Everybody, hold onto your hats. The moment we have been waiting for may have finally arrived – or, well, it’s not very far off. American offshore wind is on the horizon, figuratively and literally, and approaching fast.
American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) hosted its Offshore Windpower Conference and Exhibition in Atlantic City, NJ, last week, which brought together industry leaders, including Deepwater Wind, Cape Wind, and Dominion Virginia Power. Currently, there are 14 offshore wind projects under development, but none has yet to put a turbine foundation in the water. That’s all about to change.
“This is the year it happens,” Deepwater Wind CEO Jeff Grybowski said at the conference. “We are nine months away from the installation of our first foundations.” Deepwater’s Block Island Wind Farm, which is fully permitted and approved, will operate five wind turbines off the coast of Rhode Island.
Massachusetts-based Cape Wind plans to lay foundations in late 2015. The project, which will be the first utility-scale offshore wind project in the U.S., began development more than a decade ago. Over the years it has faced opposition from the Kennedys to the Koch brothers, at basically every stage in the process.
The project has been at the vanguard of the offshore wind movement in the U.S., meaning that it paved the way for other offshore wind projects under development, but only by jumping through all sorts of hoops. Jim Gordon, the natural gas developer who proposed Cape Wind more than a decade ago, had no idea what he was getting into. “If I knew from the very beginning that it would take 12 years and cost as much as it did, I would have had to think very long and hard about accepting that challenge,” Gordon said in 2013.
But in for a penny and in for a pound, and Cape Wind is in – and has had a series of successes recently. These include a contract with Siemens to supply the project’s wind turbines, and an agreement to use a port terminal in New Bedford, customized for offshore wind installation, as its construction base. Recent rounds of fundraising put the project on track to be fully funded later this year. Additionally, power purchase agreements with National Grid and NStar have been critical to financing the project. Through the PPAs, the two utilities have agreed to purchase 77.5 percent of the total power Cape Wind produces.
“We are on track and expect to close financing by the end of this calendar year,” Cape Wind Communications Director Mark Rodgers said. “When physical construction begins, it will be a game changer for this industry,” Rodgers added. “The benefits will be self-evident.”
And the endless legal action? Earlier this year a federal judge said, “enough with these lawsuits already.”
In Virginia, Dominion Power is developing a project backed by the Department of Energy. The project, the Virginia Offshore Wind Technology Advancement Project (or VOWTAP for short, sort of), plans to install two 6 MW Alstom turbines. These developments are included in Governor Terry McAuliffe’s newly announced energy plan. “Virginia is really serious about offshore wind,” McAuliffe said. With all these projects under development, perhaps Europe’s dominance in offshore wind will not last. In a 2010 study, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reported that the U.S. has 4,150 GW of offshore wind capacity. Soon wind turbines will be delivering American-made energy to the American economy. Harnessing our natural resources is as American as baseball and apple pie. It’s enough to make you want to chant: U-S-A! U-S-A!
Plantagenet on Fri, 24th Oct 2014 8:03 pm
This is GREAT news! The Kennedys and other liberal wealthy NIMBYs have been blocking offshore power for years. Good to hear that that wealthy elite isn’t going to be able to block moves to alternate energy and offshore wind power forever.
Pveroi on Fri, 24th Oct 2014 11:14 pm
You’re so worthlessly political man. But yay! Sincerely hope the Eroi is useful.
dashster on Sat, 25th Oct 2014 1:39 am
When Cape Wind was first being blocked as being an eyesore, I pictured wind turbines 200 feet offshore while people laid on the beach. But it turns out that they are miles away. The closes is something like 2.5 miles away from any shore. So the protests are coming from all those rich guys who summer in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard and will be sailing their yachts in the vicinity, like the Bushes. Great that the money of the elite wasn’t able to stop it
Norm on Sat, 25th Oct 2014 3:08 am
Its still a great big waste of steel and copper. Watch it succumb to rust, barnacles, and an off-course freighter.
Davy on Sat, 25th Oct 2014 7:48 am
Norm I agree and disagree with your thoughts. These huge wind farms are better than a new baseball stadium for sure. Anything and everything that can buy us some time in the descent is good. Our society is geared to big projects that generate large returns. This is our market and complexity mentality. It would be far better to embrace each and every AltE source in each and every sweet spot at the bottom up. The future of all AltE is small scale, local, low tech, low cost, technologically resilience, robust reliability, and with the associated lifestyle changes to seasonality and variability with nature. Complexity and large scales will have a short half-life.
rockman on Sat, 25th Oct 2014 10:19 am
There’s a very different way to spin the same story: UNFORTUNATELY “we are nine months away from the installation of our first foundations.”
Consider the history of offshore wind in Texas. Many years ago Texas granted the first offshore wind leases. No problem: no fed approval required since the state has absolute control over the first 10 miles. The first offshore test turbines were installed off Galveston about 3 years ago. The great news: the pilot program proved great wind potential.
So now we’re about to see huge offshore Texas wind projects kick off…NOT. LOL. And for good reason: electricity rates are so low the projects aren’t economic…at least not yet. And one reason: the rapid expansion of onshore wind especially along the S Texas coast selling directly into the same market offshore wind would have to compete.
Thus the spin: New England has to develop expensive offshore wind because of the fierce resistance to onshore development. Offshore development that has yet to begin. And yet today Texas has already developed more wind power onshore then they’ll ever see on the east coast.
What’s interesting about the article is they fail to mention the very high electricity rates folks in New England will be required to pay. Rate structures that had to be guaranteed before offshore wind development could begin. So those folks should get to brag some about being “the first”… they’ll be paying and arm and a leg for the right. Meanwhile Texas will just have to be content bragging about having as much total wind power as the #2 and #3 combined.
So: is the development of offshore wind along the east coast good or bad news?
Kenz300 on Sat, 25th Oct 2014 11:07 am
The expansion of alternative energy sources continues………….the price for alternatives gets cheaper and more competitive every year.
New Cost Analysis Shows Unsubsidized Renewables Increasingly Rival Fossil Fuels « Breaking Energy – Energy industry news, analysis, and commentary
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/09/25/new-cost-analysis-shows-unsubsidized-renewables-increasingly-rival-fossil-fuels/
Makati1 on Sun, 26th Oct 2014 7:45 am
Hmmm… Eastern shore of North America. Hurricane ally. Wonder what a cat 5 “San dy” will do to their profitability?
Kenz300 on Sun, 26th Oct 2014 11:30 am
Diversify …..diversify….diversify………
Anything we can do to diversify our energy portfolio and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels is a good thing.
Climate Change is real….. we need to do more to speed up the transition to safer, cleaner and cheaper alternative energy sources.
Wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal and second generation biofuels made from algae, cellulose and waste are the future These technologies keep getting cheaper every year.
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New Cost Analysis Shows Unsubsidized Renewables Increasingly Rival Fossil Fuels « Breaking Energy – Energy industry news, analysis, and commentary
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/09/25/new-cost-analysis-shows-unsubsidized-renewables-increasingly-rival-fossil-fuels/
Richard Ralph Roehl on Mon, 27th Oct 2014 5:55 pm
Does this wonder-fool technological promise suggest that humanity can continue the exponential growth of its global population?
Wow! Picture the population of faster poo-food Amerika exceeding ONE BILLION baboonies at the end of the 21st century… and the vast majority of them speaking Spanish as a first language. Phuck! Phuck! Hooray!