Mid-Atlantic Has Wind to Spare

Atlantic City, New Jersey is the site of a wind farm that attracts a lot of attention, about 30 million people a year in fact. Vacationers and tourists heading to Atlantic City are immediately aware of the new wind farm project constructed by the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA).  Public support has been overwhelmingly positive with many curious onlookers.

 In December 2005 the ACUA installed five General Electric turbines, each with a capacity of 1.5 megawatts (pictured above).  The land was already in use as a wastewater treatment facility and continues to be operated as such.  The wind farm provides almost all of the electricity for the treatment facility and is able to sell remaining capacity to consumers.  Due to its location near the heavy energy load of the Mid-Atlantic, the surplus electricity goes directly into the grid.

There is a study underway by the University of Delaware for a large off-shore wind farm to be constructed off the coast of New Jersey and Delaware.  This is of great interest to State of New Jersey and ACUA, which would both like to develop the field.  The estimated capacity of this off-shore wind resource is 330 gigawatts (330,000 megawatts).  The current energy load of the entire Mid-Atlantic region is 185 gigawatts.  Greg Soher, Project Analyst for ACUA says "the existence of a shallow continental shelf far out to sea would also facilitate installation of wind turbines.  The project is currently in the environmental impact study segment of the process." (wind resource map at right)

Off-shore wind farms have not been developed in the United States to the extent that they have been in the Baltic, North and Irish Seas of Europe.  Off-shore wind energy is more expensive to install due to logistics and there is an abundance of land with wind resources in the US, especially in the Western states.  However, the proximity of this plentiful wind resource to the most heavily populated, electricity hungry Mid-Atlantic corridor is tempting.  A well developed grid already exists in the region, and future wind energy would only have to be diverted to this nearby grid.

Denmark, Germany, England and the Netherlands continue to develop and perfect off-shore wind techniques.  As the technology and installation techniques are fine tuned, off-shore wind energy becomes more and more of a reality.  Whether developing on-shore or off-shore wind resources, the United States will surely continue to implement this renewable source of energy.