Abby L. Harve reports that three miles off the coast of Rhode Island’s Block Island sit five massive wind turbines, each towering 560-feet above the water below, nearly twice the height of the Statue of Liberty. The wind farm is small, but as the first offshore wind farm in the U.S, a notable achievement for owner Deepwater Wind. The Haliade wind turbines, supplied by GE Renewable Energy, combine an existing turbine design acquired by GE in its 2015 acquisition of Alstom’s power business and GE’s 6-MW direct-drive generator equipped with a permanent magnet rotor. The $290 million 30-MW wind farm can produce up to 125,000 MWh of electricity annually, enough to supply about 90% of the island’s power needs, which were previously met with costly diesel.
Block Island is a small island of less than 10 square miles located 13 miles off the coast of mainland Rhode Island. The population of the island is just over 1,000, though during the summer months the area is a popular vacation destination, and the population can triple at times. Until May 2017, the island was not connected to the mainland grid. To provide residents and visitors with power, diesel was shipped from the mainland and burned at a small, but loud and dirty, generating plant. The residents of the island had long desired an alternate form of energy, particularly in the late 2000s when diesel prices became unmanageable.
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