The Oil Drum

I have recently been writing about Botswana, and their sudden discovery of vulnerability when they found that their supply of electricity was no longer to be available. There is a passage in Cape Wind, the book by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, that shows the increasing vulnerability of places such as New England as the balance that exists between available supply and demand narrows. The event occurred in mid January 2004 when there was a sudden cold spell that lasted over a week, and the story is told from the point of view of the Independent System Operator (ISO) that manages the supply for some 14 million folk, and is located in Holyoke, MA.

On January 14th the ISO had assurances that up to 10,000 megawatts would be available from gas-fired power plants as they anticipated demand rising to around 23,000 to 25,000 megawatts, as the temperature was anticipated to drop to minus ten degrees. But by 8:30 am on the first morning of the crisis, this began to change:

A trickle of phone calls began coming in to the Holyoke headquarters, all with pretty much the same bad news. Plant operators who relied on natural gas as their fuel reported that although their plants were in working order, there was no gas available for them to buy. It had all been taken by the companies responsible for providing gas for home heating.

By afternoon the trickle of “no gas” calls became a flood. . . . .During this all-time winter peak, when electricity was essential for the very survival of many New Englanders, roughly 7,200 megawatts of gas-fired generation was now unavailable. . . . .because they couldn’t find enough natural gas to buy.”

In the end crisis was averted by some load shedding, including closing the schools, but it illustrates the coming vulnerabilities that we face as our historic assumption that there will be enough power when we need it, suddenly starts to be significantly challenged. However, in this case, action was taken, and things no longer look as grim.

[editor's note, by Prof. Goose] This is a guest post by Jérôme à Paris from the European Tribune.

I am finally in a position to write about a project that has kept me busy in the past year and a half and that may interest the readers of the Oil Drum...

This Wednesday, a few banks, including mine, signed and disbursed a ground-breaking loan: we put 378 million euros on the table, to build 60 wind turbines in the North Sea, 25 kilometers off the coast of the Netherlands, near Amsterdam. The wind farm, at 120 MW is not the biggest to be built offshore (that title goes to Nysted, built three years ago, which has a capacity of 165 MW), but it is the first-ever offshore wind farm to be financed by banks.

Above is a picture of one of the first piles, built just a few weeks ago. In just over a year, 60 of them will have been planted in the seafloor, have a wind turbine bolted on top, and the farm will start producing electricity - enough to provide power to 125,000 households and to avoid 225,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. It will look a lot like this one, North Hoyle, completed in 2004 and which uses the same turbines:

The TOD team was contacted by Greenpeace today regarding the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2005 (H.R. 889) introduced into Congress not long ago. Oddly enough (or not), Rep. Don Young (R-AK) included a provision in the bill that would block any wind farms from being built within 1.5 miles of any shipping lane.

From the letter that Greenpeace is asking people to forward to Congress:

The development of wind energy projects adjacent to shipping channels in other countries suggests that a 1.5 mile mandatory buffer is unnecessary.  Denmark and the United Kingdom are currently the world leaders in offshore wind energy, and both countries require a site specific review of impacts on navigation for projects 1/3 of a mile or greater from a shipping channel...In fact, the Middlegrunden wind farm in Denmark is within 1/3 nautical miles of a shipping channel, and there have been no negative impacts on navigation as a result of the wind farm since it was installed in 2001. In addition, this provision is more restrictive than laws dealing with other offshore structures, including oil and gas platforms that can be located within 500 feet of shipping channels.