In a letter calling on the Interior Secretary to support Cape Wind, Electrical Workers head Ed Hill writes:
If allowed to proceed, Cape Wind will create 600 to 1,000 jobs, employment opportunities that are critical to IBEW members.
When operational, the 130-tubine farm – to be located off of Nantucket Sound – is expected to generate 454 megawatts, or approximately 75 percent of Cape Cod’s power needs.
Hill writes:
Approval of Cape Wind is not only important to IBEW members; it will help advance the Obama administration’s goals of creating green jobs, improving environmental quality, and help make the U.S. more energy independent.
To let Secretary Salazar know that you support Cape Wind, click here to send him a message.
Public comments are being accepted until February 12.
j/k
To follow up on my sarcastic point… the debate below is a great one and should absolutely be considered, by the appropriate authorities and regulators, in evaluating this project.
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p>But is anyone else embarrassed by the fact that this project (whatever its merits) is being held up by some NIMBY lawsuit evoking the most utterly bullshit “tribal rights” claim I have ever heard? Isn’t this yet another log on the fire that American government is irreperably broken? Why the hell does it take years of permitting and studies to build anything in this country, and the process can be held up, indefinately, by anyone with an objection — no matter how selfish or frivolous? The Hoover Dam was built in less than five years; the Lincoln Tunnel in three. Just fucking start construction and settle the “damages” later.
it’s not reasonable to compare design/permitting with construction. I have no idea how long the Lincoln Tunnel was in the design phase, but I do know that while construction began in ’34 and the first tube opened in ’37, the second tube didn’t finish until ’45 (WWII) and the third was delayed until 1957 because, while the Port Authority was happy to build the tube (and charge for it), NYC wanted the Port Authority to also pay to upgrade the roads in Manhattan near the tubes to handle the additional traffic.
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p>Seems to me that holding up the project by a decade isn’t novel; the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel came 12 years after the second precisely because of ‘broken’ government.
You cannot possibly be saying that the total project timeline — from design through completion — is not immsurably longer now than it was in the past. When you think about it, this is ass-backwards because we have much better technology (design software, heavy construction equipment, stronger materials, etc.).
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p>I just picked examples off the top of my head. Let’s take one closer to home: http://www.bostonroads.com/cro… A commission was established to construct the Tobin Bridge in 1946. The bridge opened in February.
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p>This is why so many of the stim projects are horseshit… you can’t build anything worthwhile. Watch the HSR project in Calif. Already, the NIMBYs on the Peninsula are dragging this thing out.
and you chose poorly. Don’t blame me for that. The Lincoln Tunnel, from start to finish, took 20 years. That’s a fact.
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p>So, let’s look at the Tobin. They built it quickly, to be sure. My bet is that once construction begins, Cape Wind turbines will spring up like weeds. It’s taking a project from vision to ground-breaking that takes so long, and according to the very link you include, the talks for “a high-level fixed highway span across the Mystic River between Charlestown and Chelsea date back to 1933” — 17 years before the Tobin was completed.
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p>I’m sure that there are really good examples out there… you just can’t seem to find them.
of the Cape & Islands who already pay some of the highest electric rates in the entire country to pay even much higher rates!
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p>The environment and the IBEW may end up big winners, but it will come at a significant economic cost to our local economy. The local ratepayers will be compelled to purchase this higher cost power with real dollars.
First of all, the PPA for Cape Wind won’t result in higher prices for C&I because it’s unlikely that Cape Light Compact will be the buyer. It’s far more likely that the renewable credits will be sold on the secondary to one or more IOUs in the Northeast interested in covering their RPS obligations (NSTAR or National Grid, or perhaps an IOU in CT, RI, or elsewhere). Secondly, the power itself will be sold at market, which actually helps to drive cost down because the fuel cost of wind is zero; wind power plants are price takers. Thirdly, the reason C&I prices are higher than mainland New England is (a) sea air makes equipment more expensive to maintain, (b) the weather is worse, making equipment more expensive to maintain, and (c) summer usage is much higher than winter usage, meaning that the transmission equipment has to be built out for the summer peak but much of it goes unused 9 months a year — meaning 12 months of infrastructure must be paid for in 3 months. New England is more expensive than most of the rest of tUSA because (a) we have higher standards on emissions, (b) we don’t use as much cheap coal, (c) we use more natural gas and petroleum, which have ramped up in price recently, and (d) maintenance on the grid is more expensive because of weather and because more equipment is old or hard to access due to built out areas.
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p>The best thing C&I could do would be to (a) charge much higher summer rates than winter rates, thereby sticking the imbalance-of-use charge on those who create the imbalance of use (tourists), (b) implement programs to make cooling equipment more efficient, as well as any other electrical use which surges in summer, like commercial and hospitality services, thereby reducing the winter/summer differential, and (c) encouraging individuals to install solar cells on their roofs, thereby reducing the net summer demand.
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p>P.S. Nobody is compelled to purchase the amount of electricity they buy. It’s not handed down by God. Use less. You won’t get to net-zero without solar, but nearly every household could cut it’s usage by more than 10% for the cost of behavioral change and $100 at the hardware store. They could continue to make cuts by thinking carefully about their purchase the next time they buy a new fridge, television, DVR, light fixture, etc.
How could nearly every home on cape code cut electricity use by 10% on a $100 dollar investment?
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p>You need both behavioral change and investment. As for what one ought actually do… there’re thousands of places to read. I’d start with .gov websites like energystar.
that if a Cape electric customer chose to “buy green power” generated by Cape Wind’s mills, then they would pay a premium for it, otherwise, any power generated would become part of the inventory that makes up their utility’s KWs and would become part of the rate they charge their customers for electricity. In other words, if you want to brag you’re “green” and are using wind power, you will pay extra for the privilege. If you keep your mouth shut, you will get the same power, but at a lower rate. No matter what you choose to do, the same electrons will be flowing through the same outlets into your appliances.
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p>Until the rent-seeking maneuvering for PPA mandates is complete and the actual long term contracts are in place, I have doubts that there will be no impact to the supply component.
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p>NSTAR handles distribution on the Cape and Vineyard (NGRID on Nantucket). I believe our rates already incorporate a summer demand component.
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p>More concerning is that NSTAR is mandated to provide interconnect and transmission capacity for the project. Aside from nominal interconnect costs (which are paid for by Cape Wind), significant transmission capacity improvements are required for the project and will be disproportionally borne by the rate payers.
The rent seeking mechanism exists already (the RPS). By allowing more supply of RPS, you’re driving down the value of the rent. With respect to the change in cost due to rents, doesn’t this mean that Cape Wind will drive rents downward?
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p>W.R.T. summer time rates, charge even more!
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p>As for the NSTAR interconnect mandate, I have no idea how much it will cost — I do know that the Cape Wind Fact Sheet put out by the U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service claims that the interconnect will use the same right of ways that NSTAR is already using. I don’t know much about interconnect — are all interconnects mandated? Is this interconnect going to end up being cheaper or more expensive than some other inevitable alternative (since our usage continues to increase)? It’s not clear that the result will be costly, or even noticeable when applied to NSTAR’s large customer base spread over time. I haven’t seen any claims of “significant improvements … required for the project” so I have no idea how that will play out, or what exactly those costs would be when compared to any other generation project.
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p>Your points about the maintenance of distribution on the C&I are very true. NSTAR has done very little to keep these costs under control, adopt best practices, or keep labor costs in check.
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p>But, perhaps even more significant was the sweetheart deal struck during electric deregulation for Cambridge and New Bedford. A wildly disproportionate share of the “stranded costs” of the former COM/Electic generation facilities were heaped upon the Cape and Vineyard rate payers (i.e. they were not proportioned based on load).
Yeah, I don’t know much about the history of C&I/NSTAR relations, NSTAR’s historical maintenance of C&I elec infrastructure, or the sweetheart deals during regulation. I do know that none of that has anything to do with the Cape Wind project in particular.
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p>shrugs
Stomv is right that this has nothing to do with the impact of subsidized wind power on rates under restructuring. However I am curious about the allocation of stranded costs, so called.
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p>As I recall these were assessed by electric utility based on each company’s ownership of the
failed“stranded” assets, mostly nuclear. This in turn was collected via an energy charge–kWh, not kW–that is utility-wide.<
p>Granted the whole “stranded costs” thing was an astonishing fabrication, but I don’t see how load could have entered into things.
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p>What was different in the case of Cambridge and New Bedford?
If we are ever to get off of fossil fuels, and the harmful effects they have on the environment, and the difficult foreign policy compromises they require, we have to be able to build Cape Wind.
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p>We also have to be able to build a windmill farm in less than 10 years! Imagine the length of time it may take to build new high voltage lines to transport electricity from a variety of smaller, greener generators. Imagine how long it may take to build solar energy farms on the Mojave desert, or build new nuclear units.
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p>10 years is way too long to debate a 450Mw wind farm. This not a large amount of capacity by todays standards. For instance we have to approve 3 of that scale to generate the electricy provided by Seabrook. If we are going to really make progress on alternative energy supplies we are going to have to compromise on some of the red tape.
More than that.
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p>Seabrook generates about 10,000 GWh/yr.
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p>C.W. = .450 GW x 24 hr x 365 day/yr x .3 utilization factor = 1200 GWh/yr. You’ll need 6-10 Cape Winds to produce a single Seabrook.
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p>.3 is an estimate. The general range is .2 to .4. I’m inclined to believe that Cape Wind’s utilization factor will be on the high side due to the high quality of the wind and the size of the turbines, but I’m using .3 with shoulders shrugging.
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p>If we are going to really make progress on alternative energy supplies we are going to have to compromise on some of the red tape.
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p>Alternatively, implement cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. Electricity prices will go up, and go up the highest in places which rely on carbon fuel like coal, natural gas, and oil. Watch as people demand that projects like Cape Wind get built to provide some relief from their high bills.
The U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service used an average power capacity of 182.8 MW. Using that, we can eliminate our utilization factor and get:
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p>C.W. = .1828 GW x 24 hr x 365 day/yr = 1600 GWh/hr. You’ll need 6 Cape Winds to produce a single Seabrook.
The truth is coming out that capewind’s electricity will cost twice as much maybe even 3x as much as the current market rate? That’s not even including the state/federal subsidies and tax credits. No coincidence that the governor had to do a quid pro quo with National grid and gave National grid a rate increase to negotiate a deal with capewind? The same day that National grid and capewind signed off on the deal, Patrick’s utility commissioners approved National Grid’s first rate hike since 1999. You all trust the Boston globe, god forbid I quote the herald article. Here is the meat of the cost part.
“According to data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, electricity that’s generated offshore with wind could cost more than twice as much as power from plants fired by natural gas, depending on fluctuations in the price of natural gas.”
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p>Read the article.
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p>http://www.boston.com/business…
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if we measure amortized cost over the lifetime of the plant, and use a low price for natural gas along the entire lifetime of the plant. That means we ignore
* the RPS requirements which the utilities will have to meet otherwise, with even more expensive projects like smaller wind or solar
* the environmental cost that even =cough=clean burning natural gas places on society
* the national security cost that importing yet another fossil fuel poses on our nation
* the infrastructure requirements of natural gas, both in terms of pipelines and tankers
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p>Here’s the deal: Cape Wind will produce on the order of 3% of MA’s electricity, and it might be twice as expensive… assuming super low prices in natural gas over a long period of time. So even if that worst case is true, you’re looking at a 3% increase in your utility bills, all other things remaining constant.
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p>I looked for the Berkeley report and couldn’t find it, but I’m deeply skeptical on the Globe’s claim. I doubt that Berkeley reported on the cost for Cape Wind — they were likely taking a reasonable average based on all advanced stage off-shore projects. Thing is, Cape Wind is more economical than most, for three reasons: Horseshoe Shoal is a great place to install both footings for the turbines and the power wires, the Cape Wind project is much bigger than some others generating economies of scale, and the wind quality in Horseshoe Shoal is better than most off-shore projects. Therefore, I’m amazed that you took a “cost more than twice … depending on fluctuations in the price of natural gas” based on (what I’d bet is) a generic off-shore wind study and now suddenly it’s “will cost twice as much maybe even 3x as much”.
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p>Really?
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p>Sorry dude. That’s not enough. A single Globe article referring to a Berkeley study we haven’t seen and assuming that it applies to the Cape Wind project specifically, then taking a “might” be more than twice and changing it to a “will” be 2-3 times as much is crap.
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p>Crap engineering. Crap science. Crap reporting. Crap blogging. And all of that is on the basis that the nominal price of electricity from Cape Wind is the only direct impact on the nominal price — or the price to society — that our electricity grid and generation imposes.
A quote right from the FEIS, go to link and look for yourself, they say the cost of capewind energy will be $122/MWhr. Today’s current electricity rate is $53.27/MWhr. That would make capewind’s electricity 2.29 times higher than the current market rate, Dude. Sorry! Go to the links and look for yourself Dude!
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p>”The proposed site at Horseshoe Shoal has the lowest estimated cost of energy, equal to $0.122/KWhr, or $122/MWhr. ”
From page 19, just below Table #2.
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p>http://www.mms.gov/offshore/Re…
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p>http://www.iso-ne.com/markets/…
Especially once you read the peer review comments.
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p>Professor Felder of Rutgers points out that using average cost doesn’t make a whit of sense because the report doesn’t justify why average cost — and not actual location cost — is the right number (p 26, 29).
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p>Lessly Goudarzi, CEO of OnLocation Inc, piles on too. “The model and its assumptions has deficiencies and should be revisited” (p 31). He also points out that the study may very well be underrepresenting the expected growth of the price of natural gas (p 33). He then points out the assumption problems with the debt:equity ratios and other portions of the financial proposal, errors in both the “more costly” and “less costly” direction.
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p>David Downes of Sustainable Energy Advantage, LLC finds four issues which may be problematic: D/E, Equity return and discount rate, DCR, and REC revenues.
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p>The author responded to the comments, sometimes admitting flaws and other times clarifying or revising.
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p>The point is: it’s an incomplete paper. As someone who’s been through the academic publishing process, this paper isn’t ready for prime time.
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p>It’s also explicitly designed to analyze between different sites — not to help with public policy decisions. Furthermore, it’s not helpful in determining if Cape Wind should be built or not because it does nothing to compare the cost of RPS compliance by other means, given the increasing demand from other New England states (and NY). The RPS regulations require renewable energy increase as a percentage of our load. If not Cape Wind, then it must be something else, and substantial. There will certainly be growth outside of MA which might help, but other states are using that growth too. This is a substantial portion of the discussion which isn’t addressed by this paper (by design).
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p>So, to recap:
1. It’s not clear if his numbers really do work out
2. Even if they do, it’s not clear what they suggest about the decision to build Cape Wind or not — if we’ve got to build more renewables and Cape Wind can deliver them more cheaply than the alternatives, then building Cape Wind would help keep prices lower than they’d be otherwise.
So if the economic part of the FEIS is wrong, what does that say about the rest of the report? Based on what you say then the whole FEIS should be redone. I agree that the report has MAJOR Flaws. Sounds like the last report that many agencies were rushed. So I’m with you the report should be redone, so they can get it done coreectly.
I pointed out what peer reviewers had pointed out — that there are flaws in the MMS study you cited. Until those flaws are corrected, it’s not clear if the study is reliable. It’s also not clear that it’s relevant, but that’s a distinct discussion which you’ve chosen to ignore.
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p>To answer your questions/claims:
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p>Nothing.
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p>No.
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p>Appendix F or the whole report? If the whole report, kindly explain which “MAJOR Flaws” you find.
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p>No. It sounds like an academic report requires an iterative process, and you’ve taken a report before it’s ready and cited it as if it’s the gold standard. Furthermore, since the report was put together by different agencies, there’s no way to reliably apply the reaction to one section of the report to other sections.
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p>Let’s be clear: you don’t have a clue where I am, so you sure as hell can’t be “with me”. Do not assert my reaction to an academic publication in a field related to my expertise. It’s dishonest and it’s amateur.
I gave you two studies that show the cost of capewind’s energy, is atleast 2 times what the going energy rate is today – from ISO New England. One report is the report the government is basing their decision on. Nice to be able to cherry pick what you like from the report and what you don’t. Give me your Factual response to show that capewind’s energy will be cost effective. I’d love to see it.