(Maine’s) Governor Receives (Offshore) Wind Energy Demonstration Sites Report (identifies 3 sites)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=86313&v=article-2008

Governor Receives Wind Energy Demonstration Sites Report

December 15, 2009
Governor's Office

AUGUSTA - Governor John E. Baldacci today received from the Maine State Planning Office and Maine Department of Conservation the results of a search process to identify demonstration sites for offshore wind technology located in Maine coastal waters. Three sites were identified by the process, which included reviewing the geography of the coast to meet certain parameters and extensive meetings with stakeholders. The sites are off Monhegan Island, Boon Island and Damariscove Island.

“Maine has great potential to be the leader in offshore wind development, and the selection of the demonstration sites is an important step toward that goal,” said Governor Baldacci. “I want to thank this team that has conducted an extensive outreach effort. They ensured that all voices were heard throughout this selection process.”

The team from the State agencies traveled up and down the coast of Maine over the last four months talking with fishermen, citizens, local officials and others to determine the best areas to take advantage of Maine’s amazing offshore resources.

The site off Monhegan Island will be used by a consortium led by Dr. Habib Dagher and his team at the University of Maine. The University-led consortium was recently awarded an $8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for this project. According to Dr. Dagher, the consortium includes more than 30 partners, including private companies interested in offshore wind development.

Maine has been recognized as a leader in wind energy development. There are currently 300 megawatts operating or under construction in Maine, with another 450 megawatts of wind in various stages of development throughout the State. Already, Maine is home to 95 percent of the operating on-shore wind capacity in New England.

The Governor said that the potential of our offshore wind resources is even greater, estimated at 100 gigawatts, or three-to-four times the current peak demand for all of New England.

Maine has established a bold vision of reducing the State’s consumption of liquid fossil fuels by at least 30 percent by 2030. Maine has set ambitious but achievable targets for development of wind power.

“The willingness to move forward is a significant investment in this State’s future as a leader in renewable energy,” said Governor Baldacci. “Clean energy development will reap investments and jobs right here in Maine.”

The University has the goal for the first demonstration turbine to be operating in the water in 2011. The remaining two sites that are available for demonstrations of offshore wind or wave energy technology are available to developers, who must begin the process by obtaining an expedited permit through the Department of Environmental Protection.

More information, including maps of the demonstration sites, are available at www.maine.gov/doc/initiatives/oceanenergy/oceanenergy.shtml

[BeFree]

1. Idea?

Put windfarms on empty ships. Place in the hold batteries that when back in port offload the stored energy into the grid.

Most ships run on electric motors anyway (iirc) so they'd be self powered.

Lots of land based power plants have ship channels so access is not a problem.

Bonus:
Desal plants on board the ships.
American jobs refitting
Clean energy and great recycling.
Too, place solar panels all over the suckers.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Other people have had similar ideas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/08/energy.renewableenergy

Energy islands could use power of tropics, says innovator

Architect of Cameron's green makeover launches ambitious new plan

Robert Booth
The Guardian, Tuesday 8 January 2008

From a distance it looks like an island paradise, but get closer and those tall structures that could be palm trees turn out to be wind turbines - and the surf laps against wave barrages instead of sandy beaches. Welcome to "Energy Island", a vision of how humans could help meet our future needs for energy, food and water using the power of nature in the tropics.

Alex Michaelis, the architect who gave David Cameron's west London home a green makeover - complete with miniature wind turbine, solar panels and water recycling system - will launch the concept this year with a bid for funding worth $25m (£12.6m) from Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Earth Prize.

His proposal, which is dramatically more ambitious than the work he did on the Conservative leader's semi-detached house, is to build archipelagos of artificial islands that will produce electricity, clean water and even food in the belt of warm water that passes from the Caribbean across to the south China Sea, the Indian Ocean and west Africa.

Each island would be built on a floating platform and at its centre would be a plant that converts heat from the tropical sea into electricity and drinking water. Below deck would be marine turbines to harness energy from underwater currents and around the edge floating devices to provide wave power.

…

However, I’m afraid (currently) the battery idea isn’t viable… (too heavy, too bulky…)

[BeFree]

3. Too heavy, too bulky?

Have you ever seen a cargo ship? They are made for big and bulky.

Battery technology is evolving. And there are some underground battery banks being developed that are not conventional.

Ships could tow a blimp that reaches high to catch even more wind.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. OK, a quick thought experiment

Imagine you were filling that hold with crude oil… (I'm not saying you can make crude oil in the middle of the ocean. This is just a thought experiment.) Once your hold is filled, you bring it into port and unload it. How would that compare to batteries?

Crude Oil has an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density">energy density of 46.3 MJ/kg or 37 MJ/L

“Lithium Ion” batteries have energy densities of 0.46-0.72 MJ/kg or 0.83-0.9 MJ/L.

So, to store the same amount of energy in a battery pack it would take about 60 times the mass and about 40 times the volume. Now, to be fair, that doesn't take into account how available that energy is. We normally use oil in an inefficient manner, while batteries are close to 100% efficient. So, let’s cut those figures two thirds.

Now, you need 20 times the mass and about 13 times the volume.

There are better batteries under development. Nanowire batteries are “http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html">10 times as good!” (Or are they?)
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23893/?a=f

More Energy in Batteries

Nanowire anodes could let lithium-ion batteries run twice as long.

By Katherine Bourzac | Friday, November 06, 2009

A start-up based in Menlo Park, CA, plans to sell a new type of anode for lithium-ion batteries that, the company says, will let electric vehicles travel farther and mobile devices last longer without a recharge. http://www.amprius.com/">Amprius' lithium-ion anodes are made of silicon nanowires, which can store 10 times more charge than graphite, the material used for today's lithium-ion battery anodes. According to the company, electric vehicles that run 200 miles between charges could go 380 miles on its batteries, and laptops that have four hours of run time could last for seven hours between charges.

…

No matter how good the anode is, the overall charge capacity of a battery depends on the cathode, too. The performance of today's lithium-ion cathodes isn't as good as that of the anodes Amprius is developing. The company's initial battery designs make up for this mismatch by pairing a thin anode with a thick cathode. Compared to a conventional lithium-ion battery of equal size, this design stores 40 percent more charge. In order to further increase the energy density, however, the company will need new cathode materials.

OK, so, knock those figures down again. Let’s say you only need 14 times the mass and 10 times the volume. (That's why I said “currently” batteries are too heavy & too bulky.)

[BeFree]

5. 10 times the volume

A ship full of oil may supply lets say, 100 hours of energy to a plant.
So it might take 70 ship loads a year to run a plant. 1 ship every 5 days.

But an electric generating ship might supply just 10 hours of electricity.
That would be 1/10th of a ship. So you might have to have 10 ships of batteries for every ship of oil. That would be @ 2 ships a day.

The numbers may or may not work.

At least with ship based producers, the flexibility is greater with much less environmental siting issues. And the pollution loss would be pretty good. Cap and trade could even out the costs?

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Why not just run cables to moorings?

Why shut down your production facility to transport captured energy to shore?

[Merchant Marine]

8. Offshore wind and wave farms are the answer

The US has a massive fleet of vessels and trained crew devoted to the offshore oil industry. We have the technology to build massive wind farms, maintain them and run cable to them. Its a matter of capitalization. We regularly build oil platforms "over the horizon", so siting shouldn't even be an issue. Once you get a few miles offshore the ocean is basically empty anyway. Ocean installations don't suffer from the same size limitations as land based farms, because you can always build a bigger barge or just hire a heavy lift ship.

Really the only obstacle is political will and a lack of capital.

[kristopher]

12. Economics are still an issue for >60ft depth.

The economics deteriorate the further you get from shore (transmission of power) and the deeper the water.

There is little doubt will work out, but for now it is improbable that anyone will try to develop in water more than 60 feet deep.

That still leaves a huge amount of area for development; especially in the MidAtlantic Bight.

[kristopher]

10. Why do you need a ship?

When the Exclusive Economic Zone was increased to 200 miles from the tide line by international treaty, it approximately DOUBLED the area of the United States.

There is no shortage of places to place offshore turbines.

However, there is one company I've heard of doing some work with mobile barges. I know the guys involved however (a couple of ex fishmongers), and in the past the proposals they associated themselves with were much, much more hype than reality. They are self described (over a beer) as "two guys in a pickup with a file cabinet".

FWIW here is a site about their company: http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_06b9l1

They also do business as Deepwater Wind" where the barge idea is being explored.

They are real big on press releases and giving presentations to local groups, but IMO their claims are irresponsible and give a black eye to the credibility of the industry.

[BeFree]

15. Places

Sure, you can plant a structure off shore. Get a ship out there, bore support columns, pour concrete, erect steel and do it all within very special parameters because of the marine life that is impacted and the corrosive nature of the salt water. Then there are storms and waves.

Expensive.

Then lay a cable to somewhere that is either connected to the grid or is a storage medium. Miles and miles of cables. All this and more cause severe detrimental impacts to marine life. So what, huh?

[kristopher]

18. And you think using a ship is going to be less expensive?

We are talking about hundreds of thousands of turbines.

Technologies for shallow water foundations vary; in the sand flats off the East Coast they pound long poles deep into the sand and attach the tower to it, then surround it all with rip rap.

In seas with hard bottoms they use large (hollow) preformed concrete structures that they make on shore, float out to the location and sink.

There are a couple of other approaches also. The reason I mention it is that your post is a) merging different approaches that are not used together and b) incorrectly describing the way a piling is installed (boring vs pounding).

A very conservative estimate of the amount of electricity produced in one year by one 3.6 MW turbine:
10,481 Mega Watt Hours

That is a CONSERVATIVE estimate that is probably about 30% too low.

Scale that up to 1000 turbines (a drop in the bucket of what we are actually going to build) and you get the rounded number of 10,500 GigaWattshours of electricity that you propose to store.

Of course, under your proposal we'd produce less because the ships with their 300 ft tower and rotors with diameters larger than a football field the would have to come ashore and offload the power, so that would be down time for the turbine.

Then you have storage losses.

No, the existing planned method is probably going to deliver a lot more power for a lot less money. Along the East Coast it is expected that we will run one or more high capacity underground transmission lines north south along the coast, and the different sites will tie into the transmission line offshore. Each array of turbines runs to a central facility built like an oil platform where the electricity is bundled, put into a form that matches what is on the grid and then shipped via the cable.

It is true that the harsh environment is a challenge, but they are built to handle the weather.

If you are interested, you might want to browse the website of the Dept. of Interior's Minerals Management Service's alternative offshore energy section. They have been studying the technologies for the past 5 years and have just put forth the first regulations on how development will be guided.

[Merchant Marine]

19. The offshore industry already does all this to move oil

They've built permanent oil platforms in artic regions that are ice-proofed. The newest platforms aren't even moored, they use a system called Dynamic Positioning to loiter over the drilling site. Dynamic Positioning uses electric azipods and GPS to keep the platform within a 10m circle over the drill site.

Some rigs load oil to tankers that bring it into port, others pump through pipes directly ashore. There are supertanker offload points miles offshore that move oil with no spills or problems. And oil is a very sludgy, thick liquid that has to be moved warm or it gums up. Electricity presents no such problems. Offshore wind turbines are proven to work in europe, where they're generating a lot of good union jobs for an offshore industry transitioning away from oil exploitation. All the crane barges and heavy lift ships are already built- wind turbines are just a slightly different type of bulky cargo. They're building new designs of specialized Turbine installation vessels that can install 12 massive wind turbines every few weeks. The same pipe-laying vessels that run pipe to the oil rigs are spooling electrical cable now.

[Merchant Marine]

7. A few minor details...

Ships are propelled by either low-speed or medium-speed diesels. Some have high pressure steam plants. Electricity is supplied by separate diesel generators. Experiments in solar panels onboard merchant vessels have achieved 30% of daily auxiliary electrical needs, but this is only onboard car carriers that have proportionally greater free surface area than other vessel types that need clear decks to work cargo.

Electricity is used for alot of things while underway- air conditioning, blowers, pumps, desalinization, oily water separator, marine sanitation and disposal system, and of course keeping the lights and navigation equipment running.

[BeFree]

9. Cool

Now what are we gonna do with all those oil tankers that will no longer carry oil from the ME? Or are we gonna need them forever?

[Merchant Marine]

13. As long as there's oil they'll still sail

Hydrocarbons are too useful in chemistry to dispose of until there's no other alternative.

But they can also be reconfigured to move other liquids. There are milk, water and wine tankers out there, and Guinness used to have a fleet of beer tankers back when they bottled in the US. If plant oils become a big thing those could be moved by tanker.

[BeFree]

16. So

You think that we are gonna keep using foreign oil? And that we should plan on keeping that oil flowing from the ME, Russia and from wherever?

[Merchant Marine]

17. The only thing that's going to wean us off oil for good

is the collapse of the world's oil reserves. That's what I see going down.

[Merchant Marine]

14. Just thought of something else

Dockwise recently converted some oil tankers to semi-submersible heavy lift vessels by cutting out the holds and welding in a new section with a reinforced deck and advanced pumps and ballast tanks. These ships can move extremely big and irregular loads, like entire wind turbines or tidal generators.

[kristopher]

11. have you ever seen one of these?

test for modern sailing ships

http://www.wintecc.de/