary means for energy storage because it looks like the advocates for renewable energy + storage have forgotten that the goal is reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. With every addition to wind and solar capacity we aren't seeing much in reduced use of fossil fuels, in fact we are often seeing it increase. Some of this increase is from a need to keep boilers at power plants hot or face power outages as
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Have a look at the real performance of the UK wind installed base. Most accessible summary is here:
www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
The parc is 28GW faceplate, split about equally between on- and off- shore. There are a couple of periods a year when it produces well under 5GW per day for a week to ten days. There are several tens of days when it produces under 1GW for a day or two at a time. You can see the max and mins and average for a given period on the above site.
The reason for the long calms is the blockin
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Is it possible that enough windmills extracting energy from the wind may impact the jetstreams, gulf streams, weather, and/or global climate?
I haven't seen any articles or discussions on this topic, but it would seem that an exchange of energy would cause an impact, even if small. But over time, much like the "butterfly effect", couldn't this man-made subtle global impact cause other potential challenges?
I've seen recent articles discussing potential recent changes to the gulf stream which some speculate co
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Generally speaking is the energy we require world wide only a tiny fraction of what the sun (=wind) supplies every day.
But yes, wind farms can have some temporary effect on the local climate.
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073... [mdpi.com]
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Is it possible that enough windmills extracting energy from the wind may impact the jetstreams, gulf streams, weather, and/or global climate?
Of course it is. You only need to build a million time more than we need, and make them something like 10km tall so that they can reach the jet streams.
Esay!
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That's odd (Score:2)
What does Dominion know that Orsteae doesn't?
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Orsted
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Translated it is Ørsted / Oersted.
How to pass it on. (Score:3)
Article [wkbn.com] This one they kinda are the good guy of, but not really as we still know who pays in the end. [postandcourier.com]
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That could be it, but only if Dominion has a captive audience for that project. Which they may.
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What doubt? Orsted failed, Dominion didn't. I'd like to know why.
Re: That's odd (Score:2)
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Yes, Orsted's decision was heavily-influenced by finance charges and the inflated cost of building materials specific to their project. Theoretically, Dominion would be facing the same headwinds.
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Maybe the right question is WHO they know.
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Or: Lawer Employment Program approved (Score:2)
I am sure Lawyers are lining up to sue to stop this project (unless that area is in a poor region).
This generated a lot of revenue for the lawyers on Martha's Vineyard, it was filed in 2016 and I think it may have just been approved.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/08/25/group-files-lawsuit-to-try-to-block-construction-of-wind-farm-off-nantucket-marthas-vineyard/
Nothing like moving away from fossil fuels and playing court dodge ball at the same time. :)
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Even if we have reforms the lawyers always make out, that's unavoidable in a world where we all have such rights. It sucks in its way but the alternative is worse.
The Nantucket people lost their case as well although they are appealing but it's a good sign and p[precedent is starting to build up.
https://climatecasechart.com/c... [climatecasechart.com]
We do need reforms to the process though like other countries do where people have a right to take projects to court and voice their concerns but there are limits to the appeals and
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We do need reforms to the process though like other countries do where people have a right to take projects to court and voice their concerns but there are limits to the appeals and timelines to such things. After a certain date once rulings have been made there needs to be a point of no return and the project happens.
And that should be true not just for renewables but also for nuclear plants, hydro dams, pipelines, and all other major infrastructure projects.
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Of course, we wouldn't want the view of multi-million dollar estates to be impacted by looking at a wind farm now would we?
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Going by memory, the problem wasn't the view from the estates - the proposals placed the wind farms out far enough that the horizon would hide them.
The problem was that these people occasionally like to go boating (sailing or motor) and could theoretically see the wind turbines if they went the right direction. And they objected to that.
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Boating around wind turbines (Score:2)
That's getting to the limits of my knowledge.
Still, some searching says that if you're fishing, you might actually prefer to be around the turbines - the support structures provide shelter to fish, so sea life tends to be more common around them.
If you're in a motorboat, you're fine around them, but if you want "scenic" it seems people prefer scenes without them.
If you're in a sailboat, you'd have to have extremely unusually high sails in order to actually have the blades be a risk. Most of them are going
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Thus far, that appears to be a No [rwu.edu].
Beyond standard "don't run into stuff", it appears that your ability to boat around wind turbines is unaffected.
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Re: More jobs in operations than construction? (Score:1)
I'm guessing... that 300 FTE for a year is more than 600 FTE for three months? Or something like that...
Wind is stupid (Score:1, Troll)
Solar or nuclear are the best. Seriously, wind power kills birds .. looks annoying .. and allows MAGA hatters to claim that government is changing the weather (nevermind they previously claimed humans can't possibly influence weather/climate).
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allows MAGA hatters to claim that government is changing the weather
Well, YOU explain why we only have wind if those things turn!
Re: Wind is stupid (Score:2)
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Wind power stopped really killing birds a while ago. Cats and windows are magnitudes more dangerous. Even then, it was more bats for a while. Still, they adjusted how turbines were built and how they operate and it pretty much fixed the problem. As I understand it, the growth of turbine sizes took care of a lot of the problem right there.
Especially if you're looking at an ocean or sea based wind turbine that is far enough out that a very limited selection of birds will even encounter them.
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Seriously, wind power kills birds
Yeah at at rate of about 0.0001% of other human activity. Fuck off with your stupid anti-wind Trumpian bullshit.
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They should put one up in DC (Score:3)
All the hot air produced there still goes to waste.
Numbers (Score:2)
2.6 gigawatts of clean energy... capable of powering over 900,000 homes. In just its first 10 years it should save customers $3 billion in fuel costs.
So a house draws 2.8kW on average?
900k customers, 87600 hours being 10 years, so 78GWh total
$3b saving is therefore $3/78 so under 4c/kWh.
Exciting?
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Thank you!
I saw the thermo article in Nevada where the average power per household was 1.5 KW. I don't know where they get these numbers. I guess that there aren't going to be many EVs charging.
Also note that the savings was in 'fuel costs'. It doesn't say that the operation/electricity will be any cheaper.
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Nameplate power rating divided by three is closer to the truth on average. Solar power name plate should be divided by four, if it's sunny, divided by 14 in heavy overcast. Don't forget to adjust for length of the day, about 7 hours useable daylight in the winter.
My stove is rated at 11.2 kw. Winter days take about 60 kw-hr, during a cold snap (by local standards, not Wisconsin standards) it can reach 80 kw-hr per day.
Yes I have a heat pump.
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Where are you getting this so-called information? My 4.2kW array (nameplate power), which is installed on a gently pitched roof with a north-south ridgeline, peaks out at about 3.8kW in the summer. That's about 90%, not the 25% you claim.
Production on clear days varies from 28-29kWh/day in the summer to maybe 9-10kWh in the winter.
You can see the utilitarian "logic" at work. (Score:2)
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Yeah, they're entropy-positive if you figure in manufacturing, maintenance and replacement.
Soooo many jobs!