Standards being devised for offshore wind turbine farms

Rhode Island officials working on a state ocean zoning plan were in Washington this week to take part in a workshop to develop national design and safety standards for offshore wind turbines.

Because no offshore wind farms have been built yet in the United States, standards do not exist governing, among other issues, how turbines would be anchored to the ocean floor or how they would be built to survive hurricanes. But with several proposals on the table for offshore wind farms off the East Coast, the federal Minerals Management Service has begun working in haste to develop regulations for the design and operation of turbines.

Deepwater Wind has put forward a proposal to build two wind farms in waters off Rhode Island. The first, an eight-turbine project planned in state waters near Block Island, is moving through the approval process and scheduled to be on line by 2013. A larger, 100-turbine project in federal waters is set to follow.

Grover Fugate, executive director of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, and Jennifer McCann, of Rhode Island Sea Grant, are part of a team working on an ocean management plan that will determine locations for the wind farms. They traveled to Washington, along with scientists from the University of Rhode Island, to participate in the offshore wind standards workshop that was held Thursday and Friday by the Transportation Research Board, an arm of the nonprofit National Research Council. The council is researching possible regulations on behalf of MMS.

On Friday, Fugate and McCann said federal officials are working with states to develop standards for turbines, blades, towers, foundations and other equipment used in offshore wind farms. Rhode Island's work to manage offshore wind through ocean zoning was highlighted at the event.

"They appreciate that Rhode Island is trying to be very thoughtful about this project," Fugate said.

Although standards are in place in Europe, where offshore wind has already been developed, Fugate and McCann said not all of them could be duplicated in the United States because of environmental differences. For example, Fugate said, the European North Atlantic does not get the same types of hurricanes as in this country.

Development of the standards is important to Rhode Island because Deepwater's eight-turbine project could be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.

"We need to get this right, now," McCann said.