Gov. Janet Mills’ plan to make Maine an international leader in ocean wind power is reaching a critical juncture.
State officials argue that harnessing wind power can deliver a tremendous amount of clean energy, and that Maine is specially positioned to capitalize on the potential industrial boom.
The governor is leading a state delegation to Norway and Denmark this week to get a firsthand view of those countries’ offshore wind industry and to drum up interest in Maine’s plan to become a major player in the business on this side of the Atlantic.
The trip comes on the heels of the federal government’s lease to Maine of the nation’s first floating offshore wind research array. The 15-square-mile plot about 30 miles off the Maine coast will host 12 turbines built on structures developed by the University of Maine and its private sector partner, Diamond Offshore Wind.
Meanwhile, the state is set on building a specialized port on Sears Island in Searsport to construct and deploy floating wind. A 2023 bill passed by the Legislature and signed by Mills set a goal for Maine to produce 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040.
In just a few weeks, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold a lease sale for eight Gulf of Maine wind sites. If every lease was fully developed, the lease area could potentially generate enough wind energy to power 4.5 million homes.
It will take years for floating offshore wind to become a reality in the Gulf of Maine. But off the coast of Cape Cod, America’s first commercial-scale ocean wind farm offers a glimpse into the future.
Maine Public’s climate desk, along with colleagues from the New England News Collaborative, had a rare opportunity to get an up close and personal view of Vineyard Wind 1, a 62-turbine project under construction south of Martha’s Vineyard.
Here are some of the questions we had:
What do conventional offshore wind turbines look like?
In a word? Massive.
From the waterline to the tip of the blades, each turbine is about 850 feet tall — equivalent to a 77-story skyscraper, or roughly the size of two and a half Statutes of Liberty stacked on top of one another. They’re spaced about a mile apart in rows of six. At one point, as the boat floated close to one of the turbines, it blotted out the sun for a couple of seconds. And it was a clear, sunny day.
Every turbine starts with a steel tube, or monopile, driven deep into the sea bed. That’s topped with what’s called a nacelle, which converts mechanical energy to electric power, and the rotor and three-blade assembly.
The turbines are connected to offshore transmission stations, which in turn route power through buried cables to the Massachusetts grid.
How does floating offshore wind differ from the wind farm you saw off of Martha’s Vineyard?
A common misconception about floating wind is that the turbines will be bobbing around, unmoored from the land or seafloor. In fact, they’ll be attached to the bottom with semi-taut cables and chains, said Sanjay Arwade, a professor of civil engineering at University of Massachusetts Wind Power Center.
“First of all, they’re huge in diameter, and they’re highly tensioned,” Arwade said. “So entanglement is not conceivable. I don’t think a whale could run into the floating hulls or run into the mooring line.”
Each turbine will be attached to a platform so it can float above the waterline. The units Maine intends to launch into the Gulf of Maine will be equipped with a semi-submersible concrete floating hull.
Why can’t we install conventional turbines in the Gulf of Maine?
The water is just too deep. Wind power sites off Cape Cod and farther down the Atlantic coast are relatively shallow, so it’s feasible to drive turbine shafts directly into the seabed.
But the areas with the greatest potential for power generation in Maine mostly have depths of about 200 feet — way too far down to anchor a turbine power to the bottom.
The first floating wind project was built in Scotland in 2017. Now Scotland has two of the biggest floating wind arrays in the world with more in the development pipeline.
At a wind energy conference in Portland last month, Michael Sutherland, a consultant who worked on fisheries management and wind energy in Scotland, said floating technology enables companies to get far out into the ocean with consistently powerful winds capable of generating huge amounts of power.
“Floating offshore wind is about going into the deep water, getting away from nearshore areas, getting out,” Sutherland said. “About 80% of the offshore wind out there to be captured is in the deep water.”
So if the water is too deep, how are we going to build turbines in the Gulf of Maine?
That’s where the state’s plans for a wind power port on Sears Island comes in. Instead of shipping components into the ocean and building turbines onsite, floating turbines would be constructed on land and towed out to their site.
Maine’s proposed port would be the only one on the East Coast capable of building and launching the turbines.
And, since they won’t be driven into the seabed, floating technology could sidestep some of the biggest environmental concerns with offshore wind development, said Amber Hewett, senior director of the offshore wind energy program at the National Wildlife Federation.
“When you take pile driving out of the equation, that really removes one of the most significantly impactful times of construction,” Hewett said.
Vineyard Wind 1 pauses construction for months at a time during right whale migration season due to concerns over the underwater noise and disturbances from driving towers into the seabed.
Will offshore wind threaten fish, lobster, or whales?
One of the most pressing concerns is the harm that industrial development can have on the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, said Michael Moore, emeritus scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. But so far, Moore said, potential dangers to whales and other animals come from the noise and vessel traffic associated with construction.
“We know that vessel strikes from operating vessels around the construction site have the risk of damaging or killing whales,” he said.
But in terms of larger impacts to hydrology and food webs, the impact of wind power is much harder to quantify, Moore said.
The initial “call area” for Gulf of Maine wind development announced last spring was 9.8 million acres. By the time the bureau identified and eliminated many fishing areas and places with likely marine mammals, the developable area was down to 2 million acres.
Wind energy opponents in Maine have accused Mills and developers of taking over rich grounds for fishing and lobstering.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has excluded nearly all of Lobster Management Area 1, which is important to Maine’s offshore lobster fleet, and whale migration routes from newer draft lease area maps.
Opposition to wind farms heightened this summer, when one of the blades of the Vineyard Wind project broke off, showering the nearby area in debris. Nantucket had to close some beaches while the cleanup took place. Though supporters noted the environmental damage was minor and turbine malfunctions rare, scrutiny of the Vineyard Wind project and skepticism of offshore wind generally increased anyway.
What’s next for offshore wind in Maine? What does the future look like?
First off, the federal lease sale is scheduled for Oct. 29. Wind power supporters suggest the Gulf’s awesome potential to generate power should attract plenty of bidders.
Despite a major push by the Biden administration to build out 30,000 megawatts of ocean wind by 2030, the industry has been beset with recent setbacks including rising prices, interest rates and supply chain issues.
The Maine Department of Transportation is also awaiting news on its application for a $456 million grant to help build the wind port in Searsport. Local and state environmental groups oppose the environmental disturbance to undeveloped Sears Island, while Sprague Energy argues Maine should use its nearby fuel port as a site for the development.
Still, on the boat trip to see Vineyard Wind 1, some of the experts who have been following wind energy development in the U.S. for years expressed hope, and emotion, at seeing an offshore wind site at such scale here in the States.
“I’m from Massachusetts, so I think that’s probably where the emotion comes from. A little bit of pride, a little bit of ‘finally,’” Hewett said. “Massachusetts has been trying to make offshore wind happen for over 20 years.”
“We’ve endured setback after setback after setback. The developers of this project had to persist through the Trump administration, through almost not getting their federal permits, and really just stuck to it relentlessly, until we could be here in this moment.”
Maine Public’s Climate Desk is made possible by Androscoggin bank, with additional support from Evergreen Home Performance, Bigelow Laboratory, & Lee Auto Malls.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
