So much for Green & Cheap ...
There is NO such thing !!
*** The floating wind start up price is almost 12 times the regular price of electricityCalifornia has adopted a target of 25,000 MW of floating offshore wind generation capacity. Of course, the cost is never mentioned, so here is a rough estimate to get the ball rolling.
The estimate begins with the hugeDominion Energy (DOM)fixed wind project currently under construction off of Virginia. Because the regulated utility DOM is its own developer, we get some public numbers, so here is a crude derivation. Big numbers are rounded for simplicity and ease of memory.
A. DOM says the 2,600 MW facility will cost $10 billion to build, which is about $4 billion/GW. But financing and profit bump that to $20 billion or $8 billion/GW, which is called the “revenue requirement” or what rate payers will pay. We will use that number.
B. DOM brags that they are immune to the big cost spike that has swept the industry because their contracts predate it. The costs have increased an estimated 65% industry-wide. That pushes the fixed bottom cost to $6.6 billion/GW construction and $13.2billion/GW total.
C. Floatingwind is generally estimated to be three times fixed wind because that huge floater costs a huge amount more than the single monopile a fixed tower sits on, plus there isalot ofmooringto the sea floor.Off California, the water is around a half mile deep.
This gives a construction cost of roughly $20 billion/GW and a total of $40 billion/GW. It could be a lot more as it has never been done.
D. Thus, 25 GW of floating capacity comes to $500 billion for construction and an incredibletrillion dollarswith financing. Note this does not include 20 years’ worth of expensive operation, maintenance, repair, replacement and decommissioning. That makes it well over a trillion.
This is California’s trillion-dollar floating wind fantasy.
Now, let’s turn this into a possible power purchase agreement (PPA) price. A trillion dollars paid over 20 years is $50,000,000,000 a year. Assuming a 40% capacity factor, that works out to 57 cents a KWh. Given that the average wholesale price of electricity in California is just around 5 cents, this is incredibly expensive.
The floating wind start up price is almost 12 times the regular price of electricity. Floating wind is a crazy policy, even by California’s crazy standards.
Which brings us to something happening right now. The U.S. Energy Department’s Grid Deployment Office is asking for information and comments on developing an offshore wind transmission plan for the West Coast. Seehttps://www.energy.gov/gdo/west-coast-offshore-wind-transmission-planning
Here is the basic announcement: “The West Coast Offshore Wind Transmission effort includes a Request for Information to allow individuals and organizations to submit written input about transmission topics, including siting, technology, and policy considerations. The GDO team will consider this input as they prepare West Coast recommendations. Responses must be received by October 3, 2024, and can be sent by [email protected].”
DOE says the West Coast plan will be similar to the massive“ACTION PLAN FOR OFFSHORE WIND TRANSMISSION DEVELOPMENT IN THE U.S. ATLANTIC REGION“. This Action Plan is from the Energy Department and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which is actually building the offshore wind monsters.The plan creates a massive undersea grid along the entire Atlantic coast.
The Atlantic Action Plan shows specific offshore wind projects in ever-increasing numbers by five-year increments, from 30,000 MW in 2030 to 85,000 MW in 2050. Suppose the West Coast plan is just as big as the East Coast at 85,000 MW. That is a monstrous 3.4 trillion dollars worth of floating wind, a technology that does not even exist at commercial scale.
I encourage people to send in comments objecting to this monstrous floating wind development effort. America does not need trillions of dollars worth of unreliable electricity.
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