Offshore Wind Energy’s Huge Advantages

Final Up to date on: sixth June 2025, 04:11 am

Offshore wind energy comes with some massive advantages. It’s not as low-cost upfront as solar energy or onshore wind energy, however it additionally comes with some sturdy advantages. I not too long ago sat down with Susan Mullera Senior Vitality Analyst with the Union of Involved Scientists (UCS), to speak about a few of these advantages. Benefit from the dialog under, or in your favourite podcast community (hyperlinks under).

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Right here’s extra in textual content from UCS relating to offshore wind energy’s advantages and potential:

“The ‘gas’ for offshore wind is free, which suggests its working prices are very low. When offshore wind is related to the grid, this low-cost vitality provide enters the wholesale vitality market, the place it lowers the worth for all vitality offered available in the market. (This ‘benefit order impact’ magnifies the advantages of that free gas many instances over; a 100 MW undertaking related to the PJM system may decrease the worth of 100,000 MWh of vitality in any given hour.) The extra offshore wind we join, the better this impact will probably be.

“Put one other manner, offshore wind can cut back the necessity for peaker crops. In wholesale electrical energy markets, peak energy prices set the worth for the entire market — usually, that’s gas-powered peaker crops that spin up when demand is particularly excessive. By including extra vitality provide, offshore wind helps make certain these peaker crops don’t need to activate, which retains the general wholesale market value down. (By lowering a few of that demand for gasoline in energy crops, offshore wind additionally places downward stress on gasoline costs.)

“New England case research:

“New Englanders pay a number of the highest electrical charges within the nation, and this previous winter was the most costly in over a decade. We paid over $4 billion simply to maintain the lights on for 3 months (Dec–Feb). The largest driver of that was the price of the gasoline that our gasoline crops wanted. (On some days, they have been burning nothing however overseas LNG, which is extremely costly.) On the similar time, there was an unlimited quantity of offshore wind vitality blowing off our coast for a lot of the winter. If all that offshore wind vitality had been added to the grid, the price would have been a lot decrease.

“Some model of this sample occurs yearly in New England, with winter chilly snaps driving large will increase in vitality demand — and vitality costs, as proven by a 2023 RENEW Northeast research.

“Within the absence of offshore wind, grid operator ISO New England has needed to resort to extraordinarily costly ‘winter reliability’ packages to be sure that vitality provide can sustain with demand throughout chilly snaps. These packages have value near $1 billion over the previous three winters. Offshore wind affords a extra inexpensive solution to defend grid reliability. (…)

“Offshore wind is an considerable and native vitality useful resource in New England, and including it to our energy provide will give us some reduction from the crushing electrical payments that persons are at present experiencing.”

Certainly.