Last night I attended the lecture on the offshore wind project for Maryland. I enjoyed it very much and was stunned by some of the costs that were being talked about. The project is estimated at $1 billion dollars. The cost of laying the wire from the turbines to the onshore plant (12 miles) was going to be a couple million dollars in itself. Plus there are no manufacturers in north america so all of the parts have to be shipped here and there only two boats in the world that are able to drive the turbine stakes into the ocean floor, have to be chartered every day. This puts into perspective how large the turbines actually are. Fortunately though, from the shoreline they can barely be seen.
It was also brought to our attention that there are currently around 10 wind farm projects being negotiated. New Jersey, Maine, and even Vermont (who would use the coast of Maine) are a few of the northeastern states talking about renewable energy. I had no idea that more states than Delaware and Maryland were interested. The more the merrier! With each wind farm we decrease our dependance on energy sources that harm our environment. Maybe someday in the distant future we can begin to reverse global warming and the degredation of our environment!
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The $1 billion dollar price tag is surprising. You might go and try to calculate how long--at 200 MW, say at an average of 50% capacity (so say 100 MW then)--that it will take the plant to pay for itself at $0.1 per kWh.
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