US Offshore Wind Plods On

Progress continues on the first offshore wind farm--scheduled for completion by the end of 2016--in American waters. The Block Island Wind Farm site sits three miles from the shore of Block Island in Rhode Island state waters. It will feature a 30 MW capacity thanks to five 6 MW Haliade turbines, formerly built by Alstom and now manufactured by GE in several European cities after GE's acquisition of Alstom in 2015.

Offshore wind faces a number of significant obstacles to widespread adoption in the US, the most significant being cost. For one, it has the highest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of any power generation method considered for widespread adoption, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). A turbine's cost only represents 30-50% of an offshore project's total cost; the remaining 50% typically goes to specialized operations and maintenance costs, installation expenses, and the cost of other infrastructure such as subsea cables, batteries and other storage devices, and sometimes dedicated substations. So while it experiences less NIMBY-related opposition than onshore wind turbines, offshore's expense must be drastically reduced before there's any true competition.

And while US proponents of offshore wind claim that sea breeze is more powerful and reliable than terrestrial wind, and that turbines could be conveniently sited near heavily populated coastlines, the country's physical characteristics and climate leaves a lot to be desired. For one, US coastal waters are both deeper and less windy than the UK's, where offshore wind has seen huge development as well as better centralized policy support. Deeper waters mean more specialized (and specialized) foundations than the relatively simple monopiles used in European waters. Countries with deep coastal waters would have to invest in even more costly floating turbines for offshore wind power, as Japan did several years ago. And as far as climate goes, sunny parts of the country are more appropriate to renewables development involving solar power, and even windy areas are likely to be less breezy during periods of high power demand: hot, sunny days.

While widespread offshore wind remains beyond the horizon in the US, the Department of Energy is hopeful that the development of a reliable supply chain and improved technology could drastically lower costs in the next few decades. US projects face opposition from environmental groups carefully considering the potential impact of turbines on sea life, and customers who would rather not see their rates double due to offshore wind development. For every successful project like Block Island Wind Farm, there's been many more that've been shot down by local agencies. For more info and insight on the Block Island project and US offshore wind in general, check out this article on Engineering360.

Image credit: Global Marine Photos / CC BY-ND 2.0