New York Refuses To Give More Money For Offshore Wind Projects As Cheap "Green" Myth Implodes

Oil Price ^ | 10/14/23 | Irina Slav

[SeekAndFind]

The New York state authorities have rejected a request by Orsted, BP, and Equinor for raising the price of electricity in future power purchase contracts featuring offshore wind energy.

Offshore wind developers have been pressured by rising raw material and component costs, and higher borrowing costs, which has cast doubt over the viability of many projects. Indeed, Reuters reported that some projects planned for the waters off the coast of New York may need to be reconsidered in light of the authorities’ decision.

"Sunrise Wind's viability and therefore ability to be constructed are extremely challenged without this adjustment," Orsted told Reuters.

Sunrise Wind is an offshore project with a planned capacity of 924 MW that could supply electricity to 600,000 households. According to Orsted, it would also involve several hundred million dollars in investments in the state and 800 jobs.

"These projects must be financially sustainable to proceed," the president of Equinor Renewables Americas told Reuters, referring to the offshore wind projects the Norwegian energy major is leading in the U.S.

Per Reuters, Equinor is involved in three projects with BP—the 816 MW Empire Wind 1 and the 1.26 GW Empire Wind 2, as well as the Beacon Wind farm, with a projected capacity of 1.23 GW.

Indeed, rising costs have compromised the financial sustainability of many wind power projects and earlier this year led to the cancellation of a large-scale one off the coast of the UK.

Swedish Vattenfall, which led the Norfolk Boreas project, said it would quit it after it saw costs rise by 40%, which made the project unviable.

[huldah1776]

wind farm noise in the ocean are killing whales and dolphins.

[BobL]

“That is ONE nuclear or coal generating UNIT. A power plant often has three or four such units for a total of 3,000 to 4,000 MW. In a footprint 3% of the wind footprint. And terrestrial power can be dispatched when needed (i.e., ramped up and down) and doesn’t kill whales or raptors.”

Even your write-up is incomplete, as one has to severely de-rate the capacity of a wind farm to get its average output, usually 25% or so of its max rating. So this huge wind farm will only put out 250 or so MW, and most of that comes whenever it feels like putting it out, not when the power is needed.

So then add energy storage costs to get up to the 90% or so service factor of a nuke (which are typically down only for maintenance and refueling), and you get the REAL PRICE of this wind farm.

[mewzilla]

The problem is that the people hiding behind them are not.

[Svartalfiar]

“800 jobs”

You get LOTS of jobs when things are unreliable and break all the time.

790 of them are short-term construction jobs. Only 10 of them are actual real full-time positions. One engineer, two sub-engineers, and the rest is minimum-wage secretaries and janitors.