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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

arstechnica.com

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Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#51

Post by CGMthrowaway »

ggm wrote: post #5
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating offshore wind like ports and pipelines from a security POV makes sense, it's exactly what we do with offshore O&G. The rub is that securing offshore wind installations is an order of magnitude more resource-intensive than securing a deepwater rig, bc you're talking about a perimeter than spans 100's of square miles, not a single platform with a limited # of risers

If you wanted to defend an O&G field, wouldn't you need to consider a similar extent? per wellhead, yes. but the go to a concentrator for onshore feed don't they? or some kind of attached floating rig, which itself is a SPF. I thought fields had 100s of square km of extent too. The exclusion zone after nordstream is now pretty big, albiet "temporary" according to the web its 5 to 7 nm so 9 to 13 km so close to 100 km…

All of which are continually manned. Not so w/ offshore wind

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#52

Post by JumpCrisscross »

softwaredoug wrote: post #12

If these projects ultimately end up canceled they’ll be the largest “mostly done” infrastructure projects to be cancelled. A huge waste. And a monument to US incompetency.

> A huge waste. And a monument to US incompetency

But a windfall for the litigation financier that buys those claims off the U.S. government.

These leases are contracts. Sovereign immunity is curtailed when the U.S. contracts.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#53

Post by toomuchtodo »

softwaredoug wrote: post #49
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, judicial checks and balances should protect them until regime change, which is coming.

It's going to be dicey whether you can keep all the suppliers engaged with start / stops over 3 years.

From the piece:

> Several of these projects are near completion and are likely to be done before any government appeal can be heard.

Just gotta keep grinding towards success.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#54

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #45
bgroins wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than the Superconducting Supercollider?

Yes far worse, the superconducting supercollider produced science which has debatable value. There’s an argument we lost nothing by canceling the project. Wind farms produce electricity which pays for the investment when you finish but pays nothing when a stop early. This makes stopping early extremely economically harmful.

[deleted]

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#55

Post by sandworm101 »

ianburrell wrote: post #30
sandworm101 wrote: post #14

I am all for green energy, but these windfarms were designed years ago. Since then, solar has progressed in leaps whereas wind has not. Im not so sure that fighting the olds over wind farms is the fight worth winning. Let them cancel the wind farms if that means a free hand to develop solar.

Solar and wind are good complements. Solar works during the day and best on clear, windless days. Wind blows best during the night and on cloudy, stormy days. Solar is best in summer and wind in winter. Wind also works better in some areas that don't have solar. UK has a lot of offshore wind, but less solar. The US Northeast has a lot of wind but lags behind on solar. Wind has dropped significantly in price over the…

I theory yes, but grid storage favors solar. Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities. They are not perfect partners.

The rich/old paticularly hate wind because they do not like looking at it. (The link to golf courses is not by accident. Wind farms and golf course tend to appear together due to them both gravitating towards areas with shallow waters.) We still here stories about blinking shadows interupting sleep cycles, even causing cancer. So perhaps we let them alone for another decade and allow solar+storage to take up the slack. Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind.

(Shallow sea means no commercial traffic/ports. That means cheap land for non-industrial things like yacht clubs and big houses, which give rise to golf courses. So the rich/old dont like seeing the wind farms that, inevitably, want to live just offshore of their yacht/golf clubs. See Nantuket.)

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#56

Post by watersb »

Retric wrote: post #45
bgroins wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than the Superconducting Supercollider?

Yes far worse, the superconducting supercollider produced science which has debatable value. There’s an argument we lost nothing by canceling the project. Wind farms produce electricity which pays for the investment when you finish but pays nothing when a stop early. This makes stopping early extremely economically harmful.

Esoteric programming language developed for the superconducting super collider, Glish, was picked up by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which used it well into the 2000s.

Glish supported networked remote procedure calls, made then almost transparent to the program. Otherwise, Glish was roughly similar to Tcl or Lua.

I don't know what other bits and pieces got salvaged from the SSC project.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#57

Post by [deleted] »

defrost wrote: post #10
kentm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the sentiment behind steelmanning but Trump has had over a decade of publicaly, vocally hating windmills because some were built too close to his golf course. See https://www.npr.org/2013/07/01/196352470/thar-he-blows-trump... Its completely in-line with his personality to hold onto personal grievances for decades to the point that they become policy.

This is very much a root cause. Not just the fact that Scottish wind farms prevailed, also that he was relentlessly mocked, ridiculed, and protested against in unavoidably visible ways by the Scots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NNWmZwObZc ( Note: while a recent youtube clip, the anti Trump protests in Scotland date back to well before his campaign for his first term as POTUS )

[deleted]

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#58

Post by aqme28 »

ggm wrote: post #2

posted this at ars forum: (it should be clear I think it was a stupid move by the WH, but I am trying to think what might have "informed" it) Steelmanning the risks, its the link to mainland as a weakness in supply chain of power, compared to onshore sources possibly. But, the construction is in close water, well inside the exclusive economic zone. You would think passage of a craft capable of causing a power shock w…

I think that wind farms dotted along the entire US coast would be a bad target for crippling US power compared to a few coal/gas/nuclear mega power plants.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#59

Post by leosussan »

sandworm101 wrote: post #14

I am all for green energy, but these windfarms were designed years ago. Since then, solar has progressed in leaps whereas wind has not. Im not so sure that fighting the olds over wind farms is the fight worth winning. Let them cancel the wind farms if that means a free hand to develop solar.

That definitely won't be what they're using that free hand for, unfortunately. I wish it weren't true, but the Republican party is sticking to its blanket opposition to anything that isn't fossil-fuel related. Add it to the growing list of stuff to be annoyed / angry about.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#60

Post by shagie »

petcat wrote: post #24

3 more years. I don't know who the Dems can elect to go against JD Vance, maybe Tim Walz, but they need somebody.

> maybe Tim Walz

https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2026/01/29/tim-walz-say...

> MINNEAPOLIS (Gray News) - Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he will not run for elected office again.

> Walz touched on his political plans in a recent interview with cable news channel MS Now.

> “I will never run for an elected office again,” Walz said. “Never again.”

> The 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee said he plans to “do the work” while finding other ways to serve the country.

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