Talk:Block Island Wind Farm

Coordinate error

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According to sources Block Island Wind Farm is located in Rhode Island state waters about 2.5 nautical miles southeast of Block Island.Djflem (talk) 06:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

From eyeballing maps like the one near the bottom of this page (click on map to enlarge), I've changed the coordinates to—vaguely—correspond to the location of the proposed wind farm. When the thing actually gets built, perhaps the coordinates can be refined somewhat. I agree that the coordinates of the island itself are unsatisfactory for this article. Deor (talk) 12:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Performance (in terms of power generation trends and duty cycle) Section obviously needed

This thing is supposed to produce power. How much power does it really produce? In fact, it is not at all clear what the rating, in MW, means, since this installation does not operate all the time, or even predictably. It is obvious that this article needs some kind of evaluation of the average power and its variation. It would be a wonderful service to provide a 12 month bar graph of average power, and a 24 hour bar graph of average power vs. hour of the day. There is currently a section called operation, which really only covers how it does in storms. I propose that be re-named to "extreme weather performance".

Everyone who buys even the meanest little home solar installation has their own fancy system to monitor power. However, I cannot find a web page for the power plant itself. It would be great, if there was such a thing, to provide a link; perhaps there is some real-time monitor there.

Finally, sadly, at the date I wrote this, there appears an article suggesting it is down for maintenance: https://www.theday.com/article/20210807/NWS05/210809578 --192.184.155.113 (talk) 18:10, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

"In five of the six years it's been operational, the wind farm has produced more than 100,000 megawatt-hours of electricity, or enough power for about 17,000 homes, according to data provided to the state Public Utilities Commission by Rhode Island Energy, the utility that signed a long-term contract to buy the power.

"Production peaked in 2020, with about 120,000 MWh with the wind farm running at about at 46% capacity – a figure that measures actual production compared to the theoretical maximum production over a given period of time.

"Because renewable energy is an intermittent power source – with generation occurring only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining – capacity factors for solar and wind farms are lower than those for conventional power plants that can operate around the clock as long as they have fossil fuels to burn.

"Land-based wind farms in southern New England have capacity factors of anywhere between 20% and 30%, and solar farms in the region average between 10% and 20%. When the Block Island Wind Farm won approval in 2010, the expectation was that it would operate at around 40% capacity, because winds offshore are more consistent than those on land, and would generate about 100,000 MWh a year."

[...]

"The only year so far in which the project has dipped below either of those numbers was 2021, when the turbines were shut down over the summer for maintenance and stayed down for longer than usual to allow inspections after problems arose in Europe with the same model of turbine manufactured by General Electric.

[...]

"All told, in 2021, the wind farm produced 83,000 MWh for a capacity factor of 32% Last year [2022], production bounced back up again to 110,000 MWh and the capacity factor climbed to 42%."

Source: https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/environment/2023/05/18/is-the-block-island-wind-farm-generating-electricity-what-to-know-about-ri-offshore-wind-farm/70227020007/ 198.7.237.52 (talk) 19:06, 14 July 2025 (UTC)