After decades of talk about offshore wind, California seems closer than ever to actually supporting an industry. But to meet the state’s goal of five gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, a lot of as-yet-nascent pieces need to fall into place. Adam Stern of Offshore Wind California and Jocelyn Brown-Saracino of the US Department of Energy discuss California's recent policy efforts and the state of floating-wind technology.
Dear David, thanks for today's review of California's offshore wind development. Excellent guests.
As a resident of Mendocino county just south of Humboldt, where our traditional industries of fishing, timber and underground cannabis have taken severe hits, I've been watching this development with keen interest. The epicenter of this nascent technological and economic blossoming is the Eureka/Arcata area, probably more famous for the Pelican Bay supermax prison than high-tech energy development, but home also to Humboldt State University, recently upgraded as California Polytechnic University, one of just three Cal Polys in the state. Within CalPoly Humboldt is the Schatz Energy Research Center, which anchors the Pacific Offshore Wind Consortium along with CalPoly San Luis Obispo and Oregon State University.
For a region of very sparse population that has been quite removed from popular conceptions of cutting-edge California, these world-class offshore wind developments are a source of enormous hope and local pride, and should make great contributions to regional economic and academic development. The financing and launch of the offshore wind staging port at Arcata will be a huge kickstarter for a seriously economically challenged region!
I'm a fan of wind power in general. I'd feel a lot better about this if there were a few 1/4 or even 1/20 scale floater prototypes out bobbing in coastal USA waters, instead of zero. Particularly with the promise of "the whole supply chain will be here."
The nuke and geo folks always talk about the lack of govt/university R&D. Hopefully we can get some R&D, especially the "D" part in floating wind. How 'bout some of the silicon valley hot shots who zip around SF Bay in their hydrofoil sailboats pitching in a few billion instead of hyping nukes "everywhere." I mean the claim of not enough R&D to nuclear is just so ludicrous. Just in CA, off the top of my head there is LBNL and Stanford's linear accelerator. Twenty universities nationwide have research reactors, inc. two in CA.
Floating offshore wind is hard. There are some intrinsic structure and stress problems. If a floating platform moves, it's connected to this huge gyroscope of spinning blades which resist reorientation and put lots of stress on shafts and such. Anyway, it's clearly the most interesting area of wind turbine tech right now. But all the development seems to be in the EU and China. This is not just a computer modeling problems. Gotta test steel in the water.
We'll see about local resistance vs. support. Funny the two seemingly opposite perceptions from other commenters here, both from Northern CA. Very worrying what's going on there and nationally however with increasing organization by the opponents.
One interesting observation from recent east coast fixed bottom wind farms. The Virginia windfarm developed by the regulated dinosaur Dominion Energy will be producing power for $0.075/kWh and some of the competitively-bid windfarms further north are getting $0.15/kWh.
Finally, my perception of the CA high speed rail problem: First the actual ballot measure specified a train speed higher than any other anywhere, though only by 25 mph or so, but enough so that none of the existing kit available world wide could work as "stock" items. Second, to avoid "sprawl" out or around new park-n-rides, the track was routed right into Fresno, etc, increasing the # of properties needed from thousands to tens of thousands. Wherever I read this implied these two items probably contributed the majority of the cost and time overruns. Lesson for wind being maybe try not to be too far out on the bleeding edge and be aware of the effects of progressive perfection.
Hi David. Another good show. This is quite near to my heart and where I used to live, in Humboldt. I can admire the passion of Adam, but I can't agree with much of what he said. California is no longer a driving force for almost anything, not long duration battery storage, nor solar panels, nor utility scale wind. None of which are made in California. With China installing last year more solar than the US has ever installed. The vast majority of batteries come from China, as are solar panels or their components and they are doing the same for wind. For this project China would be the logical supplier of the wind machines as its the easiest way to get them to California. Don't know if that will happen. As to if Humboldt will be a Hub compared to Long Beach. Long Beach already has the land, all the union skill set workers and a thriving all ready functioning port. Humboldt has a staggering amount of expense to upgrade theirs and almost no skilled labor. And being real, the push back from the locals is huge. They stopped 3 times a previous wind project that would have all but shut down their fracked gas power plant supplying about 60% of their energy. I don't know how it will work out. But if it gets too complicated, towing the wind machines up from LA to Humboldt isn't that big of an expense vs building another 1-2 Billion dollar port expansion. They might make a repair facility there. Then you have the issue of how the power will get from Humboldt to greater CA. Currently it will have to be built, if it goes overland for about 1-3+ billion dollars. And that will meet a lot of pushback. It could go via undersea cable to the bay area, who knows. Keep up the good work.
PS Pelican Bay is up in Del Norte county just shy of the oregon border, its not in humboldt county.
Hi Dave, thanks for another great pod! I saw something today about Maine doing a pilot program for floating wind, as well as China doing some GW scale project. It was interesting to hear about all that’s involved ports, floating substation etc. The talk of building the supply chain made me think about the Jones Act. I assume this would apply to floating wind as well? Is there any development on new boats being built in the US? I think Dominion is building literally 1 single boat so I wonder how much that will be a bottle neck for Offshore Wind in general.
I hope you keep offshore wind on your agenda and come back with some more discussions. One suggestion is a look at the prospects for Oregon and Washington to join California in launching this new industry. Scale is essential, and while OR and WA won’t be anywhere near California’s size, every bit helps.
David, a couple of points in the podcast you used the phrase 'firm power' in reference to offshore wind. I guess I had a differing conception of firm power as closer to 24/7 power at predictable levels, e.g., geothermal and nuclear. That said, I'm in complete agreement that wind is a great complementary power source to, say, solar in that it's often generating more during nighttime hours. Perhaps we need a richer source of terms to help understand how power sources can work together to power the grid. We probably also need to continue to track exactly how much firm power is actually needed if utilities at the local and regional level diversify their portfolio and have smarter tools to share power sources to meet demand.
Yeah, Eric, I thought about that afterward. Offshore is not "clean firm" in the technical sense -- turn it on whenever you want, run it as long as you want -- but it is firm in the more colloquial sense of (almost) always being available & effectively complementing solar. We do need a richer vocabulary around this stuff!
That was right on when David said we should have power lines connecting the individual offshore wind turbines and then just one main line coming to shore. This would be true if the wind turbines were, say 5 miles apart and they were all 30 miles to land. The longer the total power line distance, the more the voltage drop loss of voltage.
Another great podcast episode....thank you. The discussion of mid-ocean wind-powered hubs for "ship fuel" reminded me of the recent news about the recently commissioned, battery-powered, small container ship now serving ports along the Yangtse in China. I suspect that China is incentivized to lead the way in this area, and that they will 'solve' intercontinental voyages with--wait for it--batteries. And they might possibly recharge (or swap) them mid-ocean or at convenient islands enroute. Maybe a moonshot, but surely simpler and more efficient than any fuel.
Dear David, thanks for today's review of California's offshore wind development. Excellent guests.
As a resident of Mendocino county just south of Humboldt, where our traditional industries of fishing, timber and underground cannabis have taken severe hits, I've been watching this development with keen interest. The epicenter of this nascent technological and economic blossoming is the Eureka/Arcata area, probably more famous for the Pelican Bay supermax prison than high-tech energy development, but home also to Humboldt State University, recently upgraded as California Polytechnic University, one of just three Cal Polys in the state. Within CalPoly Humboldt is the Schatz Energy Research Center, which anchors the Pacific Offshore Wind Consortium along with CalPoly San Luis Obispo and Oregon State University.
For a region of very sparse population that has been quite removed from popular conceptions of cutting-edge California, these world-class offshore wind developments are a source of enormous hope and local pride, and should make great contributions to regional economic and academic development. The financing and launch of the offshore wind staging port at Arcata will be a huge kickstarter for a seriously economically challenged region!
I'm a fan of wind power in general. I'd feel a lot better about this if there were a few 1/4 or even 1/20 scale floater prototypes out bobbing in coastal USA waters, instead of zero. Particularly with the promise of "the whole supply chain will be here."
The nuke and geo folks always talk about the lack of govt/university R&D. Hopefully we can get some R&D, especially the "D" part in floating wind. How 'bout some of the silicon valley hot shots who zip around SF Bay in their hydrofoil sailboats pitching in a few billion instead of hyping nukes "everywhere." I mean the claim of not enough R&D to nuclear is just so ludicrous. Just in CA, off the top of my head there is LBNL and Stanford's linear accelerator. Twenty universities nationwide have research reactors, inc. two in CA.
Floating offshore wind is hard. There are some intrinsic structure and stress problems. If a floating platform moves, it's connected to this huge gyroscope of spinning blades which resist reorientation and put lots of stress on shafts and such. Anyway, it's clearly the most interesting area of wind turbine tech right now. But all the development seems to be in the EU and China. This is not just a computer modeling problems. Gotta test steel in the water.
We'll see about local resistance vs. support. Funny the two seemingly opposite perceptions from other commenters here, both from Northern CA. Very worrying what's going on there and nationally however with increasing organization by the opponents.
One interesting observation from recent east coast fixed bottom wind farms. The Virginia windfarm developed by the regulated dinosaur Dominion Energy will be producing power for $0.075/kWh and some of the competitively-bid windfarms further north are getting $0.15/kWh.
Finally, my perception of the CA high speed rail problem: First the actual ballot measure specified a train speed higher than any other anywhere, though only by 25 mph or so, but enough so that none of the existing kit available world wide could work as "stock" items. Second, to avoid "sprawl" out or around new park-n-rides, the track was routed right into Fresno, etc, increasing the # of properties needed from thousands to tens of thousands. Wherever I read this implied these two items probably contributed the majority of the cost and time overruns. Lesson for wind being maybe try not to be too far out on the bleeding edge and be aware of the effects of progressive perfection.
Hi David. Another good show. This is quite near to my heart and where I used to live, in Humboldt. I can admire the passion of Adam, but I can't agree with much of what he said. California is no longer a driving force for almost anything, not long duration battery storage, nor solar panels, nor utility scale wind. None of which are made in California. With China installing last year more solar than the US has ever installed. The vast majority of batteries come from China, as are solar panels or their components and they are doing the same for wind. For this project China would be the logical supplier of the wind machines as its the easiest way to get them to California. Don't know if that will happen. As to if Humboldt will be a Hub compared to Long Beach. Long Beach already has the land, all the union skill set workers and a thriving all ready functioning port. Humboldt has a staggering amount of expense to upgrade theirs and almost no skilled labor. And being real, the push back from the locals is huge. They stopped 3 times a previous wind project that would have all but shut down their fracked gas power plant supplying about 60% of their energy. I don't know how it will work out. But if it gets too complicated, towing the wind machines up from LA to Humboldt isn't that big of an expense vs building another 1-2 Billion dollar port expansion. They might make a repair facility there. Then you have the issue of how the power will get from Humboldt to greater CA. Currently it will have to be built, if it goes overland for about 1-3+ billion dollars. And that will meet a lot of pushback. It could go via undersea cable to the bay area, who knows. Keep up the good work.
PS Pelican Bay is up in Del Norte county just shy of the oregon border, its not in humboldt county.
Hi Dave, thanks for another great pod! I saw something today about Maine doing a pilot program for floating wind, as well as China doing some GW scale project. It was interesting to hear about all that’s involved ports, floating substation etc. The talk of building the supply chain made me think about the Jones Act. I assume this would apply to floating wind as well? Is there any development on new boats being built in the US? I think Dominion is building literally 1 single boat so I wonder how much that will be a bottle neck for Offshore Wind in general.
Yes indeed. The northeast is experiencing an ecological disaster off the coast of Nantucket Island.
https://x.com/savelbiorg/status/1825987663255450056?s=46&t=yHhr9CFS49ZimrUMgPJlQw
I hope you keep offshore wind on your agenda and come back with some more discussions. One suggestion is a look at the prospects for Oregon and Washington to join California in launching this new industry. Scale is essential, and while OR and WA won’t be anywhere near California’s size, every bit helps.
David, a couple of points in the podcast you used the phrase 'firm power' in reference to offshore wind. I guess I had a differing conception of firm power as closer to 24/7 power at predictable levels, e.g., geothermal and nuclear. That said, I'm in complete agreement that wind is a great complementary power source to, say, solar in that it's often generating more during nighttime hours. Perhaps we need a richer source of terms to help understand how power sources can work together to power the grid. We probably also need to continue to track exactly how much firm power is actually needed if utilities at the local and regional level diversify their portfolio and have smarter tools to share power sources to meet demand.
Yeah, Eric, I thought about that afterward. Offshore is not "clean firm" in the technical sense -- turn it on whenever you want, run it as long as you want -- but it is firm in the more colloquial sense of (almost) always being available & effectively complementing solar. We do need a richer vocabulary around this stuff!
That was right on when David said we should have power lines connecting the individual offshore wind turbines and then just one main line coming to shore. This would be true if the wind turbines were, say 5 miles apart and they were all 30 miles to land. The longer the total power line distance, the more the voltage drop loss of voltage.
Another great podcast episode....thank you. The discussion of mid-ocean wind-powered hubs for "ship fuel" reminded me of the recent news about the recently commissioned, battery-powered, small container ship now serving ports along the Yangtse in China. I suspect that China is incentivized to lead the way in this area, and that they will 'solve' intercontinental voyages with--wait for it--batteries. And they might possibly recharge (or swap) them mid-ocean or at convenient islands enroute. Maybe a moonshot, but surely simpler and more efficient than any fuel.
Another good one.
Thank you David and guests.
**Together we can**