Offshore wind power in the Gulf of Maine got a big boost last week in the form of an $8 million federal grant from the Department of Energy to a consortium headed by the University of Maine. An additional $5 million grant is pending, and two floating test turbines could be in place within two years.
The grants are one more step in the development of innovative technological leadership by the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center. Among its earlier achievements was the construction last November of a small bridge south of Pittsfield using a novel technology employing plastic tubes filled with cement instead of heavy steel beams.
Making green electricity from Maine’s strong and reliable winds has been a dream for many years. Gasoline zoomed to $4 a gallon, making that dream a reality. At around $2.50 a gallon, it still puts alternative energy sources into competition with the present natural gas- and oil-fired generation.
Former Gov. Angus King presented a vision of offshore wind power generation in a June 2008 speech at Bowdoin College. He foresaw a “wind ranch” 25 miles off the Maine coast as a huge energy source close to home yet out of sight, nonpolluting and creating tens of thousands of nearby jobs while at a fixed price, not subject to the shocks of cost escalation. He predicted that it would produce enough electricity to heat all our homes and power a likely fleet of electric cars.
That vision took an important step closer to reality with the funding announcement last week.
Professor Habib Dagher, director of the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, is the key figure in the offshore wind project. He told the Bangor Daily News last week: “This puts Maine in the driver’s seat of deep-water technology. The fact that the Department of Energy has selected us provides a catalyst for industry in the state to work with us to help achieve this goal. It’s a bright day for Maine and a bright day for the future of Maine.”
The additional $5 million appropriation for the UMaine center was proposed by Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins as part of an energy and water budget bill passed 80-17 by the Senate last week after approval by the House of Representatives. It requires only President Barack Obama’s signature to be-come law.
Maine is well on its way to lead in harnessing the off-shore winds for power production. Equally encouraging is the potential for using Maine’s “bridge in a box” technology to repair or replace many of the nation’s estimated 160,000 obsolete road bridges.
All this comes out of the Orono wood composite center, a 48,000-square-foot testing and production facility with 140 full- and part-time employees that began as a small pilot study 18 years ago.
The federal funding is a deserved vote of confidence in the work of Dagher and his center and a reaffirmation of its position as a national leader.