New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, has just called on the Long Island Power Authority to approve a 90 megawatt offshore wind project 30 miles southeast of Montauk (out of sight of the Long Island beachfront), and he's also proposing a commitment to an impressive 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. As reported previously, a separate 800 megawatt offshore wind plant is due to be developed 17 miles south of the Rockaway Peninsular, and Norwegian oil giant Statoil recently shifted its investments from tar sands in order to win the auction to lease it for development.
All of this and more will be part of Governor Cuomo's push for an Offshore Wind Master Plan, which is slated to be completed by 2030 at the latest. Of course, there's a large elephant in the room in terms of the famously wind-skeptic (hostile?) President Elect Donald Trump, but Governor Cuomo's announcement suggests that states will continue to push things forward even if the federal government doesn't.
New York should learn from the fight over the Cape Cod offshore wind farm and push coal-fired plants first, with the offshore windfarm as a compromise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @05:35AM
Can I be a wind farmer and feed my family by installing windmills in my backyard? Fuck no I can't! The means of production must be owned by giant corporations and no one else!! It is your duty as a consumer to support the corporations!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:51AM
Can I be a wind farmer and feed my family by installing windmills in my backyard? Fuck no I can't!
That all depends on your local ordinances and regulations. But rage on little buddy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:22PM
Yeah I'm all amped up to dig myself some coal RIGHT NOW.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @06:20AM
If you want to generate enough energy for the trip and also store the return energy, then you need 2.42GW not just 2.4GW. Mistakes like that will get you stranded and you'll have to predict a lightening strike or something!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:26AM
2.4GW in 2017 gigawatts will be worth 2.42GW in 2030 gigawatts due to inflation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday January 12 2017, @10:04AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Thursday January 12 2017, @11:01AM
* Novelty (building that high was kinda new when the eiffel toeer was built)
* Scale (single construction is more bearable than monotones, also, landmark)
* Noise (ironically larger cities would drown out the noise of a turbine, mariehamn [åland] was painful when they had that loud wind turbine near the ferry terminal)
* Design (the poles are uglier than the girders, also, the eiffel tower [even when painted monotone] has lots of areas that are visually interesting)
* Marketing (the eiffel tower was only supposed to be there a few years)
* Accessability (I've been at the upper vistor platform of the eiffel tower [paris is friggin' huge], but has yet to be allowed to climb up a wind turbine. Also, I tend to enjoy the cafees at citybound communication towers)
* Usability (the eiffel tower also doubles as a communication centre)
* Siting (wind turbines tend to be sited in the still beautiful countryside, the eiffel tower was in the middle of a city/industrial area. Also, wind turbines - by design - needs to be placed as visibly intrusive as possible)
* PC backlash (wind turbines are the electrical equivalent of coarse seasalt mined by nuns of the order of the silent hamster)
Just the gripes/guesses I have on the subject
As a sidenote - I actually enjoy the estethics of real windmills (mainly due to their quaint novelty).
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 12 2017, @11:30AM
I remember holidaying on åland, seeing various wind turbines bravely dotted across various bits of the islands' landscapes, including the Lemland ones where we were staying, and those are the biggest ones, and barely hearing a whisper out of them. And that wasn't just because our car noise was drowning them out - when we stopped in the middle of nowhere at an unmanned petrol station to fill up, we were right next to a turbine, spinning merrily away, and all we heard was a gentle relaxing hum. How anything near a harbour can be considered noisy apart from the boats themselves I don't know, and I say that living only hundreds of metres from the Tallink terminal here.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:51PM
Mariehamn is the harbour used by Eckerö-linjen (to Grisslehamn, straight west of mariehamn), the turbine was there in the late 90s, and was a small one (sub-MW), and it was very loud due to it being a non-windy-port, the ferry (only company that uses it, it is a very small harbour) has a very short turn-around-time (so you are there well ahead of departure), and almost all cars has their engines off (normally the seagulls are the loudest persistant noise).
And that is an issue shared with wind and nuclear - lots of bad impressions comes from early experiences. (I agree that the MW-class turbines are less noisy, but more visually intrusive [at Väddö they recently built a small windfarm, you can see those from very far away, whilst forsmark nuclear power station is very easy to miss until you get past the last forest and/or island. So, nowhere to hide from the constant motion and intrusion from a wind turbine]).
But back to the main thread - all complaints about non-locally-polluting power-generators (PV, Solar thermal, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, natgas) are subjective and virtual, and once you get down to raw numbers it doesn't make sense to build wind near populated areas (HVDC links and HUGE [double-digit-GW farms] makes more sense, and cities tend to be built where it is less windy [and they obstruct wind themselves]).
Also, even if people where to like the look of turbines it still would negativly impact the value of properties that can see them (since you know you can use it as a bargaining point), and people tend to be hostile to anything that impacts their economy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driven on Thursday January 12 2017, @02:02PM
"all we heard was a gentle relaxing hum"
I've stood under a wind turbine (part of a mid-size wind farm) and I didn't find it relaxing. But I wouldn't judge the sound until you've lived next to a wind farm for a period of time - just stopping by for a few minutes and listening isn't the same. Imagine not being able to escape the sound in your own home, or trying to sleep when everything else is quiet which would tend to magnify the droning wind turbine sounds.
I wonder what effect a wind farm has on nearby property values?
Seems that most people who want a wind farm are okay with it as long as it's in someone else's back yard.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Thursday January 12 2017, @10:53PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 12 2017, @02:15PM
I'm with you on that. I enjoy the sight of wind turbines turning in the breeze; it says to me we're living in the Buck Rogers future. Also, they greatly mitigate the mind-boggling tedium of the Midwest landscape. Covering every square inch of North Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas with wind turbines would be doing the world's aesthetics a huge favor.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 12 2017, @10:45PM
(j/k - g/f's from NE)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2017, @06:53PM
Why are wind-farms considered any uglier than, say, the Eiffel Tower?
'Cause change is scary.
People protested the Eiffel Tower for being ugly, too. [www.toureiffel.paris]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday January 12 2017, @03:11PM
He announces this 2.4GW wind farm, just days after NY state decides to decommission a 2GW nuclear plant.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by evilcam on Friday January 13 2017, @04:43AM
Push coal-fired first? Naaaah bro.
You sound like Australian former Prime Minister Tony Abbott who said that "Coal is good for humanity"...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 13 2017, @04:20PM
There is one offshore wind farm in the United States that is running. It began operation last month and has a 30 MW capacity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Island_Wind_Farm [wikipedia.org]