By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
It will likely take at least a decade to plug electricity generated by floating, deep-ocean wind turbines into Oregon’s power grid.
But big steps are underway to transform the state’s electrical infrastructure and at least partially wean it from the relatively cheap, dam-produced hydropower that has kept Oregon’s lights on for the past 80 years.
Within the past two weeks, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identified three areas in water off the southern Oregon coast where the first leases are expected to be approved.
These areas, totaling nearly 2,200 square miles of ocean from Coos Bay south to Brookings, establish a process that calls for formal public comment from a variety of groups, including commercial fishing interests, conservationists, local governments, affected tribes and others.
And while the first leases to private power developers could be auctioned off as early as next year, those involved in the process caution that years of site assessments and surveys, along with technical assessments and permitting, mean the first turbines – which are likely to be situated at least 20 miles from land – won’t start turning for about a decade or so.
Even so, things are moving relatively quickly in the effort to turn the windiest parts of the Oregon coast into next-generation power generators.
“There are some huge opportunities here,” said Bryson Robertson, an associated engineering professor at Oregon State University and director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center. “Foremost, we can’t continue relying purely on terrestrial wind and solar to help decarbonize the electricity sector. That just won’t get us there.”
Myriad variables need to be assessed before an entirely new ocean grid system is established, he said, but work is now underway to address both upsides and potential obstacles.
For instance, should these floating turbines, which dwarf land-based wind turbines in size, be located closer to shore, thereby substantially reducing the cost of installation and production? Or should they be farther out, putting them largely out of view from the coastline?
“There isn’t a technical reason they can’t go out beyond the horizon,” Robertson said. “But there is definitely an economic cost association with going farther and farther out. This is just one of the decisions that is now being analyzed.”
What appears certain, he said, is that turbine installation will take place far enough out to capture deep-ocean wind currents that are far more reliable and predictable than land-based winds, which are diverted and deflected by topography.
The floating platforms would be anchored to the sea floor by long cables, with other cables then extending toward the shore, where five proposed substations will be built at Fairview (near Coos Bay), Wendson (in southern Lane County), Toledo, Tillamook and Clatsop (near Astoria).
Depths of 3,000 feet or more will make it impossible for the platforms to be moored directly to the sea floor, as is the case for the shallower East Coast wind farms now being built.
Addressing concerns from some that technology doesn’t yet exist for siting platforms in waters this deep, Robertson added, “The technology does exist. Is it production scale? No. But in other areas of the world, we have had the first projects in the water and they are looking to be very successful.”
Ramping up East Coast projects
After fits and starts over the last 10 years, offshore wind farm development has moved into high gear along the East Coast. The first commercial scale project near Block Island in Rhode Island waters has been operational since 2016 with five turbines. Projects nearing the construction phase offshore of Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York are poised to put 15 to 30 turbines each in waters around 20 miles offshore.
In October, the Biden administration announced plans to develop large-scale wind farms along nearly the entire coastline of the United States, the first long-term strategy from the government to produce electricity from offshore turbines, according to the New York Times.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the agency will begin to identify, demarcate and hope to eventually lease federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine and off the coasts of the Mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina and South Carolina, California and Oregon, to wind power developers by 2025.
The announcement came months after the federal government approved the nation’s first major commercial offshore wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and began reviewing a dozen other potential offshore wind projects along the East Coast. On the West Coast, the administration has approved opening up two areas off the shores of central and northern California for commercial wind power development.
The Vineyard Wind project calls for up to 84 turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they could generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes.
The project would dwarf the scale of the country’s two existing wind farms, off the coasts of Virginia and Rhode Island. Together, they produce just 42 megawatts of electricity.
In addition to Vineyard Wind, a dozen other offshore wind projects along the east coast are now under federal review. The Interior Department has estimated that by the end of the decade, some 2,000 turbines could be churning in the wind along the coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
Coastal counties weigh in
Federal efforts to place turbines in Oregon’s coastal waters serve as something of a companion piece for state plans. The challenges and benefits of producing up to three gigawatts of energy annually were examined in a recent draft study produced by the Oregon Energy Department.
The study was financed by passage of last year’s House Bill 3375, which directed the department to assess the possibilities of offshore wind. The three gigawatt target outlined in the bill is enough to power 2.25 million homes, according to the federal Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.
In the longer term, floating offshore wind development could sustain as much as $6 billion in construction-oriented activity off the coast by 2050, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That activity could include as many as 44,000 to 66,000 construction jobs.
“Any way you cut it, it’s clean energy,” said Court Boice, a Curry County commissioner who is helping explore the pros and cons of deep-ocean wind possibilities. “And two third of the jobs, maybe three-fourths, would all be on shore. This could be a tremendous boon to the state’s economy.
“The wind we have here is what (former Oregon secretary of state) Bill Bradbury said: We are the Saudi Arabia of wind-energy potential,” said Boice.
Lincoln County commissioner Kaety Jacobson says she is intrigued by the potential for ocean-wind energy – but joins others in laying out questions she wants answered before platform deployment begins.
Her thoughts, based on her own deep experience in helping site the PacWave wave-energy project now being built between Newport and Waldport, include: Will the new technology needed to scale-up wind energy work here? Will it generate the electrical numbers being discussed? And what effects could it all have on the state’s commercial fisheries, as well as on the fish and animal species those industries rely on?
“From marine reserves to rock-fish conservation areas to PacWave to offshore wind, you have to look at the cumulative impacts of all this,” Jacobson said. “These things aren’t disconnected from each other and they do create a potential cumulative impacts for the fishing industry.”
As one example, she pointed to the huge anchoring cables needed to hold floating platforms in place.
“Those devices, taken as a whole, will probably change the structure of the sea floor,” Jacobson said. “There are species like rock fish that will probably love a new, rockier sea floor. Dungeness crab, however, far prefer soft, sandy bottoms. They actually bury themselves in sediment during big storms. How will that all play out? At this point, we’re really not sure.”
OSU’s Robertson agrees that ocean wind platforms, along with their anchoring, will create some impacts.
“And it’s true that we don’t know enough yet about exactly what those impacts will be,” he said. “Part of this whole effort involves researching that. But what we also know is that the impacts from similar installations elsewhere has been negligible.”
Studying marine impact
Lisa Ballance, director of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute in Newport, is spearheading the effort to assess such impacts. She is the leader of a $2 million study to analyze and document any effects on marine life.
“There is far more to take into consideration than just where the wind is strongest and most consistent,” she said. “Any final decision about placement should take into account minimizing their impacts.”
The study area, taking into account that wind knows no boundaries, will extend from Cape Mendocino in California north to the mouth of the Columbia River and include marine waters over the continental shelf and across the shelf’s slope.
A prime focus on Ballance’s study will be producing first-of-a-kind maps detailing the various sea birds and mammals that inhabit the study area. Information fed into the maps will include everything from acoustic data compiled by research vessels, existing ocean-bottom-acoustic devices and even small boats deploying satellite tags onto blue whales to help better understand their migrating patterns.
“The new data we’ll collect will be done at a much finer spatial scale than anything now available for Oregon waters, Ballance said. “I have no doubt we will be discovering many new things.”
Fishing industry cautious, opposed
Commercial fishing interests, meanwhile, are following the ongoing leasing effort closely. Most applaud the need for an important new source of renewable energy, but want to ask pertinent questions now, before anything actually goes into the water.
“It’s well off the coast where they are proposing to put these wind farms, but as for the transmission cables that will come in – will they be buried under the sea floor? On top of the sea floor?” said Tim Novotny, communications manager for the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “We understand the necessity about getting things right from an energy standpoint but, in our view, there are a lot of questions out there that have so far been really sped past.”
Mike Pettis, a commercial crabber out of Newport who belongs to a county advisory group, agreed.
“Putting these platforms 20 miles out won’t be much of a problem,” he said. “About 95 percent of our crab fishery takes place inside that.”
But, in pointing to some studies showing a possible effect of transmission lines from wind turbines on crab movements, he said, “There is still an awful lot to consider. We’re just trying to give information from a fishermen’s perspective so we don’t have to lose productive fishing grounds if we don’t absolutely need to.”
Others are far sharper in their criticisms.
“Placing giant turbines and anchors in a current system that is largely free-flowing and structure-free could cause irreparable harm to seabirds, marine mammals, fisheries management regimes and more,” said Susan Chambers, who chairs the Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition. “Robust environmental analyses need to be completed before areas are identified and leased, not after.”
Heather Mann, director of the Newport-based Midwater Trawlers Cooperative, questions the size of the prospective wind-energy area.
“This is what results from government agency lip service versus authentic management,” she said. “(The federal government) has essentially chosen prime fishing areas for turbines threatening not just Oregon harvesting and processing jobs, but food security as well.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com