The recent arrival of a shipload of turbine blades at the Estes Head Cargo Terminal for Maine’s growing wind-power industry was only the beginning. Before long, loads of Maine-made blades can be swarming out of Eastport to serve the rest of the country and the whole world.
That’s the vision of Professor Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center at the University of Maine. He says the U.S. market alone for the big blades is estimated at $2.5 billion a year. And they can be made in Maine and shipped out of Eastport. Groundbreaking is set for June for a plant that will design, manufacture and test the 120- to 160-foot blades made of composites of glass, carbon and resins.
Prof. Dagher and the UM center also are working on plans for an offshore wind ranch in the Gulf of Maine, where prevailing winds are strong and steady and 25 miles out from the shoreside vacationers who might otherwise complain that wind towers would spoil their views. One thousand turbines on anchored floating platforms, rising 600 feet from the ocean surface are to produce 5,000 megawatts of electricity. A prototype should be in the water by 2011.
Prof. Dagher gives those examples of how Maine’s abundant natural resources and manufacturing know-how can make the state a leader in revolutionary green-energy technology.
Still another Down East green venture is the Coast Guard’s underwater turbine that by the end of summer will be producing electricity from the Passamaquoddy Bay tides in a modest pilot project where President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to harness the tides so long ago.
The disappointment over the closing of the Domtar pulp mill in Baileyville coincided with a surge of excitement over the incoming load of turbines. The mill has been the chief source of outgoing cargo from the Eastport terminal. The final draft of the Maine Department of Transportation long-range plan seems to downgrade the port of Eastport while lauding the potential of the port of Searsport. It notes that the port of Eastport lacks a rail connection and quotes a study that concluded reestablishing that connection “would be very expensive and would not provide a suitable return on the investment.”
Such negative thinking does not deter Laurie Lachance, president of the Maine Development Foundation, known for her annual “Just Imagine” lectures about Maine’s future, and David Flannigan, former CEO of Maine Central Power Company and author of a 2005 report on Washington County’s potential.
Mr. Flannigan sees many positive Washington County attributes: fish, forest and agriculture resources, a skilled work force, a beautiful coastline and one of the busiest border crossings from Canada. Not many of the visiting Canadians stay in the county, he notes, but tourism facilities, advertising and promotion can remedy that.
Building on the new energy focus, there’s room for optimism after all.