BALTIMORE — The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo) is planning to begin construction on its pilot offshore wind farm in 2014, according to CEO Lorry Wagner.

In an interview yesterday with Offshore Wind Wire, Wagner said that the project near Cleveland is on track and LEEDCo officials are currently negotiating power purchase agreements with local utilities. Wagner said the project has already reached a deal to sell 25 percent of the project’s electricity to Cleveland Public Power, a municipal utility. He dismissed the idea that price of offshore wind electricity was too high.

“Some people say that offshore wind power will be too expensive, but solar is expensive [and successful]. I think its premature to say that offshore wind energy will be prohibitively expensive.” Wagner said.

The first step in LEEDCo’s plan is to install a 20 megawatt (MW) offshore pilot wind project in Lake Erie. Wagner hopes that this deployment will stimulate the installation of 1000 MW of wind capacity in the Ohio waters of Lake Erie by 2020.

A key component to this project, according to Wagner, was getting the local communities on board with the plan in its beginning stages.

“We’ve participated in 65 county-led meetings and 180 forums since 2004,” said Wagner. He contrasted the experience with Ontario, where some lake front property owners opposed offshore wind development and the government appeased them by suspending all projects.   “In Ontario people woke up and read about a project in the paper and they were upset. That won’t happen here.”

Wagner said that the great majority of people he has spoken with are enthusiastic about the project, and he has encountered little opposition from people concerned about the visual impacts.

“The turbines will be 7 miles out, so they’ll be only about as big as a dime on the horizon.” said Wagner. “The question we get most frequently is “what happens when the lake freezes?”

Wagner said that the project would use ice-breaking tugs during the winter. Playing off that concern, LEEDCo has begun to promote the pilot project as the ‘Icebreaker’.”

Ice is not the only factor that makes an offshore wind project in the Great Lakes unique. Offshore wind on the Lakes is not regulated by the Department of the Interior, so LEEDCo won’t have the benefit of the Smart from the Start streamlined federal permitting process.

“I look on the bright side.” said Wagner. “One less layer of bureaucracy could be beneficial.”

Ultimately, Wagner sees the pilot project and the farms that may follow as a potential economic boon to the area.

“Ohio already manufactures wind components that are used in places like Denmark and Germany,” Wagner said. “Combined with the skilled construction, operation and maintenance positions that the project will require, there is no question that it this project will be very beneficial to Ohio.”

Offshore Wind Wire: Nautica recently received a grant from the Department of Energy. Please tell us what plans Nautica has in place for the funding?

Larry Viterna: The U.S. Department of Energy provided this funding to support technical innovations that will lower the cost of energy produced from offshore wind turbines. Our effort will develop the conceptual design of a deep water, full turbine and infrastructure system. Nautica Windpower’s Advanced Floating Turbine (AFT) will be a core innovation for this funded design effort. The AFT is presently at an early stage of development but our scale model tests and preliminary analysis indicates that it offers a number of characteristics that will reduce costs of not only the turbine but also the infrastructure system over its operating life.  Using the DOE funding, Nautica Windpower will significantly enhance the design of the AFT and infrastructure for a to-be-selected site and further confirm the predicted performance and cost of energy benefits. As output of the effort, we expect to have fairly detailed digital prototypes, meaning three dimensional engineering models, of key components of the system. In the process, we will also be conducting trades studies of a variety of system and subsystem design options, possibly leveraging other DOE funded and industry innovations.

OWW: Nautica recently claimed that it will generate offshore electricity at 7 cents per kilowatt hour. How does Nautica intend to accomplish this, and when?

Viterna: Cost of Energy (COE) is a critical design driver for our AFT system. Analysis conducted to date by our engineers indicates that 7 cents per kilowatt is achievable in a 250 MW offshore power plant at sites available in the Great Lakes and along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of the U.S. The AFT’s deepwater capability enables access to sites further from shore where average wind speeds at the turbine height can approach 9 meters/second. The AFT’s attractive COE also comes via a novel structural design and systems approach, which together increase energy capture, reduce component cost, and ease deployment and maintenance.  Specifically, our rotor and foundation system is wholly different from any commercial technology on the market resulting in a significant reduction in system weight. As weight is a surrogate for major cost elements, this innovation cascades through the system, lowering costs for material, manufacture, maintenance, and deployment per component. In addition, our installation method requires no special vessels, deep ports, or tall cranes, further reducing cost of energy, market entry time and infrastructure limitations to deployment.

Regarding timing and schedule, the DOE funded design effort is over the next three years.  In parallel, we will also conduct a one-third scale prototype test in open water, planned for 2013, to further characterize the performance of the AFT.  Finally, considering time for design and testing of a full scale commercial prototype, we believe it is possible to enter the market with limited production in 2017. This will likely involve partnerships with other wind turbine system manufacturers and component suppliers.

OWW: How does the Advanced Floating Turbine being developed by Nautica compare to a standard offshore turbine? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this technology, and will the AFT be able to withstand natural disasters?

Viterna: Two major differences between standard offshore turbines and the AFT are the way they are connected to sea floor and their water depth capabilities. Standard turbines are rigidly connected to the sea floor by driving large structural components into the floor or placing them on large gravity foundations that can resist the overturning bending from winds, waves and ice. The AFT requires a single connection cable to an anchor point on the sea floor that does not experience the high bending loads of standard foundations. These characteristics of the AFT contribute to the cost reductions during installation mentioned earlier.  Natural disasters such as hurricanes are critical design drivers for all offshore wind turbines. Surprisingly, allowing motion of the AFT can actually reduce damaging forces compared to the rigid structure of standard turbines. This is similar to how flexible palm trees can sustain hurricane winds that destroy less flexible trees.

Standard offshore turbines today are most cost effective for water depths up to about 30 meters.  There will certainly be a good market for these standard turbines in shallow waters as the offshore industry grows. Full-scale, multi-megawatt AFTs will not be capable of operating in these shallow water depths.  Instead, water depths exceeding 60 meters will be necessary and most cost effective. This deepwater capability of the AFT opens up vast new resources of wind energy.  The U.S. DOE analyses show that over two thirds of the available wind energy is located in deepwater of the Great Lakes as well as in deepwater within 50 miles of the ocean shores. DOE has also estimated that the available offshore wind energy in deep water is comparable to the entire U.S. electrical energy demand today.  We believe that for some communities, the AFT’s deepwater capability will be an additional advantage by placing the wind power plant farther from shore, even to the point of being out of sight of shoreline residences.

OWW: Is the Great Lakes offshore wind supply chain positioned to be effective in aiding Nautica’s production goals?

Viterna: The manufacturing supply chain in the Great Lakes region is a significant contributor to the wind industry today and will certainly be a great asset for Nautica Windpower and others in the offshore wind market in the future.  Basic structural materials, mechanical components, instrumentation and electronics are examples of key products of the region that will all be needed. Our Advanced Floating Turbine will be able to use many of the same subsystems and components of used in today’s standard onshore and offshore turbines. As an added asset, the Great Lakes region offers outstanding transportation capabilities by water, land and air.

OWW: How does Nautica’s AFT differ from other deepwater floating turbines currently in development?

Viterna: There are several deepwater floating turbines being designed and even tested around the world – most by very credible and capable companies. Our key differentiator is our patented floating tower technology and we believe this will provide us a significant and sustainable competitive advantage in the future marketplace.

Essentially all of our competitors utilize floating structures that are based on the three types of oil-platforms – spar buoys, tension leg platforms and semi-submersible/barges.  While these types of floating structures work well for the vertical-dominant loads in lifting oil, they are not optimum for the horizontal-dominant loading of a wind turbine. The AFT system uses much less material because of the way it balances the asymmetric forces on the system. The AFT is expected to weigh only 25 percent of the competing deepwater floating turbines, and as stated earlier, weight is a surrogate for cost of manufacturing, assembly and deployment. This patented design also allows for the single anchor line compared to the cost of securing multiple lines to the seafloor as is needed by our competitor’s designs. We also are able to eliminate the active yaw subsystem because the AFT passively follows the wind. This rotation and alignment of the tower structure further allows us to optimize the structure for the direction of the dominant forces. Finally, we can use variable buoyancy of the structure to lower the turbine in the event of major repair – something not possible with the heavy weight and ballast of the oil-platform designs.

We are very excited about this innovation and its potential contribution to a cost competitive and high growth offshore wind industry.

The company is considering laying off about 40 Norway-based offshore wind employees and has suspended plans to build a manufacturing plant in the UK, according to the report.

Forbes reported that the company is focusing on deep-water offshore wind development, with a potential 10-15 MW turbine.

LEEDCo Considers “Gravity-Based” Foundations

An official from Lake Erie Energy Development Corp — the organization that is pushing for a pilot offshore wind project near Cleveland — said the project might use gravity-based foundations that would be built on land and floated out to the site, the Ashtabula (Ohio) Star-Beacon reported last week.

The foundations would reportedly be 10 to 12 stories high and built on land, according to LEEDCo President Lorry Wagner.

“The Ashtabula port is ideally suited,” he said.

Senior Deepwater Official Leaves Company

Deepwater Wind Chief Development Officer Paul Rich has left the company, the Providence Journal reported on Saturday.

The report said that he was leaving to pursue other interests in the offshore wind industry. Jeffrey Grybowski, the company’s chief administrative officer, said that Rich would not be replaced.

“From our view, it’s a natural progression for a project, from an early-development stage to a late-development stage, where we’re getting ready to execute permits and go into preconstruction,” he said, while complimenting Rich’s work on the company’s Block Island project. “He’s been a big part of the project’s success to date.”

Winds are shifting over the Great Lakes, with offshore wind development in Ohio’s lake waters moving forward while projects in New York languish.

The United States Department of Energy has identified 742.5 gigawatts of potential developable capacity in the lakes. However, differences in state and local regulatory environments and in development structures may lead to uneven development of this potential.

In positive news for Great Lakes offshore wind, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has signed a lease option giving the Lake Erie Energy Development Co. development rights to part of Ohio’s lakebed holdings. Founded in 2009, LEEDCo is a private nonprofit economic development corporation which grew out of a local and state-level task force. LEEDCo’s current goals include building a 20 MW pilot project, then using the pilot project to develop a permitting process designed to scale up to 1000 MW of offshore wind by 2020. LEEDCO distinguishes its project through both extensive engagement with the local communities – whose manufacturing base has been hit hard by the economic downturn – and by a relatively modest initial project size of 5 to 7 turbines.

At the same time, things are not going as smoothly for offshore wind development in New York’s Lake Ontario waters. A shakeup at the New York Power Authority may spell trouble for the NYPA’s Great Lakes Offshore Wind (GLOW) program. This Tuesday, NYPA president and CEO Richard Kessel gave the Authority’s board notice of his resignation.

Within NYPA, Kessel championed the prospects of developing New York’s Great Lakes offshore wind resource. Unveiled on Earth Day 2009, NYPA’s GLOW Project featured a competitive process to award power purchase agreements to prospective developers of offshore wind projects in New York’s lake waters. Things looked rosy at first: five developers responded to NYPA’s request for proposals by the summer of 2010; NYPA appeared to be reviewing the proposals, with a winner to be announced no later than January 2011.

This year brought a shift in the winds for the NYPA GLOW project. First the developer selection date slipped to late March, then it slipped to “second quarter”. In May, the chairman of NYPA’s board publicly questioned the viability of the GLOW program. NYPA has been relatively secretive about the status of GLOW over the past year – drawing public criticism and scrutiny as recently as this week – so it is hard for outsiders to gauge the full import of Kessel’s resignation on NYPA’s offshore wind program. Nevertheless, it is clear that Kessel’s departure comes as another blow to the GLOW program. This reading is consistent with suspicions that the NYPA board will announce that none of the proposals under review meet economic criteria in terms of the return on NYPA’s investment of publicly controlled dollars.

Meanwhile, proposed federal legislation would give a boost to all U.S. offshore wind projects, whether in Great Lakes waters or our oceans. S. 1397, the Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act, would extend an existing federal tax incentive for developing new renewable projects. The U.S. tax code allows developers to offset their federal income tax liabilities through an investment tax credit (ITC) equal to 30% of the eligible costs of developing a renewable energy project. This tax credit, like other federal energy tax incentives, tends to receive Congressional authorization for several years, only to be renewed in the face of impending expiration.

Current law requires developers of wind projects to place their projects in service by the end of 2012 in order to qualify for the ITC. Between the novel nature of offshore wind technology, the challenges of the regulatory and permitting processes, and the multi-year nature of any project’s construction effort, it is not clear that any projects could meet the deadline to qualify for the ITC. S. 1397 would amend that incentive to allow offshore wind developers give years after receiving the ITC to complete project development. This would not only help conform the ITC to the needs of real offshore wind projects, but would offer developers greater certainty about the future availability of this incentive.

Todd J. Griset practices energy law with Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios in Maine. He also writes a blog on offshore wind, renewable energy and policy issues.

During a hearing on renewable energy development on public lands and waters, Chairman Doc. Hasting called on the White House to end “bureaucratic delays, unnecessary lawsuits and burdensome environmental regulations [that] impede our ability to harness wind and solar energy on public lands.”

The witness list included Cape Wind chief Jim Gordon and Jim Lanard, president of the Offshore Wind Development Coalition. Ed Markey, the Democratic ranking member, asked the hearing witnesses if their industries needed more predictability. Every witness answered yes.

“As the chairman said, certainty is very important,” Lanard said.

Leasing Agreement Sets Precedent For Lake Erie Offshore Wind

A revenue sharing agreement struck last week by the local governments surrounding the proposed Lake Erie offshore wind project will set a precedent for revenue from future offshore wind development, Cleveland.com reported today.

“When other land leases are reached for turbines that may be built in the future, this sets an example for the other projects that may not be located in Cuyahoga County,” said John Kohlstrand, a spokesperson for Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald. “The benefit here is by everyone working together, these multiple counties wouldn’t be feuding over the wind turbines.”

Cleveland Conference Will Focus On Offshore Wind Supply Chain

Cleveland will host a conference on July 13 and 14 that will focus on developing an offshore wind supply chain.

The event, organized by the Great Lakes Wind Network, will feature sessions such as “Achieving Global Manufacturing Competitiveness” and “Inventing It Here: Lowering Costs Through New Design.”

Senior Massachusetts political leaders, state energy officials and offshore wind industry representatives gathered Wednesday to open the $38 million facility — which is the nation’s largest blade testing operation. Engineers will soon will test a blade from TPI Composites, which has a facility in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts.

“We are booked for the next 18 months,” said Patrick Cloney, director of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Craig Christenson of Clipper Windpower told the audience that the facility is a ”field of dreams” for engineers.

“Thank you all for building it,” he said. “We have come.”

Nearby Counties Will Share In Cleveland Offshore Wind Lease Payment

Three counties near Cleveland will share the lease payment from a planned offshore wind development in Lake Erie, the Ashtabula Star Beacon reported yesterday.

Cuyahoga County and its Port Authority will receive 40 percent of the lease payment according to the report. The three other counties in the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. — Ashtabula, Lake and Lorain Counties — will share the remaining money.

Richmond Op-Ed Calls For Offshore Wind Instead of Oil Drilling

The Richmond Times Dispatch published a sharp critique of Virginia’s energy policy yesterday by Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who called for offshore wind development instead of offshore oil drilling.

“Pushing for dangerous offshore drilling just a few miles from Virginia Beach in 2011 is the technological equivalent of building canals during the early days of railroad. Or investing in manual typewriters in, say, 1985,” Tidwell wrote. “For a modern solution to our energy woes, Virginia should join New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland in developing offshore wind power, not oil.”

Tidwell called on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to promote “policies that move wind power forward, including appropriate incentives for Dominion Virginia Power to begin building its own turbines and blades for deployment off the coast.”

Sen. Alexander Questions Tax Incentives For “Big Wind”

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander questioned tax incentives for “Big Wind” and said that the money might be better spent on research, The Hill reported yesterday.

Alexander’s comments came a day after the Senate rejected a bill that would have cut subsidies for oil companies but he suggested that he would be open to reducing energy subsidies across a range of industries.

“My colleagues want to talk about ‘Big Oil’ all week. I think we ought to be talking about ‘Big Wind,’” Alexander said during a Senate Appropriations hearing.

The electricity would come from a planned 1,000 megawatt wind farm that the developer has planned for Rhode Island Sound and would be transmitted by undersea cable. The company’s existing power purchase agreement — for its much smaller pilot offshore wind farm near Block Island — calls for National Grid to buy the electricity at 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour in the first year of operations. The difference in this most current bid, company officials said, was the larger scale and the dramatically improved economies of scale.

“The best chance that we see of getting to large projects in the U.S. is to start off with small projects,” said Jeffrey Grybowski, Deepwater’s chief administrative officer.

LEEDCo Wants Offshore Wind Farm Operational By 2013

The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, the non-profit organization seeking to develop a pilot offshore wind project near Cleveland, wants to begin construction next year and have the project operational in 2013, Reuters reported on Friday.

Freshwater Wind — a consortium of developers formed to build the project — could reach a power purchase agreement with utilities in the next month, according to the Reuters report.

“We think there is great value in being first, because our goal is not just to generate electricity,” said Dennis Eckart, a strategic adviser to LEEDCo. “One of our main goals is to create a supply chain industry that will support the building and deployment of these turbines.”

Atlantic City Project Receives Permits

Fishermen’s Energy has received its final state permits to build its six-turbine pilot project near Atlantic City, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

The company received an electric-line easement as well as permission to build on the particular site, according to the report. Before it can move forward, the project still needs a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers as well as financing, according to company officials.

Bloomberg reported that the work to lay electrical cables could begin in December and wind farm construction could begin as early as May 2012.

“The 6-megawatt turbine will be marketed and presented here in London on the 30th of March,” said Vestas CEO Ditlev Engel.

Largest Blade Testing Facility Nearly Open

The largest wind turbine blade testing facility in the world — being built in Boston — will open in March, the Boston Globe reported Monday.

Derek Berry, the engineering supervisor on the project, told the Globe that the development could encourage foreign investment in regional turbine blade plants.

“Having a testing facility in America encourages other countries to build blades here,” Berry said. “Having a central testing center helps grow the renewable energy sector … It creates a central repository for national expertise.”

Ohio Offshore Wind Sector Could Compete For Canadian Work

In a profile of the offshore wind development near Cleveland, Yahoo! reported yesterday that the developing industry in Ohio could compete for 4,000 megawatts of planned offshore wind development in Ontario.

According to the article, one recent study projected that the Cleveland 20 megawatt pilot project by itself could create 600 jobs in the next few years.

“There’s the whole maritime industry — ships that will tow the turbines, specialized vessels, crews to do the work,” said Dave Karpinski, vice president of NorTech, a regional technology-based economic development organization.  “Because the equipment is so large, work will have to be done close to where it’s being commissioned, so lots of jobs would have to be located here,” Karpinski says.

On Lake Erie, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo) continues to make progress toward the nation’s first freshwater offshore wind development — five wind turbines in state waters about 7 miles off Cleveland.

Founded in 2009, LEEDCo is a private nonprofit economic development corporation.  LEEDCo grew out of the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force, which itself originated with the Cuyahoga County Commissioners in 2006.  LEEDCo’s current goals include building a 20 MW pilot project, then using the pilot project to develop a permitting process designed to scale up to 1000 MW of offshore wind by 2020.

As with other similar pilot programs, LEEDCo envisions a series of public-private partnerships to integrate the project into the region’s economy.  The project also intends to foster a local supply chain by attracting component manufacturing operations in the area, and then using that manufacturing base to serve other projects as well.

Great Lakes wind combines some of the advantages of both terrestrial and oceanic wind.  Winds over water are often faster and more uniform in flow than winds over land, so Great Lakes projects benefit from their location.  Michigan State University’s Land Policy Institute has estimated that Michigan alone, which controls about 40% of the surface area of the Great Lakes, has an estimated offshore wind capacity of 321,936 MW.  (Compare Michigan’s estimated 16,650 MW of theoretical onshore generating capacity.)  When the other Great Lakes states’ potential is taken into account, the opportunity for freshwater offshore wind is even greater.

Compared to marine projects, a Great Lakes site offers certain advantages.  For example, compared to the ocean, the lakes are relatively shallow (especially Lake Erie, with an average depth of 62 feet and a maximum depth of 210 feet), and are generally off the track of damaging hurricanes.  Fresh water is significant less corrosive than salt water.  Compared to many other sites with similar wind potential, the Great Lakes are located closer to consumer load, resulting in reduced costs for transmission lines to get the power to market.

On the regulatory front, the lake floor under each state’s territorial waters is held and managed by the state in trust for the public.  In marine settings, state jurisdiction in the form of coastal management zones extends only 3 miles, while in the Great Lakes states’ zones are not so limited.

LEEDCo is the farthest along in the race to develop the nation’s first freshwater offshore turbines, but other developers are moving forward as well – on both sides of the border.  In Ontario, developers have applied to lease offshore sites on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes that have a total potential capacity of 20,790 MW.  Developers in Ontario benefit from a strong feed-in tariff for offshore wind.  Ontario’s policy incentive offers generators 19 cents per kilowatt-hour of offshore wind power.  This contract price is higher than that offered for onshore wind (13.5 cents).

With developers on both sides of the border moving forward, the race for Great Lakes offshore wind is on.

Todd J. Griset practices energy law with Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios in Maine.  He also writes a blog on offshore wind, renewable energy and policy issues.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) announced today that he has proposed a new piece of legislation aimed at installing a large scale offshore wind farm off the shores of Lake Erie.

Brown’s legislation, titled The Program for Offshore Wind Energy Research and Development (POWERED) Act of 2010, would spur research on potential offshore wind projects, expand incentives for offshore wind development, and require the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a comprehensive roadmap for the deployment of offshore wind.

“Lake Erie is ready to be home to the first offshore wind turbines in fresh water,” Brown said. “The Lake is shallow enough to support offshore wind turbines and is also surrounded on land by Ohio’s rich industrial base. With the right priorities in Washington, Columbus, and Cuyahoga County, we will not only make this project a reality, but we’ll also revitalize Ohio’s manufacturing base and create new jobs.”

The announcement came during an event that saw Brown and Ohio Governor Ted Strickland join forces in Cleveland to promote wind energy with local business leaders.

“Ohio’s greatest potential for creating wind energy is offshore in Lake Erie. Offshore wind, in particular, offers opportunities for our manufacturing sector and for Ohio shipyards. Ohio can build the installation vessels needed in all the Great Lakes; Ohio can build the towers; Ohio can build the turbines and the blades; Ohio can build all the component parts,” Strickland said.