Ocean windmills, turbulence avoidance and zooplankton.

A recent paper by  University of New Hampshire professor James Pringle What is the windage of zooplankton? Turbulence avoidance and the wind-driven transport of plankton reveals how strategies used by migrating zooplankton to get where they're going can have unexpected consequences when the wind blows or stops blowing.  Something that would-be deepwater windpower extractors need to keep in mind

As Bay Blog readers know,  Maine's East and West Coastal Currents are migratory thruways for the zoooplankton phase larvae of lobsters, sea scallops and many other marine animals These currents rise in the Bay of Fundy, passing Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and interfacing with other currents deeper in the Gulf of Maine. See currents here (flash video)

 Dr Pringle has discovered that migrating zooplankton avoid turbulent waters while travelling. When they encounter it, they  descend and try going under the turbulence, even if their phytoplankton prey is  more abundant in the turbulent water.

But these peace-seeking plankton can run into a problem. When they leave the surface currents they have been migrating on, and are no longer near the surface, they leave the migratory thruway they were in.   If they go too deep while trying to go under the turbulence, they may come into contact with and settle upon the seafloor ecosystem at that location. Or they may be washed outward to settle on the archipelagoes of seamounts of the Gulf of Maine - while their siblings continue down the Maine Coastal Current.

It is not  unreasonable to hypothesize that the sea surface turbulence and water column turbulence and destratification stimulated by operating deepwater ocean windmills  will be just what zooplankton avoid. and finding it impossible to go under the

What is the windage of zooplankton? Turbulence avoidance and the wind-driven transport of planktonBy James M. Pringle, UNH
ABSTRACT
Observations of turbulence avoidance in zooplankton are compared to estimates of the wind-driven turbulence in the upper ocean. Turbulence avoidance is found to prevent the transport of zooplankton in the surface Ekman layer at realistic wind speeds.Plankton that avoid turbulence by moving deeper are no longer transported by the wind-driven Ekman currents near the surface because they are no longer near the surface. Turbulence avoidance is shown to lead to near-shore retention in wind-driven upwelling systems, and to a reduction of the delivery of zooplankton to Georges Bank from the deeper waters of the Gulf of Maine."
End of abstract

Island Institute Offshore Wind Exploitation webinar 7/7/11 AUDIO recordings.

The meeting was organized by Island Institute. Speakers included Heather Deese, Ph.D., II Director of Marine Programs, Amanda LaBelle, II Marine Programs Associate, Suzanne Pude II Community Energy Director, & Birgitta Polson, II Community Energy Fellow. Matt Nixon from Maine State Planning office also spoke..  See Power Point Slides from the Webinar. 

 
AUDIO
* Welcome to meeting. 4 minutes 10 seconds

* Heather Dietz, Intro part 1. 3 minutes Describes Island Institute Concern over threat of energy costs for islands drives them. Research tech Outreach. Stance of offshore wind energy supportive. apprriately siteds and where local benefits aligned with local costs.

* Heather Dietz, Part 2. 2 minutes Describes offshore wind energy Maine motivations is that water is quite deep. Strength of wind and proximity to major load centers. High level interest and support funding from feds. Concern is high dependence on fossil fuel Vulnerable. And have strong wind.

* Heather Dietz, Part 3. 2 minutes Maine has 5 gigawatt goal by 2030 = 3% of national energy development. Also other uses of electricity. Very early stages One full scale one existing StatOil has the Hywind floating wind turbine10 miles off Norway. And U Maine has its plan.

* Heather Dietz Part 4. 2min 4 seconds Current status of state. Governor's ocean energy task Force. LD 1810 ocean wind legislation and 25 mw pilot project green ocean energy

* Heather Dietz reads UMaine official Jake Ward's 2 memos. 5 minutes Maine's 5 GW by 2030 plan. DeepCwind tech update UMaine offshore wind lab.

* Matt Nixon, GIS expert, State Planning Office. 5 minutes

*Question and Answer period 1. 5 minutes. Maine compared to other states? More action south of Cape Cod. Because pole tech is old tech. 800 ocean windmills are seafloor mounted off Europe. Siting within ten miles of Monhegan - become precedent?  

Answer. Two siting locations within state waters: 1. a process that would allow for permit application in state waters, and (2) the experimental prototypes. (3) Commercial sized incentivizing development offshore would be ten miles out. Subsidized longterm rate at which electricity would be purchased is being considered by PUC power [FIGURE 22A]. Outside that the pilot 25 megawatt project would be considered by PUC whether off Monhegan, off Matinicus or off Portland would be up to the specific interest of developers putting in proposals.

* Q&A on undersea cables and corridors. 5 min 
Will they be sent directly to Boston by undersea cable.Or Maine?

* Heather Dietz on outreach to fishers and NGOs

* Amanda LaBelle & Suzanne Pude on coming events. 11 min. August 11th film and discussion, "On the Horizon" at The Strand Theatre in Rockland. September 15: Island Institute hosts "Sites and Sounds of Offshore Wind Energy" In Oct November "Wind Turbines on Land and Sea"

* Alan Round of Gulf of ME Research Institute on Spatial Data. 4 minutes

* Role of Maine SeaGrant. 2 min 40 sec Discussion of Seagrant's role in offshore wind energy development: outreach re DeepCwind in an ongoing series of "grange hall" style informal conversations with coastal communities. [Note poll on how well the webinar went.]

* BOEMRE and offshore sites update. 2min13sec
 
* Local Benefits

* Entire Webinar audio Click here. 77minutes

Maine's Sea Wind Liberation bill: final action Monday

It has been positively Prufrockian in Maine's capital city if you care about the Wild Wind.

LD 1810 is a  bill offering the Dawn State the opportunity to lead America either into a confused beach head of fractured local economics and social unrest, or else divert the ocean wind farm wannabes further offshore.  That depends on whether on Monday April 5th the Maine Legislature finally  denies Maine's territorial tidal waters to intrusive, over-subsidized wind turbo farms like those set up on peaks and ridges of the Maine Woods.


Many more are planned  by  an alliance of utility investment groups, & high end compromise-prone state & New England eco-yuppy outfits, milking trickle-down gold from the Wind Giants. 


Then on March 24, 2010 this  ENGO/corporate hydra had its many heads handed to itselves,  for trying to wade out onto Maine's territorial sea mounts and ledges with similar "dumb growth" designs as they'd foisted on up lands.


The plan to infest Maine state  waters with  bladed towers has been left:

 "spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table.'   

 Yet similarly, final action on historic Wind Liberation legislation  too, continues to crawl glacially  toward the finish line. This time the final vote has been delayed to Monday - the very last day of the 2010 legislative session. And what amazing changes  the bill has gone through in the month since it first appeared! 

 An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force" came out of that task force ready to force open every square mile of Maine state waters to industrial scale ocean windfarming.  But from the would-be invasion's beginning on March 11th,  Maine's two give-no-ground lobstermens associations held firm, letting wave after wave of windvaders, blades glittering above their briefcased ranks like sarissas, break futilely against their Ancient  Rights.   

But even granite becomes sand under repeated waves. At a major engagement  on March 18th,  Maine's lobstermen's 1st Legion, the MLA, was, to their everlasting ignominy, on the verge of giving up ground,  when a wild charge roaring in on shrimper, scalloper and groundfish boats savaged the invaders'  initiative, driving the windbaggers back mile after mile with their furious onset!  

Completely out of Maine state waters! Then, on March 23rd, as the Windies tried to reform, across the Line in federal waters, they were shocked to find Maine's oceanic cavalry  pouring from Bar Harbor  and other coastal towns in  coordinated small group forays through the three mile gate after them. This would be no Gettysburg, with the southern invaders again allowed to escape after their crushing defeat....

But escape they did, after being chased ten miles from shore, and vanishing, tails tucked,  into venture capital warrens - where no sensible fishermen goes.

Magnanimous in victory, Maine's fishing industry's terms were merciful: a ten mile no-windfarms buffer stretching out from Maine's shore, beyond which the Windies could practise their extraction industry - as long as (1)  the University of Maine held a controlling interest in those operations and not Wall Street, and (2) Maine electricity users had optional first dibs on the juice coming ashore in Maine from those offshore operations. 

Permission, too, was granted to test prototype offshore floating windsnatcher technology at  three tiny border sites off Midcoast Maine, to the relief of Bath Iron Works and Prock Marine, which would build the experimental wind-gathering machines, and even the mighty offshore behemoths that would be taken  by the University of Maine deep into the Gulf over the horizon.

Treaty terms made, it is up to the maine legislature and the Governor to ratify them. Bureaucratic dawdling has delayed the final signing of the agreement  by Govenor Baldacci, but  Monday is the final day of the legislative session, and already, witnesses have "heard the mermaids singing, each to each" and the governor grumbles "I do not think that they will sing to me."

* Quotes from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." by T.S. Eliot

Legislature's work session held 3/18/10 on Maine ocean wind bill: Listen to speakers

Listen to speakers at the March 18, 2010 worksession of the Maine legislature's Utility and Energy Committee on LD 1810, Implementing the findings of the Governor's Task Force on Ocean Energy.
* Introduction to the Worksession 4min
* MDEP's Beth Nagusky describes proposed changes to Bill  **  Part A 17 min
* MDEP's Nagusky Q&A session 11 minutes
* Patrice Farrell, Maine Lobstermen's Association 3 & 1/2 minutes
* MDEP's Beth Nagusky describes proposed changes to Part B of LD 1811
* Suzanne Sayre 2 minutes
* John Ferland Ocean Renewable Energy Corp 1 minutes * Dianne Messer, advocate, Liberty Maine 2 minutes
* Chris O'Neill, Friends of Maine Mountains 1 minutes
* Todd Rousette (sp?) Preti Flaherty lawfirm 2 minutes
* MDEP's Beth Nagusky describes more changes to Part B
* MDEPs Beth Nagusky on changes to Part C of bill
* MDEP's Beth Nagusky on changes to Part D of bill

More to come - refresh page for update.

Wind industry's "thirty pieces of silver" bill at Maine legislature. Listen.

Some here have wondered about what sort of economic benefits Vinalhaven and other Maine towns are gaining from becoming  “host communities” to the University of Maine’s wind turbine research operations. Will they be real or hollow promises?

Tuesday at the Maine Legislature,  there was a work session of the Utilities and Energy Committee on LD 1504, which has been renamed and entirely rewritten  as  “An Act to Provide Predictable Economic Benefits to Maine Communities that Host Wind Power Projects.” (copy not available)

Listen to the Utility & Energy Committee discuss the bill February 2, 2010 with Pete Didisheim of Natural Resources Council of Maine. (15 minute mp3)

This bill is a try at establishing a payout system to compensate Maine host communities for wind extraction-related degradation of their scenic and other natural assets by the sonic and visual pollution that is sometimes a byproduct of contemporary wind turbine technology.  Compensation is also being  considered for the no-go areas around and above wind farms set up for safety and security purposes.

Highlights of the worksession The Utilities and Energy committee’s staff policy analyst Lucia Nixon  said that  the re-written bill  “will specify community benefit agreements that windpower developers be required to have with host communities, and the nature and level of payments under those agreements, provide more specificity in the statutes regarding tangible benefits, and the documentation of those benefits.”

Nixon said the stakeholders (who are they?)  were tasked a week ago by the Committee to work together on a new bill version. They met last  Friday, and the Utilities and Energy Committee staffer has been reviewing these stakes’ drafts by email as late as noon Tuesday. (2/2/10)

Pete Didisheim of Natural Resources Council of Maine's Wind Program spoke briefly, but then spent a good bit of time responding to questions from legislators at the work session, as spokesman for the selected group of stakeholders who are hammering out the wording of the bill.  Pete told the committee that they’d come a long way in the last week but were “not quite there yet“.  He said the discussion group expects to be done by Tuesday February 9th and would  deliver something  “that  has the full support of the stakeholders and all the parties, and fully vetted through the agencies, the wind comunity and all the interested parties.”

At present, however, he admitted, there are “still a few issues. So rather than present it in its current form, we’d like  to bring you the final product. when we can walk  through it carefully and  describe exactly what we disagree on.”

 Representative David  Van Wie  had much to say to Pete. But he prefaced it with "I want to throw out a thought that hopefully won't cause people to wet their pants or set you back to zero or whatever."  

What was this thought  of Van Wie's risks ...um.....dampening the wind industry's enthusiasm?

"A wind production tax"  

One of those issues is who levies such a tax? The affected municipality? The state? Federal government?  “There’s quite a bit of concern, as you can imagine,” Pete said,  “about that potentially being siphoned off to…other areas.” 

So have NRCM and other stakeholders been talking to Vinalhaven people?  Monheganites?  Commiserating with the islanders over the loss of serene scenery and seaside silence?    Do the islanders feel “vetted”?

Monhegan & the Ivory windTower

Will it be Town vs Gown, there in the chilly waters off Monhegan?

Depending on who you listen to or read, there are many answers to that question.


What's known is:

  * November 7, 2008  Governor Baldacci signed Executive Order 20 FY 08/09, establishing  the Ocean Energy Task Force

* The State Planning Office's Special Projects Office 

implemented. the order and set up the Task Force meetings. 

* The Task Force delivered an 87 page Final Report (pdf)  on strategies to: meet  the goals established in the Maine Wind Energy Act, Title 35-A, section 3404(2)(B) :  install at least 2,000 megawatts of wind capacity by 2015 and at least 3,000 megawatts by 2020, 300 of which could be located in coastal waters.  

* LD  1465 An Act To Facilitate Testing and Demonstration of Renewable Ocean Energy Technology is passed by the Maine Legislature and signed byGovernor Baldacci. It becomes 38 MRSA 480HH  in state law.

* Summer 2009  the U.S. Department of Energy awarded an $8 million grant to  Dr. Habib Dagher and his team at the University of Maine. The team includes more than 30 partners from outside of academia, including private companies interested in offshore wind development. Dagher testifies before Congress  that Maine has the potential to produce about 130 gigawatts of power in deep water — 60 to 900 meters deep — within 50 nautical miles of the coast.

 

* December 15, 2009 Maine State Planning office designates a 2 and 1/3 square mile area south of Monhegan as the  Maine Offshore Wind Energy Research Center

* January 2010. The University receives 12.4 million more in stimulus money for offshore wind development

 

* University  proposes to install one 100-kilowatt floating wind turbine and one 10-kilowatt floating wind  turbine.  A maximum of two offshore wind turbines is allowed at any given time in the wind energy test area.

* Media Coverage Suzanne Pude, the Island Institute's Wind energy point person  wrote an article recently, detailing the above.  As did Alice McFadden, publisher of the Free Press in "Monhegan Site Chosen as UMaine's Offshore Wind Research Facility"

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

The Monhegan wind test area lies in deep water tucked between two  important fishing grounds: the  Monhegan Inner Sou'Sou'west Ground and the Monhegan Western Ground. As described in "Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine"   See clickable map here. Monhegan is lowest green spot on map

Monhegan Inner Sou'Sou'west Ground. "This ground takes its name from its bearing, lying SSW from Monhegan Light, distant 5 miles. Its width is 1 1/2 miles, its length NNE and SSW is 1 1/4 miles. It has a sharp, broken, rocky bottom, including a small shoal of 20 fathoms and some hummocks of rather greater depths. The deepest water is in the neighborhood of 50 fathoms. Fishing here is from May until July for codfish and pollock: hake and cusk are in the deep water in the spring months and halibut on the shoal in July and September. This ground is principally fished by trawls, but there is considerable hand lining in September and October. Gillnetting, too, has become more common of later years"


Monhegan Western Ground." This is a somewhat extensive ground lying about 4 1/2 miles WSW from Monhegan Island. The depths range from 22 to 45 fathoms. The bottom is rocky and gravelly and in places much broken. This is a good spring ground for cod and a summer ground for hake and cusk in 40 to 50 fathoms. Pollock are found here in September and October. Its length is 4 or 5 miles, and its greatest breadth is 2 miles on the eastern portion, gradually narrowing westward to about 1 mile. The ground runs SE, and NW. It is fished by hand lines, trawls, and gill nets. Marks: Bring houses on New Harbor over the white cliff on Pemaquid 6 miles from New Harbor."

Coming Up Next Time: What problems could these windmills bring off the mouth of Penobscot Bay?

Ocean Energy. Maine Fishermens Forum Panel Audio online.

At the 2009 Maine Fishermen's Forum, ocean wind and water energy proponent John Ferland of Ocean Energy Renewable Power Co of Maine held forth on the positives of ocean energy development, followed by a more cautious talk by Maine Marine Resources Commissioner George Lapointe. Both speakers generated many questions.
Listen to the talks and discussions (MP3s ) **** Media Coverage of the session