R.I., feds collaborating on regs for wind farms

Rhode Island’s efforts to create a comprehensive blueprint for the future use of state waters became more closely aligned with federal regulators last week as plans moved forward to develop federal engineering standards for offshore wind turbines.
Two top Rhode Island representatives for the R.I. Ocean Special Area Management Plan, or SAMP – Grover Fugate and Jennifer McCann – attended a two-day, invitation-only workshop in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Marine Board on behalf of the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service. The March 25-26 workshop focused on developing new federal standards for the design, fabrication and installation of offshore wind turbines. No such standards currently exist, and European engineering standards are not applicable to the United States because of different maritime conditions, such as hurricanes.
McCann, manager of the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island, explained what she saw as the benefits of extensive collaboration between federal and state authorities. “There are currently no offshore wind turbines anywhere in the country. We’re ahead of the game, and we want to get it right,” she said.
Fugate is executive director of the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and serves as project manager for SAMP. He said the next step coming out of the workshop is for the Marine Board, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to put together a panel of experts to write the report for the new standards.
“We have put in a request to have a Rhode Island participant on the panel – Malcolm Spaulding, a University of Rhode Island professor of ocean engineering,” he said. “If we get the appointment, URI will be the only academic institution represented on the board.”
More than 1,000 people attended the federal wind workshop, including representatives from other states involved in potential state-water, offshore wind development such as Massachusetts, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina. Deepwater Wind LLC, which has proposed a wind farm off Block Island, was also one of many companies in attendance. Despite the fact that the R.I. Public Utilities Commission turned down a long-term power purchase contract with Deepwater for its plans off Block Island, saying it was too expensive, Fugate said that SAMP was on schedule and “moving forward, no matter what,” he said. “It’s my guess that Deepwater and National Grid will have to go back to the drawing board, but that doesn’t mean that [the proposed eight-turbine wind farm] is dead,” said. The CRMC, Fugate continued, “is committed to find a wind project that works.”
The new federal standards for the design, fabrication and installation of offshore wind turbines may be in place by the time construction of the proposed wind farm off Block Island begins (assuming an agreement is reached), Fugate said. The advantage of having the same engineering standards for state and federal waters, he continued, is in creating a seamless approach. “You don’t want to have two different design standards.”
Fugate also cited the Minerals Management Service’s expertise. “MMS has, through its years of experience with oil and gas, overseen the permits for the construction of thousands of structures in the Gulf of Mexico. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”
At the same time, federal authorities have been working closely with the SAMP process, providing technical expertise and review as each new chapter of the management plan is written, according to Fugate, who called it “a partnership.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among other agencies, have all been involved in the process. Last week, three new chapters – on ecology, on climate change, and on renewable energy – were made available for public comment by SAMP. •