Can America’s First Floating Wind Farm Help Open Deeper Water to Clean Energy?

The floating turbines off Maine’s coast could be operational b

y 2022.  The technology could be a model for other states with deep waters, and deep local opposition.

The state with perhaps the greatest untapped potential for harnessing its ocean breezes for electricity could soon have turbines spinning off its coast after years of political resistance.

It's a small project—up to two offshore wind turbines serving as many as 9,000 homes—but it would blaze a new trail:  If all goes as planned, in 2022, Aqua Ventus will become the first floating offshore wind farm in the nation.

Less than a year after Democrat Janet Mills replaced Republican Paul LePage as Maine's governor, state utility regulators approved a contract this month under which the utility Avangrid will buy the power generated by Aqua Ventus.  The vote followed legislation Mills signed this summer requiring the Public Utilities Commission to approve the pilot project, which has been six years in the making.

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