NJ Wind Executive Defends Trying to Charge RI Utilities 50% More than RI's Retail Price for Electric

[NNadir]

...Power, Commercially.

Rhode Island, has some of the highest retail electricity prices in the nation, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/rhode_island.html">16.01 cents, 5th highest among the states.

Almost all of the electricity produced in Rhode Island is generated by burning dangerous natural gas for which Rhode Island has no waste storage facilities. It uses earth's atmosphere as a dump.

They know about dumps too in Rhode Island, since they have two tiny plants that burn landfill gas, plants which claim that they are "renewable" since garbage is a growth industry.

Rhode Island is considering hiring a New Jersey wind firm, Deepwater, to build off shore wind farms, wind farms that we all hope will hold together for a year or two at least, maybe three, and hopefully, when they break up into little pieces, no fishing boats, gas tankers, or oil tankers will be hit by any debris the debris and even if they are, we will be able to write "no one was hurt."

There seems to be some squabbling though about the price for this magical electricity:

Moore testified on the second day of evidentiary hearings before the PUC, which must decide whether the contract under review is “commercially reasonable.” Under the agreement, National Grid, Rhode Island’s primary electric utility, would pay the New Jersey-based Deepwater 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour for power from the eight-turbine wind farm that would be built about three miles southeast of Block Island. The price, which would escalate 3.5 percent a year over the 20-year contract, is high compared with the price of power from fossil fuels, which National Grid buys at 9.2 cents per kilowatt hour.

http://www.projo.com/economy/DEEPWATER_TESTIFIES_03-11-10_58HO1JB_v10.37d1dee.html">Deepwater CEO defends cost of wind energy

Wow. That's a great deal if you can get it, especially the automatic 3.5 percent increase every year for a twenty year contract for selling something wholesale at a price that is higher than retail.

By the time they're done, the price of electricity from these turbines - assuming that there is even one that hasn't broken apart and started leaching lubricants from the floor of the continental shelf - should be as high as solar PV's delivered price, which retails http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm">34.88 cents per kwh for residential use.

I'm so glad that we have anti-nukes here to tell us how, um, "nuclear energy" is "too expensive," even though France has the lowest electricity rates of any major country in Europe.

[kristopher]

1. An 8 turbine, first of its kind wind farm?

Is that supposed to represent the norm?

In a successful bid with the Delaware Public Service Commission, the price that has been contracted for with the much much larger wind farm scheduled to be built off of Delaware is 12 cents/kwh. The competing proposals were a coal plant and a natural gas plant. Again, this is a first of its kind and thus the economies of scale are limited.

The coal plant will not be built, the natural gas plant will not be built, and the existing coal plant on the coast where the wind power will feed into the grid (one of the dirtiest in the nation) has now been scheduled to shut down 3 of its 4 units.