Rhode Island offshore wind farm contraversey
Deepwater Wind is becoming a controversial name in Rhode Island over plans to build an off shore wind farm just off the coast of Rhode Island. While not as controversial as Deepwater Horizon, the BP oil rig that caused the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, the renewable energy plans of Deepwater Wind are certainly raising some hackles.
Deepwater Wind is the state of Rhode Island’s preferred developer when it comes to renewable energy, this is due to a law enact by the state called the Joint Development Agreement, which was signed in January of 2008. This law provided the means by which Deepwater Wind was formed to build wind farms off the coast of Rhode Island, with a project off Block Island soon to get underway.
However, three entities in Rhode Island have filed a legal dispute arguing that the state’s approval of the Block Island wind farm project is flawed on a number of levels legally.
The three entities are the Attorney General Patrick Lynch, the Conservation Law Foundation and two large industrial concerns Toray Plastics and Polytop Corp., who argue that the state Public Utilities Commission’s approval of the Power Purchase Agreement between Deepwater Wind and National Grid is not legally sound.
Deepwater Wind, in developing the offshore wind farm, which will potentially provide 15% of Rhode Island’s total energy use, signed an agreement with National Grid, an international utilities company that operates in the northeast of the US, to provide 1.3 million megawatt hours per year to the state, which would be sold through National Grid at 24.4 cents per kilowatt.
The legal dispute brought by the three entities argues that the General Assembly of Rhode Island violated separation of powers when it approved the contract for Deepwater Wind to build the wind farm after the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has rejected the proposal based on economic feasibility assessments that it believed to be inconclusive.
The wind farm being developed by Deepwater Wind will cost around $200 million, a significant portion of which the state will be funding. Deepwater Wind, an investment between First Wind, D.E. Shaw and Co and Ospraie Management, counters, along with the state legislature, that there was no abuse of separation of powers because the contract they approved was different to the one looked at by the PUC.
This in itself is disputed as well, but within the government of Rhode Island there is division as well, many Rhode Island officials are up in arms over a state-approved $8 million survey of offshore sites for wind farms that will not be examining federal waters as well.
Michael Tikoian, who chairs the Coastal Resource Management Council in the state has criticized the decision telling Rhode Island news media that the whole point of the survey is to find the best spots for developing wind farms, and that restricting the survey to state waters is counter-intuitive in this regard.
But, Grover Fugate, the director of the same council, argues that the point of the mapping was always to find the best spots within state waters and that, in any case, the state cannot do a survey of federal waters as it would be a waste of resources and an invasion into federal jurisdiction.
When it comes to offshore wind farms the United States is decidedly behind many countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Norway and other European countries that already have several large offshore wind farms in operation. But, through the next few years the US will be playing a game of catch-up, there are already seven major offshore wind farm projects underway.
Offshore wind farms are significantly more expensive to construct and maintain, according to industry records, but they offer sizeable advantages over land-based wind farms. At sea, winds are generally more prevailing and constant due to the unobstructed nature of the area around the wind farm, in addition, the wind farms’ location just offshore means that they benefit from winds that are caused by changes in temperature.
The land generally cools faster than the ocean, which creates offshore winds. The benefit of these higher and more constant winds is that electricity production per-unit is higher. It is also easier to transport large wind turbine components by sea and so wind turbines located offshore are typically bigger, which also results in higher production per-unit.
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Rhode Island offshore wind farm contraversey
There is division in the ranks over a wind farm planned for construction off Block Island, while officials in the state government have accused future surveys for potential new sites of lacking in scope.
Deepwater Wind is becoming a controversial name in Rhode Island over plans to build an off shore wind farm just off the coast of Rhode Island. While not as controversial as Deepwater Horizon, the BP oil rig that caused the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, the renewable energy plans of Deepwater Wind are certainly raising some hackles. Read more
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