A groundbreaking ceremony Monday on Vinalhaven will usher in Maine's first island wind-power project and could help set the stage for larger offshore wind farms.
Politicians and business and community leaders are expected to be at the construction site of the $15 million Fox Islands wind project, which is being built to supply electricity to residents of Vinalhaven and North Haven. It is made up of three 1.5-megawatt turbines that will spin on 250-foot-high towers.
On an annual basis, the turbines are expected to generate more than enough power to meet the demand of islanders. Excess energy will be sold into the regional grid, a transaction that could trim rates by up to 20 percent.
A dozen miles off Rockland, Vinalhaven is the largest of Maine's 15 year-round islands. Vinalhaven and neighboring North Haven are connected to the mainland by a power cable under Penobscot Bay. But energy loss from the cable, and the high cost of distributing power, mean members of the Fox Islands Electric Cooperative pay electric rates approaching 30 cents per kilowatt hour, roughly twice the state average.
High energy prices threaten the viability of island communities, according to Nancy McLeod Carter, a vice president at the Island Institute in Rockland.
"Islanders pay more for everything," she said. "This is a way to stabilize and even lower those prices."
The turbines will be located on a remote elevated patch of granite on the west side of the island, away from most homes. The mean wind speed at the height of the turbines is projected to be more than 14 mph. The turbines will generate the most kilowatt hours in winter, when wind speeds are highest.
Vinalhaven and North Haven have a combined population that can reach 5,000 in summer, and settles back to 1,600 year round. Careful siting and the prospect of lower electric bills have attracted overwhelming support from residents.
Making the effort to get communities to understand the benefits of wind power will be crucial to the state's larger goals, according to George Baker, chief executive of Fox Islands Wind LLC.
"Getting community buy-in to these types of projects," Baker said, "is really the first step in getting people comfortable with offshore wind, which is really the big prize."
That view was echoed by Parker Hadlock, project development manager at Cianbro Corp., the general contractor on the job.
Hadlock serves on the state's Ocean Energy Task Force, which is working this year to locate up to five demonstration sites off the Maine coast to test large-scale offshore wind farms. Maine contractors, including Cianbro as well as international energy companies, recognize that the state will need to become comfortable with these projects if developers are to overcome potential opposition from fishermen, conservation groups and coastal residents.
"The Vinalhaven project is a first step toward gaining public acceptance of offshore wind," Parker said.
It's also a dress rehearsal for the logistics that will be required to build wind projects offshore.
Cianbro will bring more than 30 truckloads of components from Rockland on barges. A large assembly crane, turbine-gearbox units weighing 60 tons and blades 132 feet long will be among the cargo. The equipment will be offloaded near the state ferry terminal in Carver's Harbor.
Road construction at the site is set to begin next month, with towers and turbines rising in September. Roughly 25 workers will assemble the project. The turbines are scheduled to be generating power in November.
Monday's groundbreaking is expected to include comments from Gov. John Baldacci, Cianbro Chairman Peter Vigue and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, a longtime North Haven resident.
Financing for the project is coming largely from the federal Rural Utilities Service, along with $4.8 million from Diversified Communications of Portland.
Staff Writer Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or at:
tturkel@pressherald.com
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