A new wind turbine platform will still float off the coast of Castine for the next 18 months, despite a sudden loss of millions in federal funding to the project and resulting layoffs to the University of Maine research center behind it.
But to keep the project going, researchers will have to reduce their analysis of the data, and they won’t be able to come up with a plan to bring the technology to commercial uses that they say would have many applications beyond ocean energy.
A division of the U.S. Department of Energy focused on advanced research initiatives suspended $3.3 million in funding for the project in April. That was revealed hours after a 375-ton concrete floating hull designed by the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center was towed to Mack Point in Searsport for the turbine to be assembled, according to university spokesperson Samantha Warren. The center then laid off nine employees, including engineers, scientists and technicians, from its nearly 200-person staff. Those layoffs take effect Friday.
The VolturnUS floating platform installed last month is a quarter-scale model of technology the university says will play a key role in the future of clean energy, engineering and workforce opportunities in Maine. This version of the hull has patented technology to reduce impacts from waves and winds.
Wind energy research has been underway at the center for nearly two decades as part of the state’s efforts to promote commercial offshore turbines in the Gulf of Maine, which have met with opposition from lobstermen and now the Trump administration. Almost $50 million in federal funding to the university system has been suspended or threatened this year as the president spars with the Mills administration over policies allowing transgender athletes to participate on sports teams.
An eighth-scale turbine prototype — the first floating turbine in the country to connect to a power grid — was launched in the same area off Dyce Head in 2013. Researchers said Castine was an ideal site because the waves there are about an eighth the height of those in the Gulf of Maine. Because of the gulf’s depth, turbines must be floating because they can’t be sunk in the seabed.
The federal agency had already put $9.3 million toward the current floating project, according to Warren. Without the remaining millions, the center is using existing industry and state funding.
The platform was installed May 15 as planned, and cables connecting it to the grid will be laid this month, Warren said Tuesday. The center still plans to keep it in the water for a year and a half to monitor its performance with data its sensors collect, such as how the technology can reduce motion from winds and waves.
But now researchers will be limited in analyzing the data and planning to make the technology available commercially, according to Warren.
Two other Department of Energy research awards to the university system were suspended in April, along with numerous other federal funding awards for research and other activities. The university is still working to restore those awards, Warren said.
