{"id":15857,"date":"2016-02-16T10:42:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T15:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=15857"},"modified":"2016-02-16T10:42:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T15:42:19","slug":"georgia-power-studying-wind-off-tybee-island-ga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/georgia-power-studying-wind-off-tybee-island-ga.html","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Power studying wind off Tybee Island, GA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nInstead of even considering oil drilling off the Atlantic coast,\r\nwhich is massively opposed by coastal communities<\/a>,\r\nhow about get on with offshore wind turbines?\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThey’re no harder to build than deep-sea oil rigs, and if a hurricane\r\nblows them over, they don’t leak oil, like BP did into the Gulf, which will never be cleaned up, anymore than the Exxon Valdes disaster in Alaska.\r\nJapan is already doing it, in waters with typhoons just as strong as Atlantic hurricanes.\r\nWind is clean, just what we need!\r\n

\r\nCory Dickstein, SavannahNow, 20 June 2014,\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power studying possible wind turbines, Georgia’s Coast, or Tybee’s shore<\/a>,\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nTybee Island earlier this year decided to pass on wind energy for\r\nthe beach community, but the potential for wind turbines on the\r\nisland or a few miles off its coast in the future still exists.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAbout five months after Tybee elected to forgo a controversial wind\r\nturbine an unnamed corporation offered to provide mostly free of\r\ncharge, officials with Georgia Power and other agencies from across\r\nthe state met in Savannah to discuss wind energy’s future….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nLike solar power that Georgia Power and others have championed in\r\nrecent years as a clean alternative energy for the state, wind power\r\nhas many environmental benefits. Wind turbines release no\r\nair-polluting emissions or dangerous waste streams, there is nothing\r\nto extract from the earth and it is an inexhaustible fuel source,\r\nsaid Mary Hallisey Hunt, a researcher and the director of operations\r\nfor the Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute. She was among the\r\nfeatured speakers Friday morning at Georgia Power’s local\r\nheadquarters in downtown Savannah….\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSee also Mary Hallisey Hunt, Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute,\r\nJune 25, 2008,\r\n\r\nSouthern Winds:\r\nAn Offshore Wind Feasibility Study for the South Atlantic Bight<\/a>\r\nand\r\nGeorgia Tech and Southern Company,\r\n\r\nSouthern Winds: Summary Project Report 2007,\r\nA study of wind power generation\r\npotential off the Georgia coast.<\/a>\r\n

\r\nBack to the SavannahNow story:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nCurrently, Georgia Power is conducting a pair of studies to\r\ndetermine if those pros outweigh the cons and whether investing in\r\nwind turbines is feasible, said Ervan Hancock, the power utility’s\r\nmanager for renewable energies.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“The technology continues to improve and get better to try to\r\ncapture these wind resources,” said Hancock, who said Georgia\r\nPower began seriously considering wind energy in 2005. “Right\r\nnow we’re in the process of doing smaller scale wind demonstrations\r\n… so we can figure out how that resource fits into the mix.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThose demonstrations include both a land-based study and a study to\r\ndetermine the potential for off-shore wind turbines.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe first study includes the placement of five small wind turbines\r\nat a not-yet-determined coastal Georgia location by mid-2015 and the\r\ninstallation of two identical turbines at a location in the north\r\nGeorgia mountains.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe second study, to determine the potential of placing turbines in\r\nthe relatively shallow waters several miles off Tybee’s coast,\r\n[Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim] Echols said, likely has more potential because few people —\r\nboth in coastal and mountainous regions — want the turbines in\r\nvisible locations.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIt’s no secret there’s wind off the Georgia coast, as seen in\r\nNREL wind maps<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nWhile Georgia Power studies the problem, in Japan\r\n\r\nwind turbines withstood the tsunami that took down the Fukushima nuclear reactor<\/a>.\r\nTwo years ago, Japan built the world’s largest wind turbine off Fukushima<\/a>\r\nto generate 7MW.\r\nUnlike the failed Fukushima nuclear units, that turbine won’t leak radioactivity into the ocean.\r\nAnd it’s a floating turbine<\/a>, the better to withstand typhoons and tsunamis.\r\nFukushima nuclear operator TEPCO has a 2MW floating turbine operational\r\n\r\nas LAKE reported in 2013<\/a>.\r\nAnd that’s not all.\r\nIvan Shumkov, SeeNews Renewables,\r\n19 January 2016,\r\n\r\nNEDO to support 270 MW of Japanese offshore wind through 2017<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nJapan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development\r\nOrganisation (NEDO) said on Monday it will support the development\r\nof 270 MW of offshore wind projects in Japanese waters.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNEDO intends to subsidise a part of the project costs associated\r\nwith a 170-MW project close to the Port of Noshiro in Akita\r\nPrefecture that is being developed by local conglomerate Marubeni\r\nCorp (TYO:8002) and construction group Obayashi Corp (TYO:1802). In\r\naddition, the organisation plans to back a 100-MW development within\r\nthe Ishikari Bay in Hokkaido Prefecture, undertaken by Green Power\r\nInvestment.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNEDO noted it will subsidise the two projects through fiscal year\r\n2017, which ends on March 31.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nApart from the financial support, the organisation will also help\r\nwith certain assessments in connection with construction, operating\r\ncosts and environmental impacts, it said in a statement on its\r\nwebsite.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nInstead of continuing absurdly high subsidies of tens of billions of dollars per year to the fossil fuel industry<\/a>,\r\nlet’s get on with wine off the Georgia coast and solar power inland!\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instead of even considering oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, which is massively opposed by coastal communities, how about get on with offshore wind turbines? They’re no harder to build than deep-sea oil rigs, and if a hurricane blows them over, they don’t leak oil, like BP did into the Gulf, which will never be […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18,36],"tags":[167,8701,8708,427,8702,12,7,108,9126,166,9127,6,8716],"class_list":["post-15857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-georgia-power","category-wind","tag-fukushima","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-japan","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-southern-company","tag-southern-wind","tag-tepco","tag-tybe-island","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-47L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15857"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15861,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857\/revisions\/15861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}