Dec 10 2010
Deepwater Wind has declared its intention to build Deepwater Wind Energy Center (DWEC), an advanced offshore wind farm located in the deep sea of southern Rhode Island Sound.
Most of the turbines installed for the wind farm will be placed 20 to 25 miles away from the shore and all the turbines will be placed 13.8 miles off from any populated land. The wind farm while taking benefit of the prevailing strong winds at mid-sea will not be normally visible to the naked eyes from the shore.
DWEC will host around 200 wind turbines and is anticipates to generate around 1,000 MW of clean renewable energy. The company has made an application to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), a U.S. Department of the Interior, to rent the ocean site where it wanted to locate its wind turbines. BOEMORE is currently examining the application in consultation with the Massachusetts and Rhode Island state units. The submission will be extensively reviewed by the state and federal units by providing opportunities to the public to offer comments before actually extending the lease permission. The company has also declared its plans to formulate an offshore transmission system called the New England-Long Island Interconnector (NELI) to link DWEC with eastern Long Island and southern New England to transmit the generated power to a number of states such as New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island located in the region. DWEC is looking forward to prove that offshore wind energy can be generated competitively and delivered cost effectively to match the cost of the power generated utilizing fossil fuels without polluting the environment.
William M. Moore, CEO of Deepwater Wind, said that the second generation offshore wind farms proposed by his company placed away from the shore lines will incorporate more advanced power generation expertise than any of the currently existing offshore wind projects and deliver the power cost effectively. He expressed his optimism that the US offshore wind industry will follow the footsteps of European offshore wind farms where the industry has matured and constructs wind projects away from the shorelines.