Just back from Denmark, where there are extensive wind farms off the coast. Sailors do not seem to be overly bothered by them -- they're in shallow areas that boats already tend to avoid if they don't want to run aground.
Offshore wind is favorable when there are long stretches of open ocean for the wind to pick up speed before reaching wind turbines. The prevailing winds in the populated regions of North America and Europe are from the west to east. This means the best places for offshore wind in these latitudes is the west coast.
Europe's west coast (and North Sea where the shoreline goes east-west) is blessed with an enormous continental shelf. Wind makes sense there. Some of the regions off Scotland have the highest capacity factor (average generation / max possible generation over a year) for wind, exceeding 0.6. Spain is not far behind. Capacity factor for offshore wind elsewhere is about 0.3-0.35.
The west coast in North America pretty much doesn't have a continental shelf. You travel a few miles offshore and the water is over a mile deep. The east coast has a big continental shelf, but because of the prevailing wind direction, any wind you get there is mostly spoiled by moving over the land before reaching the ocean. And in general the extra cost of building/maintaining offshore wind turbines and laying undersea power cables is not worth the slight increase in generation. You're usually better off just building onshore wind at a lower cost (typical capacity factor 0.2 to 0.25). (Exception is the east-west stretch of coastline between New York and Cape Cod. That's long enough and clear enough in the east-west direction that winds can build up to a significant steady speed. Which is why they're trying to put offshore wind there, much to the chagrin of the rich folks at Martha's Vineyard.)
So I'm usually skeptical of offshore wind projects on the U.S. east coast. In most cases they're not proposed because there's a good technical reason to put the wind turbines offshore. They're proposed because of NIMBY - you put it offshore to minimize the people who will oppose the project because it spoils their views. From a technical, logistical, engineering, and fiscal standpoint, it's better to put the wind turbines onshore - that would be easier, safer, and cheaper to build, maintain, and operate. You just have to navigate the gauntlet of public opposition (same as the hyped up fears of nuclear power stalling projects, so I guess turnabout is fair play, though I would prefer an informed public who didn't oppose either).
It is strange how people will demand for more offshore oil rigs to be built in pristine and fragile environments, but go ape nuts over wind turbines offshore.
I have no love for fossil fuels. But with the environmental movement blocking nuclear, that leaves fossil fuels as our only source of concentrated, on-demand power generation. Trying to fulfil on-demand power via battery storage is currently a pipe dream. Any time you store generated electricity, about 20%-30% of it is lost as waste heat (for some reason proponents always omit this). i.e. Storage only makes sense when nuclear + renewable generation exceeds 100% of demand. As long as you're below that threshold and
any power is being generated by fossil fuels at all times during the day, you are better off using that renewable power directly the moment it's generated, rather than trying to store it for later use. Or another way to think of it, as long as you still need to burn some fossil fuels, highest efficiency is achieved when you just shift fossil fuel generation to the time periods when renewable power is unavailable, rather than try to shift renewable power to those time periods.
e.g. Say people use 3 MWh during the day and 2 MWh during the night. And your current generation is 2 MWh renewables during the day, 0 at night, with the rest being made up with fossil fuels.
Current:
- Day: 3 MWh total demand
- 2 MWh generated from renewables
- 1 MWh from fossil fuels
- Night: 2 MWh total demand.
- Overall consumption: 2 MWh from renewables. 3 MWh from fossil fuels.
With battery storage shifting 1 MWh renewable power into the night:
- Day: 3 MWh total demand
- 1 MWh generated from renewables to the grid
- (1 MWh from renewables stored in batteries)
- 2 MWh from fossil fuels
- Night: 2 MWh total demand
- 0.75 MWh from renewables stored in batteries (1 MWh after storage efficiency losses)
- 1.25 MWh from fossil fuels
- Overall consumption: 1.75 MWh from renewables, 3.25 MWh from fossil fuels
Surprise! As long as renewable generation does not exceed 100% of demand, storing renewable energy in batteries actually causes us to burn
more fossil fuels, not less. Yes the tech should be researched in preparation for when that day arrives when generation exceeds 100% of demand. But it's stupid to implement it before we've rolled out enough nuclear and renewable power that we exceed that threshold consistently. Implementing it early will only cause us to needlessly convert some of that clean energy into waste heat, and burn more fossil fuels to make up that loss.
As for "pristine and fragile" environments, the amount of oil released in the Deepwater Horizon spill (4.9 million barrels) was about the same as is released into the Gulf of Mexico every 1-5 years
from natural oil seeps. Likewise, the amount of oil released during the recent Huntington Beach (southern California) oil spill was about as much as is released into the waters there from natural oil seeps in a single day. In some locations (e.g. La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles) it comes up naturally on land. In North America, the amount of oil released from natural seeps (and eventually consumed by microorganisms who convert it into CO2)
actually exceeds the amount of oil we burn for power by about 2:1. The media doesn't tell you things like this because they've long since abandoned giving you pertinent facts, in favor of pushing an agenda. (Don't misunderstand - the CO2 we generate by burning oil is still a problem because it's
additional oil, above the natural historical levels which resulted in Earth's steady state.)
Oil is a natural part of the environment and is constantly being released into the oceans and on land. If you've walked the beach and run across a tar ball, it's most likely from a natural seep, not an oil spill. The environment has coped with oil seeps for millions of years before we ever began drilling for oil. There's nothing pristine nor fragile about it. These spills were bad because they released a high concentration of oil in a small area. Not because they released oil.
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) battle. I would also love to see a lot more nuclear power, but there are areas where wind and solar really make sense. And as we all know, wind is better offshore, so it makes even more sense to build large generators out on the briny.
