Susan Collins - Bill Proposes Federal Grant Program For Offshore Wind Jobs Training

Comment

Comment by Willem Post on June 13, 2019 at 10:35am

The job training would be subsidized and the FOREIGN wind turbines, installed by FOREIGN SPECIALIZED CRANES AND OTHER EQUIPMENT would be subsidized as well.

Vineyard Wind, 800 MW, located about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard; 84 wind turbines, 9.5 MW each, about 700 ft tall, supplied by MHI Vestas, a Danish company, on 650 sq km (252 sq mi). Here is what it would look like on a very windy day.

 

The electricity cost for Phase 1 of the Vineyard Wind project would start at 7.4 c/kWh in year one, and escalate at 2.5% for 20 years to become 12.13 c/kWh in year 20; average (7.4 +12.13)/2 = 9.77 c/kWh

 

The electricity cost for Phase 2 of Vineyard Wind project would start at 6.5 c/kWh in year one, and escalate at 2.5% for 20 years to become 10.65 c/kWh in year 20; (6.5 + 10.65)/2 = 8.58 c/kWh. See Appendix 5.

 

NOTE: NE wholesale electricity prices have averaged about 5 c/kWh since 2009, courtesy of

1) the great increase of electricity generated with low-cost, clean burning, low-CO2, domestic natural gas, and

2) electricity generated by near-zero-CO2, NE nuclear plants, which together generated about 67% of electricity fed to the NE grid in 2017. See Appendix.

 

"The price for energy and RECs in the Phase 1 of the long-term contracts begins at $74 per MWh (nominal $), and the price for energy and RECs in the Phase 2 long-term contracts begins at $65 per MWh (nominal $). Each long-term contract has a 20-year term, starting at the COD of the relevant project, and the prices described above escalate by 2.5 percent each year of that term which starts in 2022 and runs until 2043. The 20-year average cost of the two long-term contracts’ is $84.23 per MWh in levelized nominal dollar terms. This is equivalent to a levelized net present value price in 2017 dollars of $64.97 per MWh." See first URL about siting. See second URL about pricing.

 

http://www.crmc.ri.gov/windenergy/vineyardwind/VW_ProposedLayout_20...

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/massachus...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/with-vineyard-wind-the-...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/08/13/vineyard-wind-offer...

https://www.boem.gov/What-Does-an-Offshore-Wind-Energy-Facility-Loo...

 

NOTE: The NE grid is divided in regions, each with Locational Marginal Prices, LMPs, which vary from 2.5 - 3.5 c/kWh from 10 pm to about 6 pm; slowly increase to about 6 - 7 c/kWh around noon time, when solar is maximal; are about 7 - 8 c/kWh in late afternoon/early evening (peak demand hours), when solar is minimal. Unusual circumstances, such as power plant or transmission line outages, can cause LMPs to increase to 20 - 40 c/kWh, and even higher when such events occur during peak demand hours.

 

NOTE: The above prices would be about 50% higher without the subsidies and even higher without cost shifting.

 

NOTE: Here is an ISO-NE graph, which shows for very few hours during a 13-y period were wholesale prices higher than 6 c/kWh. Those prices are low because of low-cost gas, low-cost nuclear and low-cost hydro. The last four peaks were due to:

 

- Pipeline constraints, aggravated by the misguided recalcitrance of pro-RE Governors of NY and MA

- Pre-mature closings of coal and nuclear plants

- Lack of more robust connections to nearby grids, such as New York and Canada. See URLs.

https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/markets/

http://truenorthreports.com/rolling-blackouts-are-probably-coming-t...