Town looking at 50-MW wind farm off Tuckernuck Island

Edgartown is already deep into its tidal energy generation project in the Muskeget Channel south of Tuckernuck Island, and now Nantucket is testing the waters for its own wind energy conversion proposal in the same area.

Both are part of an inter-island marine renewable energy effort aimed at utilizing the wind and tidal resources within the Muskeget Channel between the two islands, close to one of Cape Wind Associates original alternative sites for its wind farm.

While Edgartown, which already determined that there is enough tidal current to generate electricity, is moving ahead with its plan to install a pilot tidal generator to confirm its research, Nantucket is just dipping its toes in the offshore renewable energy waters right now. At the Oct. 5 meeting of the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission, wind energy consultant Stephen Barrett of Harris Miller Miller & Hanson, Inc. presented his best-case scenario for Nantucket to build its own, 50-megawatt offshore wind farm in town waters five miles from Madaket and 2.5 miles from Tuckernuck Island. It would supply electricity to Nantucket only.

"Nantucket is concerned about be- ing at the end of the electrical line, specifically in [dealing] with pricing issues and siting issues," said Barrett. "The concept is for a municipally-driven wind farm where the benefits will go directly to the town."

Frustrated with its unsuccessful attempts at trying to get the Federal Minerals Management Service to issue a lease of federal waters to Nantucket, the NP&EDC hired Barrett to find a way to make a wind farm work in town waters. The plan, in concept form only, calls for 10, five-megawatt wind turbines to be located southwest of Tuckernuck and Muskeget islands in two rows of seven and three with the turbines roughly 3,000 feet apart. With these wind turbines installed, Barrett said that because the wind in this part of the ocean blows at peak 41 percent of the time, Nantucket's wind farm would generate an average annual output of 20 megawatts.

NP&EDC member Nat Lowell liked what he heard.

"I think this is a perfect spot, in my own mind, for a small project like this and maybe it could grow," said Lowell. "A project like this in such a perfect spot starting out small and getting big instead of starting out with 130."

Although she liked the concept behind what she saw, Energy Study Committee chairman Barbara Gookin, said she is thinking even smaller to begin with, an approach she believes Cape Wind Associates should have taken originally.

"It seems small compared to Cape Wind and a 50-megawatt configuration is very large," said Gookin. "If you looked at putting a 10-megawatt station out there and perhaps expanding that later, you might work out a lot of really big issues that you'd have if you're trying to put together a 50-megawatt confi guration."

Both island projects, proposed for the National Offshore Renewable Energy Innovation Zone, a swath of ocean five miles wide and 30 miles long south of Tuckernuck Island in the Muskeget Channel, are being guided by the New England Marine Renewable Energy Center. Although this ocean zone is designated for the testing of wind and tidal energy projects and their eventual installation in this area if possible, Nantucket and Edgartown are the first entities to dive in and explore its possibilities with their projects.

Barrett said that Nantucket needs to pursue its own wind turbine project because of its history and culture of being a self-sustaining town, because of the ideal location for wind energy generation and being able to control the project by partnering with a developer when the time comes. Planning director Andrew Vorce agreed, saying that if and when the NP&EDC is designated a regional planning authority through pending legislation, it would gain the power to review and permit wind farms offshore from Nantucket. I