Having been responsible for overseeing the budgets and construction of over 600 megawatts of utility scale wind in the lower 48, (1.5MW and 2.0MW WTG’s) it was always clear that while it was interesting to build them and a pain in the neck to operate them, they didn’t really work. Either the wind didn’t blow as the developers said it did, or it blew at night when no one wanted the energy. Lacking PTC and ITC and tax equity subsidies wind is a loser in terms of a megawatt generated and the costs associated with that megawatt, as the EBB’s have consistently pointed out, and demonstrate here again with their charts. The offshore units present exponentially many more operational challenges, and what is lost on the politicians when they say look at the success of offshore wind in say Northern Europe they fail to understand that the littoral regions there are completely different than the deeper water regions currently under consideration for offshore wind development here in the northeast of the USA.
The massive businesses built around the canard of wind energy being viable other than on an intermittent peaking basis and perhaps local load on a distributed generation basis are now so big they can’t fail. Until they fail. When they do fail and they will fail, the rate and tax payers will pick up the burden of decommissioning the mess they have wrought. Nantucket is in a pickle, the wealthy summer “residents” LOVE the wind, they can brag and virtue signal over soft cheese spread on water crackers whilst consuming expensive rose’ wine all summer long and into the fall on the upper east side of Manhattan, when they return from summers sojourn, what good little rich people they are, forget the G5 that flew them out there and back. But, the locals are affected, the economic damage from just a two to three day shut down of the south side beaches was eye popping enough, and ought to cause the locals to raise holy hell and sue the pants off of the developers and now the owner operators, and do so in a manner that it makes it uneconomical to continue, and set an example for others, such that it discourages further support and ends the fantasy of offshore wind. Make it economically and politically unpalatable and they won’t come.
I agree with Charles. I'll be more explicit. As a country(s) manager for one of largest wind turbine manufacturers / project managers (engineering qualification) I realised what a complete fraud as a technology it was -- as I walked around the broken blades of a wind farm and became familiar with the numbers. This is over a decade ago.
The way I see this tech, it's all about the debt (i.e. the bonds) created to fund these very expensive infrastructure projects which of course the bankers love, and as Charles points out the business around them. And wind has a wonderfully high operating cost, so a solid income stream for years for whoever gets that contract.
The "success" of the offshore projects in the UK should be questioned. These are idealogues that are not shy about lying or deceiving to accomplish their vile goals.
If it's mechanical, it will leak eventually, I have never seen one not. Laberyth seals are the best, but you need a whole negative pressure air system that's pretty complex.
This has been happening all across the country for decades now, but not much comment. One lawsuit against NextEra for fiberglass contamination and I don't think that was ever really cleaned up well. How much of our farmland has been contaminated?
Great reporting, guys. Costly, inefficient, environmentally harmful eyesores. I'm hopeful if President Trump returns to the WH, this policy sinks and he nixes or neutralizes BOEM.
The State should mandate the Sierra Club clean up the mess on the beaches! Perhaps witnessing first hand the environmental destruction these things wreak, might open their eyes to the problems.
It never ceases to amaze me. The ability of policymakers to ignore reality for the sake of something that sounds and feels so good is remarkable, and remarkably dangerous for all of us. As to Ian Braithwaite's question about Colorado, what about New Mexico :)
Good research - thanks. Question - "electricity from the Vineyard Wind project will be $98 per megawatt-hour (MWh), but due to rising material and financing costs, recent contracts signed for New York have put the cost even higher, at $150.15/MWh. It’s also important to remember that these figures include generous taxpayer handouts from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act." - when you say "these figures include generous taxpayer handouts from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act", you mean even after the subsidies are figured in, these are the costs, - have I got that right? And these are wholesale costs, right? Are consumer costs marked up from there? Or are these figures some kind 0of guarantee that the consumer price won't be higher? I get confused on this. Need a little help...
Yes these are the costs after subsidies are accounted for. The offshore wind tends to sign direct payment plans with states for guaranteed revenues outside of the wholesale market.
I've been trying to pull myself together to write a post about Vineyard Wind. I'm glad to see this one. Thank you!
One thing I have noticed is that the Vineyard Wind spokespeople keep referring to fiberglass as "non-toxic." Really? Well, so is regular glass. That doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. You can cut yourself on either material. If you ingest enough of either material I believe it can cause death. Death from internal bleeding, not from poisoning, since it is "non-toxic." I'm not a medical doctor, but I worked in a chem lab for years and I know there is more than one kind of hazard in the world.
I hope someone more knowledgable than I am will write about the hazards of fiberglass.
I got one tiny piece of fibreglass in my eye one time and was in great pain; had to go to the emergency room. And to the extent that fibreglass is pulverized into a powder, it can wreak havic with the lungs.
Nailed it! A few broken blades won’t change anything. More pain financially and a loss of every day comforts will be required. It can’t happen soon enough! The only way the uninformed become informed and involved is MORE PAIN!
Those costs are absolute fantasy. Are the capital costs included? Are maintaining them included, as that alone is outrageous. In the desert they 15¢ a kWh, but it's more tha that, because it can't replace baseline power. Each one is an huge tower in the sea, it's insane.
Having been responsible for overseeing the budgets and construction of over 600 megawatts of utility scale wind in the lower 48, (1.5MW and 2.0MW WTG’s) it was always clear that while it was interesting to build them and a pain in the neck to operate them, they didn’t really work. Either the wind didn’t blow as the developers said it did, or it blew at night when no one wanted the energy. Lacking PTC and ITC and tax equity subsidies wind is a loser in terms of a megawatt generated and the costs associated with that megawatt, as the EBB’s have consistently pointed out, and demonstrate here again with their charts. The offshore units present exponentially many more operational challenges, and what is lost on the politicians when they say look at the success of offshore wind in say Northern Europe they fail to understand that the littoral regions there are completely different than the deeper water regions currently under consideration for offshore wind development here in the northeast of the USA.
The massive businesses built around the canard of wind energy being viable other than on an intermittent peaking basis and perhaps local load on a distributed generation basis are now so big they can’t fail. Until they fail. When they do fail and they will fail, the rate and tax payers will pick up the burden of decommissioning the mess they have wrought. Nantucket is in a pickle, the wealthy summer “residents” LOVE the wind, they can brag and virtue signal over soft cheese spread on water crackers whilst consuming expensive rose’ wine all summer long and into the fall on the upper east side of Manhattan, when they return from summers sojourn, what good little rich people they are, forget the G5 that flew them out there and back. But, the locals are affected, the economic damage from just a two to three day shut down of the south side beaches was eye popping enough, and ought to cause the locals to raise holy hell and sue the pants off of the developers and now the owner operators, and do so in a manner that it makes it uneconomical to continue, and set an example for others, such that it discourages further support and ends the fantasy of offshore wind. Make it economically and politically unpalatable and they won’t come.
I agree with Charles. I'll be more explicit. As a country(s) manager for one of largest wind turbine manufacturers / project managers (engineering qualification) I realised what a complete fraud as a technology it was -- as I walked around the broken blades of a wind farm and became familiar with the numbers. This is over a decade ago.
The way I see this tech, it's all about the debt (i.e. the bonds) created to fund these very expensive infrastructure projects which of course the bankers love, and as Charles points out the business around them. And wind has a wonderfully high operating cost, so a solid income stream for years for whoever gets that contract.
The "success" of the offshore projects in the UK should be questioned. These are idealogues that are not shy about lying or deceiving to accomplish their vile goals.
Thanks for getting this out!
Wind turbines also create oil slicks and contaminate the ocean:
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/wind-turbines-are-full-of-sh-and
If it's mechanical, it will leak eventually, I have never seen one not. Laberyth seals are the best, but you need a whole negative pressure air system that's pretty complex.
A Grande Muchacho may use up to 1400 L or even more of spendy lubricants
As long as they use "green" lubricants, then it's ok.
Is that fit the lifetime?
That's the fill. There are oil changes.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tucoschild/p/wind-turbines-are-full-of-sh-and
...and they kill whales and sea birds
Thank you EBBs. You and your subscribers may be interested in a complementary financial analysis of New York state's Empire Wind project by Prof Gordon Hughes in the UK: https://cloudwisdom.substack.com/p/empire-wind-new-york-sweetheart-deal
A question in passing - will Colorado Democrats mandate offshore wind :) ?
The would if they could!
Nice quote at the beginning of the piece 😄
Thanks! Getting in touch with it was hard but no trials and tribulations are too much for our readers!
This has been happening all across the country for decades now, but not much comment. One lawsuit against NextEra for fiberglass contamination and I don't think that was ever really cleaned up well. How much of our farmland has been contaminated?
Great reporting, guys. Costly, inefficient, environmentally harmful eyesores. I'm hopeful if President Trump returns to the WH, this policy sinks and he nixes or neutralizes BOEM.
The State should mandate the Sierra Club clean up the mess on the beaches! Perhaps witnessing first hand the environmental destruction these things wreak, might open their eyes to the problems.
Excellent idea
It never ceases to amaze me. The ability of policymakers to ignore reality for the sake of something that sounds and feels so good is remarkable, and remarkably dangerous for all of us. As to Ian Braithwaite's question about Colorado, what about New Mexico :)
The rio grande will be full of them
Lol
Good research - thanks. Question - "electricity from the Vineyard Wind project will be $98 per megawatt-hour (MWh), but due to rising material and financing costs, recent contracts signed for New York have put the cost even higher, at $150.15/MWh. It’s also important to remember that these figures include generous taxpayer handouts from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act." - when you say "these figures include generous taxpayer handouts from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act", you mean even after the subsidies are figured in, these are the costs, - have I got that right? And these are wholesale costs, right? Are consumer costs marked up from there? Or are these figures some kind 0of guarantee that the consumer price won't be higher? I get confused on this. Need a little help...
Yes these are the costs after subsidies are accounted for. The offshore wind tends to sign direct payment plans with states for guaranteed revenues outside of the wholesale market.
I've been trying to pull myself together to write a post about Vineyard Wind. I'm glad to see this one. Thank you!
One thing I have noticed is that the Vineyard Wind spokespeople keep referring to fiberglass as "non-toxic." Really? Well, so is regular glass. That doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. You can cut yourself on either material. If you ingest enough of either material I believe it can cause death. Death from internal bleeding, not from poisoning, since it is "non-toxic." I'm not a medical doctor, but I worked in a chem lab for years and I know there is more than one kind of hazard in the world.
I hope someone more knowledgable than I am will write about the hazards of fiberglass.
https://www.massfiscal.org/vineyard-wind-turbine-blade-collapse-into-atlantic-ocean
I got one tiny piece of fibreglass in my eye one time and was in great pain; had to go to the emergency room. And to the extent that fibreglass is pulverized into a powder, it can wreak havic with the lungs.
Nailed it! A few broken blades won’t change anything. More pain financially and a loss of every day comforts will be required. It can’t happen soon enough! The only way the uninformed become informed and involved is MORE PAIN!
They wanted wind power and green energy in the worst way and that is how they got it.
great work--keep it up guys!!
“The answer my friend is blowing in the wind”. NOT. With apologies to Bob Dylan.
Thought: do a study to find out how many microplastics offshore wind generates…. My guess is that it is a lot!
Those costs are absolute fantasy. Are the capital costs included? Are maintaining them included, as that alone is outrageous. In the desert they 15¢ a kWh, but it's more tha that, because it can't replace baseline power. Each one is an huge tower in the sea, it's insane.