Pioneer wind farm ‘breaks water’ off Rhode Island coast

Plans for offshore wind farms have fallen flat for years in the U.S.

But a Rhode Island-based company is about to begin installation of what promises to be the first such venture in the nation.

Deepwater Wind expects delivery this week of foundations that will support five wind turbines off Block Island, a small tourist destination 12 miles from Rhode Island’s shore.

“This is something we’ve been working toward for seven years, so this is a pretty significant moment for us,” said Jeffrey Grybowski, CEO of the private company building the $225 million project. “It’s a proverbial steel-in-the-water moment. In our industry, we don’t have groundbreakings, we have water breakings.”

The steel foundations, built at a Louisiana company that specializes in the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore oil and gas industry, travelled by barge to the site of the wind energy farm three miles southeast of Block Island. 

Deepwater Wind’s schedule calls for the five foundations to be anchored to the ocean floor over the next eight weeks, and the turbines, built in Europe by Alstom, to be mounted on them starting in late summer 2016.

If all continues to go well for Deepwater Wind, the 30-megawatt project will begin generating electricity several months later, powering 17,000 homes, including all of those on Block Island, which now relies on expensive diesel fuel to keep its lights on.

The project also includes a 20-mile underwater cable that will carry to mainland Rhode Island any power not consumed on Block Island.

The pioneer project in the nation’s smallest state is large in one respect: at 589 feet above sea level, the turbines will be among the tallest in the world. Otherwise, it is tiny compared to onshore wind farms, some of which number hundreds of turbines.

But if successful, Deepwater Wind may demonstrate that offshore wind can provide another valuable energy option in the U.S., as it has for years in Europe and Asia, where 8,760 MW of offshore wind power had been installed as of 2014.

“We’ve been struggling in the U.S. to deploy the first offshore wind project for some time now, and clearly our industry needs a win,” Grybowski said at Deepwater Wind’s offices in Providence. “We think this will open up much larger opportunities.”

In fact, Deepwater Wind is already looking ahead to bigger projects, having won the rights to develop a wind energy farm in federal waters off the Rhode Island coast. The Block Island project is in waters under Rhode Island’s jurisdiction.

The larger project off Rhode Island would cover 260 square miles of ocean, and include as many as 250 wind turbines with a total capacity of more than 1,000 MW. That’s enough generation to power a half-million homes in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York’s Long Island.

“Wind can be one of the principal new power sources in the coming decade, in the Northeast in particular,” Grybowski said. “I think that’s where it begins because we have a confluence of two really unique situations: really strong wind resources and a huge population clustered along the coast from Washington to Boston.”

In fact, the Global Wind Energy Council says offshore wind could meet U.S. energy demand four times over. 

While the East Coast is littered with failed or struggling offshore wind energy projects, like Cape Wind, the controversial undertaking off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, Grybowski said new attempts will stand a better chance as costs come down and states learn from Rhode Island’s experience.

“The key is to find a location that has the fewest conflicts and makes the most sense,” he said, acknowledging that Deepwater Wind faced some opposition in Rhode Island, including businesses that sued unsuccessfully to stop the project. “This location has a lot of support.”

Still, a potential complication for additional offshore wind projects is the expiration last year of a federal tax credit for production from wind turbines, an incentive that the Block Island project qualified for while it was still available.

Some members of Congress are attempting to revive the tax break this year, but approval is far from certain.

“I think we’ll see more wind energy built, including offshore, with or without tax credits,” he said. “But the question is how much gets built and how quickly does it get built without tax credits.”

Bill Loveless – @bill_loveless on Twitter – is a veteran energy journalist and television commentator in Washington. He is a former host of the TV program Platts Energy Week.