Duke Energy will hold a public meeting March 18th in the Outer Banks town of Manteo to discuss the newly launched environmental impact study for a proposed three-turbine offshore wind demonstration project.

The Army Corps of Engineers filed the official notice launching the study in February, according to Duke Energy spokesman Jason Walls.  He said that Duke Energy is still involved with preliminary design work for the project and that timeline is “driven by the permitting process, we don’t really have a firm start date” for construction.

The Outer Banks meeting is “a chance for the public to come in and get information about the project and to file comments,” Walls said.

The demonstration project comes as the result of a University of North Carolina study to assess the feasibility of offshore wind off the state’s coast.  That study, which was requested by the state and concluded last June, found that “there is potential for utility-scale production of wind energy.”  This specific demonstration project is capped by North Carolina statute at three offshore turbines.  The project will be a joint effort of Duke Energy and UNC.

“We’ve developed a good partnership with Duke Energy, all of us are feeling our way forward,” said Harvey Seim, a professor of Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill.  Seim said that federal regulators in the region are also new to the process of offshore wind, resulting in a learning process at all levels.

“Given all that, I think the progress is the pace it can move at,” Seim said.  “We’re anxious to see the environmental impact study move forward and hopeful that it really can be completed in a reasonable time frame.  The briefest I’ve heard mentioned is 12 to 14 months.”

Seim said that the university will play a crucial role in explaining the project to the public, specifically that “this is not a commercial project, this is not hundreds of turbines.”

He also acknowledged that a small demonstration project like this has the potential to move forward more quickly than larger projects and could be the first offshore wind project built in the United States.

“If we turn out to be the first ones in the water, that would be interesting,” Seim said.  “The state, in part, took this step to try to get North Carolina into the game.”