The first shipment of sections of large wind turbines that will be erected in the Washington County town of Columbia was trucked Monday morning through Hancock County.
The oversize deliveries are being transported overland from the Mack Point cargo terminal in Searsport, Jim Therriault, an official with the shipping facility’s owner, Sprague Energy, has said.
The terminal has served as a cargo facility for other wind projects too, with turbine blades recently being transported daily from Searsport to a wind farm in Moscow, according to Maine Department of Transportation spokesperson Paul Merrill.
For the Down East wind project, the turbine sections are being trucked from the terminal via Trundy Road in Searsport to Route 1 and then east through Bucksport to Ellsworth, according to Merrill.
In Ellsworth, the shipments will roll through downtown on Main Street and then onto Washington Junction Road, steering clear of the busy High Street corridor. The trucks will turn back onto Route 1 in Hancock and will stay on it to Station Road in Columbia, where they will turn north toward the project site, he said.
The early-morning shipments, escorted by Maine State Police, will occur five days a week into October, according to Hancock County emergency management officials. Some inconveniences to commuters are inevitable, officials said.
The turbine sections are headed toward the Downeast Wind project site north of Harrington. The wind power developer, Virginia-based Apex Clean Energy, plans to erect 30 turbines spread out among various locations in the town of Columbia and in townships 18 and 24 in the state’s Unorganized Territory.
When assembled, each of the turbines will have a maximum height of 656 feet, more than double the height of the Statue of Liberty and almost 200 feet taller than many wind turbines in the U.S. The entire project is expected to have a production capacity of 126 megawatts.
When completed, the $188 million wind project is expected to generate enough to power 37,000 typical houses for a year. The company hopes to connect the turbines to the grid in early 2025.
