Block Island, R.I.Residents Fall For Wind Turbine Story Second Time

Block Island, R.I.Residents Fall For Wind Turbine Story Second Time

In December of 2012 Deepwater Wind said electricity rates on Block Island, Rhode Island would drop by 40 percent if a wind farm is constructed off the island.

The 5 turbines today are supplying power to the island as of May 1, 2017. The big question on Block Island today is “ Will our electric bills go down at all ? ” It does not look good for electric ratepayers.

This isn't the first time local residents fell for the " wind turbines will lower your electric rates story." Once in 1979 and again in 2011.

In 1979 the US Department of Energy and NASA built a wind turbine on the island with the promise of lower electric rates. The turbine built on Block Island was part of a nation wide experiment in which around the same time a wind turbine was built in Boone, North Carolina.

The turbines caused television and radio line of sight communication problems and in Boone N.C. the turbine it was discovered caused infra sound and sleep problems with neighbors. The turbines are long gone and rate payers pay

In 2011 the average cost of electricity on the island was 47 cents per kilowatt hour. In the rest of Rhode Island it was 14.8 cents. Prior to the promise of a 40 percent reduction in electric rates these people probably begged to get the turbines built.

Rhode Island may have slightly more than 1 million residents, but its politicians have wowed political junkies by blatantly taking bribes in office. Rhode Island public officials are still dealing with defunct game developer 38 Studios and now want to finance a base ball park with taxpayer money ?

Today it's fair to say :"there's a sucker born every minute" a phrase closely associated with electric rate payers on Block Island. How could they let this happen again ? The answer : Rhode Island politics, power and more money than ever can create an environment ripe for corruption.

The tax breaks for wind are our tax burdens. RI DeepWater Wind has had cable, public safety, and downed turbine problems.

Cable problems, (more than 70% of wind project insurance claims), each repair average cost is U.S. $6,450,630.08. Subsea

Cable Installation cost averages $6 million per mile per Sue Tierney Analysis Group
Offshore Cabling 2017
2017-03-07 - 2017-03-09

"Cable damages remain an ongoing issue with average costs of € 5 million per repair. Submarine cable repairs account for more than 70 % of all insurance claims of installed wind parks."
http://www.offshorewind.biz/events/offshore-cabling-2017/

Offshore wind turbines are corroding internally & externally & industry is challenged to fix the problems.
http://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selection-des...

More on DeepWater Problems and how Markey and Warren intend to increase your debt for Big Offshore Windhttp://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/ma-senators-markey-and-warren-...


Block Island Road island See 18 minutes into video didn't save money in 1979 -- Don't save money 2017

Wind Turbines: "Those Magnificent Wind Machines" 1980 NASA Lewis Research Center

more at http://scitech.quickfound.net "The evolution of the NASA wind program is traced from 1973 to 1980\
Block Island 2.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW1oxwItqLQ

Block Island 2.jpg

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Comment by Willem Post on May 20, 2017 at 12:42pm

Frank,

A VERY EXPENSIVE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY FOLLY IN NEW ENGLAND

 

With big enough wings (subsidies), even pigs can be made to fly. Look at this offshore wind energy folly, right here in New England.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/a-very-expensive-offsho...

 

The Block Island Wind Farm, after many years of dithering, became operational in late 2016. It is located 3.8 miles east of Block Island, Rhode Island. It has five wind turbines, each with a capacity of 6 megawatt. Each turbine is about 589 feet tall.

 

The annual wind energy production would be about 105,000 megawatt-hour, at a capacity factor of 0.40. The estimated useful service life is about 25 years. Turnkey project cost is about $290 million, or $9.67 million/MW, which is outrageously high. 

 

Quick Estimate of Energy Cost: If the major costs of 25-year financing, a return on investment, operation and maintenance, and replacements were ignored, the cost of energy production, just to return the capital, would be about $290 million/(20 y x 105,000 MWh/y) = 13.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.

 

If these costs were not ignored, the cost of energy would be at least 20 cents. That would be about the price charged to utilities under a long-term power purchase agreement, PPA. This energy would be variable and intermittent, i.e., no wind, no energy.

 

Other generators, likely gas-fired, would be required to provide supplementary energy on a year-round basis, i.e., do the peaking, filling-in and balancing, which degrades their efficient operation. This efficiency degradation increases as more wind energy is added to the grid.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions...

 

Actual Energy Cost: The actual PPA, calls for 24.4 cent the first year, increasing at 3.5% per year for 20 years, i.e., 48.6 c/kWh in the 20th year, plus utility mark up of about 10 c/kWh, plus taxes, surcharges and fees*.

 

* For comparison, the Cape Wind PPA calls for 18.7 cents, increasing at 3.5% per year for 20 years, i.e., 37.2 c/kWh in the 20th year, plus utility mark up of about 10 c/kWh, plus taxes, surcharges and fees. 

 

These numbers are at least triple of any offshore wind energy PPA pricing in Europe. Those are sweetheart deals by any standard. 

 

NOTE: New England wholesale prices have averaged about 5 cents for dispatchable, steady, electricity for the past 5 years, thanks to low-cost, clean, low-CO2 emitting, domestic natural gas and nuclear energy.

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/charlottesville-vi...

 

NOTE: These high costs exist despite about 30% of the capital cost (0.3 x 290 = $87 million) being a federal, up-front, cash gift to owners. Such cash gifts are typically used to offset any federal taxes due on other investments. It looks like those owners are making an extremely high return on their investment, all at the expense of other ratepayers and taxpayers.

 

Capital and Electricity Cost of European Offshore Wind: In Europe, the turnkey capital cost of offshore wind turbine plants has been steadily increasing from about $2000/kW in 2000 to about $5500/kW in 2015, and projections are about $5000/kW during the 2015 - 2020 period. At the median installed cost of $5000/kW, and interest rate* at 8%/y, and 20-year life, and 9 m/s wind speed, the generation costs are about $192/MWh. That is about 4 times the US and New England wholesale price of electricity which has been a steady $45 to $50 per MWh for at least the past 5 years.

http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1380738/global-costs-analys...

 

* In this case, interest rate is not the interest charge and other financing charges on loans from financial entities, but the net return on investment the owners of the wind turbine plant aim to achieve.

 

Multi-Millionaire Owners: The wind turbine power plant is owned by Deepwater Wind LLC, a part of the D. E. Shaw Group, a global investment and technology firm with $38 billion of invested capital as of July 1, 2016. Multi-millionaires put up the capital and expect high, mostly tax-free returns.

 

The US Congress, under pressure of Wall Street, passed tax laws favorable to wind energy to make such tax-free returns possible.

 

Various government agencies performed studies with dire climate change predictions, and/or gave grants to “independent” entities to make studies with similar predictions, to convince the public the end of the world will be near, unless....

 

Publications, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, write mostly favorable articles about offshore wind. The public is told all of it done to save the world.

 

Warren Buffett, considered one of the outstanding investors of all-time, has stated: “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms.  That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

 

More Energy From H-Q a Much Better Alternative: There is a much better and less costly alternative. A much larger quantity of energy could be bought from Hydro-Quebec at a cost to utilities of about 7 cents, with adjustments based on New England wholesale energy prices.

 

That energy would have much less CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour than wind energy, and would be a steady, year-round supply, wind or no wind.

 

A 1,000-megawatt transmission line, costing about $2.0 billion, could supply to Massachusetts and Rhode Island about 6.5 million megawatt-hour of steady, year-round energy, at least sixty times at much as the above wind turbine system, mostly supplied by French and Norwegian contractors.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/more-energy-from-hydro-...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/increased-canadian-hydr...

 

Based on the above, it would be a huge folly to overburden New Englanders and the NE electric grid with such very expensive, low-quality energy.

 

Let us hope so-called policy makers come to their senses before it is too late.

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 -- Mahatma Gandhi

"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi 

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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