Bluewater Wind officials aggressively promoted their proposal to produce energy from an alternative source by installing windmills in oceanic waters off Delaware to a mostly special-interest crowd last Friday, answering many questions before citizens had a chance to ask them.
The dozens in attendance at the Center for the Inland Bays committee meeting in Lewes posed questions concerning the approval process and potential future maintenance of the wind farm but generally offered overwhelming support for the plan.
Familiar questions regarding aesthetics and potential bird fatalities were noticeably absent last week — partly because Bluewater Wind officials had already addressed them in their presentation, seemingly easing some concerns.
“It’s a clean and high-tech industry,” Rob Propes, Bluewater’s Delaware project director, said of wind energy production. “We’re not depending on the Middle East (region for oil) or people mining coal in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. (The project would) enable Delaware to be part of the solution for global warming.”
The $1.5 billion proposal has come in response to the Delaware legislature’s call last year for long-term energy solutions to combat rising electric costs — residential Delmarva Power customers across the state felt a 59 percent hike on average last May.
Bluewater’s proposal would generate enough alternative energy to power 130,000 homes, or provide power for 300,000 people, officials said last week. The wind farm is competing for approval with a Conectiv proposal upstate and an NRG $1 billion-plus “clean coal” plant proposal at the Indian River Power Plant to enter into a long-term supply contract with Delmarva Power.
The electric supplier will submit its own recommendation early next month to state officials studying the proposals. A state decision, which will determine the outcome of Delmarva Power’s search for a new energy source, is expected by Feb. 28.
More than 90 percent of 949 Delaware residents surveyed by the University of Delaware recently supported the wind-farm proposal, university officials said last week.
“We’re confident this project will stand on its merit,” Propes said.
In his nearly 45-minute presentation last Friday, which included a video championing wind energy, Propes told those in attendance that Bluewater’s proposal would create 45 to 50 permanent new jobs and further popularize alternative energy in the U.S. He also stressed that the technology has already been tested and proven successful — 18 percent of energy used in Demark is produced by windmills, according to Bluewater Wind. United States and Denmark officials, and that nation’s residents, supported the proposal in the video shown on Friday.
“This is not a new technology. This is not a possible technology,” Propes said, adding that there are 25 working off-shore projects in eight countries. “It is here and now.”
If approved, the first off-shore farm in the nation would stand either off Lewes in the Delaware Bay or off Rehoboth Beach or Bethany Beach in the Atlantic Ocean. (Delaware lacks necessary to produce energy at an on-shore farm, Propes noted.)
Officials have said that the windmills, designed at 360 feet tall overall, with 130-foot blades, would appear no wider than toothpicks from the shore. Bluewater officials have said they would build no closer than 6 miles off the coast — the proposal for Bethany Beach calls for 200 turbines to be built 7.1 miles from the beach.
“We could have gone much closer in,” Propes said. “It would have been a lot less expensive. But we realize that one of the great concerns is aesthetical.”
Visit the company’s Web site at www.bluewaterwind.com to view digital visualizations of the three proposed sites from several different angles along Delaware’s coastline.