Cold Lake Erie wind

You may have heard that the long-awaited feasibility study of the county’s proposed offshore windpower project was released last Friday. Maybe you read the PD story Saturday or the editorial yesterday, both of which acknowledge the project’s “eye-popping” cost but then shift quickly back into cheerleading mode:

"If Cleveland wants a big future commensurate with its big industrial past, it needs to start thinking bigger. The multimillion-dollar wind-energy pilot project in Lake Erie outlined last week by local officeholders, foundation officials, professors and developers would be a great start. Its mix of “green” industrial innovation with a broad public-private research partnership should set Cleveland apart and make the city a go-to destination for wind-energy manufacturers and innovators", etc., etc.

But perhaps you’d be interested in what the study, conducted by a German firm named juwi GmbH (through its Cleveland subsidiary JW Great Lakes Wind LLC), actually tells us about the issue of feasibility.

Let me summarize:

• Is it technically possible to build and operate a cluster of utility-scale wind generators a few miles from the Cleveland shore? Yes, of course it is.
• Are there impossible environmental or regulatory hurdles to such a project? No, nothing that can’t be handled.
• How good is the wind resource out there compared to other sites being evaluated for utility wind investments? We’re still not really sure, but the evidence so far says: Not so great for an offshore site. (See pages 4-21 and 4-22.)
• How much would it cost to build and operate the proposed capacity? In the neighborhood of $5 million per rated megawatt to build it and six to eight cents per kilowatt-hour to operate it, which would make the unsubsidized cost of its wholesale power more than twenty cents per kilowatt-hour — two to three times the unsubsidized cost of conventional land-based wind generation.(See page 11-33, especially Figure 11-7.)

Does this add up to “feasible”? The study’s authors (whose company is, after all, named “Great Lakes Wind”) say sure, no problem. After all it’s a pilot project, and besides there’s all that Federal stimulus money — let’s just go out and get some.

So, bottom line: The Great Lakes Wind Energy Center project is a feasible “demonstration project” as long as we can get the Feds to pick up most of the tab, and we remember that it’s really a $75-$90 million science experiment.

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