State gets $2m grant for wind technology
Boost for facility in Charlestown
Massachusetts and Texas won $2 million grants from the US Department of Energy yesterday to help fund centers that will test the next generation of giant turbine blades, setting up a competition between the two states for leadership in the emerging field of wind technology.
The grant for Massachusetts will provide specialized test equipment for a $15.2 million hangar on Massachusetts Port Authority-owned land in Charlestown, where different designs of turbine blades up to 230 feet long will be shipped in on barges for testing.
While the center will be devoted primarily to testing blades for pressure and fatigue, using hydraulics and sensors to measure how they respond to torque and other stresses, the state will also spend $5 million to create an adjacent research lab to develop stronger composite blade materials.
At a news conference yesterday, Governor Deval L. Patrick embraced the plan as part of his campaign to boost energy efficien cy and conservation and establish Massachusetts as a hub for alternative energy. "This is another in a series of steps we have taken to help make Massachusetts a global center for clean energy technology," Patrick said. "We think this is a big opening for Massachusetts."
A portion of the sprawling site houses Autoport, a car-shipping company that is expected to continue operating when the turbine center opens. State Representative Eugene L. O'Flaherty , Democrat of Charlestown, said he supported the project and has been assured the 300-foot-long building will generate relatively little noise and could bring economic benefits to the neighborhood. "You may create a potential where this industry gains a solid footing along the waterfront," he said.
Wind energy is the nation's fastest-growing alternative energy source, though the industry today is heavily subsidized by the federal government. Almost all of the industry's current output comes from land-based wind turbines. But projects like Cape Wind, the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, have opened the potential for a new crop of offshore plants requiring much larger turbines and longer blades.
"Our strategy will be to get out early and capture as much of the market for blade testing as we can," said Ian Bowles , the Massachusetts secretary for energy and environmental affairs. Bowles said construction is set to begin on the Charlestown hangar this fall and the test center is expected to open its doors in 2009.
Jim Gordon , president of Cape Wind LLC in Boston, said the 182-foot-long blades planned for his offshore development could be tested in Charlestown. "This demonstrates Massachusetts is serious about being an energy capital in the 21st century," he said.
Initially, the test center is expected to create only about 10 jobs, but state officials hope it will spur more wind-energy research and a new crop of wind turbine energy startups in the Boston area.
The federal grant application began last fall during the administration of former governor Mitt Romney . Under the state plan, filed by a coalition including the University of Massachusetts and the quasi-public Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the technology collaborative will put up $7 million to finance the new building and issue an additional $6.2 million in loans to a new agency, the Wind Technology Test Center. The collaborative's money will be drawn from the renewable energy trust funded by Massachusetts ratepayers through their electric bills.
Once the test center is running, it is expected to be self-funding, with revenue from turbine blade makers offsetting the cost of operations, according to state officials, who said that they expect the facility would become a magnet for other wind turbine design and manufacturing companies. By 2010, the test center is projected to generate about $82,000 in net income, state officials said. But its primary economic benefit will be as a magnet to attract wind turbine design and manufacturing companies to Massachusetts.
Though the US government is contributing a relatively small share of the cost, state officials said the imprimatur of the Department of Energy would be key to raising the profile of both Massachusetts and Texas in the wind-energy field. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said the US government would contribute new test equipment patented at a Colorado test facility that is too small to handle turbine blades so large that they must be transported by barge.
"The problem is Colorado doesn't have any seashore," he said. "And these things can no longer be moved around on trucks."
Bodman said Massachusetts and Texas were finalists in a competition for the blade-testing funds with a half-dozen other states . While the Energy Department originally planned to issue just one grant, he said, both proposals were strong enough to justify investments that could accelerate growth of wind technology. He conceded, however, the two states would compete for business.
"We're going to be in competition with Texas," said Mitchell Adams , executive director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative in Westborough, who cited a two-year-old offshore wind-research program and a cluster of alternative energy startups in Massachusetts as competitive advantages. "The business in North America for testing will be divided between us and Texas."
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said his state's test center would be built in Ingleside, on the north side of Corpus Christi Bay, on acreage donated by BP PLC . Texas hopes to break ground on its project by the end of 2007 and begin operations within two years, he said, noting that large numbers of turbines already are being shipped into the port to service the state's many inland wind farms.
"We're the number one producer of wind energy in the nation today," Patterson said. "I look forward to getting together with the folks up there in Massachusetts to see what they're doing. If there's a race, I'm not aware of it. But if it is a race, we'll certainly do our best."
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com. Globe staff writer Lisa Wangsness contributed to this story. 