Final Up to date on: sixth June 2025, 04:11 am
Offshore wind energy comes with some large advantages. It’s not as low-cost upfront as solar energy or onshore wind energy, nevertheless it additionally comes with some sturdy advantages. I not too long ago sat down with Susan Muller, a Senior Vitality Analyst with the Union of Involved Scientists (UCS), to speak about a few of these advantages. Benefit from the dialog beneath, or in your favourite podcast community (hyperlinks beneath).
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Right here’s extra in textual content from UCS concerning offshore wind energy’s advantages and potential:
“The ‘gasoline’ for offshore wind is free, which suggests its working prices are very low. When offshore wind is linked to the grid, this low-cost vitality provide enters the wholesale vitality market, the place it lowers the worth for all vitality offered out there. (This ‘advantage order impact’ magnifies the advantages of that free gasoline many instances over; a 100 MW undertaking linked to the PJM system might decrease the worth of 100,000 MWh of vitality in any given hour.) The extra offshore wind we join, the better this impact might be.
“Put one other method, offshore wind can scale back the necessity for peaker vegetation. In wholesale electrical energy markets, peak energy prices set the worth for the entire market — usually, that’s gas-powered peaker vegetation that spin up when demand is very excessive. By including extra vitality provide, offshore wind helps make sure that these peaker vegetation don’t must activate, which retains the general wholesale market value down. (By decreasing a few of that demand for gasoline in energy vegetation, offshore wind additionally places downward strain on gasoline costs.)
“New England case research:
“New Englanders pay among the highest electrical charges within the nation, and this previous winter was the costliest in over a decade. We paid over $4 billion simply to maintain the lights on for 3 months (Dec–Feb). The largest driver of that was the price of the gasoline that our gasoline vegetation wanted. (On some days, they had been burning nothing however international LNG, which is extremely costly.) On the identical time, there was an infinite quantity of offshore wind vitality blowing off our coast for many of the winter. If all that offshore wind vitality had been added to the grid, the associated fee would have been a lot decrease.
“Some model of this sample occurs yearly in New England, with winter chilly snaps driving large will increase in vitality demand — and vitality costs, as proven by a 2023 RENEW Northeast research.
“Within the absence of offshore wind, grid operator ISO New England has needed to resort to extraordinarily costly ‘winter reliability’ packages to ensure that vitality provide can sustain with demand throughout chilly snaps. These packages have price near $1 billion over the previous three winters. Offshore wind gives a extra reasonably priced approach to shield grid reliability. […]
“Offshore wind is an plentiful and native vitality useful resource in New England, and including it to our energy provide will give us some aid from the crushing electrical payments that persons are at present experiencing.”
Certainly.
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