WATCH-OUTS ON OCEAN WIND

Some Cautionary Notes on Atlantic Wind Connection
Bill Sweet, October 15, 2010 (IEEE Spectrum)

"…[The Google-backed] Atlantic Wind Connection--a proposed offshore grid to link up offshore wind with onshore grids in Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey--got [NY Times headlines]…Google is well known for its visionary long-term investment strategy and…has bet heavily on green technologies…in part because of sensitivities arising from its power-hogging server farms. The large investment Google is prepared to make in the so-called Atlantic Wind Connection naturally gives the project a credibility it might otherwise lack.

"Nevertheless, some sober-minded words of caution are in order…First, and most obviously, this is a long-term project; even if all goes as hoped, it will not begin to yield its full rewards for a decade…Second, to move at all, it has to get through numerous regulatory hoops involving three states and at least several Federal agencies…Third, politics will come into play too…"

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"Already there's grumbling in Virginia that if the transmission backbone is used initially to transport the state's relatively inexpensive electricity up to New Jersey, where it's more costly, local rates will rise…

"If this kind of argument about who's gaining and who's losing gets heated enough, skeptics may even start asking whether the right offshore wind resource is being exploited…Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey have a combined offshore potential of about 50 GW. But Michigan, to take just one of the Great Lakes states and provinces, has an offshore potential nearly double that…[I]f offshore wind ever gets really really big in the United States, it may be in the old industrial heartland on the Great Lakes, not off the two ocean coasts."