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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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Leave a Comment:
This will work but it is a stupid idea. Take $2.5 billion dollars and buy solar panels. Give them to every homeowner thats tired of being screwed by the utility companies. It will no effect the environment and not cost another $2.5 billion when a storm comes trough and tears them apart.
FYI
Egypt and Libya are now contoled by the muslime brotherhood and al-qaeda.
$2.5 billion dollars is what he has sent to them since they overthrew the governments.
A lot of Americans out of work and losing their homes could have used that money.
I have nothing against re-useable energy but there are two major considerations when one wishes to apply it. One is how dependable is it. The other is the cost to operate. While wind at sea is more dependable than most places there is also the cost of maintenance that is much higher when exposed to constant sea water, and sea air. I don't have any idea how these elements figure into the feasability of sea wind energy in terms of cost of operation but they certainly keep the cost from being free energy.
To repair the wind mill generating unit the blades have to be removed and the wind mill generating unit has to be taken off and replaced with another wind mill generating unit and the blades have to be put back on. To install the wind mill tower it has to be set on a concrete pad and installed with a crane, to remove the wind mill tower the wind mill tower has to be taken off the concrete pad and replaced with another wind mill tower and placed on the concrete pad. All the while the ship doing this operation is moving up and down and side to side right next to the wind mill tower and the concrete pad.
Solar power, wind power, bio-fuels, all doable with present tech. but very inefficient. Solar and wind are very space intensive, there is not enough space to create the farms needed to make the power we need without impacting food production, bio-fuels have similar requirements. There is enough oil, coal and natural gas to provide the power and fuel for generations, but we need to become less dependent on foreign energy sources, but that's not enough, the most efficient power production is nuclear, and with the newer generator designs much of the fears of acidents are almost eliminated. There are much more we can be doing to help our environment, re-building the worlds forests is the most important, using more of our re-cycled products, overall reduction of waste of all our resources comes in second as importance. not rocket science but neither a job of government (government can't even flush a toilet well)
Their are two forms of energy sources in the US that come from outside the united states oil and nuclear.
Here we have a great opportunity for our government to do the right thing. Washington DC, being reasonably close to the Atlantic Ocean, is the perfect test bed. Let the government allot money to build a wind farm. And then allot the additional money they hid in the first allotment. Let the wind farm power our government while we see how well it works. Possibly during long extended calms our government would shut down. One can always hope.
But 'no' you say! There will be back-up. OK, so we have back-up. The proposal is to build wind farms to provide power and to have other more predictable sources as a back-up. So we will keep a fully operational back-up system complete with personel and fuel and anything else required to produce electricity.The proposal is to have two complete parallel working electrical generation systems. Where do we get the funds to maintain the un-used system while we wait for it to be needed? Is that parts of the cost of all this free energy?
Who will go without power when the wind dies? You can bet it won't be our government. But someone will be able to say there's no work today because of a calm. Would you send your child to a hospital powered by the wind? Would there be congestion if the subways were powered by the wind and it died?
Who decides where the reliable power goes? Industry, without the power to tax, must operate at a profit. The government will be sure it is industry that first feels the brown-outs that are sure to occur. Industrial plants will quickly move to install their own generators and move 'off the grid'. The government will find a way to tax them for NOT using unreliable power from the free energy grid. Naturally the EPA will step in and tell industries the electrical generation they are doing, whatever it is, is illegal.
We need to determine the power demands of Washington DC. Then we should build an off shore windfarm capable of supplying those demands. Let Congress and the White House operate on wind generated power (without back-up) for one full year. Let them step up and show us. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad.
When the year is up they can hold hearings to discuss the results. This is an easy goal with results we can all see.
We need to determine the power demands of Washington DC. Then we should build an off shore windfarm capable of supplying those demands. Let Congress and the White House operate on wind generated power (without back-up) for one full year. Let them step up and show us. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad.
But back-up isn't a problem! We can have back-up!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
The above link is pretty close to what I want to describe that will provide us with all the back-up power we could ever want. Instead of that hillside with reservoir, use one of our many (about 1,000) existing dams! Build another smaller dam downstream that will collect water between this and existing dams and pump that water up and behind the existing dam for power storage. For using that stored power, run it in reverse! Whether it is a hydro electric dam or one without hydro electric, this can be done. For example downstream from Hoover Dam, building a much smaller dam downstream could double the power generating capacity of that dam. Building it at a dam without hydro-electric features would provide the system with hydro electric generating capacity. This isn't rocket science.
The EPA will tell you it cannot be done due to the Lesser Spotted River Eel breeding areas. Or some other such nonsense.
I love how people were saying 5kW... or 5,000 watts of energy. This article is for 5mW or 5,000,000 watts of power. Big difference. And these turbines kill an insignificant amount of birds every year. In comparison a skyscraper kills tens of thousands more every year. Bats are the thing we need to be worried about, but even they can be deterred with sonic emitters.
I work in wind so im kind of biased. But the answer isnt to take over our power making with wind, or even solar. We need to use them in conjunction with coal, natural gas, and oil. So is it a good idea to put 144,000 5mW turbines along the east coast.... most certainly not. But do we need to start somewhere and exploit other means of making cleaner power..... YES!
bravo for finally getting on the wind turbine show. California, Europe, Berkshires have it, Holland has had it for 100's of years and we all think it's quaint.
Mar the view 13 miles off? Take me to your opthamologist! Deterent to sailboats? It's the wind people, it doesn't take anything away from the idle rich sails (except the sales of other utilities). Detrimental to planes? 270" 13 miles out?
It's not like all 140,000 will be off Nantucket. Wind is clean and healthy. Two things the rich are not.
Don't like the looks of wind generators? perhaps we should build a big, filthy coal powered plant on Nantucket Island.
Oops, sorry I forgot, we only do that where the "little" people live.
No matter what idea we come up with to create energy that isnt, coal, oil or gas. Some ass will try to be little it as stupid, bad, or just no good. Get over it, wind & solar are hear to stay, and its about time. I say screw the veiw, you dont like it try the view in Detroit. Rich snobs, believe me marthas vinyard will not loose any customers. The sailing crowd will now have something to talk about. Full steam ahead a wind farms.
There are a multitude of avenues to approach, other than batteries. One could use electrolysis and get hydrogen as a fuel. H2 has its issues, but that is just ONE example. Storing potential energy, such as pumping water and then getting energy from when it drops back down (a form of hydro). Flywheels, molten salt, etc etc. Of course you always get entrophy.
It is certainly worth trying in areas where the conditions are favorable. I would think that one of the primary determining factors is going to be water depth. These turbines have to be built on the continental shelf, otherwise, I would think the depth of the water for the support platforms would be too deep to do it economically. I don't think we are anywhere near ready for 144,000 of these platforms. But if we could even get up to 1% of that number (for offshore platforms, I mean), we'd have some real-world experience by which to consider future construction. Wind power won't do much to alleviate demand for oil, but it could alleviate demand for coal and gas. Nevertheless, building them in hurricane prone areas (pretty much the whole Gulf of Mexico around Florida and up to Cape Hatteras) would seem to be a non-starter, unless you could develop a turbine that could automatically "safe" itself with the flip of a switch during a storm.
ill take one in my yard anytime. anyone else? i bet 144,000 thousand will if asked
Expensive unreliable wind turbines.
Meanwhile the Earth's plants are busy making use of the extra plant food CO2 that is in the air. Coal is stored solar power. The Earth was lush back when the CO2 levels in the air were many times higher than it is now. Plants used that CO2 to grow. All that plant matter was turned into coal. Releasing some of that stored CO2 by using coal for energy is helping to green the Earth. That's right. The Earth is actually getting greener. Of course they don't like to tell you that.
NASA has released satellite data that proves it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/02/co2-is-greening-the-planet-african-savannahs-getting-a-makeover-to-forests/
And National Geographic has reported that parts of the Sahara are greening.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/increased-co2-making-life-better-on-the-high-plains/
Cool! Can we clone a few dinosaurs using blood from amber-preserved mosquitos? (seeing as how we want to make the environment suitable for them and not humans)
My stupid computer just lost my post.
Anyways, google "Lockridge device" and find out about a VW generator that was self-running and produced 300 watts of electricity.
Ramon this is a SCAM!!!! This has been exposed as a lead in to gold pipe dream.
no one and nothing can do anything to you unless you let them
Well now Guys -this is surely generating a lot of heat! How about this idea?
Everyone generates their own power from the sources available in the quantities that they need and where they need it. And the Governments across the world support this move to the hilt with good tax cuts equivalent to the money that the govt will no longer need to "fix" the results of mass energy production and pollution.
We all become independent of mega business' and we all improve our quality of life hugely
Its happening in Europe
I was surprised to read this news article as I was under the impression that the USA was "still in the race" towards opting for renewable energy sources.
Evidently, this is NOT the case. Seemingly, the petroleum industry STILL has their "HOLD" on the government, and the subsidies are still pouring into the petroleum industry pockets.
I would suggest that the government enact a bill requiring any & all subsidies to be reduced by 25% and that 25% would be allocated towards renewable energy R&D.
IF the USA has the intention to "put their money where their mouth is" - the renewable energy "industry" will leap the obstacles placed before it - having funding sufficient to accomplish the mission.
Ironic. Massachussets and the Kennedy clan; two interlinked bastions of liberalism and liberal causes like environmentalism.
But when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road, the liberal elitists prove they are no different than the conservative elitists.
As for George W. Bush's Crawford Ranch, passive solar, cisterns to trap water for the landscaping, geothermal heating and cooling. Funny that.