From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It looks as if the huge Vineyard Wind project will start operating about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard by late 2023, now that the Biden administration is close to giving it the final thumbs up, though there still could be last-minute hitches. (The Trump regime much preferred power plants powered by fossil fuel and seemed to oppose the project.) All such big projects swim in politically tinged controversies and tangles of interest groups.
The wind farm would include 62 giant Boston-based General Electric turbines in the project’s first, 400-megawatt phase. The full project, at 800 megawatts, would be enough to provide the electricity for a total of 400,000 residential and business customers in Massachusetts. The turbines would be spaced more than a mile apart.
This project would mean much more local, and thus more secure, clean energy for New England, boosting its economy and health indices. There would be considerable economic development associated with building and maintaining this $2.8 billion project with, of course, southeastern New England reaping a lot of those benefits. Several thousand well-paying jobs, of varying periods, would be created.
Some have called offshore New England “the Saudi Arabia of wind.’’
Vineyard Wind has tried to address the issues raised by fishermen by putting more distance between the turbines than earlier proposed and deciding to use the GE turbines instead of the originally planned Vestas ones. The more powerful GE turbines mean that fewer would be needed to meet generation goals.
Fishing and big offshore wind farms seem to co-exist well in Europe, though there are bound to be disruptions, especially during construction. Vineyard Wind will attract fish once that’s over: The below-water parts of turbine towers act, as do reefs and shipwrecks, as habitats for the creatures.
Then there’s the bird issue. Some birds crash into turbine blades, as they do into buildings, cars, power-line towers and so forth. (Ban skyscrapers?) But the newer, bigger turbines, such as GE’s, are more widely spaced and spin more slowly than earlier ones, making them less perilous to birds and bats. And it seems that such measures as painting one of a turbine’s blades black help steer birds away, as does broadcasting certain sounds and using certain lights. The industry is still learning how to minimize impacts on wildlife.
Of course, burning fossil fuels pose far wider risks to birds and other wildlife via global warming, ocean acidification, pollution, oil spills, etc., than do wind turbines.
Problems will arise but, all in all, Vineyard Wind and other such projects would be a boon for our region.
Are we ready for such a major new local industry? Vineyard Wind would be the first such big wind farm off southern New England. But others will probably follow. Officials of another mega-project, Mayflower Wind, for example, for south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, hope to start generating electricity in 2025. (The up-and-running Block Island Wind Farm is tiny, with only five turbines, producing a total of 30 megawatts.)
For the foreseeable future, wind and solar power will remain the major non-fossil-fuel energy sources. But hydrogen in fuel cells could become a big deal, too. Meanwhile, of course, we’ll still have to depend on fossil fuels for much of our energy for the next couple of decades.
A bit of an irony: New Bedford would play a major role in the construction and maintenance of Vineyard Wind and other offshore wind projects. For decades in the 19th Century, the city was also an energy center, as the biggest port for bringing in whale oil, which was used for lighting. Getting it caused horrific losses of these marine mammals.
Some people would hate the look of these big wind farms; others would see them as (eerily?) beautiful. In any case, we’ll get used to them.
