Cart, J. (2023, October 16). ‘A massive enterprise’: California’s offshore wind farms are on a fast track.

Retrieved January 26, 2024 from, 

https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/10/california-offshore-wind-humboldt/

 

The push for a 100% renewable energy power grid in California has pushed them to become more ambitious in ways to attain this renewable energy. California is planning to push out offshore windmill farms, but unlike those seen off the coast of Rhode Island and China, these windmill farms will be far off the California coast in deep waters. This is because the greatest winds occur far off the California coast before they converge inland. California sees the “offshore wind farms producing 25 gigawatts of electricity by 2045, powering 25 million homes and providing about 13% of the power supply.” However because of the distance from the mainland, “miles of undersea transmission lines, expanded ports, new or upgraded onshore substations and electrical distribution networks.” Although pushing for renewable sources, California will have to burn through fossil fuels to make it happen when producing these farms, a hit they are willing to take for the long term future. 

I’m interested in seeing how far offshore windmill farms will affect our power sources. I’ve seen offshore wind farms before, but this farm seems to be a lot different than the rest. I can see it being a success, however. Although being far offshore I think given the infrastructure that will have to be produced, it will be able to work swiftly. What worried me though is how large-scale this project can be if new infrastructure is needed when applying these windmill farms to places other than Humbolt, where they are going right now. Ultimately the use of windmill farms will give us better renewable energy sources, however, I think there may be a scalability issue. I’m interested in seeing how this pans out in the future.