U.S. gives go-ahead for offshore towers to study wind

Proposed wind farms off the coast of New Jersey and Delaware took a major step forward yesterday when U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave four companies the right to build research towers offshore - the first such leases the agency has issued for the nation's outer continental shelf.

The leases will allow the companies to gather crucial data on wind speeds and other meteorological information.

Until now, the companies and New Jersey, which has agreed to invest $12 million in three projects, have relied on public data and wind resource experts.

"Now we're truing up the projections," said Jim Lanard, managing director of Deepwater Wind LLC, which obtained leases for two sites.

The others, receiving a lease for one site each, are Fishermen's Energy of New Jersey, Bluewater Wind New Jersey Energy LLC, and Bluewater Wind Delaware LLC.

To be economically feasible, the farms need an annual average wind speed of 18 miles per hour.

Gov. Corzine, who spoke yesterday at an Atlantic City event announcing the leases, said the towers would enable the companies to verify their projections.

"We feel very confident that will be the case, but that needs to be proven," Corzine said. "They need the facts to be able to go to their bankers and do the financing."

Yesterday's announcement puts the companies in the running for being first in the nation to construct an offshore wind facility.

"The technology is proven, effective, and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil," Salazar said.

If the tests go well and all five wind farms are eventually built - in several years or more - their capacity would equal 1,750 megawatts, or enough for half a million to 625,000 households.

But due to the fickleness of wind, the average annual output is expected to be as little as a third of that.

The announcement also was significant because it broke a Catch-22 for offshore wind developers.

Previously, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service had the authority to regulate wind projects in federal waters on the outer continental shelf, roughly 1.7 billion acres of submerged land from three to 200 miles offshore. But the Bush administration had failed to complete a regulatory framework for that to happen.

The MMS "had the authority, but they didn't have the rules written, so no one could apply," said Laurie Jodziewicz, an offshore wind expert with the American Wind Energy Association.

"Now all the pieces are in place," she said. "We're going to start seeing metal in the water to start the data collection at these proposed sites."

At the same time, the federal agency tidied up a snafu that gave two agencies - MMS and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - the authority for positioning projects on the outer continental shelf.

MMS had the authority for wind, and FERC for hydropower. That left the door open for Seattle businessman Burton Hamner to apply for a hydropower license through FERC, except that the footprint for his project overlapped significant portions of the wind projects.

His applications were later denied.

The meteorological towers will be located from six to 18 miles offshore. Typical towers resemble radio or communications towers and are 60 to 100 meters tall, with anemometers to measure the wind speed at various levels.

Much of the data so far are from sea-level buoys, but what's most important to know is the wind speed throughout the course of a year at the height of the wind turbine's hub, said Lanard, whose Deepwater Wind is partnering with PSEG in one of the ventures.

"Particularly, what happens in the afternoons when there is a cooling and warming mixture. Do winds sweep up and get some sort of wind sheer that would result in greater generation of power?"

Lanard said he expected his company's towers - at a projected cost of $7 million, minus the $4 million promised by the state - to be installed in the summer of 2010.

Wind has been seen increasingly as a strong contender among renewable energy sources. The Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has said the offshore wind could provide 20 percent of the electricity needs of almost all coastal states.

Drawbacks of wind include the way the wind farms look and the variable output due to changing meteorologic conditions.

But in general, offshore winds are stronger and more consistent than those on land.

Another concern is the potential harm to wildlife. Birds remain a concern with offshore wind, but Danny Cohen of Fishermen's Energy said yesterday that the bases of the turbine towers would become, in effect, artificial reefs.

Land-based wind also has proven problematic when it comes to transmission because most of the high-wind areas are distant from population centers, but proponents of the coastal projects point out that the turbines would be near areas with high electricity needs.

Sierra Club of New Jersey director Jeff Tittel applauded yesterday's announcement. "Until now it has been easier to put oil derricks off our coast instead of wind mills," he said. "We look forward to seeing the first wind farms actually permitted and built."