PROVIDENCE – The newly approved Cape Wind project plans to make its home port either Quonset Point in North Kingstown or New Bedford, an official said Thursday.
Cape Wind Associates LLC has looked at six ports over the years as it sought a base for the $1 billion project and originally settled on Quonset Point, Mark Rodgers, the developer’s communications director, told The Standard-Times.
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But over the past two years the company has also become interested in New Bedford thanks to heavy lobbying by Mayor Scott W. Lang, Rodgers said.
Cape Wind Associates plans to construct 130 turbines capable of generating up to 420 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 200,000 homes.
The turbines – to be manufactured by Germany’s Siemens AG, which says it will open an office in Boston to handle the project – would rise 400 feet above the seabed in a 25-square-mile area north of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Cape Wind estimates the project will generate 600 to 1,000 jobs while it is being built and another 150 permanent jobs once it is up and running. The company hopes to start construction by the end of this year and begin generating electricity in late 2012.
Rodgers told The Standard-Times a decision on Cape Wind’s home port will be made soon.
Deepwater Wind LLC, a Hoboken, N.J.-based company that has proposed two wind farms off Rhode Island, has also said it wants to use Quonset Point as a base.
But although that project has the strong backing of Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, it hit a snag last month when the R.I. Public Utilities Commission voted down a proposed power-purchase agreement between Deepwater and National Grid Plc.
A bill filed in the R.I. Senate this week would shift authority for the agreement’s approval from the PUC to four gubernatorial appointees, a move Deepwater says could revive its project.
Although Cape Wind and Deepwater say they share the broad goal of seeing the United States develop a strong wind power industry, there is also a bit of a rivalry between the two companies.
Each one says it wants to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm – Cape Wind with its proposed 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound, Deepwater with the smaller of its two proposals, which calls for up to eight turbines off Block Island.
Last year, Carcieri vetoed a bill that would have allowed National Grid to sign long-term contracts with renewable energy developers, partly because he said the legislation could have benefited Cape Wind and undercut the profitability of Deepwater’s proposal.
At the time, Cape Wind’s backers said their project was likely to be staged at Quonset.
Additional information is available at capewind.org.
