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Ingo Wagner / Reuters
Offshore wind turbines are seen in Germany's North Sea, along with a service platform that doubles as a transformer sending electricity to the mainland. Germany and Denmark are leaders in the offshore wind industry.
Placing wind turbines off the East Coast could meet the entire demand for electricity from Florida to Maine, according to engineering experts at Stanford University.
It would require 144,000 offshore turbines standing 270 feet tall — not one of which exists since proposals have stalled due to controversy and costs. But the analysis shows it's doable and where the best locations are, says study co-author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering.
The team is not advocating for an "all wind" approach, saying it'd be foolish to put all of one's energy eggs in a single basket, but they do think it could reach up to 50 percent. Today the U.S. gets about 4 percent of its electricity from wind, but only via turbines on land.
The first large-scale offshore wind farm was proposed in 2001 off Massachusetts' Nantucket Island. But vocal opposition, including from political heavyweights like the Kennedy family, are seeking to block the $2.6 billion Cape Wind project, arguing the 130 massive turbines would mar views and endanger boat and air traffic.
"The question that I would first ask" critics, Jacobson told NBC News, "is would they rather have a coal or natural power gas plant in their neighborhood, which affects their health and that of their children as well as their quality of life and property values, or an innocuous turbine that they could barely see during those times when they were actually looking offshore."
For the analysis published in the journal Wind Energy, Jacobson's team created a computer model with 144,000 wind turbines that produce 5 megawatts of electricity each, similar to the turbines installed off Denmark and Germany. They then plugged in historical wind speed data to come up with estimates.
A. Baseden / AP
Map shows site of proposed wind farm near Cape Cod.
They also favored places with lower hurricane risk, essentially excluding any area south of Virginia.
The best locations are "way out of sight" from coastlines, Jacobson said, and the worst-case scenarios would be distant views of turbines about the size of one's extended thumb.
"The only place with significant opposition to offshore wind that I am aware of has been in Nantucket," he added. "There are dozens of other proposals in the U.S. that have not faced nearly the same extent of opposition."
Cape Wind does have federal approval, as well as support from major national environmental groups, and hopes to begin building turbines next year. But opposition groups like Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound are still battling the project in court and before federal agencies.
Cape Wind
Cape Wind created this simulated photo to show what it says would be the view of its wind farm from Nantucket Island. The distance out to the turbines, seen as white dots on the horizon, is 13 miles.
A further limitation is cost. Cape Wind, for one, is still working on financing, and cheaper natural gas has taken some of the shine off wind, at least in investors' eyes. Moreover, installation offshore currently costs two to three times more than land-based turbines.
Jacobson's team says the new study will help locate the most economically feasible sites, particularly around New York and Boston when peak demand for electricity can send prices soaring.
"Connecting the power to the grid would be technically as easy as laying a cable in the sand and hooking it directly into the grid without the need to build often controversial transmission lines on the land," said Mike Dvorak, the principle author of the study.
He also noted that offshore wind has an advantage over land-based wind turbines.
"People mistakenly think that wind energy is not useful because output from most land-based turbines peaks in the late evening/early morning, when electricity demand is low," Dvorak said. "The real value of offshore wind energy is that it often peaks when we need the most electricity — during the middle of the day."
Nov. 5, 2007: NBC Cameraman Brian Prentke and Soundman David Moodie took a two-hour boat trip just to film the Middelgrunden off shore wind farm in Denmark. Denmark currently gets 20 percent of its electricity from 5500 offshore and onshore wind turbines.
Besides reducing pollution and increasing domestic energy resources, wind has a key advantage over natural gas or coal, Jacobson notes. That's price stability.
"There's zero fuel costs once they're in the water," he said. "Coal and gas are depletable resources, so their cost will inevitably go up over time. The cost of wind energy will remain stable, and the wind resource is infinite."
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To me, this is a no brainer. Our current approach is not sustainable, damages the environment, sends our money to countries that hate us, and will continue to rise in price. Obviously, the up front cost will be high, but we need to start to think long term. We can't use renewal sources of energy for everything, but where we can we should. Obviously, the oil, natural gas, and petroleum companies will continue to lobby against this type of thing, and there will be hurdles to overcome, but this is the type of thing that we should be going for. If Denmark can do, I think that we should be able to.
The Hoover Dam. The Golden Gate bridge. We got this. This is nothing.
Lets just not outsource the work. I can almost see it now, the bid goes to China for cheap, defective turbines.
A wind turbine is not a pair of sneakers. Try to walk away from your fears about China and please do not speculate. Wind Turbines, solar, continued research into finding even more solutions should be the focus.
There are several companies in Michigan already engineering turbines and blades for these things. We can do it!!!
What do you do on days where the wind does not blow? Sue GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shift the grid to other energy sources.
We have in this country about 2,000 energy storage devices that can be retrofitted to work in conjunction with wind turbine generators. Water can be pumped behind already existing dams and the same pump turbine motors that do the pumping can work in reverse as generators.
Nobody, I mean nobody says this should be the one and only source of energy, not even Romney who agreed with President Obama (although he did not know he was agreeing) when he said we should use an "all of the above" energy resources.
The wind is always blowing somewhere! your comment is stupid! You use more than the base amount, then you have backup, REDUNDANCY is the key.
Also, use Solar, land based Wind Turbines, and every other source we have. You NEVER put all the eggs in one basket. Try to think before posting it works better!
What I don't understand is the negativity toward no resources like wind a solar.When the computer first came out it was big and bulky and no internet..with time it grow smaller.. and then the lap top and now you hold it on you hands.. Will we have improved the computer in relatively a small amount of time. And the same goes for other inventions..Why is it so many people are so negative toward new energy sources, that in time can be improved and be modified..Is it your not really thinking about the reality we face ???? Do you expert it to be perfect before you start doing it.????..In that case we still won't have cars for that matter..We have to start doing it and work on it just like anything else.....
There are so many on this board that are negative simply because they either work for the fossil fuel industry, own stock in it, or are paid to shill for them. They don't have much of a real argument.
Jim in Houston-1509351
I wonder how many sea birds will lose their lives to the spinning blades.
Studies show only the retarded. We have them here and none have been found killed by them!
This is a very one sided article in favour of wind power. As an early adopter, Denmark has been moving away from this energy for almost half a decade now as it does not produce what is promised. There are very large maintenance costs putting these wind devices in the ocean, and without subsidies they tend not to be profitable. They also only work under specific wind conditions, which also means they are not reliable. The following link provides more detail on the failings of this technology. www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html#I
Yeah that's a problem we have here in the States, keeping our scientist aware of what Denmark is doing.
Wind and solar will never ever be a viable power source simply because they are not constant, they are intermittent per the whims of the wind, and the sunny days. If we should go down this road, we are looking a huge energy costs and third world brown outs.
Coal is a constant power and we have the reserves that are the envy of the world.
It would be stupid to shoot ourselves in the foot and drive yet more companies off shore with high energy cost, the highest corporate tax on the planet, the Roman Legion EPA, Unions, and Obamacare,
Look at Greece and Egypt, that is our future if we go down this road.
Use everything!
If you are suggesting we use everything, then why are you simultaneously arguing against wind and solar? Most people, including the Obama administration, support as diverse an energy portfolio as possible.
WE can ill afford draining our planet of the it's sources..We must find other means..sure coal sounds great, right?? ..but what happens when all these mines and tunnels weaken to surfaces and the crust of the earth caves in with giants sink holes because you keep removing remove thefoundations holding it up..Remember we can remove it a heck of a lot faster then the earth can produce it..
Publius is right we'd be fools not to make use of or coal reserves. We could also deny oxygen to our enemies kind like killing lots of birds with one stone.
Yea clean coal ! There is no such thing ! leave the coal in the ground we don't want it !
Start the f'ing construction on Monday.
We may need 144,000 stations now but as technology evolves in 25 years we may need only 14,000 or less.
It's just a matter of time before someone decides that wind turbines interrupt the natural flow of air across the glob, endangering vital weather patterns, and putting life at risk as we know it.
Llanos, your grammar is outrageously bad. How did you get this job? For example, "But the analysis shows its doable and where the best locations are.." should be "it's", contraction for "it is", not "its", which is possessive. Your article is riddled with contractions, cliches and well-worn phrases. Looks like something my high school students would write. TskTsk.
As for wind farms, to compare Denmark's power usage with the U.S. is non-sensical; they are only a small percentage of our size and our power needs. I was on the cape this summer and saw a lot of turbines onshore; it is an arresting site to round a curve on the cape highway and come face to face with a huge wind turbine. Yes, we need them. We need a lot of things. But to line them up like soldiers on the horizon does really spoil the view. In the south you see drilling rigs out in the ocean, many visible from shore, but they are generally isolated, not in "farms". There is a lot of ocean-going traffic around the cape, and ferries carry supplies, people, and vehicles back and forth to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard daily. One more obstacle for them, and the whales, to dodge.
I say keep them on land, keep the view unspoiled for it is a rarity, and please attend to your grammar.
Like investors day, "Don't put all your money in one basket", so don't put all your generating capacity in one basket.
And nobody is suggesting it.
Wind turbines offshore make so much sense. It's hard to believe that anyone would oppose turbines located 13 miles off the coast.
The country is in a funk. It is impossible to deny we are in decline. We can turn this around with renewable energy. The inability to secure energy was one factor in the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire that depended on slaves to power its cilization. When the expansion of the Roman Empire through conquest ended, so did their supply of slaves that provided the Romans their energy. Today, America is going through the same experience. Cheap power is gone. Without cheap affordable power, this country is toast.
This has got to be a joke. Hazard's to navigation, marine life, cost to maintain. This is right up there with E85. I hope that not one dime of the taxpayers's dollars went to fund this projecdt.
Yeah! Let's give our hard-earned tax dollars to Oil companies instead, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare!
Part of the reason Europe is in such financial turmoil is they tried to get away from the use of fossil fuels. Countries like Spain had to subsidize those technologies so heavily and borrow so much money to do so that they are now broke and ready to default on those loans. The only way it will work here is under that same system of huge subsidies because the everyday American will not be able to afford the extremely high costs for their electricity, and we already know how broke we are. Also wind power can't meet the base load power we need in this country to meet the needs of manufacturing. Unemployment will go up if manufacturers can't have a reliable cost efficient power source to compete with the rest of the world.
I don't think it is meant as a full replacement, just as an alternative. It seems like the US would be an ideal place for sea/wind energy. We are surrounded by water everywhere.
I like the way debt problems in Europe conveniently get linked to things Conservatives oppose. Spain has no national reserves of oil or gas. They have to import it at high cost. So you are saying that they go further in debt by supporting using their own domestic resources as opposed to importing fuel?
Professor Miller, UC Berkley, skeptic of human caused climate change/global warming was granted money by Koch Industry to research and study the phenomenon put out a report from his studies that the globe is warming and the cause is human produced CO2. This well established, well respected, professor and scientist actually convinced himself that his original thinking that the rise in global temperatures was merely cyclical was wrong and now promotes the evidence that man is changing the worlds' climate. Wnd Turbines offshore and on land combined with solar power and anything else that can produce electricity without burning fossil fuels should be pursued relentlessly and agressively!
Good post !
This is a great idea. We could kill billions of birds and fish with these sharp blades and incessant underwater sound. Obama would be proud about how much he could destroy. Do we really have a moron in the White House or his Obama just an al Qaeda member?
Uh you do realize that this technology is in use all over the world? So far not a lot of dead things to report. But it's OK shows your thinking.
There are also some new designs such as the Tesnic wind turbine that might render the problem moot.
This should be our new "space race" or our new "Manhattan Project" . I hear nothing but skeptics touting their opinions here without enough facts. We have some pretty great minds in the US and at Stanford and DRPA, MIT, Berkly, JPL just to name a few. We put men on the moon. There wre 82k people employed to build the first atomic bombs. Both seem routine now but at the time they were scientific and engineering marvels with extremely high rates of possible failure. They both seem less possible than putting up turbines in the ocean and accounting for weather, plate shifts, tsunamis or whatever natural occurrence that might put these turbines at risk. Do we shy away from adversity because of risks that can be possibly be engineered around? Do we shy away from putting thousands of people to work on this? Nobody's even mentioned utilizing wind power in the midwest to supplement this. I am not a proponent of eggs in one basket but this could be game changing. Bring this country's most brilliant minds together to try and think and account fro every caveat imaginable and build to that. The ability to become a self-sustaining country in my OPINION outweighs the risk.
President Obama is the greatest President this country has seen since Kennedy. He will go down in history along side of Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Kennedy.
Jamie Alvarez
Oh please, give it a break. Do you trolls always have to bash Obama on everything?
Nuclear Power you bunch of Dummies.144,000 vs 4,you people are out of you minds.144,000 windmillsCmon be real!
We already know that Nuclear power produces radiation, radiation that leaks into water aquifers and is emitted into the air. Nuclear power is the dumb approach. There is no solution to the radioactive waste problem, after over 50 years of trying to find one. But as you say this, Livermore is working on fusion which is much less harmful than fission. That being said, it does not come cheap. Without government subsidies and government insurance, there will never be a nuclear power plant.
dubsak20
And how much will these four nuculear power plants cost to build, maintain and store the waste for thousands of years ? Answer me that !
Your point is not well thought out, please go back and try again!
dubsak20 (59):
Yes, you dummy. We'll make sure the nuclear power plants are constructed in YOUR backyard..........especially the nuclear waste.
4 nuclear power plants to power the entire eastern US? Just 4? If I believed that I might actually think it was a good idea.
If you built efficient wind and water devices the maintenance and numbers would be considerably more favorable, but then digital was not a big thing in the 18th century, and today 18th century fluid dynamics is followed by even fewer. You bunch of idiots!!!
What the article failed to mention was the cost of the electricity. Offshore wind turbines already in place have shown costs per kilowatt hour of $0.15 to $0.30--much higher than from conventional sources. While still somewhat higher than average, onshore wind farms produce much more cost effective results ($0.08 to $0.10).
So what if it cost a little bit more now. Coal is cheap, but the global effects of using coal and its ramifications are not built into the cost. ie $300 billion to clean up after Katrina.
I don't agree that doubling or even tripling the cost per kilowatt hour (vs. conventional sources) is a 'little bit more'. I'll be a huge fan of wind, solar and other non-petro applications once they are closer to being economic...
If you have any idea of how economics works you will recognize that new products cost more at first but over time the cost comes down. The point that I was trying to make is that opportunity costs are not built into coal, nat gas, oil or nuclear. I also want to point out that even if it costs me twice what I currently pay for electricity, I would be willing.
I have a BA in Econ/Business, an MBA in Finance, 26 years of accounting experience and was a NASD Series#27 Financial/Operations Principal, as well as a Controller and CFO. So, yes, I understand economics quite well, thank you. I encourage you to do additional research about fully-absorbed costing of the various sources of electricity generation. The costs I referred to, above, are the fully-absorbed ones. For now, the most economic sources are natural gas, coal, hydroelectric and nuclear. Solar cells are, perhaps, several years away. Fusion, perhaps 15-20 years before we have a working reactor...maybe. We should be doing more research with Thorium (liquid salt) reactors. Thorium is 4 times as abundant as uranium and the reactors, etc., are much safer. The US has an abundant supply of Thorium. Wind and solar will always suffer from unreliability, though, and could only augment the electricity generation portfolio. Improvements in current battery technology would help...
I was wondering if someone would bring up the idea of thorium reactors. I think China is already working on one. Why aren't we?
Jay-1644814
You fail to comprehend the premiss that the wind blows at the correct time of day, durring "PEAK DEMAND HOURS" that is the reason. Additionally no one ever said we can't build onshore generating capacity also.
Did you even read the article?
@Sad Person: Yup, China has one, Oak Ridge, too. In my opinion, research is underfunded...
@Danno: Yes, I read the article, as well as over a hundred others on the subject--most of which go into far more depth than this one. Did you read your first sentence? It's a complete mess--I'm not even sure what your point is. If you are referring to wind power unreliability, there are other reasons. Peak demand hours impacts ALL electrical generation and is not the only factor. Wind speed will always be variable and an uncontrollable factor (i.e., you can't expect wind speeds to increase when you most need them; you can fire-up a natural gas turbine when you need peak power). Location is very important, as different areas of the country average significantly higher/lower wind speeds. Unfortunately, these prime onshore areas tend to not have sufficient transmission capacity. As such, adding these new power lines is costly and never popular. Finally, due to the variable power generation, utilities have to expend extra resources to supply conditioned, reliable power to its users--even if onshore wind power was economically competitive and prevalent, this would be a constant challenge for them. BTW, you may want to check out this new technology called 'spellcheck'.