Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Massachusetts and Rhode Island both awarded major offshore wind contracts on Wednesday, underscoring the increasing economic viability of a kind of renewable energy that has been long considered too expensive.
The Massachusetts installation will have a capacity of 800MW. Situated 14 miles off Martha's Vineyard, the wind farm will be called "Vineyard Wind," and it has an accelerated timetable: it's due to start sending electricity back to the grid as soon as 2021. According to Greentech Media, the contract was won by Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, both companies with headquarters in Europe. The two share 50/50 ownership of the project and beat Deepwater Wind and Bay State Wind in the bidding.
Massachusetts recently approved an ambitious goal to build 1.6GW of wind energy capacity off its coast by 2027. This new contract gets the state half of the way there. According to a press release from Vineyard Wind, the owners of the project will now begin negotiations for transmission services and power purchase agreements. The press release added that the project "will reduce Massachusetts' carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year, the equivalent of removing 325,000 cars from state roads."
[...] The second major contract awarded on Wednesday came from the state of Rhode Island, and it went to Deepwater Wind. Deepwater Wind built the US' first offshore wind installation ever, a six-turbine, 30MW installation off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:36PM (13 children)
n/t
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday May 25 2018, @06:39PM (2 children)
http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/ [boston.com]
Well at least Kennedy is finally gone so we can do projects like this.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 25 2018, @07:59PM
Trump Turnberry was in a MAGNIFICENT location. The most beautiful country ever. It's the most famous golf resort in Scotland, the home of golf. And I was going to put in a very very luxurious 140-room hotel, a 5-star hotel. Beyond 5 stars because it's a TRUMP hotel. I changed my mind about that one. Because now Aberdeen Bay is SULLIED by these awful windmills. It's a disaster for my business. And a disaster for the beautiful birds. Which we fought all the way to the UK Supreme Court. And we could have gone to the European Court of Human Rights. Because Scotland is part of the EU, as everybody knows. But, not worth it. We will be focusing all of our investment and energy towards Trump Doonbeg on the Atlantic Ocean in Ireland. All of it, believe me. As the birds fall from the sky!!!!
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Saturday May 26 2018, @02:21AM
I told 'em serving refried beans on cruise ships was a bad idea, I told 'em!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @07:46PM (9 children)
I'd love to research why modern windmills are bad but old-fashioned windmills are good.
Humans have been using wind power for centuries. It's only now that it's "green" that nobody wants any part of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:38PM (8 children)
Modern windmills spin significantly faster than the old ones did. They're also not being built to service local needs like the old ones were.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday May 25 2018, @10:11PM (1 child)
By "modern" I assume you are including windmills built over 20 years ago? Because the newest windmills turn quite slowly. The tips of the blades move fast because of the massive size of the blades, but the rotational speed is quite low.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 25 2018, @11:46PM
You could have pointed out that his second setence was also incorrect, since a 5MW turbine is going to feed the next town and not much else.
A park of 800MW capacity may feed from itself to the next metropolis, like a coal plant or a nuke does, but without the ugly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @10:13PM (5 children)
I've never seen power generating windmills spin fast. 5 RPM was maybe the fastest. I would think they are kept massive to avoid pureeing birds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @01:55AM (4 children)
Yup. The lesson was learned 4 decades ago at Altamont Pass.
Some people have that ancient bit of lore stuck in their tiny little brains and keep repeating it as if it was a current event.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:12AM (3 children)
Won't someone think of the BIRDS!?! That's why we need to burn coal, for the BIRDS you see?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:49AM (2 children)
Thank you, I've been saying that for years. People don't listen, unfortunately they don't listen, it's very sad. We're losing so many birds. So many. Wind farms going up everywhere, as the birds fall to the ground. Solar farms, by the way, that's another horrible bird killer. Because they focus the sun, Secretary Zinke calls it the cone of death. The zap zone. Wind turbines are not only killing millions of birds, they are killing the finances & environment of many countries & communities. Seriously downgrading property values in many places. Let me tell you, there's sexy ugly and there's just plain ugly. And turbines are NOT SEXY!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @11:12PM (1 child)
Showing how stupid you are once again, eh?
It has been mentioned here multiple times that cats and windows are orders of magnitude more significant.
Chart 1 [wikipedia.org]
Chart 2 [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [thinkprogress.org]
just plain ugly
...and giant gold letters on buildings aren't just plain gaudy. /sarc
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:50AM
Believe me, it's not real gold. It's fake gold. Amazing stuff. Looks exactly the same, costs A LOT less. Pays for itself very quickly. People pay to see my name, they want to see my name. I have the hottest brand in the world. And if you don't like the way it looks, I'm sorry but there's something seriously wrong with you. Because gold is beautiful. And my name is beautiful. Ask anyone. And the fake gold I use looks just like gold. It fooled you, in fact.
I put up a big beautiful sign on Trump Tower Chicago. I didn't go with the fake gold for that one, it's stainless steel. Very durable, that one will really last -- like my presidency. It's magnificent and popular -- also like my presidency. It's the Hollywood Sign of Chicago. A landmark. But the Dem mayor said it's tasteless. And the @chicagotribune [twitter.com]'s dopey third-rate architecture critic hated it too. Before I bought the site, the Sun Times had the biggest, ugliest sign Chicago has ever seen. But nobody talks about that one. It's always Trump, Trump, Trump. And that's OK. The Fake News media love to talk about me, I'm a ratings machine.
You don't like cats. And many people don't like cats. But we don't have huge, ugly cat farms going up everywhere. Making property values drop tremendously. And you don't like buildings. That's OK. But the rest of us like buildings, we live in buildings. We make our living from buildings. And without buildings we'd have many problems. Wind farms, they're a big tax shelter for the elites. And they make VERY UNRELIABLE electric. It goes on, it goes off, nobody knows when it's coming on or going off. Very rough for our Energy Grid. It's not what we need. We need electric that's on all the time. Every day, every night. Look what happened in Puerto Rico. The hurricanes came, suddenly there's no electric. And there's still no electric. With coal, with nuclear, very easy to store the fuel. And so many times, there's room for 90 days of fuel. Right there at the plant. So when the hurricanes come, the lights stay on. Because you don't run out of fuel. And I said, let's have a subsidy for our great coal & nuclear power plants. For the ones that can keep 90 days of fuel. So we don't have any more Puerto Ricos. I asked my FERC for a subsidy, they told me "no." Every single one voted "no" on that. So I need to get a totally new FERC. It's going to take a while. But I'm working hard for you. And I always, always win in the end.
Wind, oh does it kill the birds. Scotland, they had a very rare & beautiful bird. The White-throated Needletail. Very rare to see one in Britain. For 22 years, nobody saw one. Then somebody saw it! And so many bird watchers came to see it. They saw it die. Killed STONE DEAD by a wind turbine!!! foxnews.com/world/2013/06/28/birdwatchers-flock-to-see-rare-bird-then-watch-it-killed-by-wind-turbine.html [foxnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:28PM (1 child)
!.2 GigaWatts! That's almost enough for a single trip in a delorean!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:37PM
Factorials are quite useful, but in this case I'm not seeing what the factorial of a gigawatt even means!?