After receiving federal approval by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the Cape Wind project has made agreements with its first customer, National Grid.
Cape Wind, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, plans to sell 50 percent of its energy output to National Grid at a rate of 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour. The rate would increase by 3.5 percent per year over the 15-year contract.
Massachusetts’ consumers within National Grid’s service area can expect to pay double the 9 cents per kilowatt-hour they currently pay for electricity, as monthly bills are expected to increase by an average of $1.59 according to Grid estimates.
The power supplied by Cape Wind translates to a little over 3 percent of Grid’s total energy supply.
The $1 billion project will construct 130 wind turbines on a 25-square mile area of Nantucket Sound, just off the shore of Massachusetts.
“Cape Wind looks forward to working with National Grid to diversify their energy portfolio with pollution-free, inexhaustible wind off our shore,” said Cape Wind President Jim Gordon. “National Grid’s decision to move forward with this agreement helps put Massachusetts at the forefront of this emerging industry and provides their customers with secure and stable-priced renewable energy.”
Cape Wind will provide 420 megawatts of electricity, which could power approximately 200,000 homes in Massachusetts or 75 percent of the electricity needs of Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard combined, said reports from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, a bureau within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Proponents of the project believe that Cape Wind will not only aid the environment by creating clean, renewable energy, moving away from the burning of fossil fuels, but also believe the project could be the beginning of a new wave of innovation and industry.
“(The project) is going to be a step towards negating certain effects of climate change, a small step, but it’s a step in the right direction,” said Barbara Hill, executive director of Clean Power Now. “But more importantly, it’s going to essentially launch an entire industry in this country, and we may very well see, as more and more projects move to the regulatory regime, a robust manufacturing sector in this country once again, manufacturing wind turbines.”
Project construction will include four phases that include turbine manufacturing, upland cable construction, offshore electric cabling and park construction. This will offer hundreds of construction jobs and a number of permanent jobs in maintenance and operation, said the CLEAN’s Northeast coordinator Jennifer Filiault. The CLEAN is a network of grassroots organizations all around the country that works on energy issues.
However, opponents have expressed concern over the significant expense of the project, in addition to harming the landscape and tourism of the region.
“Basically the project poses numerous adverse impacts to commercial fishing, to sacred tribal lands, to public safety, to the environment and to the economy, and is essentially only in the interest of one private developer at the expense of rate payers and taxpayers of Massachusetts,” said Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
The extra cost over the 15 years is estimated to be about $443 million based on the extra $1.59 per household per month, Parker said. However, she added Grid’s stated price premium in the contract may be higher than expected, adding millions to the overall cost.
“Our experts have stated that (the price premium) is an underestimated figure because they have overvalued the baseline...” Parker said. “So it’s probably closer to $100 million in the first year and that’s just for 50 percent of the power.”
The project is expected to begin service by the end of 2012, with National Grid purchasing 50 percent of the power by 2013.
Learn More: How do wind turbines work?
Onshore vs. offshore wind turbines:
Offshore winds tend to blow at higher speeds compared to onshore winds, allowing turbines to produce more electricity. In addition, off-shore wind centers would be closer to large coastal populations that require high amounts of energy and where land-based wind centers are limited.
Potential energy produced from the wind is directly proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Therefore, slight increases of wind speeds of only a few miles per hour can produce a significantly larger amount of electricity. For example, an average wind speed of 16 mph would cause a turbine to produce 50 percent more electricity compared to the same turbine and average wind speeds of 14 mph.