Secretary Ken Salazar made an appearance in Rhode Island today to announce that the Federal government was accepting applications for offshore wind farm projects off the coast of the state and that it would start signing offshore leases for those projects by 2012.
Rhode Island is getting special attention because of the huge potential for offshore wind in the state. Salazar pointed to an NREL study that found that Rhode Island offshore wind farms could potentially generate 1,000 gigawatts of electricity -- enough to power most of the U.S.
The state has already announced plans for a couple of offshore projects: one is a smaller wind farm that will power the currently diesel-generator-dependent Block Island and feed any excess power to the mainland and the other is the huge 1,000 MW Deepwater Wind Energy Center that will be located in the Rhode Island Sound with transmission lines running from Massachusetts to New York.
With the government pledging to start signing offshore leases and the wealth of electricity that could be generated, there will likely be more cropping up soon.
via Huffington Post
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written by Sam Vilain, August 18, 2011
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written by Matt, August 22, 2011
Why is that the fresh water "off shore" get so little play. Salt water is a much harder environment than fresh. Looking at great lake states: (total GW)
Ill(21.0), Ind(2.9), Mich(483.2), Minn(20.5), Ohio(46.2), Penn(9.6), Wis(116.5); plus most of NewYork(147.2)
Notice that 6 of the 8 great lakes states have as much to a lot more "Off shore" wind as R.I.
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written by Guest, August 24, 2011
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AUG 18
"Matt, Good point. However, I guess that such a big deal is made about..."
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