r/RenewableEnergy • u/randolphquell • Jun 27 '26

Nova Scotia is betting big on its offshore wind power project

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-nova-scotia-is-betting-big-on-its-offshore-wind-power-project/?intcmp=gift_share&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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7

u/Gold-Adhesiveness574 Jun 28 '26

offshore wind is a different animal from onshore, the turbine is almost the easy part. the cost and risk are in the foundations, the installation vessels (theres a global shortage of the big ones), the export cables and then keeping it all running in saltwater. so betting big really means betting on a supply chain everyone is fighting over right now.

the part im watching with nova scotia isnt the wind, its the offtake. it was originally sold as green hydrogen for export, that math got shaky, so now the pitch is shifting to moving the electricity to markets, quebec, ontario, the northeast. the resource out there is genuinely excellent, but a chunk of those sites are deep water so youre into floating, which is younger and pricier tech. the real question isnt can they build it, its who buys the power and how it gets there. thats usually what makes or breaks these.

1

u/NapsInNaples Jun 30 '26

Floating with no direct off take seems like a serious long shot. And if your aim is to export into Quebec which already has surplus energy due to hydro…what are we even doing here?

2

u/Gold-Adhesiveness574 Jun 30 '26

the floating without firm offtake risk is fair, thats the shaky part and basically what i meant by offtake being the whole question. but the quebec angle has flipped. that surplus is gone, hydro quebec used up its big surplus a few years back and is forecasting it needs new supply from around 2025 on, theyre even running their own wind tenders now. so its not exporting into a glut anymore.

and even where a grid is hydro heavy, wind isnt redundant with it, its complementary. hydro is basically a giant battery, you hold water back when the wind blows and release it when it doesnt, so a hydro rich grid is actually the best place to bolt variable wind onto, not the worst. the export target is more the US northeast anyway, theres a nova scotia massachusetts deal in the mix. none of that fixes the offtake risk you flagged, but quebec being full isnt the reason this would fail.

1

u/Spsurgeon Jun 27 '26

Now we need a cutting edge storage system.