OCEAN CITY -- State energy officials are gauging interest from developers who would build an offshore farm of electricity-generating, skyscraper-sized wind turbines off the Worcester coastline.

"The question is, how do we tap into the wind resources that we've got?" said Maryland Energy Administration Director Malcolm D. Woolf. He said coastal turbines could help the state satisfy self-imposed requirements that one-fifth of all power generated in Maryland come from renewable energy sources by 2022.

The agency has announced it is formally asking businesses with experience in turbines to advise the state about how they could be installed off Maryland's coast.

Woolf said a discussion of offshore wind farm possibilities starts with communities to see what residents think. Then, a scientific analysis would be done to check if those bountiful offshore breezes also happen to be in places where it "wouldn't be responsible" to build turbines, like fragile ecosystems or shipping lanes.

The last step? Getting proposals from developers.

It's a tall order. So far, there are no offshore wind farms in the United States. There are about 30 operational wind parks in Europe, the oldest of which came online in 1991.

Plans for an oceanic wind farm off Rehoboth Beach are moving forward with developer Bluewater Wind, which plans to construct two $6 million meteorological towers next year to collect data on bird flight patterns and wind speeds before opening the Rehoboth facility in 2013. The company is currently pursuing interim financing from investors.

In Maryland, Bluewater has proposed a wind park about 12 miles out from Ocean City. That project hinges on securing $700 million to $1 billion in private financing, a process that could take years in this economy.

"It's very encouraging," said Dave Blazer, Bluewater spokesman, of the MEA's interest. "It really gets the ball rolling in Maryland for offshore wind. There's a lot of hoops and steps to go through, but this is a great start."

Blazer said Bluewater has been talking to Maryland officials for a year and a half about developing a wind park 12-18 miles offshore from Ocean City. Plans call for an array of 200 wind turbines, each 262 feet tall from the surface of the water to the hub. By comparison, Ocean City's tallest structure, the Century I condominium at 99th Street, is 258 feet tall.

"We've had visualizations done; it'll look like small toothpicks on the horizon," Blazer said.

Staging operations, including the construction of the turbines and the subsequent shipping to the site, would likely be done in Maryland, bringing so-called green-collar jobs here, Woolf said. The MEA also has to determine the exact spot where the miles of power cable would make landfall. That substation could be in Delaware or Maryland, he said, depending on where the site is built.