November 23, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills on Friday announced an ambitious, state-led effort to build as many as 12 floating wind-energy turbines off Maine’s coast.
Mills is on the hunt for a location for the array, in partnership with the University of Maine and the big-money investors behind the pioneering Aqua Ventus turbine experiment near Monhegan Island. But that’s got some fishermen worried.
The effort to win a so-called research lease from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will be led by Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office.
“The opportunity to work with these developers using the Maine-made, Maine-developed floating technology is just a really significant opportunity for the state and for us to continue to take a national and even global leadership position for floating offshore wind,” he says.
The Mills administration is pitching the project as small scale, needing “only” 16 square miles of ocean as compared to lease areas ten times as large for wind projects off southern New England. Still, with as many as 12 turbines running at a capacity of 10 megawatts each, Burgess says they could provide enough energy for 70,000-100,000 homes.