Two More Offshore Wind Projects in the US Allowed to Continue Construction (reuters.com) 76
Friday a federal judge "cleared U.S. power company Dominion Energy to resume work on its Virginia offshore wind project." But a U.S. federal judge also ruled Thursday that another major offshore wind farm is allowed to resume construction, reports the Hill. "The project, which would supply power to New York, was one of five that were halted by the Trump administration in December...."
In fact, there were three different court rulings this week each allowing construction to continue on a U.S. wind project: Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction allowing Empire Wind to keep building... Another, Revolution Wind, was also allowed to move forward in court this week... The project would provide enough power for up to 500,000 homes, according to its website. The court's decision allows construction to resume while the underlying case against the Trump order plays out.
Meanwhile, power company Orsted "is also suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York," reports the Associated Press, "with a hearing still to be set." The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind LLC, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, joined the rest of the developers in challenging the administration on Thursday.
CNN points out that the Vineyard Wind project "has been allowed to send power to the grid even amid Trump's suspension, a spokesperson for regional grid operator ISO-New England told CNN in an email." Residential customers in the mid-Atlantic region, including Virginia, desperately need more energy to service the skyrocketing demand from data centers â" and many are seeing spiking energy bills while they wait for new power to be brought online.
CNN notes that president Trump said last week "My goal is to not let any windmill be built; they're losers."
The Associated Press adds that "In contrast to the halted action in the US, the global offshore wind market is growing, with China leading the world in new installations. Nearly all of the new electricity added to the grid in 2024 was renewable. The British government said on Wednesday it had secured a record 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind in Europe's largest offshore wind auction, enough clean electricity to power more than 12m homes."
In fact, there were three different court rulings this week each allowing construction to continue on a U.S. wind project: Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction allowing Empire Wind to keep building... Another, Revolution Wind, was also allowed to move forward in court this week... The project would provide enough power for up to 500,000 homes, according to its website. The court's decision allows construction to resume while the underlying case against the Trump order plays out.
Meanwhile, power company Orsted "is also suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York," reports the Associated Press, "with a hearing still to be set." The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind LLC, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, joined the rest of the developers in challenging the administration on Thursday.
CNN points out that the Vineyard Wind project "has been allowed to send power to the grid even amid Trump's suspension, a spokesperson for regional grid operator ISO-New England told CNN in an email." Residential customers in the mid-Atlantic region, including Virginia, desperately need more energy to service the skyrocketing demand from data centers â" and many are seeing spiking energy bills while they wait for new power to be brought online.
CNN notes that president Trump said last week "My goal is to not let any windmill be built; they're losers."
The Associated Press adds that "In contrast to the halted action in the US, the global offshore wind market is growing, with China leading the world in new installations. Nearly all of the new electricity added to the grid in 2024 was renewable. The British government said on Wednesday it had secured a record 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind in Europe's largest offshore wind auction, enough clean electricity to power more than 12m homes."
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind (Score:2)
Windmills Cause Oil Profit Cancer (Score:5, Funny)
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In what way?
Re: Windmills Cause Oil Profit Cancer (Score:2)
He said while making an unsupported and therefore crazy claim. Take your meds, Grandpa.
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Windmills cause oil profit cancer?! Wow, I never knew that.
Now, I wonder what effect wind turbines have...
Re: Windmills Cause Oil Profit Cancer (Score:2, Troll)
They make Cheeto Benito tilt at them.
"they're losers"... (Score:3, Interesting)
Such a compelling argument of vast intellectual depth! Well, I guess he knows on what level the MAGAs operate.
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Well, I guess he knows on what level the MAGAs operate.
Well, that makes sense - given that he pretty obviously operates at that level too.
That may be part of his appeal - "hey, he's not smart - but he's still rich and powerful, so maybe we can be too!"
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That may be part of his appeal - "hey, he's not smart - but he's still rich and powerful, so maybe we can be too!"
Some things money just can't buy.
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That may be part of his appeal - "hey, he's not smart - but he's still rich and powerful, so maybe we can be too!"
Some things money just can't buy.
Oh, yes. But there are lots of people that do not understand that.
Re:"they're losers"... (Score:5, Interesting)
That may be part of his appeal - "hey, he's not smart - but he's still rich and powerful, so maybe we can be too!"
"I love the poorly educated." [pbs.org] -- Donald Trump, while campaigning in 2016.
Per the article I linked, one explanation for Trump's appeal for the poorly educated is not necessarily that they're less bright, but rather they have a less secure financial situation.
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With some exceptions, the poorly educated in the US will also be significantly less bright. Incidentally, mental skills (not just IQ, but also knowing hot to apply it effectively) roughly correlate with your financial security level. If Trump had not been born rich, the best he could have ever done was used car salesperson. But probably he would simply be in prison.
Re: "they're losers"... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of Reagan's campaign managers said the quiet out loud about avoiding an educated proletariat. You can stop pretending that degrading education in this country wasn't or isn't an OVERT Republican goal. Only Republicans are stupid enough to believe that it wasn't. Oh wait, maybe you aren't pretending. Question is, are you evil or stupid?
Re:"they're losers"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I guess he knows on what level the MAGAs operate.
Well, that makes sense - given that he pretty obviously operates at that level too.
That may be part of his appeal - "hey, he's not smart - but he's still rich and powerful, so maybe we can be too!"
Indeed. This is pretty much cargo-cult thinking though. Remember that Trump was born rich. An it comes with the drawback that the model these people aspire to is a rapist, a serial liar, a serial scammer, and probably a child abuser, murderer and war criminal. He also has zero loyalty to others, is uneducated and low-intelligence, is uncultivated and does not understand how to form alliances. You know, about the worst performance a human can hand in.
Still, the MAGAs probably still think they can be part of his in-group. Obviously, all he does is use them. But they do not have what it takes to see that.
Re: "they're losers"... (Score:2)
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Now he's going to try and stop the entire industry in the US because he's a pretty shitgibbon.
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Control mechanisms (well, people) failing at their responsibility is how free societies turn into totalitarianism and fascism, or, even worse, theocracies. There are a lot of historic and and more current examples.
Re:it doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if you insist on being idiots, you will always feel like victims. Nothing surprising there. But you are doing it entirely to yourselves. So zero compassion here.
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Re:it doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Dissent will not be tolerated - it will be ridiculed, shadowbanned, then canceled
Incredible how accurately this describes what Trump is doing. Canceled can mean canceling a program, taking away funding, sending away to foreign prisons, or shooting people.
Re:it doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Dissent will not be tolerated - it will be ridiculed, shadowbanned, then canceled
Incredible how accurately this describes what Trump is doing. Canceled can mean canceling a program, taking away funding, sending away to foreign prisons, or shooting people.
Yep. OTOH, Trump has a very short attention span. He's forgotten all about the wind farms. As long as the press doesn't remind him by asking him about it (because his cadre of yes men won't bring it up), the wind farms will be able to get back on track.
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seek therapy
Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
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It probably has more do to with the oil and gas producers that contributed to Trump's presidential reelection campaign. They want the message to be loud and clear... NO big solar or wind deployments that need federal approval will be approved during Trump's second term.
Re: Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:2)
Re: Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that the GP wrote "wind farms", not "windmills".
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Oh, you totally didn't write anything incorrect. You wrote wind farms and GloryWacky "corrected" your non-existent use of the term "windmills".
Re: Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
Somebody is doing large deployments of windmills? Have the Dutch on crazy?
Now, you've posted a number of times about wind turbine vs. windmill based on the idea that it is wrong to call them mills vs. turbines. Now that you mention the Dutch though, it is clear that you are referencing the windmills of Amsterdam, so this touches on important details of what a windmill actually is. So, when you think of a windmill, you probably think of something that uses wind to grind grain to make flour. However, the windmills in Amsterdam are a good example of how that is not always the case. The ones in Amsterdam (most of them, anyway, some really were for flour) were actually to drive pumps. A lot of Amsterdam is so called "reclaimed land", which uses a process of building a dike around an inundated area to form a polder, then pumping the water out.
So, this shows that we should really look at what a turbine means vs. a mill. Oxford languages says:
A machine for producing continuous power in which a wheel or rotor, typically fitted with vanes, is made to revolve by a fast-moving flow of water, steam, gas, air, or other fluid.
As for the meaning of mill, while the flour grinding definition is in there, Oxford languages also has:
a building fitted with machinery for a manufacturing process.
Other sources like Meriam-Webster have a lot of other definitions, including repetitive manufacturing devices, simply any work process, or an engine. As a verb it can mean to stir or spin or just to move around.
Anyway, some of those definitions taken together with the fact that that the term windmill has clear precedent in Amsterdam as a machine that spins with the wind to do work, it seems pretty clear that, in the context of wind power, windmill and wind turbine can be synonymous. At the very least, you will have to acknowledge that a windmill is a wind turbine because it is "a machine for producing continuous power in which a wheel or rotor ... is made to revolve by ... air...". The term mill has a lot more connotations and definitions than turbine from much, much longer usage in language.
Of course, if we want to look at etymology, we can go back to the Latin root and see that it means to grind, implying that a mill has to grind something. Except, we have the example of various kinds of mills (like windmills in Amsterdam) that don't grind anything. Then there's "grind" itself. There are plenty of meanings that don't involve turning anything into powder. Consider, for example, an organ grinder (not to be confused with putting organs into a meat grinder), who is someone who plays an automated musical instrument with a handle to turn.
Basically there's just too much history of the term windmill describing a class of devices of which an electricity-generating wind turbine is a member. Arguing for a personal idea of pedantic linguistic correctness here is probably not a winning proposition. A bit like trying to correct anyone who says Nucular instead of Nuclear if it turns out that they actually know anything about the etymology.
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They shouldn't be called turbines either. To be a turbine the moving parts should be totally enclosed - ask any ship or nuclear power engineer.
The things which stand up on land and at sea are properly impellers.
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No, it's an impeller if it's driven by some power source and causes fluid flow. If it's being driven by the fluid, it's a turbine.
Re: Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:2)
The turbine is inside. The unit as a whole is a wind energy converter (WEC)
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Some journalists started calling them windmills as a derogatory term, so some proponents adopted it. That's why you sometimes see them called windmills by people who should know better.
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Hmm. Was it journalists who started it? I'm thinking of Dr/Sir MacKay, one of MacMann's favorite authors. He wrote a self-published book claiming to be an impartial look at renewable energy but, from my reading, seems to really be a semi-subtle attempt to promote nuclear power over all. He typically referred to them as windmills as a way to insult them.
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Could have been, he was full that nonsense.
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He uses some poor logic: "half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 km per day". But you'd be use EVs, most sensibly, and the average distance travelled by car in the UK is closer to 15km per day. So given efficiency and distance, he's made the target an entire order of magnitude too great with respect to car use. Very odd.
Very odd, except of course when the goal is to craft a false narrative to drive the reader to a predetermined conclusion. You are quite right about the poor logic, but ti goes further obviously. First there's the ridiculous average distance driven per day that you noted, which is deception one. Then the fact that he has that as per person, not per driver, which is deception two. I probably should count the claim that he is being generous as another deception, but not for now. On the side of that same page,
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Exactly. The problem with wind and solar is they're too cheap.
You have a certain demand for power and you have a certain amount of power you need to bring online to generate it. You of course bring up the wind and solar because they're stupidly cheap power plants to operate, then you add nuclear and finally you add the natural gas, oil and coal plants as they're the most expensive. Meanwhile, you raise the price of power to cope with the fact the added electricity load is costing you more and more money, s
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I guess some people prefer dirty, loud, ugly coal plants, to something without odor.
Re: Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:1)
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If democrats like something then he’s against it. Simple as that.
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Don Q-uixote [reddit.com]
Re:Who uses windmills anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone built a windfarm visible from one of his golf courses. He opposed it but lost. So now whenever he golfs there he's forced to look at evidence that someone told him no.
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Yes, he so loves the natural beauty of the area you see. That's why he opposes anything that destroys the natural beauty of the area and carefully preserved the dunes... Oh, wait, no he didn't. He promised to preserve them and then destroyed them anyway.
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Well, he built a golf course. Golf courses are about as much natural beauty as skyscrapers, something else that New York developers like to build.
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Well, they're basically big lawns and, like many lawns, they're basically toxic wastelands.
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probably because wind produce too much and too cheap so it compete with other energy producers who gave money for his campain...
That assole will appeal this all the way to (Score:3, Interesting)
the Supreme Court. And if that doesn't work, he'll use even more executive orders to try and thwart it/s
Part of the asshole's plan is to gum up the courts wit so many challenged EO's that the final rulings by the supreme court will be years if not decades away.
The lawyers on both sides will be eating high on the hog, while the taxpayers foot the bill.
Yet Another Preliminary Injunction (Score:2)
American politics meets American media. Team Blue wins then Team Red wins, and both claim victory.
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I bet that must have sounded smart in your head.
Donald J. (Score:3)
US wind power (Score:1)
It is frightening to see the orange perils of wind power in the US, while in Europe, we are massively expanding wind power generation.
In Germany, they now start to engineer wind power generators in the efficient range of 300m+
Gicon builds in Schipkau Brandenburg a wind generator with 365 meters (1200ft) https://www.gicon.de/gicon_hoe... [gicon.de]
Wind power is simply the most cheap energy supply.
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