Turbines in really deep water
December 21, 2010 by Kathleen Zipp
Filed under Offshore Wind, Wind Power Projects, Wind Turbine Installation
Deepwater Wind, a company based in Providence, Rhode Island, has drawn up plans for what could be the largest wind farm in U.S. waters, the company announced last week. The proposed farm would generate a huge 1,000 MW of power and would be located 18 to 27 miles off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts at a depth of 52 M—considerably deeper than any other large scale wind project to date. By moving into deeper waters, turbines can harness stronger, more sustained winds. And the massive turbines the company plans to use—each capable of generating more than 5 MW of power, with blades rising 150 M above the water’s surface—will be nearly invisible from shore, thereby avoiding potential legal battles with coastal communities that perceive the turbines as eyesores.
Four-legged steel platforms rising from the seafloor will allow Deepwater Wind to operate in depths more than twice those of conventional steel “monopole” wind turbine platforms. As water depth increases, the diameter of monopoles must increase exponentially, making them uneconomical in water deeper than about 20 M. By using a four-legged design, company officials say they will be able to work in depths that were previously prohibitively expensive.
The four-legged platform design is already commonly used for offshore oil and gas rigs. It was first adapted for offshore wind turbines in a pilot project in the North Sea, known as the Beatrice Wind Farm Demonstrator Project, in 2007. Two 5-MW turbines were each mounted on a four-legged tower in 45 m of water. Although the towers were never connected to the electricity grid, they remain the world’s deepest offshore wind platforms.
Paul Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, says four- or even three-legged towers offer a ready way for offshore wind to expand into deeper waters. However, truly deepwater deployments—platforms in hundreds of meters of water—will require floating platforms unattached to the seafloor.
“For depths much larger than [45 m], the only solution is floaters, but we still have to do more development on these designs,” Sclavounos says. Only two small pilot floating turbines have so far been deployed anywhere in the world.
Deepwater Wind’s proposed project would cost $4 billion to $5 billion, and state and federal approval would be required. The company is also proposing a $500 million to $1 billion offshore high-voltage transmission line to connect the wind farm to the electricity grid in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York.
Deepwater Wind officials say they plan to sell electricity at a rate that is in the “mid teens” per kWh. That is roughly two-thirds the $0.24 per kWh that the company hopes to charge for electricity from another proposed wind farm, of 29 MW, off Rhode Island. The 1,000-MW project would make possible economies of scale, the company says. Even so, its electricity would still cost twice as much as electricity from fossil-fuel power plants.
Offshore wind may nonetheless be a worthwhile investment, says Stephen Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives at MIT. “Fossil-fuel plants are cheaper now, but there is the structural risk of what happens if and when you have to pay for their C02 emissions,” he says. “A better comparison of Deepwater Wind’s costs is with nuclear power or coal plus carbon capture and sequestration. When you do that, it starts to look much more equivalent.”
Connors says offshore wind is also attractive compared with other renewable energy sources. It produces electricity at half the cost of photovoltaic solar and is only slightly more expensive than onshore wind.
Regional offshore wind farm to supply multiple east coast states
December 9, 2010 by Kathleen Zipp
Filed under Offshore Wind, Wind Power Projects, Wind Turbine Installation
Offshore wind developer Deepwater Wind plans to construct the Deepwater Wind Energy Center (DWEC), what the company calls the first of second generation offshore wind farms in the United States.
At a capacity of approximately 1,000 MW and with the ability to act as a regional offshore wind energy center serving multiple states, DWEC is an important step in moving toward a U.S.-based, clean-energy future. DWEC will be sited in the deep ocean waters of southern Rhode Island Sound, where it will be barely visible from the shore. Construction is planned to begin in 2014, with the first wind turbines in operation by the end of 2015.
“This ‘second generation’ of offshore wind farms will be larger and farther from shore, and will produce lower priced power, using more advanced technology than the offshore projects announced to date,” said Deepwater Wind CEO William M. Moore. “We expect the offshore wind industry in the United States to follow the European experience, where a more mature industry is building larger projects farther from shore.”
With as many as 200 wind turbines, the company says the wind farm will be the largest offshore farm ever planned in the United
States. Because of the economies of scale gained by building a large facility and also because of the continuing maturity of the offshore wind industry, DWEC’s power price will also be lower than earlier offshore wind projects proposed in the U.S. DWEC will demonstrate that as the offshore wind industry continues to mature, its energy prices will become increasingly competitive with plants that burn fossil fuels – but without the environmental problems that plague fossil fuel plants.
Deepwater Wind recently filed an unsolicited nomination to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) to lease the ocean site where it plans to locate DWEC. BOEMRE is currently reviewing Deepwater Wind’s lease request in consultation with taskforces organized at the state level in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Deepwater Wind’s submission will be subject to federal and state review, and if a lease is awarded, the project will be subject to extensive permitting reviews and public comment opportunities.
Deepwater Wind is also developing a regional offshore transmission network, the New England-Long Island Interconnector (NELI), connecting DWEC to southern New England and eastern Long Island. NELI will allow the wind farm to send power to multiple states in the region. Deepwater Wind plans to market power from DWEC to several states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut.
For the entire wind farm, most of the turbines will be located 20 – 25 miles from shore. No turbine will be located any closer than 13.8 miles from inhabited land, with only a few turbines located at that distance. At these distances, the wind farm will be barely visible from the shore and the project site can take advantage of the stronger winds found in the open ocean.
DWEC is the utility-scale offshore wind farm referred to in the Joint Development Agreement between Deepwater Wind and Rhode Island. Deepwater Wind has been identified as the preferred developer of offshore wind at the proposed project area, which is within the Area of Mutual Interest identified by the governors of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The DWEC site is also within the Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) area studied by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC). Through the leadership of the CRMC, the Ocean SAMP is recognized as a national model of ocean planning and is expected to accelerate the permitting of projects in Rhode Island sites by several years.
Deepwater Wind www.dwwind.com
Offshore winds blow fast but farm development slow
May 7, 2010 by Paul Dvorak
Filed under Featured Wind Power Articles, Wind Power Projects
The development of offshore wind farms would drive job creation and stimulate industries such as offshore shipping and installation work.
Steady and stronger winds offshore have wind farm planners looking there for the next big buildout.
T he American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has accelerated the already dramatic growth in America’s wind energy output. The 8,558 MW of new wind generation capacity added in 2008 was 43% of all new U.S. energy generation, and another 5,800 MW was added through the third quarter of 2009 – bringing total wind output to more than 31,000 MW. Some 13 states have more than 500 MW of wind capacity. From 2009 through 2012, the ARRA’s tax credits and loan guarantees could spur 40,400 MW in new wind generating capacity. Even more dramatic expansion is being discussed: Early in 2010 the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) suggested that it was feasible to shift 20% or more of the Eastern Interconnection’s electrical load to wind energy by 2024 – if $90 billion or more is invested in 225,000 MW of new wind-power generation and in 22,000 additional miles of power lines. The wind energy gold rush is on.
Federal guidelines say offshore wind projects can generate from 3,000 to 15,000 jobs when including the supply chain and grid improvements.
Rules for the Outer Coast Shelf
But where will this new wind energy infrastructure will be located? Today’s large-scale wind U.S. power installations are land-based, with the four top states being Texas, Iowa, California, and Minnesota. Yet according to NREL, the best winds are not on land, but on the outer continental shelf (OCS) and the Great Lakes. The OCS extends seaward from the coastal United States to a point at which U.S. jurisdiction ends, which can cover anywhere from 60 to 350 nautical miles. The U.S. has complete jurisdiction over Lake Michigan and shares jurisdiction with Canada over the other four Great Lakes. Offshore wind development would drive job creation and elevate other industries such as offshore shipping and installation and development of marine-friendly equipment and operation and maintenance regimes.
Despite this, there has been little wind energy development in offshore areas. The closest an OCS wind program is to existence is Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound off the southern coast of Massachusetts. It plans to use 130 wind turbines to produce up to 468 MW. Cape Wind’s environmental assessment and approval process has been significant, contributing to a doubling of the project’s initial cost estimates. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has sought a last round of public comments and hopes to finalize permitting in the first half of 2010. As for the Great Lakes, no offshore wind project has yet been developed, but several efforts are possible.
One firm looking to build offshore, Deepwater Wind, has plans for several locations along the continental shelf.
In an effort to spur offshore renewable energy development, Congress in 2005 gave authority over offshore production, transportation, and transmission of renewable energy to the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS). The agency undertook extensive rulemaking proceedings to create a renewables program, which culminated in a Final Rule issued April 22, 2009. In it, the MMS introduced its OCS Alternative Energy Program and implementing regulations.
Under the new rule the MMS will issue two types of leases, commercial and limited, for OCS wind generation. Emphasis is on the former, which lets developers produce, sell and deliver power on a commercial scale for a period of up to 30 years, with the opportunity for renewal. All leases will be awarded through a competitive process modeled after that used for offshore oil and gas leases. The commercial lease could take up to two years to secure, especially because of extensive environmental analysis.
Plans for the OCS
On June 23, 2009, the MMS issued five exploratory leases for renewable wind energy production in OCS areas off New Jersey and Delaware. The leases, the first of their kind, authorize preparations to construct meteorological towers from six to 18 miles offshore. They will collect site-specific data on wind speed and direction to plan wind energy installations. Securing the leases were Bluewater Wind New Jersey Energy and Bluewater Wind Delaware LLC, Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey LLC, and Deepwater Wind LLC.
Other East Coast OCS projects have been publicized, but they are far from final. These are key examples as of early 2010:
•In Delaware, Delmarva Power signed a power purchase agreement with Bluewater Wind in June 2008 for up to 200MW of offshore wind production.
•In September 2009, the Maryland Energy Administration announced an initiative aimed at examining its 31 miles of coastline for wind energy potential.
•The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced in October 2009 that it has selected Garden State Offshore Energy – a joint venture of PSEG Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind – to develop a 345.6-MW wind project off the coast of New Jersey.
•Also in October 2009, the Governor of Maine announced that the University of Maine and several consortium partners were awarded $8 million of federal funds to begin research and testing to deploy prototypes of two 10 kW and one 100 kW floating offshore wind turbines.
•In December 2009, Deepwater Wind secured a 20-year power purchase agreement to sell electricity from up to 8 wind turbines producing 28 MW off the coast of Rhode Island.
All these deals were announced with emphasis on the jobs they could generate: anywhere from 3,000 to 15,000 per project, using federal figures of 15.6 jobs created for every $1 million in renewable energy investment. That includes everything from fabricating wind turbine components, to building and operating the interconnection grid.
Plans for the Great Lakes
Offshorewind.net provides an interactive map with news on sites planned for offshore wind plants.
Another tangible effort is under way in the Great Lakes. In December 2009 the New York Power Authority (NYPA) released a request for proposals (RFP) to develop offshore wind power projects anywhere in the New York State waters of Lake Erie, or Lake Ontario, or both. The NYPA is soliciting proposals to develop a utility scale, offshore wind power project totaling about 120 to 500 MW, to interconnect with transmission grids controlled by the New York Independent System Operator. The NYPA would purchase the full output of the wind power project under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA). The RFP process will culminate in completion of PPA negotiations by May 31, 2011, with a target commercial operation date of 2015.
Details of the NYPA’s proposal illustrate major technical hurdles that offshore wind developers will face, even under the relatively benign conditions of the two lakes (at least two nautical miles offshore, in water depths of 150 feet). The RFP calls for developers to meet 12 different sets of requirements, including those that cover:
•Turbine and turbine support structure manufacturing and construction standards, including corrosion abatement and ice abatement strategies.
•Offshore substation and interconnection line siting and permitting.
•A site plan that includes geotechnical evaluation and lakebed leasing arrangements.
•A comprehensive construction plan that includes all provisions for vessels and rail and port facilities to be used and that ensures no interference with the operation of either the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Welland Canal.
•All environmental, regulatory, and other agency and municipal permits, approvals and certifications required for construction and operation.
•Financing to support the project through construction and PPA completion.
•A comprehensive pricing proposal that covers fixed capacity charges, fixed energy price, fixed price for renewable energy credits or other tax credits, and use of funds provided through the ARRA.
•An operation and maintenance plan that ensures high levels of safety, environmental protection, equipment availability and performance.
There are also plenty of political requirements, such as producing long-term economic benefits for the region and helping to achieve New York State’s energy policy goals of using renewable, alternative energy sources to provide 30% of New York’s energy portfolio by 2015. Any company and project that meets all these standards and is successfully built will constitute the world’s first freshwater wind farm.
The NYPA project is the most recent offshore wind effort under way in the Great Lakes, but – as on the Eastern OCS – there is no shortage of others under consideration. The most advanced is in Ohio, where Cuyahoga County leaders are pushing a $92 million project to build three to eight wind turbines three to five miles off Cleveland’s coast. The pilot project would, depending on the size of the turbines, produce 5 to 20 MW, and government officials say they would like to see the 260-foot-high turbines operating by 2013, two years before the NYPA target date. Cuyahoga County and its partners have invested more than $2 million in studies analyzing the feasibility of such a project, and one point in its favor is that the proposed location has a lake depth of only 40 to 50 feet. Another project being tentatively discussed is a proposal by Scandia Wind Offshore LLC for a 1,000 MW wind farm on Lake Michigan near Ludington.
Many issues must still be resolved before commercial-scale wind energy projects begin operating on the OCS or in the Great Lakes. Examples include cost, multiple regulatory approvals needed to connect offshore energy generation to the existing electricity grid, and vocal objections from local groups that oppose development. Nonetheless, the combination of government incentives, state and proposed federal renewable energy portfolio standards, and potential investment payoffs is moving offshore wind energy projects from low-profile possibilities to highly publicized opportunities. WPE
