Visibility issues
Bluewater Wind representatives briefed Ocean City officials yesterday on the Delaware proposal and the possibility of turbines off the Maryland resort.
"We're interested, but we're concerned what the horizon will look like," Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan said afterward.
Proponents of the turbines say the towers would be barely visible from shore.
John Hughes, Delaware's secretary of natural resources and environmental control, said the Rehoboth Beach project has elicited little opposition from waterfront resort owners or the public.
"We consider the towers and the blades graceful - they are no taller than your thumbnail on a clear day," Hughes said. "On a muggy summer day, they won't be visible at all."
Currently, there are no offshore wind projects in America, but ocean-based turbines are generating electricity in Denmark and England.
Proposals for wind farms off the coast of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts have run into fierce opposition from property owners and vacationers.
Offshore wind turbines can be more expensive to build than those on land, but the wind is often more consistent and stronger at sea, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for Bluewater Wind and a dozen other wind developers in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration and O'Malley's point man on the issue, said the Bluewater Wind group has hammered out an agreement with Delmarva Power under which the utility will buy 200 megawatts of power per year at what he called a "very competitive" rate.
By itself, that might not be enough power to make the venture viable over the long term, Woolf said.
But if Maryland utilities were to buy 400 megawatts a year - for a total of 600 - that would bring the project to a level where it could succeed, he said.
Woolf said 600 megawatts equals the amount of electricity needed to power 600,000 homes. He said the advantages of wind power include locking in a long-term price, adding capacity and diversifying sources of supply.
The energy chief said a larger wind project could lower the price per kilowatt. Among the options being considered, he said, are a larger bank of turbines off the Delaware shore and a separate field of turbines off Ocean City.
State uncommitted
