Scott Lynch is all for wind power. The energy program planner for the Delaware Energy Office would love to award rebates for the installation of the green technology, he said. Unfortunately, as the office has awarded numerous bids for solar and geothermal technology, wind is not as much of a reliable resource in the area. Not one application for the state rebate for wind power has landed on his desk.
While farmers have been using windmills to pump water for decades, the natural resource has not been proven to produce the necessary 500 watts of energy inland for anyone to be eligible to receive the state rebate, Lynch said.
“You wouldn’t want the system just sitting there,” he added. “You want something that’s a constant resource. Sometimes that resource isn’t there.”
In a study performed by the American Wind Energy Association in the 1990’s, Delaware did not rank in the top 20 states for wind energy potential. North Dakota ranked first on the list with the potential to produce 1.2 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year. Missouri was ranked number 20 on the list with the potential to produce 52 billion kilowatt hours a year, with Delaware nowhere to be found.
Because of the limited and unreliable resource for wind power inland in Delaware, local residents might have to rely on a New York company and a famous middleman to provide them energy savings through wind power.
Winergy Power LLC, a company based in Happauge, N.Y., has proposed a wind farm off the coast of Delaware. The more than 300 windmills — as proposed — would sit on a 67 acre area 3.5 miles offshore, in federal waters stretching from the Indian River Inlet to Fenwick Island.
Dennis Quaranta, the president of Winergy Power, said that the company has to re-file the Indian River proposal with the appropriate federal agencies and emphasized that the installation of windmills in oceanic waters is three to four years off — if it happens at all.
If installed as originally proposed, Winergy — which has not yet installed an oceanic wind farm in the United States — would place 306 windmills off the coast, each of them standing about 450 feet tall with a 350-foot diameter at the tip of the blade.
By theory, wind coming off of the ocean would constantly move the blades. The spin of the rotor would drive the shaft of a generator, creating electricity. That electricity would then run through a series of wires and into a substation on land, where it would enter the grid and be sold to a company such as Delmarva Power. Quaranta said that the idea is to provide electric suppliers with a steadily-priced source of energy.
“We don’t have increases in fuel prices,” Quaranta said. “Wind is free.”
The price of a barrel of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange, for instance, rose from $25 to a record of more than $70 last August. Quaranta said that, while the cost of oil and other standard sources of energy continue to rise, Winergy could offer Delmarva Power a long-term power purchase agreement, where the price for a kilowatt hour would remain the same over a period of 10 years, for example.
Ideally, the Delmarva Power, which plans to raise its residential rates almost 60 percent in May, would be able to pass that savings on to the customer, Quaranta said. The Coastal Point could not reach a Delmarva Power spokesman for comment for that possibility.
Quaranta has had some resistance, however, to the plan. In a trip to speak with the South Bethany Town Council last year, fishermen worried that they wouldn’t be able to fish near the windmills; others worried migratory birds would die by running into them and more were worried that the view from the beach would not be as good if they were looking at windmills.
Quaranta and Bob Link, Winergy’s permit compliance officer, explained that the windmills would be about 2,000 feet apart. Dragnet operations might be disturbed by them, but all other fishermen would be fine.
Link then took the lead on the bird mortality question, saying plate glass on cars is the top killer of birds in the country. Cell phone towers place second and windmills rank near the bottom of the list, he said.
As for the aesthetic value from the beach — Quaranta said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” He added that people in Europe have found windmills attractive and it has even increased tourism in certain areas.
Quaranta noted, however, that he is working on technology that would allow the company to install the windmills 12 to 15 miles offshore. Beachgoers would still be able to see the windmills, but they would look less than an inch tall, he said.
Still, the possible installation of the wind farm is years away, Quaranta added, and the company’s real focus is on Long Island, N.Y. The Indian River project — attractive, he said, because of the rising level of energy prices in the area — is still just one of the company’s 13 proposed projects in the entire country.
“They do make more economic sense than they did three years ago. But to build these would be expensive,” said Quaranta, adding that the project would be 100 percent privately funded.
“The numbers have to make sense.”
— This is the third of a three-part series, exploring alternative sources of energy. Next week, the Coastal Point will look into more general ways to save money on rising energy costs.