It’s become a biannual tradition.

Since 2021, when North Carolina adopted a law requiring Duke Energy to zero out its carbon pollution, advocates have spent every other year poring over the company’s plans for supplying this state of 11 million with clean electricity. 

As of late last month, the first phase of the new ritual is now complete: citizens turned out by the hundreds to public hearings around the state and submitted written comments; and dozens of organizations, businesses, and large customers filed testimony to the state’s Utilities Commission, charged with approving or amending Duke’s plan by year’s end.  

A review of these comments shows clear dissatisfaction with Duke’s plan, which critics say is too reliant on gas and unproven technologies and too dismissive of resources like solar and battery storage.  

But there are also a few powerful institutions pulling in the opposite direction. And their voices could grow louder in the coming months, as the state enters the next phase of in-person, expert witness hearings. 

The law requires Duke to cut its carbon pollution by 70% by 2030 and at least 95% by midcentury, in line with scientists’ recommendations for avoiding catastrophic global warming. The statute directs regulators on the Utilities Commission to develop a plan to make that happen and to update the blueprint every two years.

Even as the popular, bipartisan measure moved through the legislative process, some critics worried it gave too much deference to Duke and did not make clear that regulators — not the utility — would chart the state’s path to a decarbonized electricity sector.

Still, after Duke in 2022 issued its first Carbon Plan proposal — a document covering hundreds of pages and including four different pathways for achieving net zero — a host of outside stakeholders put forward their own plans for the commission to mull, hoping the panel would pick and choose from them or even craft its own blueprint.

But in the end, after months upon months of expert hearings, public input, and thousands of pages of written testimony, the commission adopted Duke’s plan with few edits. 

This first Carbon Plan order was largely nonbinding. But after regulators sided with Duke on virtually every major issue — from how much the company should drive energy efficiency to how much solar it can connect annually to the grid — advocates this year are taking a slightly different tack. 

Rather than devise their own painstaking models to compete with Duke and its army of lawyers, engineers, and other experts, this time most organizations are starting with the company’s portfolios and critiquing key elements.

‘Most reasonable, least cost, least risk plan’

As in the lead up to the first Carbon Plan, this year Duke has proposed multiple routes to zero carbon by midcentury, with one clear preference. Offered in January after predicting a steep rise in electricity demand, that pathway is to add over 22 gigawatts of renewable energy and battery storage in the next decade, including from ocean-based wind turbines.

In the same time frame, the company wants to shutter most of its coal plants and add nearly 9 gigawatts of new gas plants, nearly three times the immediate build-out it proffered two years ago and one of the largest such proposals in the country. It also envisions two small nuclear plants of 300 megawatts each, about a seventh the size of the state’s largest nuclear plant outside Charlotte.

The company seeks to exploit exceptions in the state’s law to achieve a 70% cut in carbon emissions by 2035 instead of 2030. And while its plans to zero out its pollution are vague, they rest partially on building more nuclear reactors by 2050 and fueling any remaining gas plants with hydrogen – a technology still under development.

Still, Duke’s focus is on the immediate term. In its January filing, it sought support for “pursuing near-term actions that align with [its preferred pathway] as the most reasonable, least cost, least risk plan to reliably transition the system and prudently plan for the needs of…customers at this time.”

‘Imperative that the 2030 target be met’ 

Numerous commenters questioned that assertion, including the company’s premise that ratcheting down emissions more slowly than the law prescribes presents a “lower execution risk.” 

Perhaps most notably, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, a group of 400 major corporations from a range of sectors with their own sustainability targets, argued forcefully against delaying the 2030 target. 

“The ability of [our] members that are Duke customers to meet their clean energy commitments depends in large part on how clean Duke’s resource mix is,” the association’s Kyle Davis said in written testimony. He went on to say regulators should “only” approve a near-term plan that would allow Duke to cut its pollution 70% by decade’s end. 

Similarly, a group of local government Duke customers with climate goals, including major cities Raleigh and Greensboro and small college towns Boone and Davidson, noted that Duke’s energy mix would dictate whether they could meet their aims.

“Due to the urgency of the climate crisis and the implications to the health and well-being of the constituents we serve,” the cities and counties wrote, “it is imperative that the 2030 target be met in the timelines specified in [the law.]”

Testifying for the office of the Attorney General Josh Stein, expert witness Edward Burgess noted that the commission has not yet abandoned the 2030 deadline and that, according to the law, the 70% cut could only slip past 2032 under “very specific conditions” that have not been met.

Regulators haven’t authorized a nuclear or wind project that has been delayed beyond Duke’s control, he asserted, and a delay wasn’t necessary to maintain the “adequacy and reliability of the existing grid.”

Recognizing Duke’s latest increased demand projections, Burgess urged commissioners to “set a clear directive for Duke to achieve the Interim Target by no later than 2032.” Otherwise, said the witness for the attorney general, the public interest would be harmed by the “increase [in] the cumulative tons of CO2 emitted, which would remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.”

‘Arbitrary limits on battery and solar’

The process by which Duke maps its generation plans over the next decade is complex and time intensive. But it’s aided by a computer modeling program that weighs various factors including costs to produce an optimal generation mix.

This method produces more solar and battery storage each year than Duke thinks is possible or appropriate to connect to the grid, so the company imposes manual limits on the computer program. Critics call that step unnecessary and damaging to the project of curbing carbon emissions in a least-cost manner. 

“Solar [photovoltaic] is the cheapest source of carbon-free electrons on the grid now and for the foreseeable future,” testified expert witness John Michael Hagerty on behalf of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association. “All things being equal, the more generation… that Duke can get from solar PV instead of other resources, the cheaper it will be for Duke to comply with carbon reduction targets.”

Michael Goggin, an expert witness for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association and clean energy groups represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, analyzed other grid operators around the country and estimated that Duke could connect around 4 gigawatts of solar and storage annually, compared to the upper limit of 2.8 gigawatts suggested by the utility.

“Duke’s arbitrary limits on solar and battery interconnection should be greatly increased if not eliminated,” Goggin wrote. “These limits do not reflect reality, and there are many potential solutions to the interconnection challenges Duke claims in its attempt to justify these limits.” 

Pleading for more offshore wind

While numerous commenters were happy to see Duke move much more ambitiously toward offshore wind than it did two years ago, they noted the utility’s projected 2.4 gigawatts — enough to power about a million homes — fell significantly short of the near-term potential in ocean wind areas off the state’s coast. 

“The Carolina Long Bay projects have the potential to reach more than 2 gigawatts, and the Kitty Hawk Projects have the potential to reach nearly 3.5 gigawatts,” two employees of wind company Avangrid testified. “Therefore, there is additional offshore wind resource beyond the Preferred Portfolio request available to North Carolina.”

The state’s Department of Commerce has taken a keen interest in offshore wind because of its vast potential for economic development. Jennifer Mundt, an assistant secretary at the Department, implored regulators and Duke to “set a path forward… that directs the deployment of at least 6.0 gigawatts of offshore wind by the mid-2030s.” 

Such development is achievable with the Carolina Long Bay and Kitty Hawk areas, she said, and “will unlock billions in capital expenditures and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs for North Carolinians, and boost Duke towards its mandate to achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century – a true win-win-win scenario.”

A pair of experts testifying for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association noted that Duke would benefit from being a “second mover” on offshore wind in the United States: it could learn from the many other projects underway on the Eastern seaboard without putting ratepayers at risk. 

In contrast, John O’Brien and Philip Moor warned that for small modular nuclear reactors, “it is unclear when the Companies will be a second mover… the only approved project design…has been cancelled, and the closest designs… are under development by TerraPower and the Tennessee Valley Authority.”

Skepticism of new gas and ‘advanced’ nuclear

Indeed, while most clean energy advocates believe large, existing, emissions-free nuclear power plants can play a vital role in curbing carbon pollution, several say Duke’s near-term pursuit of as-yet unproven small modular reactors over more readily available alternatives is a mistake.

“Given the long lead-times, nuclear experts have found that [small modular reactors] will do nothing to address climate change, as the technology is too little, too late,” Grant Smith, senior energy policy advisor with Environmental Working Group, testified on behalf of his group, Durham nonprofit NC WARN, and others.

Numerous stakeholders criticized Duke’s plan to build 10 new gas plants in the next decade, half of which would be large baseload plants forced by new federal rules to run 40% of the time or less. Not only would Duke customers be on the hook for these underutilized plants, critics argued, they’d also be subject to erratic fuel prices.

“In North Carolina, this volatility was at the heart of hundreds of millions of dollars of recent fuel cost increases approved by the commission,” expert witness Evan Hansen testified on behalf of Appalachian Voices. “The Companies’ proposed aggressive build-out of natural gas-fired power plants will only increase their exposure, and their ratepayers’ exposure, to the future volatility of natural gas prices.”

The company’s strategy of converting gas plants to run on hydrogen molecules separated from other compounds as late as 2049 also strains credulity for some. 

“Duke’s general plan to build new natural gas-firing facilities and then transition those facilities to 100% hydrogen-firing faces significant technical uncertainty, infrastructure hurdles and costs,” testified William McAleb for the Environmental Defense Fund. The plants, he said, “are not necessary to maintain grid reliability, may never be co-fired with hydrogen, and will likely raise rates.”

The Clean Energy Buyers Association also suggested that Duke’s plan to supply its members with gas-fired electricity could backfire, causing the state to lose economic development projects and the utility to lose new customers.

“Some of the new load that Duke is forecasting may not materialize if Duke increases the carbon intensity of its resource mix as it has proposed to do in this docket, since some of the customers bringing new load… have clean energy targets,” the association’s Davis wrote. 

If that happens, he said, “and Duke overbuilds with fossil fuel capacity, it would result in higher costs for existing customers and make it more difficult for existing customers to meet their sustainability targets.”

Amid all this criticism, support for Duke’s approach stood out, especially where the timeline is concerned.

Testifying for the Carolina Industrial Group for Fair Industrial Rates, a powerful consortium of manufacturers and other large Duke customers, Brian Collins asserted, “there is increased cost and risk in reliably meeting the interim 70% target by 2030. As a result, I recommend that the Commission not require Duke to meet the 70% emission reductions target by 2030.”

Public Staff, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate, believes that compliance with the interim pollution cut is possible by 2034 but not before. And the state’s 26 electric cooperatives, which buy electricity wholesale from Duke, expressed some concern about the speed of transmission upgrades necessary to add renewable energy to the grid fast enough. 

A technical conference is scheduled for next week in Raleigh, and what is likely to be weeks of expert-witness hearings begin July 22.

Groups urge N.C. regulators to push Duke Energy on solar and wind, pump the brakes on new gas is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Some environmental advocates are striking a new tone as they urge skeptical neighbors to see the larger climate benefits of a proposed port that would help build future offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Maine. 

The fast-warming area of the North Atlantic is thought to have one of the world’s best wind resources in its deeper waters. Tapping into this huge renewable energy potential will likely require massive floating turbines, with a deepwater port to help construct and assemble them before they’re towed out to sea. 

A state announcement on one of two potential port sites in the small Midcoast town of Searsport is expected in the coming weeks. Amid a record spate of destructive extreme weather events, conservation groups are stepping up calls for the public to back some version of the port project for the climate’s sake.

“The number one best thing to do for the environment is to get turbines in the water and start generating renewable energy,” said Nick Lund, the advocacy and outreach manager for Maine Audubon. “This is a larger question than just Searsport, because it really does affect all of us.” 

Saying ‘yes’ to development

Offshore wind is crucial to Maine’s goals for reducing its carbon emissions, Lund said, and offers a unique chance for the state to contribute its resources to the national and global fight against climate change. 

Maine Audubon, which predates and is separate from the National Audubon Society, hopes to reframe the debate around the port and offshore wind in general as more than a “lesser of two evils,” he said. 

“This type of turbine is not something that can be built elsewhere,” Lund said. “This is a real opportunity to generate a ton of energy completely locally. Other states, other countries don’t have this opportunity.”

Maine depends more on carbon-intensive fuel oil for home heating than any other state, importing it largely from Texas, Louisiana and Canada, according to federal data. The state has encouraged residents to switch to electric heat pumps and hopes to get 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

But a boom in local solar projects has raised land-use concerns, and residents have repeatedly pushed back on transmission lines planned to bring Canadian hydropower or land-based wind from Northern Maine onto the regional grid. Some Maine fishing groups also oppose offshore wind development.

Lund said Maine Audubon is trying to turn toward saying “yes” rather than “no” to projects with a net benefit for the climate. The group has spent years developing habitat-minded siting guidance for solar developers, and executive director Andy Beahm wrote a newspaper commentary in 2023 urging support for offshore wind and calling climate change “the No. 1 threat to Maine wildlife and habitat.”

Around the same time, the National Audubon Society put out a report supporting transmission build-out for climate reasons despite potential impacts to birds. Environmentalist Bill McKibben also wrote that summer that “some NIMBY (not in my backyard) passion will need to be replaced by some YIMBY (yes in my backyard) enthusiasm — or at least some acquiescence” in order to fight the climate crisis equitably. 

In an interview soon after his commentary was published, Beahm acknowledged that localized energy development may feel new to many Mainers: “Maine is highly dependent on others for our energy,” he said. “As a consequence, we haven’t had to see a lot of the power infrastructure from our communities.” 

But his group and others are increasingly arguing that this needs to change. If Maine can’t tap into its offshore wind potential, it could see far more land used for solar, Lund said — or could help drive fossil fuel growth in already overburdened environmental justice areas of Appalachia and the Gulf South. 

“If we say no to everything here,” Lund said, “someone else, someone with less power — their land is being developed.” 

Few options for necessary site

It will take a rare kind of port to help build and deploy turbine assemblies that are expected to be taller than the Washington Monument, with blades and installation vessels more than 400 feet long, according to a 2021 port feasibility study by the state Department of Transportation. 

“Those locations in Searsport are, by far, the sort of best available — certainly in Maine and in New England,” Lund said. “Without a deepwater port, we’re simply not going to have floating offshore wind in the time that we need.” 

The state has zeroed in on two potential wind port sites in Searsport: Mack Point, a piece of shoreline that now partly houses a Sprague Energy oil and cargo terminal; and Sears Island, a state-owned conservation area popular for birding and outdoor recreation.

Sears Island is one of the largest undeveloped islands in Maine, managed by a 2009 conservation easement that set about a third of its area aside for a potential future port. The island was unsuccessfully eyed for a nuclear plant, a coal plant, a container port and an LNG terminal in decades past, according to a state committee that overcame “years of acrimony and controversy” to negotiate the easement.

The 2021 study listed Sears Island as a preferable wind port site, partly because building one at Mack Point would require costly dredging. But some Mainers have pushed back hard against the idea of this use for part of DOT’s Sears Island set-aside, with officials predicting protest “sleep-ins” if they go this route.

A state working group has spent more than a year considering ways to minimize Mack Point’s potential cost and dredging issues — with buy-in from the site’s current owner, Sprague — and recent editorials in Maine newspapers have supported it as a better choice over Sears Island.

“Locating the offshore wind port at Mack Point consolidates industry in a single location and removes unused physical remnants of outdated energy production that offshore wind intends to replace with clean, renewable, more sustainable energy production,” Sierra Club Maine director Pete Nichols wrote in the Portland Press Herald on Jan. 18.

Lund said Maine Audubon agrees that Mack Point is the preferable site, and that choosing it could help the state avoid costly legal challenges. “And,” he said, “I’m better with delay than I am with not getting it built at all — that’s really the worst outcome.” 

He said his group is most interested in seeing the project move forward, and in working to mitigate and offset any environmental impacts wherever it’s located.

Maine environmental groups urge support for proposed offshore wind port ahead of siting decision is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A group of utilities that once went big on building transmission is now going small to open bottlenecks and move more wind power from western Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Grid North Partners, which includes 10 investor- and consumer-owned utilities, will spend roughly $130 million for 19 transmission upgrades to improve access to wind energy and reduce grid congestion.

Many of its members, including Xcel Energy, Minnesota Power and Great River Energy, are also involved in much larger transmission projects through the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which manages the grid in the central portion of the country.

The utility partnership came together in 2004 to begin planning additional transmission lines to tap wind generation in the state’s western regions and the Dakotas. The CapX2020 initiative, as it came to be called, developed the largest transmission project in the Upper Midwest in more than 40 years.

Between 2010 and 2017, CapX2020 spent $2 billion on five projects that created more than 800 miles of new transmission lines. The initiative interconnected 3,600 megawatts of wind energy, enough to power 1.5 million homes annually.

The planning for CapX2020 took place before MISO began extensively planning regional transmission lines. MISO eventually incorporated CapX2020 into a portfolio of projects that decade, a precursor to a current batch of projects announced this year known as “Tranche 1,” two of which involve Great River Energy. 

Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance, said the Grid North projects serve a different purpose. Rather than add a huge volume of new capacity, the projects will create “a bridge until we get the new large transmission lines in place” and create enough capacity to allow utilities to continue adding solar and wind.

Utilities involved seek to “use the existing grid we have better,” she said. “You’ve got a spectrum of smaller things you could do quickly, that are not going to solve your whole problem, but they’re going to help and they’re going to be quick.”

Unlike bigger projects, which will take years, Grid North Partners said the upgrades will be completed over the next three years and be finished by the end of 2026. The partnership of the state’s major utilities and cooperatives includes Xcel, Great River Energy, Minnesota Power, Otter Tail Power, Dairyland Power Cooperative, Missouri River Energy Services, Rochester Public Utilities, Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency, Central Municipal Power Agency and WPPI Energy.

Matthew Ellis, Great River Energy’s manager of transmission strategy and development, said big transmission projects take eight to 10 years to build. The generation and transmission cooperative is involved in six Grid North Partners projects in collaboration with other members.

“The goal of this effort was to identify what can be done incrementally to mitigate congestion within the next two to three years,” he said.

Congestion blocks the transmission of clean energy generation and has caused the growing problem of wind curtailment in western Minnesota. The projects will allow “cost generation, like wind and solar, to have better access to the transmission grid,” he said. “The transmission grid is all interconnected. What these projects directly do is allow better access for clean energy resources.”

Grid North Partners conducted the research to determine the location of transmission bottlenecks. Ellis said the experience is a bit like looking at traffic maps and where congestion occurs at different times and places. Electricity from wind and solar generators slows at sites in different parts of the state, he said.

Fixing one part of the grid to reduce congestion sometimes means just adding to another location. “One of the advantages of Grid North Partners is that, by having different utilities partnering up, we can mitigate those downstream impacts,” Ellis said. “We can get a lot more bang for our buck and much more synergy.”

Ellis said the transmission upgrades mainly focus on replacing old equipment, not on adding lines or new transmission towers. Instead, newer technology allowing them to operate more efficiently will be installed. Grid North Partners said in a news release the project will pay for itself.

Upfront costs will be paid for by the utilities that will benefit from them. In some projects, several utilities will split costs; in others, the line and work will be owned by one of the partners, Ellis said. The transmission lines affected by the projects span in length from half a mile to 67 miles.

Xcel Energy said in a statement that congestion in western Minnesota caused by wind projects has pushed the existing grid beyond what it can support and forced the utility to use peaking plants to supplement the energy supply at peak demand times. Congestion “limits our efforts to keep costs low for customers,” Xcel said.

Xcel will partner or be the sole sponsor on 10 Grid North projects, more than any other utility. Two of the largest Xcel projects add second circuits to the existing CapX2020 transmission lines between eastern South Dakota and Lyon County, Minnesota, and between Scott and Dakota counties. After regulatory approval, the western line will be completed by 2024, with the Scott-Dakota project slated for 2025. Xcel has partners on both projects.

“We estimate hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits to customers following the completion of the project due to reduced congestion costs and increased ability to access renewable energy in the region,” Xcel said.

Otter Tail Power’s seven Grid North projects involve upgrading substations, adding circuits and replacing electricity poles, said communications director Stephanie Hoff. No new facilities will be added by the utility.

Hoff said Otter Tail has partnered with other regional utilities on two projects in the long-range MISO plan. Although the Grid North Partners initiative does not directly impact Otter Tail’s generation assets, including renewables, the investment will help the grid function more effectively, she said.

“New and upgraded transmission helps move electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s used,” Hoff said. “When the transmission system can’t move electricity from the most economic energy generators, market prices rise and energy generators may need to be curtailed, resulting in higher electricity costs for customers.”

Grid North Partners’ budget is tiny compared to projects announced by MISO and Xcel. MISO will spend $10.3 billion on its first tranche of transmission projects, with more than $2 billion dedicated to corridors entirely or partially in Minnesota. Xcel Minnesota Energy Connection, linking wind farms in the southwest to a plant in Becker, will cost $1 billion.

Minnesota utilities target small transmission upgrades with big grid impacts is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by John Szoka. Szoka is is the CEO of Conservative Energy Network, a national network of state-based organizations focused on promoting clean energy innovation rooted in conservative values. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

Landing an automobile manufacturing plant is a major win for a state, both economically and politically. In March 2023 VinFast announced that it would invest $4 billion to build a new automotive manufacturing plant in North Carolina that would create over 7,500 jobs. This was widely celebrated by politicians of both major parties as a huge win for North Carolina.

There’s another industry on the East Coast of the United States that could lead to investments of even more than $4 billion for North Carolina — the construction of, and supply chain for, offshore wind facilities.

So far New York has established five active offshore wind projects and five active port development projects. These projects have brought more than 4,300 megawatts of energy development, more than 6,800 jobs, and over $12.1 billion in economic development to the state. New Jersey is not far behind, with a goal of 7,500 MW by 2035. The state’s competitive solicitation process has resulted in three offshore wind projects that have a total capacity of 3,758 MW, $4.67 billion in economic benefits, and include commitments to significant supply chain investments in New Jersey. These investments include a monopile fabrication facility in Paulsboro, New Jersey, support to small businesses, and commitments to two manufacturing facilities at the New Jersey Offshore Wind Port (NJWP). The port is expected to support up to 1,500 jobs and up to $500 million of new economic activity within the state and the region each year.

Northern states that are often at a disadvantage compared to southern states because of their higher labor costs and more onerous regulatory systems, are beating southern states through their significant effort to attract these businesses and jobs. What do conservative, southern states need to do to ensure that they capture the economic benefits of this growing industry?

North Carolina politicians and coastal residents need to separate the idea of having offshore wind facilities off the coast of North Carolina from the manufacturing and supply chain needed to build and support offshore wind up and down the east coast.  Those are two different discussions and two different opportunities.  

Like New York and New Jersey, North Carolina must proactively attract investment to gain the economic benefits of the offshore wind industry. Whether or not there are ever wind turbines off the coast of North Carolina, the focus should be on getting a portion of the manufacturing and supply chain for offshore wind. I’d be thrilled to get just 10% of the estimated $109 billion needed to establish a domestic offshore wind supply chain into North Carolina. That’s the equivalent of another two automotive plants. And that investment in North Carolina would be where it’s needed most, along the coast.

We can do that if we look at this opportunity just like we look at attracting car manufacturers to the state. We have many strong assets, including our ports infrastructure, our workforce, and our current strong manufacturing base. But North Carolina needs to show the offshore industry that we are ready to make investments and embrace offshore wind manufacturing and supply chain activities. Actions speak louder than words.

Commentary: Offshore wind is a win for North Carolina is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

It has been quite a whirlwind month for Lindsey Greer.

Just as her team from Virginia’s Smithfield High School was snagging an award at the 8th annual National KidWind Challenge, the 17-year-old senior found out she had won a $5,000 college scholarship from the Business Network for Offshore Wind.

Greer, who graduates next month, plans to attend James Madison University this fall to study engineering, which she anticipates will be her launchpad to design the next generation of offshore wind turbines. The Harrisonburg school is selected regularly to participate in the esteemed U.S. Department of Energy’s Collegiate Wind Competition.

Her six-member high school team from the Hampton Roads region, The Goon Squad, was one of 82 that faced off this month at the University of Colorado. Students from elementary, middle and high schools earned points via contests that included testing their small-scale model turbines in wind tunnels and explaining their thinking to judges.

“We love the movie ‘The Goonies,’” Greer said about her team’s namesake. “And we’re pretty goofy.”

Greer and her fellow wind whizzes won a special award in the “Fixed Bottom Offshore Wind Challenge” category. Fittingly, teams constructed a fixed bottom foundation in a fake ocean and tested it in a wind tunnel.

“It’s a replica of what Dominion Energy does offshore,” she said. “We used a sand screw, PVC pipes, 3D-printed supports, and our usual hub and blade design.”

Greer is one of three recipients of the business network’s Rising Star Offshore Wind Student Scholarship, which was initiated last year. The two other winners are from Newport, Rhode Island; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The nonprofit educational organization has offices in several East Coast states.

Virginia sent half a dozen teams to KidWind in Boulder. One was the AirBenders, also from Smithfield High School. Team J.A.M.S., also of Smithfield, was named a top performer in the middle school division. Another Virginia top performer, in the high school division, was the Tabb High School Wind Breakers of Yorktown.

Greer will continue to savor KidWind memories after she receives her diploma on June 16. And, no doubt, she will be deploying some of that know-how in her freshman engineering classes this autumn.

“Once you get started, it’s hard to stop,” she said about the joy of contributing to a creative team. “It’s almost like you’re addicted to it. There are lots of ups and downs and the highs are definitely worth it.”

In an interview with the Energy News Network, Greer elaborated on her commitment to offshore wind. This conversation was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Q: What do you want to tell readers about your team, The Goon Squad?

A: We had the greatest time. Our team had two juniors and four seniors and I’ve known a good portion of them since elementary school. It’s definitely a lot better to have a team because when something goes wrong, someone is there to try to fix it.

Competition can be stiff and communication can be complicated. Our approach is to divide and conquer. We’re playful, but I’m fortunate that this group knows when it’s time to get serious, lock in and get things done. 

Q: What’s your specialty with the team? 

A: This year, I was in charge of the blades on our model. We ran through a lot of birch wood because we experimented with six or seven types of blades, trying different lengths and widths.

Fortunately, birch is not in high demand, and the manufacturing and engineering program has access to a lot of supplies. Our school is very kind to us.

Q: What sparked your interest in wind energy? 

A: During my freshman year, my engineering exploration class included a brief lesson about the wind industry. My teacher was my mom.

I learned about the KidWind competition and thought, “Hey, I can do this.” We had a team of three girls in 2020; two were seniors. Our project had a wooden base, blades made of PVC pipe, and an old bike wheel as part of the pulley system. We advanced from the regional level, but the pandemic canceled the state and national competition that year.

In 2021, we competed digitally and only at the national level because of the pandemic. I didn’t compete last year because I had a heavy load of college-level courses.

Q: Wait, so your mother, Heather Greer, teaches your engineering class and coaches the wind energy teams?

A: Yes, she started out as a biology teacher. Now, she teaches engineering and Adam Shipman, our other coach, teaches manufacturing. My mom has had our school competing in KidWind since 2018. She’s an inspiration.

We’re lucky to have them in this program because they open us up to so many ideas and are always there with whatever we need. They invite professionals from Dominion Energy, James Madison University and engineering firms to our school to help introduce us to concepts and things we’ll see when we get into the business.

The best part about their coaching is that they don’t tell us what we should do with competition projects. They let us fail and figure out what the next step should be. 

They’re always trying to find ways to make us succeed and push us to the limit, in the most gentle way possible. 

Q: How did wind power become such a “thing” in Smithfield? Is it at all connected to the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project that Dominion Energy is constructing relatively close by? 

A: That’s part of it. My dad is a mechanical engineer in Portsmouth and my whole family is involved in engineering. And a lot of our residents have somebody in their family involved with energy or renewable energy.

Q: What kind of time commitment is a KidWind project?

A: I don’t know the number of hours this year, but including all three competitions — state, regional and national — it’s got to be up there. We spent two classes a day working on it and also time after school.

We’re thinking about the project and how we can make it better 24/7 because when something goes wrong we know we have to come up with a solution as quickly as possible. There are several instances where I wake up in the middle of the night thinking, hey, what if we …?

Q: Why did you choose to attend James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley, which is definitely not coastal Virginia? 

A: I got a good look at the campus because it hosted the state competition for KidWind. I have toured its Center for Advancement of Sustainable Energy and it was eye-opening to see details about the wind industry. 

Their engineering program is general, meaning I’ll have a little taste of all types of engineering. So, in graduate school, I’ll know where I want to specialize. It seems to be hands-on based, which matters to me because I’m not a person who wants to be staring at words all day.

Q: Was there anything particularly difficult about this year’s competition in Boulder?

A: Well, because of a mix-up we ended up going to Martinsville, Virginia, which is about six or seven hours away, for the regional competition.

Then, we had three weeks to redesign something we knew we had to pack on an airplane. That time crunch meant we went with something we knew worked.

Our base was PVC pipe and we laser-cut the blades from birch wood. The whole turbine had a lot of 3-D printed parts that are adjustable and replaceable.

Q: You mentioned that you learned to “fail fast, reiterate fast and take failures as lessons.” How does that mantra tie into wind competitions?

A: Often, so many ideas we thought were top-of-the-line would just fail. Our coaches helped us realize that the longer you sit there and dwell on what went wrong, you lose time figuring out how to make it right.

That’s true for engineering and anything else in life.

Design competition gets gears turning for Virginia student’s offshore wind career is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.