Winds of Change: The DeepCwind Consortium

Apr 12, 2012 7:50 PM ET
Habib Dagher

Audio File

You probably remember the Cape Wind project. It is America’s first offshore wind farm, located in Nantucket Sound, but coastal residents who considered it an eyesore have been anything but breezy, costing the project dearly in delays and dollars. This week’s guest on Sea Change Radio has a model for offshore wind power that can bypass the objections of the “not-in-my-beachview” crowd.

Host Alex Wise talks with Dr. Habib Dagher who manages the DeepCWind Consortium, a floating wind turbine project which is scheduled to launch off the coast of Maine in the summer of 2013. Unlike the Cape Wind project, this offshore wind project is floating, and it’s far enough away from land that it can’t be seen from the coast. Dr. Dagher talks about the exciting solution that floating turbines could offer, the magnitude of this technology’s capacity for energy capture, and some of the challenges facing the offshore wind industry on the whole.