DOE Grant to Maine Consortium to Study Offshore Wind

DOE today announced an investment of up to $8M in the University of Maine’s Deepwater Offshore Wind Test Site and related educational initiatives.  The award was one of three competitive grants made to university-led consortia that will support university research and development programs to improve wind turbine performance and reliability and undergraduate and graduate educational opportunities in cutting-edge wind technologies.  The University of Maine is the only grant recipient that will research and develop deepwater wind technologies.

The University of Maine consortium includes Norway’s StatoilHydro, which recently hosted Maine’s Governor Baldacci and a Maine trade mission (including Pierce Atwood’s John Gulliver) to Europe to discuss renewable energy opportunities.  (For more on the trade mission, see our previous post.)  Trade mission members were invited to visit StatoilHydro's 2.3-megawatt Hywind turbine, the only offshore, deep-water, power-generating wind turbine in the world.  A more detailed account of the trade mission is here.  After seeing the Hywind turbine, Governor Baldacci and University of Maine’s Prof. Habib Dagher signed a letter of intent with StatoilHydro to explore whether this deepwater wind technology could be put to work in Maine.  The DOE grant marks a great step forward for this public-private partnership.