The US’ first industrial-scale floating wind plant is on track to be built off the state of Maine starting in 2024, with the governor’s energy office on Friday (1 October) handing in a application to the federal seabed landlord, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), for acreage for an up-to-144MW array in the Gulf of Maine.
The submission for the 12-turbine project, which will use so-called VolturnUS concrete floating foundations developed at the University of Maine for over a decade, marks a key step forward in the technology’s commercialisation, with the first full-size prototype of the concept currently being built by UMaine with Mitsubishi-owned Diamond Offshore and utility RWE as part of the Aqua
