Wind Power: The Next Generation
By Maureen Traxler

While attending the European Offshore Wind conference in Berlin last December, Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island (RELI) and a member of Networking® magazine’s “Guide to Going Green” Advisory Committee, visited Middelgrunden, a wind farm in the Copenhagen harbor. Not only is the wind farm visible from the streets of Copenhagen, he says, “But it has become a new landmark.”

Middelgrunden is an array of 20 (2 megawatt) turbines arranged in a 3.4 kilometer arc, which produces 40MW (megawatts) annually and provides 4% of the electricity for the city of Copenhagen. Ownership of the farm is split 50/50 between the public utility Energi E2 and the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative, founded in 1997 by the Working Group for Wind Turbines on the Middelgrunden shoal. It’s the world’s largest cooperatively owned development.

“Europe is moving very aggressively into offshore waters,” notes Raacke, who visited one of the huge Middelgrunden turbines up close, actually standing on a foundation in the water and climbing up to the base. The turbine’s maximum wingtip height of 111 meters (over 350 feet). Raacke reports that to him it appears a “misconception” that turbines are noisy. “While standing under the turbine, we could hold a normal conversation. There was a little bit of a swishing sound from the turbine; other than that we only heard the noise of the wind itself.”

Raacke, who coauthored a 1998 report with the Pace University (White Plains) Energy Project, asked several Copenhagen residents what they thought about the turbines. He says that at first they weren’t thrilled about the idea of the farm sharing their beautiful coastline, but he adds, after these six or seven years, residents say, they like them; they’re not bad at all.

A Welsh School of Architecture case study states that the Middelgrunden environmental impact assessment indicated: “Nature will be spared annually a pollution of 258 tons of sulphur dioxide, 231 tons of nitrogen oxides, 76,000 tons of carbon dioxide, and 4,900 tons of dust and particles.

Offshore wind projects can have higher performance because the wind is stronger and steadier farther out to sea and there are fewer obstructions, such as trees and buildings. The most significant factor in the expanse of offshore farms is the shallow waters in the North and Baltic Seas and along the European coast line. Two of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, Denmark’s Horns Rev and Nysted, 80 turbines each, are located in waters 19 to 35 feet deep and on average 6 to 10 miles from shore.
A 2007 survey of offshore wind farms in Europe conducted by KPMG, the major international accounting and consulting firm, notes that Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden initiated offshore wind farms in the 1990s, installing up to 28 turbines. Great Britain entered the offshore market with the installation of the Blyth test field in 2000, and Germany submitted an initial application for approval in 1999. Spain passed a law a few years ago to allow wind farms to be built off its coast, and just last year, France implemented an ambitious policy and launched its first offshore wind farm.

Not only has Great Britain brought into operation six offshore wind farms since 2003, but the nation of 60.9 million has up to four additional farms under construction. Reuters in London recently announced that British utility Scottish & Southern Energy will build the world’s largest offshore wind farm with 140 (3.6MW) turbines in the North Sea off the Suffolk coast. Work is scheduled to begin on the 504MW Greater Gabbard project shortly and power generation is expected by 2011. Greater Gabbard will meet the demand of 415,000 homes, more than the domestic electricity needed in Suffolk, and will annually offset more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide. Greater Gabbard will be the “first” in the UK to go into International waters, the furthest and deepest offshore project.

USA offshore
All of the U.S. current wind power is situated on land, mainly in Texas and California and scattered sites throughout the Midwest and Northwest. But experts say offshore prospects make great sense for future consideration.

RELI’s Raacke notes that the Northeast coast is “a perfect match” because of the Continental Shelf. In California, in contrast, the ocean drops off more deeply. Developing farms in the Midwest presents problems, too, adds Raacke, due to need for transmission to populated areas. “There are great locations,” he says, “on Long Island, Cape Cod, Delaware and Maryland.”

Wind advocates are watching developments in Massachusetts, New York, Delaware and Texas as determinants to the future of offshore wind energy in the United States.

“It’s the tipping point,” said Cristina Archer, an engineer at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, CA, in the April 2008 online edition of Geotimes. “We’re all looking to see what happens. If they do start and do work, there will be a proliferation.”

The longest running application for a wind farm—and a rival of Britain’s Greater Gabbard for the largest worldwide project—is the 130 turbine, 420MW capacity Cape Wind project on the Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, five miles south of Cape Cod. In average winds, Cape Wind is expected to provide 75% of the electric power on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Cape Wind was launched in 2000 and a permit was received in 2001. For eight years, critics have stalled the project, however Cape Wind won state environmental approvals in March 2007 and the federal application was approved in January 2008.
In line with the essence of the Danish cooperatives, residents of the town of Hull, Massachusetts, have proved wind-turbine friendly. In late June 2008, Hull announced plans to build the first offshore wind farm in the United States about a mile-and-a-half off their coast. The town’s 11,000 residents have already erected two on-shore turbines that provide 13% of their electricity, significantly lowering their electric bills. If approved, the proposed offshore 4-turbine project could potentially meet 100% of the town’s energy needs.

Delaware’s interest in wind energy has grown as the state grapples with increased energy demand, rising energy costs, and environmental concerns related to pollutants from fossil fuel-based power plants. Bluewater Wind is proposing to build an offshore wind project of 450 megawatt capacity, located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 11.5 nautical miles from shore. The wind farm will generate the amount of electricity used by as many as 110,000 Delaware households. The process of planning, verification, permitting, and construction takes approximately two years and involves dozens of state and Federal agencies.

To date, Texas, California and New York, including Long Island, have not undertaken offshore wind projects, yet each has dabbled in the prospects.

“The Department of Energy reports potential for 90,000MW of offshore energy that could be tapped into in the next 15 years,” notes Raacke. “That’s equal in capacity to the conventional power plants in the United States today.”

Europe’s early lead
Europe is the strongest continent in installed wind energy with 61% of the world’s capacity, followed by North America at 20% and Asia at 17%. Wind energy associations have formed around the world, too. The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) is the largest and most powerful wind energy network, with over 400 members from 40 countries including manufacturers with a 90% share of the global wind power market, plus component suppliers, research institutes, national wind and renewable associations, developers, contractors, electricity providers, finance and insurance companies and consultants.

With virtually no energy resource in-country other than coal, and a national consensus that ruled out nuclear power, Germany embraced the wind energy industry and has become the world’s leader in total capacity with 22,247MW installed at the end of 2007. Germany has over 18,000 wind turbines, mostly in the northern part of the country.

In the 1970s, Denmark introduced an investment subsidy that covered 30% of investment costs in wind turbines. The subsidy provided the stimulus for a thriving new wind turbine industry. To encourage wind power, Danish families were offered a tax exemption for generating their own electricity, which promoted the startup of wind turbine cooperatives.

To overcome the natural drawback that electricity can only be produced where wind exists, Denmark connected the private wind turbines to the national grid, allowing fluctuations to average out and therefore provide a constant supply. Denmark, for instance, has invested more in wind energy than any other European country in the last 15 years, and has the highest percentage of windpower of any country.

England’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently confirmed a big step forward in his country’s renewable energy strategy, setting a target of 15% for all the UK’s energy to be generated from renewables by 2020, which means 35-40% of electricity will have to come from green sources. The lion’s share, 33GW, he said, will come from offshore wind. UK business secretary John Hutton added, “It is going to change our coastline. There’s no way of making the shift to a low-carbon technology without there being change and for that change to be visible and evident to people.”

Europe’s wind power currently meets 3.7% of the European Union (EU) electricity demand. With the adoption of the new EU Renewables Energy Directive, Europe is expecting wind power’s share of new renewable energy in the period 2005-2030 to reach 39%. The European wind industry’s interim target of 180GW by 2020 is equivalent to supplying the electricity needs of 107 million average EU households.

Energy Crisis
The energy crises of the 1970s brought a heightened awareness of the need to explore alternative energy sources, from solar and wind to tidal, biomass and geothermal. After see-sawing between energy confidence and conservation over these past 30 years, wind power has taken its place as the world’s fastest-growing energy source and has a potential to power industry, businesses and homes with clean, renewable electricity for years to come.

According to the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA), 74 nations spread among every continent had some installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, even Antarctica, which has the strongest winds on earth. The Australian Mawson station in East Antarctica has two wind turbines that have been generating part of the station’s electricity since 2003. In April this year, a joint effort between Antarctica, New Zealand and Meridian Energy, a New Zealand-based clean energy company, was announced to build the world’s first wind farm on the rapidly vanishing ice plains of Antarctica.

In an assessment by the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., today’s world wind capacity* is enough to meet the residential electricity needs of 150 million people.

World wind energy leaders
In recent years, the U.S. has added more wind energy to its grid system than any other country.
WWEA, which represents the wind sector in 85 countries and major national organizations worldwide, noted in its year-end 2007 report that three booming markets contributed dramatically: the United States (ranked second behind Germany), whose 5.2 gigawatts accounted for about one-quarter of the world’s 20 gigawatts of newly installed capacity, Spain (3.5 gigawatts) and China (3.4 gigawatts).

Wind has been recognized as the first renewable energy technology that is cost competitive, generating electricity at almost the same cost as conventional power plants—oil, natural gas and coal.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, world wind energy reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 122 million tons in 2007, roughly equivalent to 20 large coal-fired power stations. While wind power consumes no fuel for operations and has no emissions in production, there is some resource consumption in manufacture and construction. In order to ensure truly sustainable development, WWEA urges strong investment in renewables in developing countries, and it’s encouraged that India (ranked fourth) and China (fifth) are among the top producers worldwide.

State policies set standards in US
In 1941, on a hilltop in Rutland, Vermont, the “Grandpa’s Knob” wind generator supplied power to the local grid for several months during World War II. The Smith-Putnam machine was rated at 1.25 megawatts in winds of about 30 miles per hour. Most of the current large-scale wind turbines have been rated 2MW, but newer, more powerful equipment is coming online at 3.6MW.

In the mid-1970s, the NASA Lewis Research Center in Ohio developed the MOD-0, horizontal axis wind turbine. Federal research and development for wind power continued with Department of Energy funding through the 1970s and early 80s. However, funding was reduced dramatically by 1982. The following year, California utilities contracted with facilities to generate electricity independently. These contracts, combined with state tax incentives, led to the installation of wind turbines in California in the early 1980s, particularly in the Tehachapi and Altamont Passes—the oldest wind farms in the U.S. and the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world.
By 1990 California was producing 2,200+ megawatts of wind energy, more than half of the world’s capacity at the time. Today, Altamont consists of about 4,800 turbines with a capacity of 576MW and annual generation of about 1.1 TWh of electricity. Together with Tehachapi and San Gorgonio, these three projects account for nearly 95% of all commercial wind power generation in California and approximately 11% of the world’s wind-generated electricity.

Individual states have stepped up to adopt their own energy policies, referred to as a Renewal Portfolio Standard (RPS), a policy that requires electricity providers to obtain a minimum percentage of power from renewable energy resources by a certain date. Currently, 24 states plus the District of Columbia have RPS policies in place, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Three states, Missouri, Virginia, and Vermont, have set voluntary goals for adopting renewable energy instead of portfolio standards with binding targets.

Texas established its RPS in 1999 under then Governor George W. Bush. The Texas Public Utility Commission was skeptical that utilities would be able to purchase enough energy to meet their goals, and they began to look at wind potential. Today, Texas leads the states in existing wind power with 5,316.65MW installed.

New York State’s RPS calls for 25% of its electric needs to come from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and other sources, by 2013. As of March 2008, New York’s existing wind power capacity was 424.8MW with an estimated potential capacity of 7080MW. New York ranks 12th in the nation in existing capacity with 12 operational wind farms and seven under construction. On Long Island, the Long Island Power Authority has operated one (50 kilowatt) Atlantic Orient Company turbine at its Calverton facility since 2002.

US 20% by 2030
In May, the US Department of Energy released a first-of-its-kind report examining the technical feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20% of the nation’s total electricity needs by 2030. The report states that achieving 20% by 2030 could avoid emission of 7.6 cumulative gigatons of CO2.

The U.S. wind energy industry invested approximately $9 billion in new generating capacity in 2007 and has experienced a 30% annual growth rate in the last 5 years. The DOE report presents an in-depth analysis of the potential for wind in the U.S. and outlines a potential scenario to boost wind electric generation from its current production (2007) of 16.8 gigawatts (second only to natural gas) to 304GW by 2030.

Low profile and floating turbines
In addition to on- and offshore wind turbines, manufacturers are expanding small wind power units (low profile) and floating turbines for deep sea waters. The development of this new industry is expected to raise the opportunity for “green collar” jobs.

At present, one of the most important aspects of siting a wind farm is finding locations close to demand centers. On-shore wind farms require significant unobstructed space. Oftentimes, the land is available, but costly transmission lines may be needed to bring the power to homes.
Numerous local wind workshops and large-scale conferences are held as frequently as monthly around the world. For example, North America’s largest conference was held this past June in Texas and attracted a record breaking 776 exhibitors and over 13,000 registrants. The leading industry associations working in China have organized Global Windpower 2008 Conference and Exhibition to be held this October. Its promoters say it’s an event wind power veterans and newcomers cannot afford to miss.

* The current world wind capacity of over 93.800GW or gigawatts (representing power) generates 200 Twh or terrawatt hours (extremely strong electrical power) of energy per year, equaling 1.3% of global electricity consumption. In some countries and regions, wind energy already contributes 40% and more. To put that in perspective, worldwide wind energy capacity in 1980 was virtually zero. Based on the great strides in new wind installations, WWEA raised its prediction for the year 2010 from 160,000 to 170,000MW or megawatts (170GW) of installed wind energy.

 
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