Maine

Maine has a long-standing maritime industry through its ship building and fabrication, commercial fishing, composite research and innovation. Maine is also well positioned to lead the U.S. in the commercialization of deep-water offshore wind technologies, directly addressing its stated priorities of energy security, economic growth, job creation and renewable wind energy. With an aggressive RPS of 40% by 2017 and a recently established goal of 5GW of offshore wind by 2030, Maine has positioned itself to be a leader in deep-water offshore wind development. Wind resource maps show strong Class 6 winds in water depths exceeding 50m off the coast of Maine.

Maine has established three deep-water offshore wind test sites one of which will be a test bed facility run by the University of Maine. Principle Power has joined a consortium called DeepCwind which is made up of 30 + other companies for the purpose of testing and building up to 3 deep-water wind platform technologies at this site.

Funding support for the demonstration effort was initiated in October 2009 when the US Department of Energy awarded $8 million USD to the University of Maine and it’s DeepCWind consortium. In addition another 5 million in Congressional funding will allow the University of Maine to investigate deep-water offshore wind energy generation and to design and deploy10-kilowatt and one 100-kilowatt prototypes to be mounted on floating offshore foundations. The first prototypes are scheduled to be in the water as early as the spring of 2011.