UNH gets stimulus funds to test floating wind turbine

The University of New Hampshire’s Center for Ocean Renewable Energy will receive $700,000 in federal stimulus money to test the nation’s first floating deepwater wind turbine off the Isle of Shoals.

The money is part of $8 million in stimulus funds for a University of Maine-led consortium to develop three deepwater wind energy test sites in the Gulf of Maine.

If the floating turbines work – and sustain the harsh weather of the western North Atlantic - it may forge new public support for offshore wind farms. The nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm – the 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound – has been stalled more than five years largely over aesthetic concerns because it can be seen from land.

The University already has an offshore aquaculture program that has permanent mooring lines in 170 feet of deepwater, making it easier – and quicker - for them to test a floating turbine.

“This is a really exciting project because we’re pushing the envelope,’’ says UNH’s ocean center director Ken Baldwin, professor of ocean and mechanical engineering.

As early as next autumn, Baldwin and others will install a wind turbine on a 60-foot tower about six miles off the mainland and close to the Isles of Shoals. The 10-kilowatt turbine will measure wind, wave and temperature on the turbine itself, the platform and the mooring lines that anchor it to the fall.

Two other. larger, floating wind turbines will be tested off Maine.

But Baldwin cautions it won’t be easy: Computer models of offshore wind turbines on floating platforms exist but they’ve never been tested in a deepwater environment. The team’s first step will be to test small models, developed by UNH seniors in an undergraduate ocean research projects course in UNH’s indoor wave tank.