Prototype offshore windmill in Maine makes major move

Floating turbine will be first on North America to tap resource for power

BREWER, Maine — North America’s first floating windmill that will produce power was ceremonially lowered Friday into the Penobscot River, the first big step in a process that could tap an offshore wind resource with a potential of 75 Hoover Dams.

The 65-foot-tall turbine is a prototype that’s one-eighth the size of a full-scale wind turbine that the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center hopes to launch off Monhegan Island in 2016. The prototype floating turbine, called the VolturnUS, was built by the Cianbro construction company at its riverside site, near Bangor.

The prototype will be towed roughly 30 miles from Brewer down the Penobscot River to Castine during the next several days.

Once it’s moored, it will be hooked up to the grid and start generating electricity, making it the first on the continent to do so. It also is called the first in the world with a composite and concrete design to make it weather-resistant and stable in rough seas.

“It’s going to survive the perfect storm,” said Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at UMaine.

The prototype will be placed in water with about one-eighth the wave action of the Gulf of Maine, where the full-scale floating windmills would be placed if the prototype is successful.

By 2030, developers envision turbines in place to produce 5 gigawatts of offshore wind power, enough to power more than a million homes at any moment. They say the plan could attract billions of dollars in investments and create thousands of jobs.

“We are energy-rich,” Dagher said. “We just haven’t taken advantage of this wind richness.”

Keeping the cost of offshore wind power as low as possible and continuing to draw government grants are crucial to making offshore wind production successful. Dagher said his goal is to get offshore wind prices lower than what they are in Europe.

Dagher said one advantage of the UMaine consortium’s units is that they can be built onshore and towed to sea, eliminating the more expensive cost of construction at sea.