Oil fields are now using wind power as supplemental energy to extract petroleum. Doyon, Limited has installed two 100-kilowatt wind turbines on the Doyon Drilling pad in Deadhorse.
The turbines are intended to provide supplemental power to Doyon Drilling’s warehouse and will assist in offsetting their electricity usage.
Based on wind data history in the area, it estimates an average daily output of 1,440 kilowatt-hours from both wind turbines. This is estimated to be equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from 100 gallons of diesel consumed, the Native-owned company said. It did not say how long it would take to recover the cost of the wind turbine and the installation, but it is a first in Alaska’s Arctic oil fields.
“This project is the first of its kind on the North Slope,” said Andrew J. Honea, Doyon Drilling President and General Manager. “I’m proud that Doyon Drilling is part of this monumental milestone.”
It’s wonderful to see this project come to life,” said Tanya Kaquatosh, Doyon, Limited Senior Vice President of Administration. “The wind turbine project is part of Doyon’s sustainability initiative and aligns directly with our corporate value of long-term sustainability.”
I’m sure we the Tax Payer paid at least twice for them. Can’t fix stupid…..
Talk about “Coal to Newcastle.“ It seems stupid to me to put a wind generator in a place e power am be produced for pennies with waist NaturalGas and locally produced Diesel fuel.
Sitting on top of the largest oilfield in North America and they install windmills. Idiocy in the name of wokeness seems to know no bounds.
The enormous amount of flare-off gas alone could power most of Alaska. They must be trying only to display their environmental temperament. As Paul stated, idiocy stands tall in Alaska.
This is part of the Bidenomics Inflation Reduction nonsense. Current subsidy is about 30% of installed cost there’s a credit per kW for a decade or so as well.
If a native company is doing it there’s zero probability they’re doing it for greenhouse gasses; it’s because the tax and installation incentives pencil.
This is BS, meant to appease woke shareholders. Nothing more.
Prove me wrong.
Whether they will recover the cost at all will depend entirely how much they have to spend on maintenance and/or replacement. I am not holding my breath.
I’m curious about that myself. As windy as it is up there, I can see the possibility.
But considering wind farms in Texas froze solid, it doesn’t bode well for Deadhorse.
The black blades are supposed to help with keeping ice formation low by using solar radiation to heat the blades and melt the ice or keep it from freezingto begin with. I’m not sure how that works when the wind turbine is located in a place that gets no sun for months.
Yeah, payback on that thing never happens without the government subsidy.
That shows those environmentalist activists. Heheheh. Who says green energy source can’t coexist with petroleum, metals, and gas. Key word is Supplemental, another energy source, a co worker, so its diesel co worker can have breaks.
The diesel “coworker” will not have any breaks.
Wind, even in Deadhorse, is not stable enough to prevent brownouts/blackouts. So, they will run the generators at full capacity pretty much all the time. If they did not, there would be numerous times during the day that power delivery will fluctuate beyond the point their equipment can tolerate.
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That is the fallacy of wind and solar energy. A belief that the conventional generation of power can be switched on and off at a whim. It cannot. The larger the generator, the longer period of time required to get back up to full capacity.
Unless Doyon can tolerate having their pumps and control systems turning off, or running at reduced capacity throughout the day, they will leave the generators running at full speed.
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This is nothing but a publicity stunt.
If there isn’t a load on it, it won’t run at full speed.
Correct.
However, when does an oil production facility not have a load?
Additionally for that matter, when does a city not have a load?
.
Sure, your little Honda for your RV stops running when you do not need it, but anything supporting any kind of industry runs providing 100% of the required load, plus a margin to avoid black/brownouts.
That’s not how it works, at all.
Taxpayers subsided green BS. Nothing more.
They are not cost effective.
Wind energy there, as a supplement, makes sense.
Only if it is feed non-essential systems.
Doyon will not be able to cut back on their generator use without the danger of having pumps shut down, or oil flow stopped.
However, if these turbines are used exclusively for things like lights in the housing facilities, that is different.
Not really, those things will be trashed inside of a year. They will get packed with blowing snow, just like everything else, then ice, just like everything else, then the ice will break them from the inside out…..just like everything else. We can’t even keep our buildings in one piece up here how the hell are we going to take of these? Also it’s cold enough we don’t need two big ass fans blowing.
We had 3 of those big ones at Gambell. Great location for them
I hear they put some in Perryville too.
And, if the lights dim in Gambell, the folks gripe, but life goes on.
Anything in Gambell (Perryville too) that requires steady power has its own generator.
All well and good but subsidized by us, the taxpayers.
Of course. That’s what taxes do. By rockets and concrete etc.
And, we need to stop buying rockets and concrete with Federal dollars. States and municipalities need to take that burden on. The FHWA and NASA have long since ceased to have a valid reason to exist.
But, a good leftist will always side with larger government, taking more taxes, and having more control over the states, cities, and individuals.
This is so stupid. Anyone that’s worked on the Slope can attest to the fact that the power is produced by a very large NATURAL GAS plant utilizing the gas that’s a byproduct of oil production. Most of the power used there isn’t “sold” to the end users either. These turbines were installed to comply with our idiotic government and their green mandates, all to avoid costly fines (or permits if you will) which is the truth to “Doyon’s sustainability initiative”.
Makes no sense.
Boondoggle of the greatest magnitude. Wind turbines are marginally viable only because they are taxpayer subsidized (tax credits). They suffer far more frequent breakdowns than gas turbine generators, and backup power must still be provided for windless days – which occur in Deadhorse during the very coldest days of winter. One could point out the resourcing, manufacturing, and lifespan environmental costs of wind turbines, but Doyon is proud of this idiocy, and there it stands.
Utilizing the natural gas in more ways would be a better plan, instead of just keeping the torches lit.
There appears to be no mention of bird strike mitigation. It’s not a problem now, but it will be next spring.
Not just birds, but aircraft trying to navigate in the commonly low visibility famous in the area. They should be painted international orange so they can be spotted just before going through your windshield.
Wind energy DOES make sense but the problems with wind turbines regarding maintenance and overspeed braking system failures puts this particular type of generators on the losing end financially except for all the tax incentives in the form of credits and other $$$$$ incentives which in essence costs the taxpayers much more than the benefit of the actual electricity produced makes those killowatts very expensive
Lets just give it time and when the real costs of operating and maintaining a useful life expectancy of these costly generators pencils out we will see them everywhere or just at the photo op site next to the big “Welcome to Deadhorse” sign.
It is similar to the big EV trip they made to Deadhorse with electric vehicle fleet of Tesla’s Nissan Leafs and Chevy Sparks last summer.
That particular voyage costed tens of thousands to truck in and “temporary” installment of the required charging stations at various pump stations along the way just so the Sparks and Leafs owners could say they drove to the Arctic Ocean although they were able to carry at least some of the food needed for the drivers to make the loooong trip (they read some great books about global warming while recharging)…. money well spent i guess…
Makes about as much sense as bringing sand to the beach!
…….but it gets them more government handouts from Joe Biden.
Aren’t these just plain old-fashioned tax credit schemes?…Doyon installs two tax credit generating turbines at Deadhorse
Many members of the Biden Administration have visited Alaska recently and visited with the native corporations. I expect to see more of these popping up all over. Lots of money flowing in now with the skim making many in the club rich.
Gambells 3, 100 kw generators make 25 percent of the villages electricity. If it can work there, it can anywhere.
No, they do not.
What they do is spin, and dump their power into load banks because the power plant providing the “75%” of the rest of the electricity cannot vary production quickly enough to avoid outages.
And, anything in Gambell that is critical has its own generator, either main or backup depending on how important the service is.
A wind turbine costs between $5,000-$8,000 per kW to install, I’d guess these cost quite a bit more than $8,000 per kW but even at $8,000 you are looking at $1,600,000.00. If, and it’s a big if, they are able to produce the daily 1,440 kWh and the average price per kWh on the North Slope is about $0.50 it would take 6 years to break even on just the purchase price and installation at $8,000 per kW. It wouldn’t surprise me if the purchase price and installation for these two wind turbines was way more than $3,000,000.00 and if that’s the case you are getting to over a decade for the break even point and that doesn’t include any maintenance or repairs or special training or flying someone in to do the maintenance and repairs.
But they are a private company that appears to know that blowing a few million for a photo op just might pay off, or it already has.
Oh come on now Doyon! Don’t play the game. I thought you guys were on to Biden when you pulled out of the AFN?
That’s enough power to run one small camp. Maybe when the wind is blowing. LMAO
+100
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