These wind turbines are part of the Hornsea wind farm, located about 89km off the Yorkshire
coast in England’s North Sea.
It’s the largest offshore wind farm in the world.
But Hornsea won’t hold that title for long – the UK is already working on larger projects,
including the Dogger Bank windfarm, which should be complete by 2026.
It’s all part of the UK’s plan to become the “Saudi Arabia of offshore wind” as
Prime Minister Boris Johnson put it.
They already increased their offshore wind capacity from just 1 gigawatt to 10 gigawatts
in a decade, and the UK plans to increase that to 40 gigawatts by 2030.
And it’s easy to see why: offshore wind has greater and more consistent wind speeds
than onshore, there are no nearby residents that would be upset by windmill construction,
and while offshore wind is still more expensive than onshore, the cost has decreased by two-thirds
over the past decade.
Now let’s take a look at the great lakes in North America.
The great lakes have all the same advantages as ocean offshore wind, and even a few more.
For example, compared with Atlantic coast locations, the great lakes have shallower
floor depth, smaller waves, no hurricanes, and electrical grids close to shore.
But, looking at this footage of the lakes, you’ll notice a distinct lack of turbines.
Currently, there is no offshore wind power generated in the great lakes, but that’s
all about to change with Ohio’s Icebreaker project, which will build a modest six wind
turbines in Lake Erie.
So why haven’t there been any developments before this?
Well, there have been some unique challenges, both engineering and political.
Let’s start by taking a look at the engineering challenges.
Unlike the offshore wind locations in the UK we looked at earlier, the great lakes freeze
during the winter.
This leads to a phenomenon called the “ice shove,” where winter winds and currents
push ice sheets around, sometimes piling them up to 50 feet high near the shore.
Any wind turbines will have to be built to withstand the forces from the moving ice in
winter.
The Icebreaker project will also be the first ever offshore wind project built in freshwater
that freezes during the winter.
In freshwater, ice floats on the surface whereas in saltwater it tends to hang below the surface.
This means that a different engineering approach is needed compared to other turbines that
have been built in cold saltwater locations.
To tackle the ice problem, engineers for the Icebreaker project have come up with an inverted
cone design to be installed near the water line of the turbines to deflect the ice down
and away.
Another engineering innovation will be the use of “mono bucket” foundations, where
a 56-foot diameter steel bucket-like structure is dropped face down onto the lake floor and
sucked hollow, causing it to act like a suction cup, sticking to the lake floor.
This approach takes only a few days to install as opposed to a few months for traditional
offshore wind foundations.
While it’s great to see the Icebreaker project moving forward and tackling some of these
engineering challenges, there are some political obstacles that could block the full potential
of the great lakes’ wind energy from being unlocked.
Much of the surface area of the great lakes is on the Canadian side, and the province
of Ontario has had a moratorium on offshore wind development since 2011.
The then Ontario government implemented the ban supposedly because they felt more environmental
review was necessary, which may have been part of the reason, but what more likely swayed
the government’s decision was the fact that 2011 was an election year and the existing
onshore windmills were becoming very unpopular with Ontarians.
This unpopularity was because of many diverse reasons, too many for me to list all of them
in this video, but there are a few that stand out.
Some Ontarians thought the windmills were ugly, and a few people who lived close to
windmills claimed they emitted a high-pitched whirring noise that gave them headaches.
But many of the complaints were more related to the economics of the windmills.
Onshore turbines were being built at the same time as electricity rates were rising in the
province, and many Ontarians believed that the windmills were the cause of this.
Some reports have disputed this claim, saying that the need to build new electricity plants
and infrastructure would have caused rates to go up anyway, regardless of whether windmills
were built, but whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter - what matters is that in
the minds of many voters, windmills were making their electricity bills go up.
But there’s also a second piece to these financial woes, which is the mismatch between
wind power supply and electricity demand.
Let’s take a look at this chart of average wind speed vs electricity demand in Ontario.
We can see that during the winter months, wind speed and demand are both higher, so
no problems there.
But in the fall and spring, demand for electricity decreases while wind speeds remain relatively
high.
Then, during the summer when everyone turns their air conditioning on, electricity demand
surges, but wind speeds drop.
The result was that when power demand was higher, other power sources often had to step
in and fill the gap left by wind.
But in addition to that, the inverse relationship between wind speeds and electricity demand
often resulted in wind power being generated when it wasn’t needed in Ontario – that
electricity was then exported at a loss to American states like Michigan, Minnesota,
and New York.
Ontarians essentially saw this as their rising electricity bills and taxes subsidizing cheap
electricity for Americans, which, as you can imagine, absolutely tanked the popularity
of wind power in the province.
Therefore, there has been much speculation that the moratorium on offshore wind development
was put in place as much to appease voters as it was for environmental review.
In the 11 years since, none of the subsequent Ontario governments have lifted the moratorium.
But maybe its time for that to change.
It’s been over a decade and wind power doesn’t seem to be as much of a hot button issue with
Ontario voters anymore, at least in my experience.
Plus, the cost of offshore wind power and wind power in general has come down a lot
in the past 11 years, and since offshore turbines wouldn’t be near people’s homes, they’d
have no reason to complain about their looks or whirring noises.
And as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, one of the advantages of offshore wind
is higher and more consistent wind speeds.
Like onshore, wind speeds over the great lakes are lower during the summer than other seasons,
but since the average wind speed is still higher than onshore, it could partially offset
the demand mismatch problem.
If the government managed the implementation better this time around – and knowing how
incompetent politicians can often be, that is a very big if – new offshore wind development
could be a success.
But don’t take my word for it, after all, I’m just some guy on the internet, so what
do I know?
But if you did happen to find this guy on the internet interesting, then you should
check out my other video about how the closure of Canada’s oldest nuclear plant is about
to send greenhouse gas emission skyrocketing.