Eastern states from North Carolina to Maine are working on plans for offshore wind power.

Why is nothing happening off the West Coast, where the winds also blow strong?

The main problem, experts say, is topography. Whereas the continental shelf extends for miles off the East Coast, the bedrock drops off sharply just beyond the West Coast –- making it too deep to anchor the turbines with current technology.

A second difficulty is power prices. Electricity in California, while expensive relative to the middle of the country, is still cheaper than in most of New England. This makes offshore wind projects less economical. (Electricity in Washington and Oregon is cheaper still.)

Western states also have an abundance of what Easterners do not: land. “We have a huge endowment of land-based wind resources (on gigantic open spaces not available in the East) that are going to get developed before we need to go offshore,” Elliot Mainzer of the Bonneville Power Administration, said in an e-mail message.

For projects off California, there would also be an “additional side concern of the earthquakes,” said Peter Mandelstam, the president of Bluewater Wind, a developer that plans to put offshore turbines off the Delaware coast.

However, he added, this challenge is probably surmountable.

Despite all of the West Coast’s barriers, at least one project appears to be moving forward — in British Columbia. And there are long-term hopes, too, for California, a state that has set aggressive renewable energy targets.

“I know that there is interest in developing wind and wave projects off the central California coast, but not of specific wind projects yet,” Megan Birney, a renewable energy specialist with the Community Environmental Council, based in Santa Barbara, said in an e-mail message.

Projects near Santa Barbara — probably on the far side of the Channel Islands, outside a marine sanctuary — could sell power into the huge Los Angeles market, she said.

David Olsen, coordinator of the California Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, said that the West Coast could eventually benefit from improving technology.

“The larger turbines under development will extend the economic limit of water depths that can be utilized for fixed foundation projects,” he wrote in an e-mail message. Floating wind turbines too, he said, are under development.