University continues offshore wind research despite sudden funding cut ...Middle East

The University of Maine is going ahead with its plan to test a cutting-edge floating wind turbine hull despite the Trump administration’s sudden suspension of millions of dollars of research funding.

Using existing resources and state and industry partner funds, it will tow the 375-ton, three-quarter-scale test hull into the Gulf of Maine as early as this week.

The plan is to keep it in the water for 18 months to monitor UMaine’s motion mitigation technology, which cuts wave and wind-induced movement and helps keep the turbine upright in storms.

DOE giveth …

Last July, under the Biden administration, UMaine received $12.5m from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to advance its research.

The rationale was that the Gulf of Maine has nearly 156GW of offshore wind capacity within 50 miles of the coast.

According to UMaine, harnessing just 3% of that would be enough to electrify heating and transportation in the entire state.

The problem is, much of the Gulf is too deep for sea-floor-fixed turbines, so floating turbines are needed.

That led UMaine’s Advanced Structures & Composites Centre to develop lighter, corrosion-resistant precast-concrete hulls that are relatively cheap and easy to make locally.

… and taketh away

But on 11 April, just hours after researchers towed the hull to a staging post off Mack Point, where the tower and turbine were to be installed, the DOE sent a letter to the university saying its grant was being suspended for 90 days.

A copy of the letter posted on social media by a Maine state lawmaker cited the university’s “failure to comply with one or more” terms of the grant, without further explanation.

It meant that $4.1m of the grant remaining to be spent is now unavailable, Samantha Warren, UMaine’s governmental affairs officer, told GCR in a statement.

“UMaine still plans to keep the project in the water for 18 months and collect real-time data from a range of sensors designed and built by researchers to understand the performance of the hull, including how the technology reduces motions in naturally occurring wind and waves,” Warren wrote.

But she added: “Without [DOE] support, researchers will be limited in their ability to analyse the findings and develop a commercialisation plan for this revolutionary technology, which has industrial applications well beyond ocean energy.”

Hands-on learning

Warren noted that the hull was engineered by UMaine and fabricated in Trenton by a team of more than 50 local contractors.

She said that while reduced in scope, the research would “enable hands-on experiential learning for UMaine students and industry, growing the size and skill of the state’s engineering and clean energy workforce”.

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University continues offshore wind research despite sudden funding cut Global Construction Review.

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