Despite controversy that has slowed the Cape Wind project in Nantucket
Sound, land-based wind farms are expanding rapidly in the region.
One company alone, First Wind Holdings LLC of Boston, has installed
enough turbines in the Northeast over the past few years to generate
nearly as much power as the long-awaited offshore wind farm. Other
companies, too, have developed wind projects in New England states.
Driving this growth are technological advances reducing the cost of
wind turbines and increasing their efficiency, making wind power more
competitive with traditional power sources — particularly in the Northeast, where electricity costs can run as much as 60 percent above the national average.
Turbine prices have dropped about 30 percent over the past few years,
and new turbines are able to generate electricity at lower wind speeds.
Meanwhile, average electricity prices in the Northeast can top 15
cents per kilowatt hour, compared to a US average of 9.52 cents. New
wind technology can generate power at an average cost of about 10 cents
per kilowatt hour, excluding subsidies, according to the US Energy
Department.
“Some of the states in the Northeast have been some of the
fastest-growing markets,” said Elizabeth Salerno, director of industry
data and analysis at the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group
in Washington. “Power prices are relatively high [there], so by
delivering wind projects, you can develop a pretty affordable source of
generation.”
First Wind has built wind farms in eight locations in Maine, Vermont,
and upstate New York. With the 34 megawatts that will be added when the
company completes its wind farm near Eastbrook, Maine, First Wind’s
projects will have the capacity to generate nearly 420 megawatts of
electricity, compared to Cape Wind’s 468 megawatts.
In addition, Quincy-based Patriot Renewable operates two wind farms
in Maine and one in Buzzards Bay, with a total generating capacity of
about 25 megawatts. The Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corp., a
consortium of 14 municipal utilities and the Massachusetts Municipal
Wholesale Electric Co., owns a 15-megawatt wind farm in Hancock that
went online last year.
A megawatt of wind-generated electricity can power about 300 homes.
Despite the growth of land-based projects, the discussion about
developing the region’s wind resources has often focused on offshore
projects such as Cape Wind and a proposed “wind energy area” that would
encompass nearly 165,000 acres of federal waters off the coasts of
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Last week, US officials completed an
environmental review of the wind energy area, an important step in
opening the area to development.
Still, it could be years before any turbines are built offshore,
meaning that more land-based projects will be needed to achieve
renewable energy goals set by several states seeking alternatives to
fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and natural gas. In Massachusetts, for
example, the state has set a goal of installing 2,000 megawatts of
wind-energy capacity in the state by 2020 and has required utilities to
get 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, and other renewable
sources in that same time frame.
Today, there are 61 megawatts of installed wind power capacity in the state.
This has created opportunities for companies like First Wind. Founded
a decade ago, the
