Seacoast Anti-Pollution League

Leadership for a healthy planet and a safer world

Wind power coming close to fruition
By Jennifer Keefe
Special to the Sunday Citizen
Sunday, February 24, 2013
DOVER — Imagine powering the entire state of Maine without
using fossil fuels.

A 61-foot prototype for an offshore wind farm planned for the waters off the coast of Maine sits outside the Offshore Wind Laboratory at the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center. It is slated to be placed at its offshore test site in May. Courtesy photo

Two pilot projects are working toward doing just that with offshore wind farms, projects that could result in a whole new industry for the Pine Tree State.

“In the U.S., we have a large offshore wind resource,” said Habib Dagher, director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center. “There’s about 4,000 gigawatts offshore — that’s enough to power the U.S. four times over.”

Dagher has been working on a prototype for an offshore wind farm for five years.

According to Dagher, there are 156 gigawatts just 50 miles off Maine’s shore, which is equal to 156 nuclear power plants. It takes 2.4 gigawatts to power the entire state.

And a major development in the university’s project is taking place in just a few months.

A fabrication of the turbine unit will be completed in April and towed from the Penobscot River to a test site off the coast of Maine in May. There, it will be anchored by pre-existing mooring lines.

This prototype, called VolturnUS, is about 61 feet high, Dagher said, and will be used to test the floating wind technology.

“If all goes well, this will be the first offshore wind turbine in the U.S.,” he said.

A separate pilot project called Hywind Maine, led by Norwegian energy company Statoil, is planned for federal waters off the coast of Boothbay Harbor.

This project just cleared a major hurdle with recent approval by the Maine Public Utilities Commission to support the project and provide an above-market rate.

Patrick Woodcock, director of Gov. Paul LePage’s Energy Office, said the PUC vote was a “significant decision,” but the governor’s office has consistently expressed concern about these projects increasing energy costs.

“We have concerns about the rate impact on electricity bills,” Woodcock said, adding the plan is also “vague” about the economic benefits brought into Maine from the developer.

Statoil has established a relationship with UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center.

Both projects have received about $4 million in funding from the Department of Energy, having been chosen among seven out of more than 70 applicants in a DOE competition for advanced technology for offshore wind.

The DOE will pick three out of those seven to receive the remaining funding.

In 2012, LePage put a hold on bonds to rein in state borrowing, which included funding for the offshore wind project. However, Dagher said they have partners backing the project who will match the costs.

The university’s full-scale unit — slated to be in the water by 2016 — would consist of two 6-megawatt machines that would float off Monhegan Island in about 200 feet of water and be grid-connected to shore.

Dagher said the whole unit is taller than the Washington Monument, and each blade is bigger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

The third phase, which is slated to be up and running by 2020, would be eight turbines producing about 500 megawatts from 20 miles offshore.

And by 2030, Dagher said the goal is a full-scale wind farm of about 170 turbines that would supply a total of about 5 gigawatts to the state of Maine.

“That could be used to put on grid in New England, throughout the region,” he said.

He said a cost-effective wind farm would keep electricity prices at about 10 cents per kilowatt hour by 2020.

He said the process is a “walk before you run” approach, but the overall intent is to greatly reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

“We want to keep some dollars in Maine by using our own resources,” Dagher said, noting the high costs of gas and heating oil. “We have no control over the cost of that energy over the long run. You can see why we’re looking at ways to cost effectively bring this energy back to shore.”

He said the energy could be used “in a variety of ways,” but the intent is to heat homes, or provide electricity for electric cars.

“Our goal here is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and help stabilize these prices over the long run,” Dagher said. “These are very volatile prices. By diversifying energy infrastructure in the region, we’ll reduce costs in the long run. The New England region is very dependent on natural gas for electricity, but when you’re so dependent on one resource, you’re exposing the region to the danger of price increases or that resource becoming obsolete.”

He said more than 98 percent of the 2,500 residents who responded to a survey conducted by the University of Maine about the project were in support of deepwater offshore wind farms that are not visible from the shore.