Tim Faulkner: Future of region's fossil-fuel plants looks shakier

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The latest auction price for the ISO New England electricity contracts dropped to a historic low, signaling an uncertain future for power plants that run on fossil fuels.

The cost of $2 per kilowatt-month marks the steady decline of wholesale electricity since it reached a peak of $17.73 per unit in 2015. The price has been in free fall ever since, dropping to $4.63 in 2018 and $3.80 per unit last year.

Rhode Islanders learned about forward capacity auctions during the contentious permitting hearings for the Clear River Energy Center (CREC) proposed for the woods of Burrillville. In 2016, the developer, Invenergy Thermal Development LLC, was awarded an electricity purchase agreement from ISO New England for $7.03.

The capacity supply obligation, or CSO, became a point of debate as Invenergy argued that earning the contract from ISO New England proved the power plant was vital to the region’s energy needs and therefore the project deserved a license to operate.

However, the CSO was awarded to only one of CREC’s two proposed electricity generation units. Project opponents argued that the limited CSO proved that only a portion of the power plant had a place in the regional electric grid and therefore the project was too large to approve.

Invenergy argued that it could still sell the electricity from the second power unit on the open market and earn a profit.

But the Chicago-based company was no doubt in a bind because reducing the size of the project from two power units to one would require a new application, an expensive and time-consuming process.

Problems over cooling water and other setbacks in the application proceedings forced Invenergy to sell its CSO capacity during the years the energy facility was supposed to be producing power. The delays prompted ISO New England to suspend Invenergy from participating in the CSO auctions for its second power unit. In 2018, Invenergy was dealt another blow, when ISO New England rescinded the first CSO contract.

All the while, the CSO unit prices continued to drop as electricity capacity grew and demand held steady, due in part to the success of energy-efficiency programs and new renewable-energy projects feeding into the regional power grid.

The falling auction unit price gave CREC opponents further conviction that the fossil-fuel project was redundant. This reasoning was part of the argument the state Energy Facility Siting Board used to ultimately reject the CREC application in June 2019.

ISO New England, the operator of the six-state power grid, also forecasts energy needs and trends for the region. The nonprofit sees the drop in CSO price as a win for ratepayers.

“New England’s competitive wholesale electricity markets are producing record low prices, delivering unmistakable economic benefits for consumers in the six-state region,” said Robert Ethier, ISO New England’s vice president for system planning.

The pricing also reflects the growing flow of renewable energy into the grid. Of the some 600 megawatts of new electricity approved in the auction, 317 were from land-based and offshore wind, solar, and solar paired with batteries.

Behind-the-meter solar is also reducing demand for utility-scale power. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, New England added 493 megawatts of rooftop solar last year.

“This is good news for consumers all over New England,” said Bill Eccleston, a former activist against the Invenergy power plant. The lower auction price “also contradicts the propaganda that we need to be building more fossil-fuel power plants.”

“There’s a glut of (electricity) supply on the market,” said Jerry Elmer, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).

Elmer and CLF opposed the Burrillville proposal and as intervenors argued before the EFSB. Elmer and CLF staff are steeped in local energy markets because they serve on ISO New England’s working committees.

“The big lesson there is there no need for new fossil fuel plants and I don't think you’ll see any in the near future,” Elmer said.

New Connecticut solar facility to benefit Ocean State

Rhode Island is fulfilling one of its renewable-energy goals by acquiring power from a Connecticut solar facility.

To help reach 1,000 megawatts of renewable power by 2020, the state is making another deal with New York City-based hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. In 2008, D. E. Shaw was the financial backer of Deepwater Wind, the Providence-based developer that won the contract to build the Block Island Wind Farm.

D. E. Shaw sold Deepwater Wind to Danish energy company Ørsted in October 2018 for $510 million.

This time, D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments, a division of D. E. Shaw, has won a contract for a 50-megawatt solar facility at a gravel mine in East Windsor, Conn. The state will not release the precise location of the project, called Gravel Pit Solar II LLC.

Without offering specifics, D. E. Shaw has offered to pay $300,000 for renewable-energy workforce development in Rhode Island.

Although it’s promoted by the state as a deal for Rhode Island’s three electric utilities, the agreement awards 99 percent of the energy generated to National Grid. The remaining 1 percent, or 0.5 megawatts, is credited to the Pascoag Utility District and the Block Island Utility District.

The 20-year contract must be reviewed and approved by Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission.

National Grid is asking the state to buy renewable-energy credits (RECs) for 5.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, the state is paying between 24 and 50 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from the 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm.

National Grid selected D. E. Shaw from 41 bids. The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources and the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers served as advisors for the selection process. Of the 19 projects that offered to sell the electricity below market rates, none were based in Rhode Island.

Ratepayers are expected to pay $30.8 million for the electricity over 20 years. Based on energy price forecasting models, ratepayers will save $101 million over the term of the contract.

Gravel Pit Solar II LLC is expected to be commercially operational by March 31, 2023. More details of the project can be found in the PUC docket. The proposed ground-mounted solar facility is estimated to displace 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Ferry funds

Rhode Island Fast Ferry Inc. recently received up to $30,000 from the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation to expand its offshore wind shuttle services at the Port of Quonset and along the East Coast.

The grant pays for costs associated with acquiring permits from the Coastal Resources Management Council, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Tim Faulkner is an ecoRI News journalist.

Tim Faulkner: Sport and commercial fishermen at odds over offshore wind

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Commercial fishermen and sport fishermen are split over the benefits of offshore wind facilities.

Commercial fishermen, primarily from eastern Long Island, N.Y., say the wind-energy projects planned for southern New England, such as the South Fork Wind Farm, are the latest threats to their income after decades of quotas and regulations.

“I don't like the idea of the ocean being taken away from me after I’ve thrown so many big-dollar fish back in the water for the last 30 years, praying I’d get it back in the end,” said Dave Aripotch, owner of a 75-foot trawl-fishing boat based in Montauk, N.Y.

In the summer, Aripotch patrols for squid and weakfish in the area where the 15 South Fork wind turbines and others wind projects are planned. He expects the wind facilities and undersea cables will shrink fishing grounds along the Eastern Seaboard.

“If you put 2,000 wind turbines from the Nantucket Shoals to New York City, I’m losing 50 to 60 percent of my fishing grounds,” Aripotch said during a Nov. 8 public hearing at the Narragansett Community Center.

Dave Monti of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association said the submerged turbine foundations at the Block Island Wind Farm created artificial reefs, boosting fish populations and attracting charter boats like his.

“It’s a very positive thing for recreational fishing,” Monti said. “The Block Island Wind Farm has acted like a fish magnet.”

Offshore wind development also has the support of environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and the Conservation Law Foundation, which view renewable energy as an answer to climate change.

“Offshore wind power really is the kind of game-changing large-scale solution that we need to see move forward, particularly along along the East Coast,” said Amber Hewett, manager of the Atlantic offshore wind energy campaign for the National Wildlife Federation.

Aripotch and fellow commercial fisherman Donald Fox urged the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to study the cumulative effects of the four other wind projects planned for the Rhode Island/Massachusetts wind-energy area. They want to know how catches and quotas will be calculated if fishing nets run through multiple wind facilities.

“God bless you if you figure that one out,” Fox said.

Commercial fisherman David Aripotch said offshore wind turbines and the accompanying infrastructure will shrink fishing grounds along the Eastern Seaboard. (Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News photos)

The comments were made at the last of three public hearing held by BOEM for the South Fork Wind Farm’s environmental impact statement (EIS). A 30-day public comment period on the environmental impacts ends Nov. 19. BOEM has held a total of eight public meetings for the South Fork project.

After the current comment period, a second 45-day comment period will follow BOEM’s release of a draft IES. BOEM then has three months to issue a decision, which is expected in early 2020. If approved, construction on the South Fork Wind Farm would begin in 2021. Pending other permits, the wind facility would then be expected to be operating by the end of 2022.

BOEM is reviewing the engineering plans for the wind turbines, an offshore substation, and the 30-mile power cable that will run to East Hampton, N.Y. The federal agency also is reviewing the effects of the transmission line, such as the impacts of electromagnetic fields on sea life.

The substation would be above the water on its own platform or share a platform with a wind turbine. It will have a height of up to 200 feet to support a high-voltage power transformer, reactor, and ventilation and air-conditioning systems. The substation may also include a 400-horse-power diesel generator and a 500-gallon diesel fuel tank.

Sportfisherman Dave Monti said the submerged turbine foundations at the Block Island Wind Farm created artificial reefs, boosting fish populations and attracting charter boats like his.

The designated wind area between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard has already restricted wind-energy development in portions of prime fishing grounds such as Cox Ledge.

Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association called Deepwater Wind “the not ready for primetime players” because of technical problems with the Block Island Wind Farm, such as exposed undersea cables.

Brady noted that Deepwater Wind, now called Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind, increased the capacity of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm from 90 to 130 megawatts. Each turbine can have an electricity output of 12 megawatts, or twice the power output of the Block Island turbines. The maximum height of the new turbines is 840 feet. The Block Island turbines are about 580 feet tall.

Brady wants BOEM to study of the effects of the larger turbines and increase the space between each turbine to 2 miles. Deepwater Wind has offered to separate the turbines by a mile. She said studies are needed of the noise and particle pressure from the larger turbines and the impacts of jet plowing and pile driving on fish and shellfish.

Brady is advocating for BOEM and New York regulators to afford fishermen the same protections that Rhode Island fishermen receive, such payment for lost revenue, as defined by the Ocean Special Area Management Plan.

“There needs to be long-term mitigation, long-term compensation at fair values, without signing a nondisclosure agreement,” she said.

Tim Faulkner, nature writer, is a reporter and writer for ecoRI News

Wind pays off

Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The Danish energy company Orsted’s purchase of Providence-based Deepwater Wind from D.E. Shaw & Co., an investment company, for $510 million certainly testifies to the growing value of wind power, especially in the reliably wind-rich area off southern New England. Congratulations to the Deepwater Wind folks for their visionary and complicated risk-taking -- economically, technologically, politically and regulatorily.

I noted that the companies said that, Deepwater, now a subsidiary, would be based in Providence and in Boston; the latter city is where Orsted’s North American operations are based. But I predict that soon the Providence office will be closed and everything will be run from Boston (and Denmark). As a PR move in acquisitions, companies often assert that much important stuff will remain in the home town of the acquired entity. But the savings and efficiencies from consolidation almost always trump such sweet ideas sooner rather than later.

If anything, Newport, not Providence, might be the best town for a second headquarters: It’s closer to planned big wind farms south of New England. And Aquidneck Island, like Greater Providence, has lots of engineers.

By the way, wind turbines, though far, far better than burning fossil fuel, can raise air temperatures in wind-farm areas by half a degree or more by interrupting wind flows, say recent studies. All energy production has downsides. Consider, for example, that solar arrays require a lot of space, which leads to clearing woodlands in some places. Abandoned big-box store parking lots and landfills are among the best sites, besides rooftops, of course.

Spinning blades of offshore wind turbines found to create little noise

Block Island Wind Farm.

From eco RI News (ecori.org)

New research lead by the University of Rhode Island has concluded that offshore wind facilities produce minimal noise above and in the water while the blades are spinning. But the noise and vibrations from building them are a concern.

The research, funded through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, began with the construction of Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm in September 2015. It continued when the five turbines began spinning in late 2016.

Through acoustic monitoring, James Miller, URI professor of ocean engineering and an expert on ocean sound propagation, found that the sound from the turbines was barely detectable underwater.

“You have to be very close to hear it. As far as we can see, it’s having no effect on the environment, and much less than shipping noise,” Miller said.

Working with a team of specialists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Acoustics Inc. of Newport, and others, Miller heard ships, whales, wind, and fish. But noise measurements 50 meters from the turbines was hardly audible. Above the waterline, the swish of blades was barely heard, according to Miller.

The noise was monitored using hydrophones in the water and geophones, which measure the vibration of the seabed, on the seafloor.

The vibrations from the pile driving of the turbine’s support structure is a bigger unknown. Miller said the vibrations on the seabed had a surprising intensity that may harm bottom-dwelling organisms such as flounder and lobsters, which have a huge economic value in the state.

“Fish probably can’t hear the noise from the turbine operations, but there’s no doubt that they could hear the pile driving,” Miller said. “And the levels are high enough that we’re concerned.”

To minimize the aquatic impacts, the pile driving started with minimal sound to allow marine life to move away. Pile driving was also prohibited between Nov. 1 and May 1 to protect migrating North Atlantic right whales, which are critically endangered. The pile driving was also limited to daytime so that spotters could search for nearby whales.

This kind of monitoring will continue once construction starts on other Deepwater Wind offshore wind farms such as the Skipjack Wind Farm, off the coast of Ocean City, Md. Additional research will be conducted in the federal offshore wind energy area between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

In addition to the acoustic impacts, the researchers looked at the impacts of offshore wind facility construction and operations on fishing, habitats and seabed scaring and healing. Studies will eventually be published from that research.

URI expects to study and provide data for the nearly 1,000 offshore wind turbines that have been proposed for installation in the waters between Massachusetts to Georgia in the coming years.

“We’ve become the national experts, which has added to Rhode Island’s reputation as the Ocean State,” Miller said.

Tim Faulkner: Deepwater Wind's big expansion plans

The proposed Revolution Wind facility would be built in a federal offshore wind zone between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard. (Bureau of Offshore Energy Management).

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Providence-based Deepwater Wind continues to invest in the areas of New Bedford and Fall River while embarking on other projects across the Bay State, including a mountain-lake power plant in western Massachusetts.

The owner of the Block Island Wind Farm has announced it will choose Somerset, Fall River or New Bedford to host a facility for building 24 wind-turbine foundations for its Revolution Wind facility proposed in a federal wind zone between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

If approved, Revolution Wind would start construction in 2022, according to Deepwater Wind. In all, the offshore wind facility is projected to inject $300 million into the regional economy and create 2,300 jobs. Three hundred employees would be employed at the yet-to-be-named site for turbine foundation construction, where workers would weld, fabricate and paint the 1,500-ton steel structures.

“This is about building a real industry that lasts,” Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said.

In a recent radio interview with 1420-AM (WBSM), New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said the number of jobs promised is too low for the size of the site needed for the foundation work. Mitchell said Deepwater Wind is looking for about 100 acres. He suggested that the 307-acre site of the former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset might be better suited for the work.

New Bedford is already expected to receive some of the economic benefits of Revolution Wind and other proposed wind projects. The 26-acre New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal will host construction and staging work for Deepwater Wind's latest project and the Bay State Wind and Vineyard Wind renewable-energy facilities.

Deepwater Wind is also seeking proposals from local shipyards to build special boats that ferry employees to its offshore wind facility. Some 12 employees would operate the vessels during the 20-year-plus life of the Block Island Wind Farm turbines. Similar boats would be built for Deepwater Wind’s other projects in the wind zone in the waters between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The 21-meter Atlantic Pioneer was built by Blount Boats shipyard in Warren, R.I., to transport crew and supplies to and from the Block Island Wind Farm.

Revolution Wind is the first offshore wind project to take advantage of 2016 Massachusetts legislationthat calls for 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind by 2027.

Mountain power

Revolution Wind is billing itself as an energy source that can deliver electricity when needed, even if the wind isn’t blowing. A lack of electricity from the proposed 400-megawatt wind farm would be substituted by a 40-megawatt-hour battery storage system designed by Tesla. It will also take ownership of electricity from a hydroelectric “pumped storage” system in Northfield, Mass., some 115 miles from the Massachusetts South Coast.

There’s no dam. Instead, a manmade lake atop Northfield Mountain drains into a generator within the mountain. The 50-year-old facility requires more energy to refill the 5-billion-gallon lake with water than it produces. But the 1,168-megawatt energy facility, owned by FirstLight Power, makes money by using electricity for its pumps during off-peak hours, when prices are lower, and selling it to the grid when electricity prices are higher. The hydro facility also provides on-demand power, so it's a suitable partner for a wind facility that periodically stops spinning.

Revolution Wind, therefore, could join fossil-fuel power plants as a baseload energy generator that can be turned on and off based on electricity demand.

“Revolution Wind will deliver ‘baseload’ power, allowing a utility-scale renewable energy project for the first time to replace the retiring fossil fuel-fired power plants closing across the region,” according to Deepwater Wind.

The Northfield Mountain Generating Station is waiting for its federal operating license to be renewed. In February, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt made a surprise visit to the pumped-storage facility, which draws its water from the Connecticut River. Pruitt was joined by a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the entity that decides if Northfield Mountain will get relicensed. Pruitt gave no comment on whether he supported the power facility and was criticized for not meeting with local officials and environmentalists who support the power facility.

Expandable offshore transmission network

Deepwater Wind is partnering with Nation Grid Ventures, a division of National Grid the utility, to build a a network of undersea power cables that would connect Revolution Wind and other offshore wind facilities to the electric grid. If approved, the project would speed up the approval and licensing of other wind facilities by having an existing network of transmission lines to tie into within the Massachusetts and Rhode Island offshore wind zone.

Tim Faulkner reports and writes for ecoRI News.

Tim Faulkner: The lessons of the long Cape Wind saga

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Cape Wind may be gone, but it’s still fresh on the minds of attendees and speakers at a two-day southern New England wind energy conference hosted by the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

Bill White, senior director of wind development for the Massachusetts state agency that advances renewable energy, said the demise of Cape Wind was a personal disappointment, but the 16-year saga offered several teachable moments for the offshore wind industry.

Those lessons, White said, include building further offshore, presumably away from popular recreation and fishing areas such as Nantucket Sound. To speed up permitting, environmental studies should be completed and regulations addressed earlier in the application process, he added.

Cape Wind also established offshore infrastructure that will benefit future projects. It led to construction hubs such as the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, and laid the groundwork for planning, staging, and construction of turbines and their transmission lines.

“Cape Wind in a way served as a catalyst not just for Massachusetts but in a way for the entire East Coast in educating us to the possibility of offshore wind,” White said.

Smaller is better, Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said. He noted that the 130-turbine Cape Wind project and other failed offshore wind farms suffered from a process that was pushed by developers rather than by a state-driven model, such as the one Rhode Island embraced for the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.

Developers, inspired by large European wind projects, relied on analysis from engineers showing the maximum number of turbines that could be built in an offshore zone, Grybowski said. Large projects like Cape Wind and others off the coasts of Delaware, New Jersey and Long Island “were in essence drawn up on a white board in a developer’s office."

"They were engineered," Grybowski said. "An engineer said, ‘I can build this much in this area.’ They were mechanically engineered and financially engineered to those particular project sizes. And those projects failed.”

Grybowski praised Rhode Island’s ocean mapping plan for providing the locations and process for approving offshore wind projects. Through community and stakeholder involvement, the project was reduced from 100 turbines to eight and then five.

“When you are doing something for the first time going for the large size is not necessarily the right way to go, even though it may make financial sense,” Grybowski said.

Building 400 turbines is feasible and already happening in Europe, he said, “but starting small makes a lot of sense when you look at the long term.”

Starting small and moving slowly makes it easier to recover from mistakes that might derail a larger project. Grybowski didn’t mention specific errors, but the Block Island project encountered some safety and construction problems, along with minor public resistance, all of which were fixed or addressed with alternative plans.

Grybowski described the give-and-take as “enlightened self-interest.” He explained that the turbines benefited Block Island by fulfilling its dual goals of ending its reliance on diesel-fuel power, while connecting the island to the mainland power grid. As an inducement, the transmission line included a fiber-optic Internet connection.

“It means ... making the right concessions for the community and the project that maximizes everyone's goals at the end of the day,” Grybowski said.

The experience of building the Block Island Wind Farm set the course for new and much larger offshore wind projects that will be needed as the country transitions away from fossil fuels. Electrification of the transportation sector and advances in battery storage are escalating the demand for renewable energy and offshore wind is the most practical source of utility-scale power to meet that energy need, according to Grybowski.

Fake news

Science was the focus of the two-day conference (Dec. 11 and 12), with sessions on marine mammals, fish and fisheries, birds, and bats. Grybowski urged scientists to do more to promote their research. Climate-change deniers, Grybowski said, were given legitimacy because scientists didn't adequately “engage in that public conversation.”

“When there was pushback, fake news on the other side, the science community, they were comfortable with kind of putting their studies together," he said. “They weren’t really comfortable engaging in a real way out with people on the other side in the community. So I ask you to do that."

Grybowski pointed to news stories that circulated a dubious claim that noise from the Block Island Wind Farm killed a humpback whale that washed ashore on Jamestown earlier this year.

“When that sort of thing happens, it would be really great to have some researchers who were willing to step up and actually get engaged in that conversation and provide facts and help people make clear judgements about what is and what isn’t happening,” Grybowski said.

Tim Faulkner writes for ecoRI News.

Tim Faulkner: Will hurricanes imperil wind turbines off the Northeast?

Via ecoRI.org

As new offshore wind farms are built off the Northeast coast, a new report suggests that the current models of wind turbines may not withstand the most powerful of hurricanes. The study, by the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the U.S. Department of Energy, is intended to help the budding offshore wind industry as it expands into hurricane-prone regions, such as the East Coast.

“We wanted to understand the worst-case scenario for offshore wind turbines, and for hurricanes, that’s a Category 5,” said Rochelle Worsnop, lead author and a graduate researcher in the University of Colorado's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC).

Current design standards require offshore wind turbines be built to withstand 112-mph winds. Using computer-generated simulations, researchers found that portions of Category 5 hurricanes can reach up to 200 mph. Turbine blades also can be stressed by sudden and powerful shifts in wind direction, called veer.

Offshore wind turbines are typically larger than land-based turbines because components can be shipped over water instead of along size-restrictive railways and roads. The structures are therefore exposed to greater harm over their 20- to 30-year life, according to the report.

“Success could mean either building turbines that can survive these extreme conditions, or by understanding the overall risk so that risks can be mitigated, perhaps with financial instruments like insurance,” said Julie Lundquist, a co-author of the study and a professor at ATOC and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute.

A subsequent study by the same group will look at the long-term effects of hurricanes on offshore wind farms built off the Atlantic Coast.

Rhode Island holds the honor of building the country’s first offshore wind farm, with the completion of the Block Island Wind Farm last November. The developer of the five-turbine, 30-megawatt wind farm, Providence-based Deepwater Wind, says the University of Colorado study is more relevant to the Southeast, where hurricane are more common and more powerful.

“Current offshore wind turbine designs are suitable for the wind conditions expected in the Northeast, where the strongest hurricane to make landfall in recorded history was a Category 3," Deepwater Wind spokeswoman Meaghan Wims said.

The most recent Category 3 hurricane to make landfall in New England was Hurricane Carol on Aug. 31, 1954. The storm had a sustained wind of 110 mph.

Deepwater Wind designs its turbines to withstand a 100-year storm, which has top wind speeds of 134 mph.

In the coming the decades, the company is planning to erect wind farms in the waters between Maryland and Maine.

“We don’t expect offshore wind energy to be deployed in the Southeast in the near term for other reasons — namely, a lower offshore wind resource than the Northeast,” Wims said.

Deepwater Wind and other developers have proposed multiple projects off of the wind-rich Northeast coast. Deepwater Wind is advancing a 15-turbine project, called South Fork Wind Farm, off eastern Long Island. Its Deepwater ONE project is slated for thousands of acres of federal waters between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Vineyard Wind and DONG Energy, both based in Denmark, are also planning projects in the region. Bay State Wind, owned by DONG and Eversource Energy, intends to build several wind farms in the region.

But it’s only a matter of time before these wind turbines are tested by hurricanes. A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists says climate change, and warming oceans in particular, are making coastal storms more intense. Since the 1970s, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled. Category 5 hurricanes have winds exceeding 157 mph; Category 4 winds blow between 130 and 156 mph; Category 3 winds are between 111 and 129 mph.

Tim Faulkner writes for ecoRI News.

Offshore windpower: They'll come to love it

Excerpted from the Sept. 1 "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.

It’s too bad that it has taken so long, but the completion of Deepwater Wind’s five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, R.I., is very good news for New England.

The facility, expected to start producing electricity inNovember, will mean that a little more of New England’s electricity will come from the region’s own sources andthat we might be able to use a little less natural gas from fracking.  That process, contrary to the corporate publicity and wishful thinking, does not slow global warming because the process releases so much methane from the fracking sites.  And the Block Island project will help reduce air pollution:  The island’s electricity has been produced by unavoidably dirty diesel fuel.

Further, success in getting this project up will boost, by example, much bigger offshore windpower projects planned for  nearby waters,  most notably between the eastern tip of Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard. Eventually, this should dramatically improve the reliability of our electricity and in the long run cut its cost as windpower technology improves.

As usual with such projects in places like Block Island, Deepwater Wind had to fend off some affluent summer people who were offended that they’d have to look at wind turbines (which many folks think are beautiful) on their horizon.  Most famously, a group of very few rich people in Osterville, Mass., led by Bill Koch (of the Koch Brothers) have managed to block the big Cape Wind project, which was to go up in middle of Nantucket Sound,  although the project has been supported by a large majority of theMassachusetts public. Yet again,  a few privileged NIMBYs have sabotaged the public interest. (I co-wrote (with Wendy Williams) a bookabout that controversy, called Cape Wind, later made into a movie called Cape Spin.)

The Obama administration and some states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts have, to their credit, enacted laws and regulations to encourage offshore wind. This is especially attractive in the Northeast, with its reliable breezes and shallow water extending a lot further offshore than you see off the West Coast.

The Europeans have long embraced offshore windpower, for environmental reasons and to reduce reliance on fossil-fuel imports, especially from an increasingly aggressive Russia.

I predict that many current offshore-windpower foes will come to tolerate and even like the turbines’  curious beauty. And the fishermen will  come to love them because fish congregate in the supports of such structures.

--  Robert Whitcomb

B.I. wind farm and Lucky Sperm Club on Nantucket Sound

Why is construction starting on a wind farm off Block Island, R.I., while, despite 14 years of effort by Cape Wind developer Jim Gordon, nothing has gone up in Nantucket Sound?  And that's even with the Block Island project, Deepwater Wind, about three miles offshore while Cape Wind would be more than five miles offshore -- thus usually out of  sight from land in this hazy and windy region. Well, yes, the Block Island project is much smaller.

But the main  answer is  that Block Island project doesn't have as rich and ruthless a billionaire opponent as Bill Koch, from whose summer house in Osterville (which he only uses a very few weeks a year) you could see Cape Wind's turbines on a crystal-clear day. Mr. Koch, another member of the Lucky Sperm Club (his father founded the industrial empire from which Bill  Koch hugely benefits), has been willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to stop Cape Wind because he doesn't ever want to look at it.

He can take great pride in single-handedly stopping a project that would have provided about three-quarters of southeastern Massachusetts's electricity.

--- Robert Whitcomb

Wind wins on Block Island

With surprisingly little fanfare, except in the glorious Block Island Times,  what   would be  the first offshore wind farm in America has received its final major  regulatory approval, from the Army Corps of Engineers. It's on schedule to be  up and running in two years. The Block Island Wind Farm --  Deepwater Wind's five-turbine , 30-megawatt operation  --  would lower Block Island's sky-high electricity costs and  would act as an encouragement for  backers of other, much bigger projects, such as the Cape Wind project, in Nantucket Sound. That project has been held up for years by Osterville, Mass., summer resident and fossil-fuel mogul Bill Koch.

How difficult it has become to do big projects in America, especially when a few local rich people don't like them!