
America’s First Offshore Wind Farm - petethomas
http://nytimes.com/2016/08/23/science/americas-first-offshore-wind-farm-may-power-up-a-new-industry.html
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overcast
I always see people commenting about the negative visual impact of a windmill.
I feel like I'm the only one who thinks they are beautiful to look at.
Obviously we shouldn't be plopping them down directly in front of houses, but
wind farms are pretty hypnotic to see.

What's amazing is that only five wind mills are capable of providing power to
17,000 homes per this article. That's 3400 per windmill. Doing the math on
124,000,000 homes in the US. That's only 36,470 total windmills. Something
can't be right here if that's ALL it takes.

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wehadfun
Would you feel they were beautiful if you paid $700K for an oceanfront
property?

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ocschwar
This:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Mystic_G...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Mystic_Generating_Station,_Everett_MA.jpg)

This is the Mystic Generating Station in Everett, MA.

It is inside Boston Harbor, and receives liquified natural gas to generate
electricity.

The arrival of gas ships in Everett is a big security event, and is greeted
with a general closure of shipping lanes, chopper patrols over the harbor, and
patrol cars at every point in the harbor that are close to the ship. Because
each of those ships is a floating fuel-air bomb able to take out the whole
city.

Every wind turbine, every solar panel, and every bicycle dynamo hooked to a
hamster wheel in New England, lengthens to time between visits from these
ships.

So yes, I do feel they are beautiful.

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bimmer44
I'd guess that this sort of bulk wind power is going to increasingly find
favour with the big utilities over time. They don't like thoughts about
homeowners buying in to a future with Tesla powerwalls + roof solar at
plunging costs (e.g. the situation in Hawaii [1]). Big offshore projects let
the utilities supply clean electricity without decentralisation of the grid.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/hawaii-solar-
indust...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/hawaii-solar-
industry_n_4452177.html)

~~~
maxerickson
I expect utilities will be big Powerwall customers.

~~~
jsight
I don't see how. The cost seems to be prohibitive for them.

It might make a little more sense for some consumers due to the excessively
high retail rates for electricity in some regions.

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yessql
Utilities have to have excess capacity available to spin up instantly to meet
demand. So you have to compare the cost and maintenance with a natural gas
peaker plant. I think there is a place for Tesla's PowerPack to replace the
least used peaker plants.

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toomuchtodo
Tesla PowerPacks are already replacing three peaker plants (that I know of).

The more expensive the peaker, the faster the payback time.

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tombert
I think this is incredibly cool. 75% of this planet is difficult/impossible to
live on; why not use it for a clean form of energy?

I'll admit that I didn't think windmills would ever catch on, but I'm very
happy to be wrong here.

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legulere
Please call them wind turbines. Wind turbines don't mill anything.

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tombert
I thought the consensus at this point was that "windmill" basically meant
"wind turbine", at least colloquially, in the same way that a "battery" really
should be called a "cell".

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pjc50
I'd got the impression that "windmill" was the deliberately wrong use of
terminology by people opposed to wind power to trivialise or ridicule it. But
that may just be me reading the Telegraph.

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tombert
In my particular case, it wasn't meant to be offensive or dismissive at all; I
think _wind turbines_ are very cool.

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barney54
A couple important pieces of information were omitted from the article--
according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) offshore wind is the
second most expensive source of new electricity generation. In fact, offshore
wind is 250% more expensive than onshore wind, but it only produces
electricity 5% more of the time.
[https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation...](https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf)

Also, the Block Island project is 50% more expensive than EIA's numbers assume
(It was $10,000 per KW while EIA assumes $6,331 per KW for the first few
offshore facilities).

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arm85
Yes it is. But it's going to drop quite quickly the more off-shore wind
developments there are. Unfortunately, these prices only drop when people
start building them. When the banks get more experience with the risks
involved the project costs drop and the same will happen with new foundation
technologies.

~~~
_rpd
There seem to be higher costs for offshore wind that aren't going to go away
with extra projects. Maintenance is more expensive because the turbines are in
a salt water environment, and the electrical interconnect to the shore is an
order of magnitude more expensive than equivalents on land.

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vermontdevil
Hopefully this will spur developments for Cape Wind [1] and other locations.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind)

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tcoppi
Anything that close to shore is going to cause, and in this case has already
caused, a lot of NIMBY backlash. I can't say I really blame them for it
either. We're going to have to find locations suitably far offshore to put
these things, as the article suggests.

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jessaustin
The standards that NIMBYers advocate in this context, e.g. "if it's within X
miles I might be able to _see_ it" would be laughable in any other. Not to
mention that wind generators are among the most beautiful useful things ever
built, so it's odd to claim that seeing them is some sort of hardship. If
windswept shorelines weren't occupied by old-money assholes, these facilities
would already be common in USA.

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Thriptic
It's easy to point the finger and call people assholes when its not your home
value that is being impacted by the project. For better or worse, most people
don't move to places like cape cod so they can stare at wind turbines all day.
Placing them there will obviously negatively impact home prices where they are
dominant on the horizon.

That's not to say that it's a bad idea to put them there, and the overall
public good may make it worth it, but to brush off the concerns of the actual
residents (who I would guess is not you) as stupid is not very productive.

~~~
jessaustin
They're not assholes because they live/vacation on the shore, they're assholes
because they've arranged for a different set of rules to apply to them.
Offshore petroleum extraction equipment has been a common sight offshore in
other regions of USA for decades. That equipment is much uglier, and has more
disturbing associated traffic, than wind generators. I don't own any shoreline
property, but if I claimed some right to regulate what can be done _in sight_
of the property I do own, the only result would be well-deserved derision.

~~~
tcoppi
I don't think anyone in that situation is claiming a right(which would indeed
be preposterous), just an interest in using their political power to deny,
degrade, and disrupt the process of getting these sorts of projects approved
if they are within sight of shore. They are perfectly within their rights to
do that, and it is and will have a strong effect on the ability of these
projects to get both funds and regulatory approval, which is why I suggested
that they should be looking at sights not visible from land, of which there
are plenty suitable locations.

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karma_vaccum123
Cheaper and easier to just pass marine development laws that categorically
invalidate their claims. If people want to move, let them. No one will.

edit: for some reason I cannot respond to the child of this comment, but I
recommend reading this if you think Bay Area NIMBYism is omnipotent:

[http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-brown-housing-
pla...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-brown-housing-
plan-20160514-snap-story.html)

State and Federal governments override local concerns all the time.

~~~
tcoppi
That obviously won't work, since laws are subject to the whims of elected
officials and constituents that can change them through NIMBY lobbying, and
they need to get past those NIMBYs in the first place. See: SF Bay Area
development restrictions.

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mixmastamyk
Any reason they don't use the vertical turbines that take up a lot less space,
and are less visible?

