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posted this at ars forum: (it should be clear I think it was a stupid move by the WH, but I am trying to think what might have "informed" it) Steelmanning the
by ggm 9mo ago
posted this at ars forum: (it should be clear I think it was a stupid move by the WH, but I am trying to think what might have "informed" it)
Steelmanning the risks, its the link to mainland as a weakness in supply chain of power, compared to onshore sources possibly. But, the construction is in close water, well inside the exclusive economic zone. You would think passage of a craft capable of causing a power shock with an anchor chain was raising hackles well before this, because it's hugely unusual for a warcraft of another nation to be that close without an explicit permit. Under the Jones act, all inshore commercial craft delivering goods to and from named ports have to be US badged, for international shipping it's clear from the baltic there's a concrete risk, but that's a matter of policing the boats, not banning the structures at risk.
A second steelman might be some belief about the intermittency. Thats easily knocked over because the system as a whole is building out storage and continuity systems, is adapting to a mix of technology with different power availability throughout the day, and of all the sources of power, wind is one of the most easily predicted to a useful window forward. You know roughly when a dunkelflaut is expected inside 48h, if you don't know exactly when, or for how long. Thats well north of the spin-up time for alternative (dirty) sources of power, if your storage capacity isn't there yet to handle it.
- kentm 9mo agoI appreciate the sentiment behind steelmanning but Trump has had over a decade of publicaly, vocally hating windmills because some were built too close to his golf course. See https://www.npr.org/2013/07/01/196352470/thar-he-blows-trump-tussles-with-scots-over-wind-turbines https://www.npr.org/2013/07/01/196352470/thar-he-blows-trump... Its completely in-line with his personality to hold onto personal grievances for decades to the point that they become policy.
- ggm 9mo agoThe Judges appear to have responded to something specific. If it was made-up, they would have thrown the case out harder and sanctioned whoever submitted false evidence. So I assume somebody with an ability to legally bind intel into the right form was persuaded to say something.
- maxerickson 9mo agoIn the quote in the article there, the one judge responds to something specific by calling it "irrational".
- duskwuff 9mo agoPerhaps the objection started out with something fundamentally irrational or opinion-based, and someone was ordered to "reverse-engineer" an objection out of that which wasn't trivially refutable - e.g. "the noise from the turbines will keep our submarine sonar from working" or "reports say that human smugglers are hiding aboard the windmills" or whatever.
- ggm 9mo agoYes, I think thats very plausible. "inshore defense operations in an area of strategic importance will be excessively impeded by both development of this site, and future operations in ways which <REDACTED>" type thing.
- defrost 9mo agoThis is very much a root cause. Not just the fact that Scottish wind farms prevailed, also that he was relentlessly mocked, ridiculed, and protested against in unavoidably visible ways by the Scots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NNWmZwObZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NNWmZwObZc ( Note: while a recent youtube clip, the anti Trump protests in Scotland date back to well before his campaign for his first term as POTUS )
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 9mo ago> Its completely in-line with his personality to hold onto personal grievances for decades to the point that they become policy. I feel like much of what he does today can be directly attributed to the epic roasting he got from Obama at the correspondents' dinner. Most of us would be absolutely honored by being roasted by the sitting president, but he seemed at the time to take it very personally.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoTreating offshore wind like ports and pipelines from a security POV makes sense, it's exactly what we do with offshore O&G. The rub is that securing offshore wind installations is an order of magnitude more resource-intensive than securing a deepwater rig, bc you're talking about a perimeter than spans 100's of square miles, not a single platform with a limited # of risers
- ggm 9mo agoIf you wanted to defend an O&G field, wouldn't you need to consider a similar extent? per wellhead, yes. but the go to a concentrator for onshore feed don't they? or some kind of attached floating rig, which itself is a SPF. I thought fields had 100s of square km of extent too. The exclusion zone after nordstream is now pretty big, albiet "temporary" according to the web its 5 to 7 nm so 9 to 13 km so close to 100 km^2
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoAll of which are continually manned. Not so w/ offshore wind
- rootusrootus 9mo agoDon't wind turbines get serviced a few times a year? I would bet that on any given day there will be people at the farms.
- defrost 9mo agoFrom an attack PoV that's hundreds of square miles to destroy or disable many structures Vs taking out a single target. ie. They can nibble a bit at an array before you're onto them Vs everything gets thrown at a point source target.
- anonymousDan 9mo agoWhat about some kind of mass underwater drone attack? Feels like it might be feasible in the not too distant future...
- janice1999 9mo agoUS wind farms are 30 miles from the coast at most? No country is attacking that under some plausible deniability and it not being seen as an act of war.There are more important power lines further from civilisation running through rural areas in the US. These are not fiber cables a 1000 miles from the coast. Gas generators can be spun up to provide megawatts in seconds btw. With less than a quarter of the grid being renewable, intermittency is not an issue. Grids are built with resilience in mind (or at least should be...).
- bob1029 9mo ago> Gas generators can be spun up to provide megawatts in seconds btw Only if they're already spinning and everything is hot and ready. Non-spinning reserves can take hours to bring online. Cold power plants cannot be brought up quickly. The simplest designs can ramp within a few minutes, but these are generally not intended for any kind of continuous operation due to efficiency concerns.
- lovich 9mo agoWeird how these security risks only show up to tank projects in blue states
- wattso 9mo agoThe pretext for the suspension was radar noise.[1] [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/trump-offshore-wind-leases-pause-rcna250513 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/trump-offshore-wind-...
- aqme28 9mo agoI think that wind farms dotted along the entire US coast would be a bad target for crippling US power compared to a few coal/gas/nuclear mega power plants.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoEven if there were legitimate concerns surrounding defense of the wind farms, it makes more sense to instead de-risk with redundancy elsewhere, which is increasingly cheap and quick to do thanks to the combo of solar+batteries. That’s what we should be doing anyway if AI data center energy requirements are to continue to increase.