June 1, 2009

Gone with the Wind

Dr. Robert Peltier, PE, Editor-in-Chief

Unfounded Estimates

The EIA website also reveals that wind generated 42.1% of the nation’s renewable electricity in 2008. Renewables, less hydroelectric power, generated 3.0% of our electricity in 2008, so wind supplied 1.27% of our electricity needs. I’m not prepared to make the mental leap from the small contribution wind power makes today — with no U.S. offshore turbines — to an energy source capable of supplying all the nation’s electricity.

If we were to accept Salazar’s vision of the potential for offshore wind, the entire 1,800-mile length of the Atlantic coast would be filled with wind turbines to replace our 1,470 coal plants and more than 15,000 other power plants. Ignoring the obvious transmission and distribution difficulties, the cost of these installations, and the price of the power produced, a little elementary school math reveals Salazar’s vision as a fantasy.

As a template, consider the Cape Wind project, located in Nantucket Sound, which only recently received approval to proceed after battling government regulators for years. Cape Wind consists of 130 wind turbines, each rated at 3.25 MW, arranged in a grid pattern of parallel rows for a total of 420 MW. Within a row, each turbine is located 0.34 miles apart, and the rows are a little over half a mile apart, when viewed from Nantucket.

If we assume the entire eastern coastline were open to development, then there is room for 3,600 wind turbines, one row deep. Also, if the rating of all these new turbines were the same as for Cape Wind, then to replace the entire nation’s installed capacity with a like amount of offshore capacity requires 334,462 wind turbines. In other words, the entire east coast would have wind turbines located every half-mile and 93 turbines deep (over 30 miles) out to sea.