Biden-Harris Administration Approves Largest Offshore Wind Project in the Nation
Biden-Harris Administration Approves Largest Offshore Wind Project in the Nation
The Biden-Harris administration today announced its approval of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) commercial project – the fifth approval of a commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project under President Biden’s leadership.
What are the benefits of putting them offshore?
Basically:
- Wind blows more consistently
- Wind blows at different times from onshore
- It's a big area you can set up wind farms in, while property ownership in the eastern US is typically in the form of lots of small parcels, making it difficult to accumulate enough contiguous land for a large wind farm
- It's close to major urban areas
Also the turbines can be much larger. The blades have to be a single piece, to withstand the forces on it. That obviously causes problems transporting them on land. Modern offshore wind turbine blades are single pieces of over 100m, so longer then a football pitch. However that is not a problem offshore. The reason you want it is that with blade length the energy produced grows exponentially.
Sad to me that few upvote questions around here. This is a good question to ask. Thank you for asking.
Why on earth are we not publicly financing loads more farms like these as a measure of national and civilization defense???
The public finance is in the form of a tax credit and relatively cheap lease of federal waters
THINK OF THE WHALES
If someone is interested, there is a list of offshore wind parks on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms
The project plans for 5GW power. In comparison, The UK alone currently operates 6GW, with another 3GW under construction (finished by 2026), another 7GW planned for 2026 and another 10GW planned without a specified time line. Population in the UK is roundabout 66million. US 330 Million.