Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Virginia Beach Nixes Kitty Hawk Wind Cables

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by

Steve Haner
in , , , , ,

Site map for the first phase and cable connection route for the proposed Kitty Hawk Wind project.

by Steve Haner

The political leaders of the City of Virginia Beach have informed an offshore wind developer that they oppose its plan to bring power cables ashore at Sandbridge Beach. No formal vote was taken on the application, however, according to media reports.

The story appeared in The Virginian-Pilot and on local television station WAVY around Thanksgiving. When Bacon’s Rebellion last visited this matter, Virginia Beach City Council had conducted a May public hearing at which most speakers strongly opposed the power cable location.

European energy developer Avangrid controls the wind lease space off the shores of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, but the most efficient plan to bring power ashore brought the cables north to Sandbridge Beach in Virginia. The exact landing location proposed was under a city-owned parking lot that serves the commercial section of the popular beach neighborhood.

From there the cables would have run along mostly public highway right of way to connect with the main electrical grid. A similar plan to bring cables ashore from Dominion Energy Virginia’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project involves the state’s military reservation (no longer named for Confederate artillerist William Pendleton) so is not near commercial or residential properties. No similar local opposition has developed to CVOW’s cables.

The city leaders reportedly informed the developer of their stance in a private meeting and then later announced it. The company is free to continue to try to change minds, since no formal vote was taken, and also free to look for another route to the grid.

The jeopardy to that project is another strike against the economic promoters in the Hampton Roads region who dream of a major industrial hub there to install and maintain the massive turbines. It follows quickly on the announcement by Siemens Energy, another European firm, that it is abandoning its plans to build a manufacturing plant for turbine components in Portsmouth.

Avangrid has no customer yet for the power the Kitty Hawk field would produce and has not started the full application process with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Another setback for it came when North Carolina’s Duke Power filed its long-term integrated resource plan and included no call for offshore wind. Dominion is planning for more but has resisted using third-party suppliers and prefers to own the projects directly.

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17 responses to “Virginia Beach Nixes Kitty Hawk Wind Cables”

  1. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    Admitting sheepishly I didn’t look through my VPAP clips on Thanksgiving Day…or I would have posted this update sooner. 🙂

  2. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    Oops.

  3. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    Oops.

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Well, gotta come ashore someplace. Somebody gonna benefit.

    Va. Beach leaders couldn’t figure out how the plan benefited Tommy.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      This industry is already dead, but we’ll be propping it up in Virginia for 30 years. ‘Twill be a wondrous white elephant.

      1. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        I didn’t know elephants hunted whales…

        😉

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          You’re right, a Moby Dick analogy might work better. Joe Biden in the Ahab role….

        2. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          You’re right, a Moby Dick analogy might work better. Joe Biden in the Ahab role….

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        But small in comparison as white elephants go. Mountain Valley Pipeline anyone?

        1. WayneS Avatar
          WayneS

          Small, yes. But an obnoxious blow-hard.

        2. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          Vital natural gas will be flowing through that pipeline decades after the Dominion turbines have been yanked from the sea floor and the unrecyclable blades buried in unmarked graves.

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            “Vital natural gas might be flowing through that pipeline decades after the

  5. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
    energyNOW_Fan

    Sounds like a non-binding action that can be reconsidered at some future date if so needed. New York and New Jersey to lesser extent are NIMBY states, so they will be depending on others for landfill space, green power generation etc. So we shall see.

    ON-shore wind is much more competitive. But I do not know how much additional wind growth potential remains in the Allegheny Mountains in PA/Md/WV, which is our main wind resource in this region. If there is more potential, we should grab some rights.

  6. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
    energyNOW_Fan

    Sounds like a non-binding action that can be reconsidered at some future date if so needed. New York and New Jersey to lesser extent are NIMBY states, so they will be depending on others for landfill space, green power generation etc. So we shall see.

    ON-shore wind is much more competitive. But I do not know how much additional wind growth potential remains in the Allegheny Mountains in PA/Md/WV, which is our main wind resource in this region. If there is more potential, we should grab some rights.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      The one project proposed out in Botetourt County continues to languish. Build spinning turbines on those ridgelines and expect massive NIMBY outbreaks.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        speaking of cancellations and govt subsidies…..

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/79c45ee7364cb07c58faf1d22c496ca0462fdfd71261ec53fd0a39270ca81184.png

        The project meant to debut small modular reactors, the technology the nuclear energy industry hopes will spur a renaissance of atomic power construction, collapsed Wednesday night amid mounting financial troubles.

        The NuScale Power Corporation based in Portland, Oregon, whose SMR design became the first in U.S. history to win the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval last January, had planned to build a dozen of its small, partly factory-made atomic energy reactors at a federally-owned site in Idaho. The power plant was dubbed the Carbon-Free Power Project.

        The company received more than $1 billion from the Biden administration to fund the construction. Once completed in 2029, NuScale planned to sell electricity to small electrical cooperatives across the American West via the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a state-owned power company.

        But as costs began swelling with inflation, NuScale told investors in March it would need more contracts on the books to sell at least 80% of the electricity it planned to generate by next February. That number had fallen to just 25% after a number of utilities canceled contracts to buy power from NuScale via UAMPS.

        In a joint press release on Wednesday, NuScale and UAMPS said they “mutually agreed to terminate” the SMR power plant underway at a property owned by the Idaho National Laboratory, ending more than a decade of work.”

        https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuscale-uamps-nuclear_n_654c317ce4b088d9a74d17db

  7. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    SH, you closed with: “Avangrid has no customer yet for the power the Kitty Hawk field would produce and has not started the full application process with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Another setback for it came when North Carolina’s Duke Power filed its long-term integrated resource plan and included no call for offshore wind. Dominion is planning for more but has resisted using third-party suppliers and prefers to own the projects directly.”

    Exactly. Wind power, especially the offshore variety (OSW), depends on government/regulatory incentives to overcome all the NIMBY obstacles and reach critical mass. I have a bone to pick with the first sentence quoted because there is a customer for the power — the PJM wholesale spot market — but the fact that spot-market wholesale sales won’t support the financing of this project tells you why no investors are stepping forward to rescue it, let alone do all the government paperwork. Obviously Duke reached the same conclusion, absent a directive from the NCUC to do otherwise, and Dominion is holding out for a better regulatory deal from the SCC before taking the plunge.

    But is OSW really that flawed? I don’t think so. The problem is Virginia Beach and the like who talk green-commitment but retreat under fire. They won’t allow their municipal parking lot to have a trench cut through it because they are expecting to be overridden by some other agency — let the other agency take the political heat (especially if it’s those nasty feds) — even though a cursory glance at the electric transmission line map of the mid-Atlantic shows that Virginia Beach is the obvious, logical place to come ashore to tap into the larger mid-Atlantic electric grid at lowest cost.

    What’s wrong with OSW is the startup obstacles. Somebody has to develop a project to prove that the economics already achieved in Europe can be replicated here. I’m not defending Dominion’s approach to that issue, but reaching that demonstration goal plus developing the support infrastructure (including the transmission) to support many more such projects is what it will take — just as it already has with solar power, batteries, and nuclear plant extension agreements.

    When we need the power in a few years the only quick solution will be gas-fired generation. And how popular do you think that will be?

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