By Erin Stojan Ruccolo, senior policy associate, Fresh Energy

Great Lakes states are predominantly served by coal generation, the impacts of which are well-documented. Mercury advisories are in place across much of the Great Lakes, and global warming may cause other serious problems, including increasing water temperature in the lakes and decreasing water levels, impacting wildlife, fisheries, water quality and the associate tourism and shipping activities that rely on these attributes.

Wind generation on the Great Lakes could be part of the solution. Indeed, the Great Lakes is estimated to have 250 gigawatts (GW) of wind potential, enough to power 75 million homes. About 160 GW of that power is located in areas 30 meters in depth or less, where current technologies could most easily be implemented.

It’s not a surprise, then, that the National Wildlife Federation identifies 35 separate proposed wind farm projects on the Great Lakes. At the same time, the patchwork of state and federal regulations offer no clear or consistent set of development guidelines for wind developments. And a complex series of obstacles remain – questions about siting wind projects and constructing them to best address concerns about bat and bird populations; viewshed issues of how turbines located on the Great Lakes appear from shore; technical issues that make offshore wind development, at least for the immediate future, most feasible in depths no greater than 30 meters; and issues of siting transmission needed to bring wind onshore and connect it to the population centers who would use it. (There are two offshore demonstration projects in the world in depths greater than 30 meters; these are still in the research phases and will take time to commercialize.)

However, offshore wind development on the Great Lakes offers several compelling advantages as well. Offshore wind as a whole blows more consistently, day and night, and at higher speeds, than its onshore counterpart. Indeed, capacity factors are high enough in some proposals to allow the developers to gain a “capacity payment” from organized electricity markets, usually offered to fossil fuel generation. Moreover, offshore wind is often locate close to population centers. And because offshore wind is available during the day, it can offer power during peak pricing times, making the resource even more useful and more economic. This is to say nothing of the jobs and economic opportunity afforded by manufacturing and constructing these turbines in Great Lakes states, who already have a manufacturing base.

Significant questions, though, remain. Little is known about bird activity in the middle of Great Lakes – where birds land, the impact of taking away a particular landing site, for example – that will be critical to responsibly siting wind projects. Scientists in the Great Lakes area are already working to gather this data as quickly as possible. In the meantime, conservation and environmental advocates continue to work with wildlife experts, scientists, wind industry representatives and other Great Lakes stakeholders to determine what role Great Lakes wind might play in our electricity mix.

You, too, can see a map weighing these factors. The Great Lakes Wind Atlas includes “layers” to better understand the impact of various Great Lakes birds and wildlife, economic activity and other uses of the Great Lakes, available at http://erie.glin.net/wind/.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 1:44 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy, Great Lakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.