Maine offshore wind project back in the running for $40M award
File photo / James McCarthy
Habib Dagher, director of UMaine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, in front of the VolturnUS prototype wind turbine deployed off the shores of Castine in 2014.
Aqua Ventus 1, the pilot offshore wind project designed by a University of Maine-led consortium that includes Cianbro Corp., is back in contention for a full $40 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy.
U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King announced the news in a joint statement Friday morning.
“Today’s decision by the Department of Energy puts Maine firmly on the map of America’s emerging offshore wind industry,” Collins and King said in the statement. “With the project’s innovative and cutting-edge floating design, the University of Maine has once again catapulted our state to the forefront of clean energy innovation through advanced technologies that could harness and deploy the vast wind resources off our nation’s coast. This decision is outstanding news for Maine and a testament to the unmatched hard work and ingenuity of the University of Maine and the numerous Aqua Ventus partners. We applaud them for their efforts and will continue to support them as they strive to lead our state and nation into a brighter, cleaner energy future.”
The announcement elevates the Aqua Ventus project from its status as an “alternate” to the offshore projects in New Jersey, Virginia and Oregon previously selected by DOE as the three finalists to receive up to $39.9 million over three years. It is now eligible for up to $39.9 million in additional funding over three years for the construction phase of the demonstration program to have two full-scale 6 megawatt wind turbines producing power off Monhegan by 2020.
“It’s a big day for Maine,” Habib Dagher, director of UMaine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center and principal investigator of the DeepCwind Consortium, told Mainebiz in a telephone interview on Friday. “We received the phone call this morning from the Department of Energy. We’ve been working around the clock with Cianbro, Emera Maine and our other partners to prove our technology.”
Dagher said DOE’s announcement removes two projects previously named as finalists — the Oregon and Virginia offshore projects — and elevates AquaVentus and an Ohio project previously named as an alternate to join New Jersey as finalists in the demonstration program.
Dagher said the UMaine consortium submitted to DOE a package about a month ago with more than 70 reports, including detailed independent analyses of its unique concrete floating platform against eight steel and four concrete platforms. “The numbers came back extremely favorable,” he said. “Our technology is less than half the cost of the competition. It can be produced locally, all over the United States, both on the East Coast and West Coast. The data we provided shows the impact of this technology on the U.S. as a whole. This is a technology that can carry the U.S. forward in the offshore wind industry.”
Dagher said the next steps will be for UMaine and its corporate partners to begin plotting the timeline for construction of two full-scale floating platforms to support the 6MW wind turbines that will be installed off Monhegan.
“Those hulls will be made in Maine,” he said. “The idea is to create as many Maine jobs and opportunities for Maine companies as we can.”
Sens. Collins and King said a contract will soon be finalized to provide the $3.7 million DOE had promised back in November when it named AquaVentus an alternate, and brings total funding for the Maine project on par with the three previously selected second-phase demonstration projects that were each awarded $6.7 million. AquaVentus had received $3 million in R&D funding from DOE a year ago, when it came in fourth of six projects then seeking to make it into the construction phase of the Offshore Wind Advanced Energy Demonstration Program.
Collins is a member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee and King serves as a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
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