America's First Offshore Wind Farm Coming to Delaware, Finally
by Stacy Feldman - Jun 26th, 2008
Finally some news of an offshore wind power deal in the US that doesn’t end in a project-stomping NIMBY victory.
Bluewater Wind has secured a buyer, Delmarva Power, for part of the electricity that it's planning to generate from its long-awaited offshore wind park, 13 miles off the coast of Delaware.
The two companies signed a 25-year contract for the sale of up to 200 megawatts this week. (The $1.6 billion project could eventually produce as much as 600 megawatts -- enough electricity to power 110,000 Delaware households.)
The turbines are expected to go online in 2012. When that happens, Delaware, the "First State," will become home to America's very first offshore wind farm.
About time.
Back in 2005, a report called A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States (pdf) by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and General Electric dropped this nugget: offshore wind could power all of America.
From the report:
The offshore resource between 5 and 50 nautical miles along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts alone could support up to roughly 900 gigawatts (GW) of wind generation capacity — an amount similar to the current installed U.S. electrical capacity.
To date, proposed coastal offshore projects have faced heavy NIMBY activism. Most notably in Cape Cod.
None have gotten off the ground.
The Bluewater deal was different. It effectively addressed NIMBY concerns through the company's "realistic visualizations" of the project.
And here's what Bluewater was able to show to the locals: From the shore, the thicket of turbines will only be visible on the clearest of winter days, and will be nearly invisible in the summer months when Delaware's Rehoboth Beach is packed full of vacationers. Here's spokesperson Jim Lanard in this CNN article:
If they can see them at all, the turbine blades would cover about the size of your thumbnail, and the poles would be about the width of a toothpick.
But don't uncork the champagne just yet.
The deal includes a clause that allows Bluewater to back out -- without penalty -- if the park doesn't look economically feasible for the company at the end of two years.
So come 2010, we'll know the fate of America's first offshore wind farm, officially.
In the meantime, hopes are high. Yesterday, the Delaware State Legislature passed legislation to allow the turbines, which was almost immediately signed into law.
And here's the feel-good prediction from Peter Mandelstam, founder and president of Bluewater Wind:
This is an historic day for our country.
We now expect even greater interest in offshore wind farms, the development of which will help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of fuel and will serve to aid in the fight against climate change and sea level rise.
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All wind power projects
All wind power projects should be applauded and are an important part of the total energy shortage problem, and If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times, solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equal to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and hydrogen gas for all!
After the millions of murders, and billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)
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