Water, Water Everywhere...And Electricity Too?
— by Melissa Waterman
As oil prices still hover above $130 a barrel, it’s encouraging to learn that Maine is, in fact, rich. The state is amply supplied with the world’s most vital commodity, energy. The problem, however, is that we haven’t yet tapped into our wealth. Certain human and technological obstacles stand in Maine’s way, according to the speakers at “The Power of the Gulf,” a conference organized by the University of Maine’s Center for Law and Innovation and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and held in Northport last Thursday, June 12.
“Maine has tidal and river currents, wave energy, offshore and shallow water wind energy,” said Walter Musial, senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Golden, Colorado. He pointed out that the 28 coastal states, the nation’s most densely populated, currently use 78 percent of the electricity consumed each year in the United States. The majority of that electricity comes from oil- and coal-powered power plants. Drawing energy from the ocean that borders these states makes logical sense, Musial said. “They can’t be served by land-based renewable energy sources alone. We need to find ways to generate energy where people live,” he explained.
This past February the Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power Development released its report on wind power generation in the state. The task force concluded that the state should aim to generate at least 2,000 megawatts of electricity from wind power by 2015 and 3,000 megawatts by 2020. By 2020, 300 megwatts of that electricity should be drawn from offshore wind projects.
Musial said that offshore wind farms have particular benefits, specifically greater and more constant wind velocities and little or no aesthetic impacts, plus they can be located near demand centers, such as Portland or Boston. “You can build them big,” he said. “You can’t ship the big wind turbine towers on land because they won’t fit under the interstate system’s bridges.” He said that currently 22 wind farms operate in Europe, producing 1,100 megawatts of electricity in 2007; Denmark and the United Kingdom are the greatest wind energy producers. In the U.S. there are proposals for offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Delaware, New Jersey, off Cape Cod and Hull, Massachusetts, but no projects are yet operating in the ocean.
In the Gulf of Maine at 60 to 80 meters water depth, the mean wind speeds are 21 miles per hour, or more than 9.5 meters per second, a velocity that Musial called “outstanding.” Presently, however, commercial turbine companies such as Siemens of Germany build shallow water turbines that can be fixed to the seafloor. Offshore turbines must float and have a durable system for remaining anchored in one place. “The technology is for [turbines] at zero to 30 meters,” Musial said. “We need the technology for 60 to 80 meter depth.” There is one such system operating in Scotland, called the Talisman Field. Turbines there are the largest in the world, using individual wind blades 61.5 meters in length. In Norway, the experimental HyWind Floating Wind Turbine will be located at 100 meters depth when constructed.
Musial noted that there are more than 100 different companies currently looking at developing wind and tidal energy devices for the world’s oceans. While most are not operational, the demand for reliable alternatives to oil is driving rapid technological advances and putting money in the pockets of the innovative.
“In the United States, the technology companies [for ocean-based energy development] are all down in the Gulf of Mexico, where the offshore oil is located,” Musial said.
Technology is one, albeit diminishing, obstacle to drawing energy from the sea. Regulatory obstacles, said Peter Mandelstam, are another issue entirely. Mandelstam founded Bluewater Wind in the 1980s to build wind energy projects. The company built Montana’s first wind farm, which provides electricity to 45,000 homes. Its much larger ocean wind farm project, off Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, is designed to generate electricity for 130,000 homes.
Mandelstam said that the country would see more ocean wind power projects if regulatory policies at all levels of government were somehow harmonized. “There are different state policies in different states,” he said. “There are no standardized best practices [for a developer to follow].”
The list of federal laws pertaining to ocean-based energy projects is lengthy. The Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and a host of other agencies and offices all have fragments of regulatory authority over activities in federal waters. In Maine, the Department of Marine Resources and the Department of Environmental Protection both would have regulatory authority over any proposed ocean energy projects.
Still, wind energy is an absolute winner, Mandelstam said. “Nine months after building the wind turbine and installing it, you’ve paid off your carbon footprint. Everything after is ‘free.’ We think that wind power is about as good as it gets — there’s no upstream or downstream pollution,” he said.
Chris Sauer, president of Ocean Renewable Power Company, is using a less dramatic method to draw energy from the ocean. His company began working four years ago on designing and building a tidal energy turbine to be installed in two locations off the town of Eastport. There the tides rise and fall on average 18 feet; on a good spring tide that range can be 26 feet. Working with students at the Washington County Community College Marine Technology Center, Sauer and his team created a demonstration turbine generator unit to be hung 300 feet down in the water column from a stationary barge. The $1.2 million device, which can generate 32 kilowatts in a six-knot tidal current, was completed and installed in December 2007; in April it began producing power.
Sauer said that for small companies like his own, creating new technology and equipment while trying to build a company and comply with state and federal regulations is difficult. “We’re developing projects while also developing a company. I spend most of my time begging for money,” he said. Regulatory uncertainty of any sort has a chilling effect on potential investors, he added.
Yet companies like Ocean Renewable Power have the potential to create jobs in areas where jobs are scarce, Sauer said. “Expertise in maritime trades is key to success [of his company]. We have been blown away by the capabilities of the people in Washington County,” he said. “Initiatives are coming and with the high price of oil, they are coming even sooner. It’s important to act proactively as a community, to get issues and concerns aired out early.”
Massachusetts has experienced long-standing controversies, lawsuits and general bad feelings generated by the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. Deerin Babb-Brott, the new Secretary for Oceans in that state’s Department of Environmental Protection, spoke very directly to the conflict between environmental and economic interests. “This is not about science and technology. This is about public trust. We have adequate tools to make rational if not fully informed decisions. The problem is allocating public trust rights,” he said.
He said that all the regulations in the world will not satisfy the public if those regulations aren’t based on data — such as bird migration patterns, local fishing territories, etc. — and on public interest. “The governor [of Massachusetts] just signed the Massachusetts Ocean Act in May,” Babb-Brott said. “Through the Act, we will have to create a plan, in 18 months, that will identify ocean wind sites and then create the regulations to follow.” Such a plan will give the public and potential developers a clear game plan for the future, he said.
Former Maine governor Angus King closed the conference with a vision of what Maine could be in the future. King, who recently created Independence Wind LLC to develop wind power projects in Maine and throughout New England, said that the energy crisis precipitated by high oil prices is a true danger to the state and its economy.
“I think this is the most serious crisis ever to face the state of Maine,” King said. “Therefore, we need to think about it in new ways.” Maine, he said, is strategically placed to draw energy from the Gulf of Maine, convert it to electricity and sell it into the New England power grid.
What is a kilowatt-hour/megawatt-hour of electricity?
A kilowatt-hour is the unit by which residential and most business customers are billed for their monthly electric use. It represents the use of one kilowatt of electricity — or 1,000 watts — for one hour. For example, a 1,000-watt appliance, used for one hour, would use one kilowatt-hour of electricity. Similarly, a 100-watt light bulb, burning for 10 hours, also would use one kilowatt-hour of electricity.
A megawatt hour represents the use of 1 million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts, of electricity for one hour. The terms megawatt and gigawatt (pronounced “jig-a-watt,” GW, 1 billion watts) are most commonly used to describe the capacity of generating units like wind turbines or other power plants.