PROJECT EASY GREEN

Any structure higher than 200 feet must be considered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a possible obstruction before it is built. Contemporary utility-scale wind turbines typically exceed the 200-foot limit. Wind project developers therefore routinely submit their projects for obstruction evaluation.

“When you submit a filing for obstruction evaluation, there is a preliminary evaluation that the FAA OEAAA analysts do,” explained enXco GIS Program Manager Carl Moczydlowsky. He was referring to the FAA group charged with doing the evaluation.

A group of 4,000 FAA employees, including those who do evaluations pertaining to flight standards and airport planning, have been furloughed indefinitely as a result of the Congress failing to extend FAA funding before it left for its summer recess. The OEAAA group, however, remains on the job.

The analysts look at flight paths, military training routes, airport operations and similar considerations. If there could be an issue, Moczydlowsky said, further review is required.

In “99.9%” of the cases reviewed, the analysts issue a finding of either “determination of no-hazard” or a “presumed hazard.”

What a developer like enXco wants is “a determination of no-hazard, which means you have clearance to build that turbine,” Moczydlowsky said.

“If you submit a hazard determination and it requires review by one of those divisions that is on furlough, you’re not going to get it back,” Moczydlowsky said, “until those people are off of furlough.”

Not all reviews will be delayed. “If you submit for review on your obstruction and it doesn’t require going to flight standards or going to airport planning,” Moczydlowsky said, “then the obstacle evaluation group can just write that as a non-hazard themselves.”

The obstacle evaluation group is now going to have a large backlog of work on submitted to flight standards or airport planning that they will not get back to finalize. “It’s just going to be sitting in somebody’s inbox somewhere until they come off of furlough,” Moczydlowsky said.

The other determinations that flow through will be their only workload, he went on. “So if you don’t have a flight standards or airport planning issue, then they’re actually going to get to you faster than they would have normally.”

Because enXco believes that one of its projects is in the former category, it immediately sought out feedback from the FAA and from its best consultants about what to expect.

Moczydlowsky could not identify the project because of a pending environmental impact review (EIR) but said they do not expect to get an FAA response on it, even after the result of the EIR is issued.

Renewables developers are used to being tied up in regulatory processes but the FAA work stoppage represents particularly poor timing. Many projects, like enXco’s, are counting on investment tax credit (ITC) benefits to make them financially viable. Some may also have federal loan guarantees at stake, too.

Projects that don’t achieve a minimal level of progress by September 30 will lose their loan guarantees. Projects that don’t break ground by December 31 will lose their ITCs. These delays, Moczydlowsky said, could hold up the entire permitting process. That would then delay the start of construction. The result could be the loss of the incentives and the project’s financial viability.

Interpretations of what qualifies a project for the incentives vary according to companies’ internal reviews and may be applied differently in different jurisdictions, so it is not clear at this point how significant the FAA delays will be.

“Some counties require no-hazard determinations before they will issue grading or building permits for any part the project,” Moczydlowsky explained. Others, he added, are friendlier to renewables projects.

What is at stake is not yet clear. “FAA furloughs like this have happened many times over the last 30 years,” Moczydlowsky said. “They usually last a couple of weeks at most. That will not throw off any of our timelines.”

If the furlough goes on longer, he said, more analysis will begin. “We’re not too concerned right now, based on historical precedent,” Moczydlowsky said.

Then again, the degree of polarization and stalemate in the present Congress is pretty unprecedented.

Greentech Media's recent investigative pieces identified a problem with California Energy Commission renewable energy that has now produced the filing of a complaint against small wind turbine maker DyoCore, Inc. Alleged misrepresentations by the company of the energy-generating capacity of its small wind turbine, according to the CEC complaint, resulted in alleged misuses of the taxpayer-funded emerging renewables program (ERP).

The CEC staff complaint requested that the DyoCore SolAir turbine be immediately removed from the Commission's list of ERP eligible equipment for “grossly overstating the turbine performance,” based on the analysis of a third-party energy testing and certification authority.

Amy Morgan, a CEC Information Office spokesperson, characterized DyoCore’s alleged misrepresentations as “out of the ballpark,” beyond any accuracies found in other small turbine makers claims.

The state suspended ERP in mid-March when allegations were raised that some companies were exploiting loopholes and trying to get rebates for turbines that do not produce the promised power or generate the promised electricity.

Initiated in 1998 to drive growth of under-30-kilowatt solar, wind and fuel cell systems, ERP was the first such U.S. incentive. Though the Schwarzenegger administration developed bigger programs for solar, ERP’s $8.7 million in rebates had helped build 577 small systems in California, with a cumulative installed capacity of 3.6 megawatts, when questionable rates of applications for rebates began to raise questions.

“I have 314 approved applications,” the CEC’s Morgan told Greentech Media at the time. That was about six times the annual rate of small wind system installations. "Out of the 314, it looks like approximately 268 are systems where there was almost no cost to the consumer. That raised a red flag.”

Jennifer Jenkins, Executive Director of the Distributed Wind Energy Association (DWEA), the leading U.S. small wind advocacy group, said the numbers revealed “a product eligibility loophole that is giving the program a black eye.”

As reported by Greentech Media at the time, DyoCore was widely considered the poster child for the alledged abuses.

“They have a five-foot-diameter turbine that they mount on a roof,” Mike Bergey, President of DWEA and of Bergey Windpower, an internationally respected small wind company, explained at the time. “They have paperwork that shows it produces 1.6 kilowatts at a wind speed of eight meters per second.” That, Bergey went on, is “over four times the total kinetic energy at that wind speed with that rotor diameter and about nine times the efficiency of the best-performing small wind turbine on the market.”

ERP had provided rebates and production incentives for 577 installed small wind systems since 1998 when, in early 2011, it got more than 1,000 rebate reservations for small wind systems using DyoCore turbines which, under program rules at the time, could qualify for as much as $28,000 in rebates, making the system essentially free to consumers.

Bergey said at the time he was surprised the CEC let DyoCore’s claims stand.

 “Approximately 33 systems using DyoCore turbines have been installed and $515,385 in rebates paid,” according to the CEC’s Morgan, adding, “249 rebates reservations for systems using DyoCore turbines, amounting to $6,393,544, have been approved, but not paid. And 1,069 rebate applications using DyoCore turbines, totaling $31,220,976, have been received and are pending review.”

David Raine, CTO for DyoCore, told Greentech Media in March that the company’s performance claims were backed up by laboratory and field performance tests, referencing the work of Chuck Skinner, a field evaluation engineer with TUV America (who Raine said was with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

When contacted, Skinner said TUV America had done no testing that would confirm anything but the electrical safety of the DyoCore turbine.

The DyoCore SolAir remains listed as eligible for the suspended energy rebate program with a self-certified output of 1.6 kilowatts (kW) at 18 miles per hour. Multiple companies have alleged that this rated output is a gross over-statement of what the SolAir turbine can generate at that wind speed.

In the wake of doubts raised about DyoCore, the CEC "engaged a third-party technical consultant, KEMA, who verified that DyoCore's claim is 7.5 times greater than theoretically possible," said Robert Oglesby, the CEC Executive Director.

KEMA’s analysis was based on data on the SolAir turbine submitted to the CEC by DyoCore and available from DyoCore's website in support of the claim it produced a 1.6 kW power output at wind speeds of 18 miles per hour (MPH).

“We’re exactly what the ERP was created for,” Raine said of the CEC filing against DyoCore. “We have a dynamic product that applies more than any other product has ever applied.”

As to the KEMA findings, Raine said that DyoCore is “just a family-owned business” and “we had no idea even what a power curve was when we filed for application. We really counted on KEMA knowing,” he explained, “how to take our numbers from our testing sites and work up the appropriate math. We feel KEMA just dropped the ball. They applied those numbers in the wrong fashion.”

Raine added that the DyoCore claim for its turbine’s 1.6 kW power output was not at 18-MPH winds but at [a rare] 60 MPH, a fact which he said had always been available on the company’s website and was “110 percent accurate.”

KEMA concluded, however, that “the manufacturer's claimed performance is not possible because the claimed power curve exceeds the performance of a state-of-the-art wind turbine rotor by 9.0 times.”

The CEC's Morgan said the Commission continues to work on reforms for the rebate program, including the replacement of equipment makers' self-certification with a standardized third-party certification process.

Cape Wind, the offshore wind farm famous for its 10-year fight against Cape Cod’s most prominent NIMBYs, will likely be the first U.S. project in federal waters. But there are three smaller pilot projects slated for state waters off Rhode Island, New Jersey and Ohio that are more likely to settle regulatory, permitting and finance issues and start generating electricity sooner.

As Dr. Lorry Wagner, President of the Lake Erie Development Corporation (LEEDCo), put it, “We don’t have the Department of Interior to deal with.”

The most likely first U.S. project will be in New Jersey state waters adjacent to Atlantic City. Fishermen’s Energy, a New Jersey-based consortium of commercial fishing companies that decided in 2007 to join offshore wind instead of fighting it, is the developer.

“The six-turbine project,” said Rhonda Jackson, Fishermen’s Energy Director of Communications, “will be 25 or fewer megawatts.”

“The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Army Corps of Engineers are the permitting agencies,” Jackson said. “We have completed all our permitting on the state level and we are finalizing what we need from the Army Corps. We expect by the end of summer to have permits from them.”

Instead of a power purchase agreement (PPA), Fishermen’s Energy has worked with the state to develop the Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificate (OREC) program. ORECs issued by the state will be purchased by electricity distributors from project developers as a means of meeting their state-mandated requirement for offshore wind-generated power. This incentive is expected to provide the necessary extra margin of funding for development.

Construction on the transmission line that will bring the project’s power ashore to Atlantic City is expected to start this fall. ”We expect to have that done off-season so it doesn’t interrupt Atlantic City’s summer [revenue],” Jackson said. “Foundation work will probably be done in the late spring or early summer of 2012, with turbines installed in the summer. If all goes well, the turbines should be spinning by Labor Day weekend.”

Negotiations are being completed on turbines, construction and vessels. Announcements are expected soon.

Aside from the cooperation of regulatory agencies, Fishermen’s Energy has benefited from a favorable public attitude. A July 2009 Zogby/Stockton College survey of residents and tourists found that turbines would leave Atlantic City tourism unaffected. Respondents overwhelmingly saw benefits in offshore wind and associated few negatives with it.

Finally, both Democratic and Republican gubernatorial administrations and environmental groups have backed the project. “They really like the idea of starting with a pilot project,” Jackson said. It will control costs and impacts and produce data upon which future development can be based.

If Atlantic City is not first, Deepwater Wind’s five to six turbine, 30-megawatt Rhode Island project three miles off Block Island likely will be.

The developer won a victory in Rhode Island’s Supreme Court July 1 when its state Public Utilities Commission-approved power purchase agreement (PPA) with New England power-provider National Grid was upheld.

Opponents argued that the capped $0.24 per kilowatt-hour rate put an undue burden on ratepayers by adding an average $1.35 per month per household to carry the $250 million capital investment. It is estimated the project will bring the state $100 million in economic activity as well as 200 construction jobs and many permanent jobs.

Construction is announced for 2012 with operation expected the following year. A new transmission system capable of carrying the Block Island project’s power to the New England grid is already being built.

In Ohio, LEEDCo’s Wagner is not as concerned with being first in the country as with being first in the Great Lakes region. Atlantic and Great Lakes offshore wind are two different types of resources and markets, Wagner said.

“We all have our challenges,” Wagner said of the Lake Erie project. “Right now, we’re looking at the end of 2013 for the project to be completed, but that’s pretty aggressive. The Army Corps of Engineers, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife have been really collaborative,” Wagner added.

Ultimate wind capacity potential on the U.S. side of the lake is “something on the order of 50 gigawatts,” Wagner said, but “if we could get ten, we’d have a very vibrant industry here.”

LEEDCo’s pilot project will have five to eight turbines with an installed capacity of 20 to 30 megawatts. “It’s going to be about seven miles offshore,” Wagner said, but “flexibility moving forward” is still necessary.

“At this point, we have an option for a submerged land lease for the pilot project, we’re in the middle of doing some of the permitting work and we’re working on a power purchase agreement.”

The biggest challenge Wagner foresees is getting construction vessels to Lake Erie. The first Atlantic projects are likely to be built with adapted offshore oil industry vessels, but “the vessels that may be available in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico do not fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway.”

On the other hand, LEEDCo does not yet know what kind of foundations its offshore wind turbines will require. “Once we determine that,” Wagner said, “then we can determine logistics and shipping considerations.”

Wagner said some maritime operators have speculated about building vessels that could do work in the Atlantic and yet fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway. But “nobody has said, ‘We’re starting,’” Wagner laughed, “and until that happens, nobody is going to put in an order for a vessel.”

The numbers on wind’s year in 2010 are already in, but researchers at one of the nation’s premier laboratory facilities have found some important indicators of which way the wind is blowing by digging into them.

“The heart of this document is in tracking cost, price and performance trends,” said Ryan Wiser of the report he and U.S. Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research partner Mark Bolinger wrote on numbers and trends.

“We have very strong indications that wind project costs and wind project pricing are entering a steep decline phase,” Wiser said, “making wind steeply more economically competitive.”

“Turbine pricing has declined substantially from a high of as much as $1500 per kilowatt down to $1200 per kilowatt or even a little bit south of that.” That decline, he said, “is very likely to turn into aggregate project price declines of an equivalent magnitude.”

Wind-generated electricity is also dropping in price due to “turbines that have scaled, especially in rotor diameter and to a lesser extent in hub height.” This produces turbines with higher capacity factors because they can better capture available wind. “Lower upfront costs and better project performance undoubtedly will lead to better project pricing,” Wiser said.

A drop in project price of twenty percent will surely impact wind’s competitiveness. “The PPAs that people are pricing today in the best wind markets around the country,” Wiser said, “are in the three cents per kilowatt-hour range. Wind is now back in a very competitively advantageous position” despite the fact that “dropping natural gas prices make that competition tougher than ever.”

Because local wind resources and energy alternatives vary, however, “We have to be a little bit careful about making broad statements about competitive positioning,” Wiser said. On the other hand, “larger rotor diameters in particular” and “improved turbines” overall, he went on, “make lower wind speed sites more economically attractive today.”

“Utilities will continue to be the largest purchasers of wind,” Wiser said, and they “have also begun to take ownership stakes of a pretty significant scale since the mid-2000s, which demonstrates the growing maturity of the technology.”

In the offshore wind sector, there was a lot of planning and development activity last year in both the private and public sectors, Wiser noted, singling out federal policy efforts. Offshore wind projects, he said, “are complicated to build. We haven’t built one in the U.S. before. They present technical challenges, cost challenges, permitting challenges, a whole variety of challenges. It takes a while to run through all of those processes, especially on the permitting side. We have a ways to go to get those projects to the finish line.”

Curtailment — the turning off of turbines when the wind is blowing — was a less serious problem last year. “We’re making progress,” Wiser said. “Ultimately the answer is going to be more transmission and greater project integration.”

“Transmission is hard to build,” Wiser said, but it is being built. “The initial development of the competitive renewable energy zones (CREZs) in West Texas,” Wiser pointed out, is having an impact. “In Texas, curtailment was a substantial factor but it was below what we saw in the previous year.”

Some say the obstacle to greater grid integration is cost. However, Wiser’s research found otherwise. “Integration costs for managing short-term variability of wind comes to less than a half-cent per kilowatt-hour. That represents ten percent or less of the cost of wind,” he said. “It’s not zero. But the number is certainly economically manageable, though technically challenging at times and requiring some attention.”

Greater grid integration can be achieved through “strategically using demand response kinds of options,” “working with other utilities in the region to try to share the imbalances that exist” and “really trying to forecast.”

Wiser believes system operators are doing “everything they can to manage reliability.” They are, he said, “well aware of the challenges and are actively seeking to manage variability just as they actively seek to manage variability in loads and forced outages of other generation sources. Wind is a different kind of resource, but it doesn’t impose challenges that system operators haven’t confronted to at least some extent in the past.”

Wiser’s report concludes more wind on the grid will require more balancing reserves in the form of fossil fuel generation. Some argue this will cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. “The emissions per kilowatt-hour of fossil generation output will increase a little bit,” Wiser said, but “you’re reducing the output of fossil fuel plants in aggregate because you’re increasing the output of wind. There is an emissions penalty,” he said, from the total reduction in emissions.

“I have seen some evidence that the emissions reductions benefits of wind may not be quite as high as some people might have expected because you need to operate the fossil plants in a more flexible fashion,” he said, but “I’ve seen no credible evidence to suggest that aggregate emissions would actually increase in a higher wind scenario.”

None of Wiser’s research belied the widely heralded 2010 installed capacity drop-off. The U.S. wind industry, Wiser concluded, remains on track to provide the U.S. with twenty percent of its power by 2030 — but getting there "is going to be a big push.”

Generating renewable energy in California’s Antelope Valley will be easy. As Nat Parker, project manager for Element Power’s Wildflower Green Energy farm, explained, “The wind blows there like a coal plant.” The solar resource? They call it high desert.

The hard part will be making the development deal with the locals. To do so, Element Power, which wants to build a first-of-its-kind combination wind and solar project, opened an Antelope Valley office. Parker, previously with the Sierra Club, has been working the region for the last year.

Element plans to build a wind farm of approximately 50 turbines with a capacity of 100 to 150 megawatts and a solar photovoltaic array with a similar capacity. “We’re talking between 250 and 300 megawatts of renewable energy,” Parker said.

“The panels would be on the flatter area,” he explained, “and there would be wind turbines in and among the panels.” The design accommodates the lay of the land. “There are a number of hills and topographic features where solar would be less desirable. In those areas, we would emphasize just wind.”

The land is a former horse ranch where cattle still graze. But it is on the Valley floor, adjacent to the photogenic Antelope Valley poppy reserve, a world-famous home to California’s state flower. The location has brought challenges but also offers huge opportunities, Parker said.

“In our business, you’re looking for land with limited environmental constraints, access to markets and access to high voltage transmission,” he explained.

Because the land is privately owned and previously occupied, there are large parcels of contiguous sites with “a low incidence of serious environmental constraints” that can be carefully but readily mitigated. There are no military or radar constraints.

It is only five miles from the high capacity Southern California Edison Antelope substation, which can deliver electricity to the Los Angeles market 70 miles away or to other California utilities via the state grid. It is also only 1.2 miles from an LA Department of Water and Power line.

But “probably the single most unique feature,” Parker said, “is that it boasts one of the most impressive on-peak late afternoon wind resources in the state. Winds pick up between four and seven in the western Antelope Valley,” he explained. “Right when the grid needs power most, Wildflower is peaking in its generation.”

“You can do a lot of good with these projects,” Parker said, but “utility-scale renewable energy projects will have impacts. We recognize that.” Element will avoid impacts if possible, he said, minimize impacts that can’t be avoided and mitigate all impacts. From a thorough study of the site, Parker explained, Element will measure impacts and deal with them. “We’re trying to create a project that is mitigated by its very design,” he said.

Finding the best mitigation methods, Parker said, means “maintaining a constant dialogue with local town councils and with environmental stakeholders and building their concerns and requests into how we design and manage this project.”

He takes nothing for granted. “We are out there pounding dirt and really reaching out to folks in a proactive way,” Parker said. The “classic not-in-my-backyard sentiment,” he added, is “something that you ignore at your peril.”

Interviews with residents, who declined to be identified, revealed serious concerns about Element Power’s project. The first and most problematic issue is the location. “The fact that the site is next to the poppy reserve is not lost on us,” Parker said in reply. “The project is called Wildflower Green Energy farm.”

Studies underway will quantify aesthetic, traffic, noise and other potential harms, Parker said, but he insisted Element’s project will not harm tourism, is preferable to the nearby NextEra Energy Portal Ridge proposal, and will generate clean, renewable energy year-round, whereas the poppy reserve is only an attraction for a span of a few weeks each spring.

Valley residents complain that developers have been getting access to approvals by making under-the-table deals with local desert and mountain conservancy groups. “There is emotion,” Parker noted, over “who will administer mitigation programs or monies.” But, he added, “Element Power has not made any agreement with any conservancy whatsoever.” However, he did acknowledge holding meetings with the groups “to solicit their input.”

There are even uglier allegations of energy company involvement in strong-arming land-owners for access. Parker said Element Power is not involved. “It’s unacceptable,” he said. “I think it’s a damn shame.”

A big concern of Valley residents is who will get the project’s economic benefits.

“At a time when unemployment is over 17 percent in the western Antelope Valley, we’re looking at up to 300 construction jobs over the course of 12 months and probably 12 to 20 permanent, good-paying local jobs,” Parker said, as well as “four to six million dollars in property tax revenues.”

But locals fear Element will bring in trained outsiders to fill the jobs. And, because Antelope Valley is part of LA County, property tax revenues will be spread far and wide.

Parker said he understood the doubts, but insisted that “if Antelope Acres and Fairmont will host the Wildflower project for 30 years, you better believe we’re going to be a good partner.” That partnership, he added, would include “a community investment that benefits public interest programs” with transparently agreed-to funding from Element for things like local services and community centers. In fact, Parker added, “we are in discussions with the town councils and the supervisor’s office about what that could look like.”

If Germany’s fateful decision to phase out its nuclear program by 2022 is to be successful, it will require a massive buildup of offshore wind capacity. Skeptics say it can’t be done and believe the decision will result in more coal consumption, the purchase of French nuclear power and higher electricity bills for German consumers.

A recent German government agency paper said offshore wind will meet the country’s needs in the planned timeframe. If it does, it will in large part be thanks to Research at Alpha Ventus (RAVE), a public-private research program that has been an integral part of Alpha Ventus, the world’s first deep water ocean wind project off Germany’s North Sea coast, since planning began in 2006.

By the end of 2009, Alpha Ventus’ 12 five-megawatt turbines were generating electricity and undergoing thoroughly documented trials. The project was formally inaugurated last summer.  That timeline contrasts dramatically with Cape Wind, the leading U.S. deep water project.

After nine years of struggle and controversy, Cape Wind may see building begin next year and may have its planned 420-megawatt capacity fully installed by 2014 or 2015 — at a cost of $2.6 billion because of its long, expensive permitting process. Cape Wind has taught the U.S. offshore wind industry little other than that onshore wind is cheaper and less fraught with difficulties.

World offshore wind capacity is expected to go from its present four gigawatts to over 70 gigawatts before 2020. Europe expects to obtain seventeen percent of its electricity from offshore wind by 2030. While there are proposals for U.S. projects in the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes and off Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland on the Atlantic coast, there is as yet no construction, just permitting hassles.

Meanwhile, RAVE research has produced conclusions about best practices in short-term studies, and RAVE’s scientists, who hail from dozens of institutions and companies, are assimilating substantial data in longer-term studies with results due in 2012.

“RAVE is the main project,” said David Schlipf, a researcher who holds the Endowed Chair of Wind Energy at the University of Stuttgart. Operated under the auspices of Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU), Schlipf explained, the research initiative is funded partly by taxpayers and partly by utility and energy industry interests. It is composed, he said, of a full spectrum of research.

The degree of organization is impressive. There are projects for foundations and support structures; turbine technologies (including components, blades, wind and output measurement, and maintenance); grid integration (including transmission, forecasting and energy markets); and environmental factors (including ecological impacts, noise, public acceptance, and geology and oceanography). All data, both public and proprietary, is carefully overseen.

An early RAVE result from Schlipf’s own research into light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology, a cutting-edge use of lasers to map anticipated wind speed and direction, showed that LIDAR can economically predict when winds will be damaging and allow intervention that, Schlipf said, will significantly reduce the cost of turbine maintenance.

The centerpieces of RAVE’s comprehensive research are an Areva Multibrid M5000 5-megawatt turbine and a comparable REpower 5M turbine, paired for study. Two major points of intentionally selected differentiation, Schlipf pointed out, are that the Areva turbine incorporates permanent magnet direct drive technology, whereas the REpower turbine has a traditional gearbox, and that the Areva is mounted on a tripod foundation while the REpower is mounted on a jacket foundation.

Though Siemens, Sinovel and other manufacturers now have experimental 6-megawatt prototypes operating, the RAVE findings are nevertheless likely to be highly determinative for offshore project developers when the final reports are issued in 2012.

By then, Germany, the U.K. and China will be gearing up for major offshore development. They will all be looking to deep waters where, Schlipf said, “you have the benefit of stronger winds that create about a 40-percent capacity factor.” The main drawback, he added, is the need for more frequent and more expensive maintenance. But “offshore wind will be price competitive soon,” he noted. “There will be cost reductions by reducing the load and improving control,” he said. “But I think the main price driver will be scale.”

As in the U.S., transmission is an issue for Germany. “The wind is in the north,” Schlipf said, “and the major cities are in the south.” As in the U.S., he said, infrastructure build-out is needed. Unlike the U.S., present plans will, Schlipf said, make it possible “to have a stable grid but a renewable grid” despite the challenges of variability.

Of the cost for transmission, Schlipf said, “I think compared with all the money they are still spending with nuclear power plants and the money they have to spend to manage the waste, it’s nothing,” because “it’s not a matter of technical limitations.”

Other undertakings like RAVE are forming elsewhere. A U.K. project is developing a 10-megawatt turbine. A Spanish-led consortium is working on an almost-inconceivable 20-megawatt turbine. Even the U.S. Department of Energy is sponsoring research at the University of Maine and Clemson University, though it does not yet have a real turbine in the water.

Talking with Schlipf about RAVE was strange, because in the U.S. offshore wind is a controversy, not a reality. Schlipf and his RAVE colleagues and forward-thinking German leaders are making it happen. RAVE on.

Seeing U.S. renewable energy setting to sea, Alpine Ocean Seismic Surveys seized the emerging opportunity.

Alpine has done marine surveying and data collection for the offshore, coastal and freshwater oil and gas and submerged pipeline and cable industries since 1957. “We were looking to go to the next level, said Rob Mecarini, Alpine’s co-owner and Executive Vice President. “One of the industries we were targeting was offshore renewables.”

To grab the opportunity it saw, Alpine partnered with U.K.-based Gardline Marine Services Group, which had been involved with offshore wind and other ocean renewables in Europe for a decade. “It’s the largest privately owned survey company in the world,” Mecarini said, “and one of the biggest companies involved in offshore surveying for renewables in Europe.”

Behind Alpine’s move to ocean renewables, Mecarini said, “there was a personal impulse and an economic impulse.” He explained, “I thought renewables was something I would be proud to be involved in … [because it seemed] good for my kids and the planet.”

There was also an economic impulse. “It could be the next internet,” Mecarini said. “From a business strategy point of view,” he said of offshore renewables, “we thought it was a real growth industry and we thought we’d be able to bring to the table a lot of things useful to our clients. We have a lot of experience working in this part of the world.”

Alpine has now brought to the table the Shearwater, a purpose-designed, state-of-the-art 110-foot marine surveying research vessel similar to those used by Gardline and other vessel providers in Europe. (Interestingly, we recently profiled Liquid Robotics, a company that wants to launch fleets of robots rigged with sensors and instruments to map activity on the sea.)

Using leased third-party vessels, Alpine did the sea floor surveying for the meteorological tower installed by Fishermen’s Energy in preparation for a wind project off New Jersey’s Atlantic City coast. The survey taught Alpine much about what a dedicated, full-service research vessel needs.

The Shearwater, due to officially launch June 22, has a low-noise hydraulic propulsion system that gives it advanced maneuverability and allows for dynamic positioning. Mecarini called it “a very steerable boat.” The steering system can be operated from a wireless box, allowing the captain to move to where he can best observe and modify his efforts.

The vessel has dedicated labs and office space, redundant generators, a desalination system, sleeps twenty, allows round-the-clock crewing and is capable of operating autonomously at sea for up to fourteen days.

Digital communications and computing within the labs and offices allow research teams to plug-and-play. Networks allow data processing and sharing, facilitating ongoing review of collected and collated data. The comprehensive capabilities allow for simultaneous or sequential surveys.

Running underneath the Shearwater’s hull are cylindrical tubes in which sound equipment used to map the sea floor and monitor the marine environment is pre-fitted and able to be repositioned as the vessel moves and needs change. Multiple echosounders, streamers, magnetometers, gradiometers and sonar scanners serve hydrography and geophysics.

Water sampling, turbidity monitoring, grabbers, high-powered corers and drop-down cameras serve benthic, oceanographic and geotechnical studies. Specifically selected and mounted lifting equipment (a two-ton crane, one- and five-ton A-frames, a five-ton geotechnical winch and other dedicated winches) facilitate data gathering.

The cost for the use of Shearwater’s comprehensive facilities, Mecarini said, will range in very broad numbers from $7,000 to $8,000 for a 12-hour day to $8,000 to $9,500 for 24-hours-per-day operations.

Ultimately, the U.S. ocean energy industries will need a fleet of such vessels to provide services that begin with the mapping of the seabed and end with the decommissioning of out-of-date and damaged equipment. Other services that will be needed include the performance of all environmental studies, including the pre-monitoring of impacts on the ocean’s flora and fauna such as crustaceans, marine mammals and avian life, the transport and erection of turbines and wave, tidal and current energy devices, and the transport of maintenance and emergency crews.

The Shearwater’s maiden undertakings for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection won it praise. Though non-disclosure agreements prevented him from naming names, Mecarini said Alpine is now engaged in talks about other offshore wind and hydrokinetic projects and subsea transmission lines. It was reasonable to assume, he agreed, that Netherlands-based Fugro, which Mecarini said is probably Alpine’s chief competition, is similarly engaged.

From working with Fishermen’s Energy, Mecarini observed firsthand the difference between negotiating the federal permitting process — as demonstrated by Cape Wind’s just-completed nine-year approvals ordeal — and the simpler, more streamlined New Jersey state permitting process, through which the Fishermen’s Energy project has almost worked its way.

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) obstructions are likely to continue, a frustrated Mecarini said, “until the fear goes away when people finally realize you can build a wind farm offshore where you can barely see it in the distance and the sky is not going to fall and their real estate values aren’t going to crash.”

Mecarini was equally frustrated by the federal government’s on-again, off-again renewables policy, which has offshore wind development on idle at present. “It seems like it’s two steps forward and one step back,” he said of efforts to advance development in federal waters, where it must ultimately be built if it is to achieve scale. “There are going to be problems with offshore wind until U.S. energy policy gets straightened out and there are clear long-term goals and policies. As long as we don’t have that policy roadmap and something developers can bank on, there will be problems.”