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City of Morro Bay Approves Memo With Wind Power Company – 1000 MW Project Envisioned

October 14,2105-

December 10 Public Meeting Planned

Screen Shot 2015-10-14 at 3.00.45 PM

This week the City of Morro Bay approved a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with a Seattle-base firm, Trident Winds LLC, regards a possible 1000 megawatt wind turbine project some 15 miles offshore for the production of electricity.

Unlike other proposals for floating wave power turbines – the wind turbines rise as much as 400ft over the ocean. Europe has plenty of ocean-based wind power including 4MW of floating wind power. Unlike fixed wind projects in the ocean there is no piling or weather concerns.

In their presentation to the city, Trident officials emphasized the renewable energy project will be designed to meet California demand by 2025 and it will be years in development. Construction could start by 2023 at a site north of Pt Estero  north of Cayucos in water 1500 deep.

The city says a December 10 public meeting on the project will be held at a location to be announced.

Key issues discussed at the October 13 city council meeting include the white turbines should be barley visible from the shore with the company providing a photo of what they say it will look like.Screen Shot 2015-10-14 at 2.49.47 PM Pictured are – on left – how it would look to the naked eye and on right – how it would looked zoomed in 4X.

In terms of size the procjt is almost as much capacity as one of the two units at Diablo, and larger than the 600MW Morro Bay plant capacity.

Other point made:

– Floating  offshore  wind  is  now  proven  and  a  maturing  technology
– A  number  of  technology  options  will  be  available  for  offshore  wind  projects  in  deep  water  in  the  post  2025  time frame
– WindFloat  is  the  current  leading  technology,  with  existing  demonstration  plant  and  additional  capacity  under construction. That technology is owned by Principle Power that includes at least one key official with Trident.
– Workforce- All commissioning activity  completed  onshore  –  onshore  labor  rates  infrastructure.
– Reduced weather dependence  – everyone  comes  to  work  every day in shipyard

Vacant Morro Bay Plant Key Issue

The Morro Bay city staff report said under the agreement the municipality makes no commitments but allows a project study to move forward that could connect some 100 wind turbines to the vacant Morro Bay power plant. The plant has not operated since January 2013.

The city staff report notes that “The City has experienced significant negative economic impacts as a result of expired MBPP operational agreements, including, but not limited to, because a vacant power plant on the City’s waterfront is a visual and economic detriment to the future growth and prosperity of the City. Since the closure of the MBPP, various parties have suggested site re-use concepts to the City.”

“Staff and Trident understand the necessity to evaluate and address potential impacts to the marine ecosystem, specifically, water quality and migratory and resident species of concern, as well as other issues, such as visual resources, recreational opportunities, navigable channels, cultural resources and the fishing industry for any proposed re-use of the MBPP. It is also well known, California has a public policy to significantly increase the use of renewable power in the State and to significantly decrease the emission of carbon in the power, industrial and transportation sectors of the California economy.”

Green Energy vs Birds?

Advocates say the pressures of climate change and the need to transition to clean energy, projects like this one are going to be critical to getting off of fossil fuels.
Others like  Lynda Merrill who commented to the city this week argue the “toll for wildlife is just too great” suggesting off shore wind turbines kill “thousands of birds every year.”
Trident would connect export cables from the turbines located 15 miles offshore through outfall pipeline at Morro Rock to the Morro Bay Power Plant switchyard where it would connect to the grid. An underground pipe connects the two sites.

Trident has months of tough negotiations and permit applications to go through with local,county,state and federal authorities as well as interest groups. Key to the plan would be the cooperation of Dynegy who wants to sell the idled power plant. PG&E needs to agree to the idea too.

The Morro Bay-Trident memo has no specific time-period during which the parties are agreeing to cooperate but provides the City can determine, at any time, to discontinue operations under the MOC.

“ The MOC expressly states the City “will,subject to its own rules and regulations and applicable law, and following significant public review and participation, cooperate with Trident to the extent it deems reasonable and in the public interest.” Therefore, at any time the City Council decides the public interest would be better served by no longer cooperating with Trident, the City has the right to withdraw that cooperation.”
For now, the city calls the potential project “environmentally and commercial and recreational fishing industry friendly.” In the past the city and the fishing industry in Morro Bay have found fault with all wave power project proposals that nevertheless, are still pending through FERC, the federal energy agency. These competing plans also hope to use the power plant’s grid connection in Morro Bay.

Some environmental advocates are expected to object to the wind power plan citing bird deaths but supporters counter that bird activity 15 miles off the coast is less than near-shore.

Affiliate Looks to Do Same In Oregon

An affiliate of Trident – Principle Power whose founder is part of Trident  and are working to use the same technology off the Oregon coast. According to news reports ” The Seattle-based company Principle Power needs a guaranteed stream of money from Oregon ratepayers to move forward with the pilot project known as WindFloat, which could have up to five wind turbines as tall as the Seattle Space Needle and cover as much as 15 square miles in the deep ocean off Coos Bay.

A bill in the Oregon Legislature this year would have required investor-owned utilities to purchase power from the WindFloat project, but the legislation died amid opposition by utilities, a consumer group and industrial businesses. They argued that electricity from offshore wind costs much more than from onshore wind. The commercial fishing and processing industries also opposed the bill and continue to raise concerns about the project.”

Atlantic Ocean Wind Projects

A key hurdle  for the Morro Bay project will be to get approval for a lease of federal waters from at federal agency-  BOEM. Coming next month Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Abigail Ross Hopper  will announce lease agreements on 343,833 acres offshore New Jersey for commercial wind energy development in a competitive lease sale on November 9, 2015.
If fully developed, the New Jersey Wind Energy Area could support at least 3,400 megawatts of commercial wind generation, enough to power an estimated 1.2 million homes, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

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