Cape Wind signs lease to assemble turbine project in New Bedford, Quonset off the table

NEW BEDFORD – Cape Wind Associates LLC has reportedly signed a lease agreement with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to use an industrial terminal that the agency is building on the waterfront here, apparently for assembly of Cape Wind’s 130-turbine wind turbine project in Nantucket Sound, the Boston Business Journal has reported.
That means the project will no longer be built out of Rhode Island’s Quonset Industrial Park in North Kingstown.
In an interview with the Standard-Times in New Bedford, Gov. Deval L. Patrick, said, “Cape Wind is going to be built out of New Bedford, not Rhode Island, that’s the bottom line.”
The newspaper reported that Cape Wind will file paperwork next week to alter its permit with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to allow for the New Bedford project.
The federal permit now requires that most of the on-land work will take place in Quonset; Quonset overseers approved a lease option with Cape Wind for 14 acres there in July.
Steven J. King, managing director of Quonset Development Corporation, told Providence Business News in July that the lease option agreement included the creation of an estimated 50 to 100 jobs.
A press conference will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s wind technology testing center in Charlestown, Mass., to announce the latest Cape Wind development. The Boston Business Journal said that the Patrick administration “has long made it a priority for the work to be done in New Bedford.”
The Standard-Times reported that Cape Wind, which is part of Boston-based Energy Management Inc., would pay $4.5 million in rent to the agency for two years, and that Cape Wind would be the only operator of the facility during that time.
The state’s new $100 million shipping terminal in New Bedford was about 70 percent complete in July.
Meanwhile, Cape Wind’s principals are working on financing for the $2.5 billion project. Construction is expected to begin in 2015.

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