“Birds and bats killed by (off shore) turbines are likely to become fish food, sink or drift away with the currents.” – Christine Morabito, “Did Mass Audubon Sell its Soul to the Wind Industry?” The Valley Patriot (June 2015)
... Imaging is the grand task of the eco-renewable lobby.
Photoshop to green the scene.
Mute the noise.
Don’t picture the (otherwise unnecessary) transmission lines.
No birds either.
Just make wind turbines look as natural as the breeze.
Economically, ratepayers and taxpayers lose.
Industrial wind requires long-term price-insensitive contracts, as well as endless DOE research grants, the perennially extended 2.4 cent/kWh federal tax credit, and local and state tax abatement.
It’s hard making the uneconomic economic.
The other victims are the locals living in view and sound of wind turbines.
Many have to be bribed to become neutral or supportive of such rural industrialization.
Facing constraints onshore, the push is for massive offshore wind installations.
... The history of offshore wind in domestic waters is replete with canceled plans ... cost overruns, cabling problems, and permit delays.
... offshore wind continues to be one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation.
... The impact will be particularly hard in northeastern states like New York and in New England, where consumers already endure some of the highest electricity prices in the country.
... America’s lone completed offshore wind project, 30-MW Block-Island project off the coast of Rhode Island, now four years old, went offline last year for costly seabed cable repairs.
Was this to be expected?
“High-voltage lines—be buried at sea to carry power from the burgeoning offshore-wind sector and then inject it into the onshore grid—represent the most complicated, and as yet uncertain, aspect of an industry poised to boom,” E&E News explained.
“From grid congestion to technical troubles, the offshore wind’s transmission challenge is the focus of growing attention as the industry advances.”
This setback further slows the Northeast offshore wind rush.
Driven by monopoly utilities guaranteeing rates, it takes of offshore power to blend in with lower-cost, flexible power.
For captive consumers, they have no choice.
... “Developers will say ANYTHING to gain permitting.”
... Not only do they gain permits based on serious errors, omissions, and misrepresentations of fact—ONCE a project is permitted, they use their professional skills to subvert an honest analysis of the operation’s impacts upon a community.
As such it is my opinion that they act in violation of ethical standards as a result of grossly misrepresenting what they are “selling” to these local boards.
... Adversaries to the proposed takeover of the U.S East Coast by industrial wind point to these ongoing problems in Europe:
Unreliability
Design errors, including with cabling
Worker danger
Technology failures
Collision casualties, as flying creatures mistake the structures as resting places on long migratory paths
Damaging to sub surface organisms of all kinds: ongoing not just during construction, when dB can reach 110 or more
Massive subsidies that are never really attached to real production and meaningful electrical output or the complexities of grid-balancing
Expense overruns, including with maintenance.
... offshore wind proposals, problematic economically, can and should die a natural death from environmental concerns."