Larry Caldwell
Super Member
I saw an article this morning that there is 30 gw of offshore wind power in the infrastructure bill, but 10x as much will be necessary to decarbonize east coast electrical generation. Connecting the new generation capacity to the existing transmission lines is supposedly a serious problem.
The article did not explain why all of the new generation capacity had to be offshore. I don't know enough about the east coast to understand if that is real or just bad writing. Is it a NIMBY thing? I suppose if I paid east coast property taxes a big propeller would matter to me. Not that I am ever going to have to deal with it. My county has the lowest average wind speed of anywhere in North America. If you want a windmill to spin here, you have to put it on top of a mountain.
I can see the distribution problem as being real. Our electrical lines are designed around point source generation. I have a great south facing bare slope that would be a perfect solar site, except there's no way to get rid of the power. I'm the last house on the line. Try to pump 500 kw into that line and you would melt it. The big advantage of PNW wind power, like the Stateline Project, is that it can dump the electricity into BPA lines from the dams on the Columbia.
The article did not explain why all of the new generation capacity had to be offshore. I don't know enough about the east coast to understand if that is real or just bad writing. Is it a NIMBY thing? I suppose if I paid east coast property taxes a big propeller would matter to me. Not that I am ever going to have to deal with it. My county has the lowest average wind speed of anywhere in North America. If you want a windmill to spin here, you have to put it on top of a mountain.
I can see the distribution problem as being real. Our electrical lines are designed around point source generation. I have a great south facing bare slope that would be a perfect solar site, except there's no way to get rid of the power. I'm the last house on the line. Try to pump 500 kw into that line and you would melt it. The big advantage of PNW wind power, like the Stateline Project, is that it can dump the electricity into BPA lines from the dams on the Columbia.