Offshore wind power meets the power of local politics
New York Times: Wind entrepreneur Peter Mandelstam had his eureka moment when he released how much power was associated with the Mid-Atlantic Bight. This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This is, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand — not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.
Building offshore turbines to exploit it however, would leave Mandelstam against the local power companies, who didn't want the competition, and holiday resorts who didn't want their coastline view spoiled with windmills in the distance. It would lead to millions of dollars spent fighting one of the most protracted political battles in Delaware history, and the proposal to build a 200-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Delaware.
Mark Svenvold looks at the politics behind wind power, why states are shaping the state of the national energy grid, and the need for federal regulation and subsidies for renewable energy.
Comments
The power of the global wind energy streams I am reasonably sure, although I am not an expert in this field, is within an order of magnitude less than the solar power incident upon the planet. Since solar energy drives wind energy which is impart driven by the evaporative and condensation phase change of water from the Earth's surface and oceans and in the atmosphere, the precipitation in the form of rain, snow, etc, I cannot be too far off the mark.
The Sun delivers about 10 EXP 17 watts into the Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere combined. If just 10% of this incident solar power ends up as wind stream energy, the time averaged wind stream power would be 10 EXP 16 Watts or 3 orders of magnitude greater than the entire time averaged global industrial output including but not limited to electrical power production, gas, diesel, and kerosene powered transport systems, natural gas, and oil fired building and residence heating, and manufacturing and other industrial processes. Harnessing just 0.1 percent of this global wind stream power could power the entire global civilization.
The wind blows even at night or in very cloudy weather when sunlight is not available for photovoltaic energy systems. Combine solar PV energy, wind energy, nuclear energy, and bio-fuels production, and we can have the problem of Global Warming licked once and for all with the resulting plenty of energy for all. No more political instability and national security issues with dwindling fossil fuel reserves. We owe it to our selves and our descendants to start the switch ASAP.
Posted by: James M. Essig | September 19, 2008 12:15 AM