New York has an ambitious goal to fight climate change, and it includes the nation's first major offshore wind farms.
On a gusty day, Wainscott resident Michael Hansen walked the beach hopeful about his children's future.
"Knowing that there'll be wind power for their future is what makes me happy," he said.
Stretched beneath the sand 80 feet below him, a new power cable will transmit our energy in the future.
"You can feel it on your face right now. We have this renewable resource," Hansen said.
Long Island winds, strong and consistent, will power New York's first offshore wind farm, and its first power cable has made landfall. Snaking 60 miles, by year's end it will connect 12 wind turbines being built 35 miles east of Montauk, ushering in clean energy to 70,000 homes.
It's the biggest dive into offshore wind in the nation - a first of many.
"Offshore wind is a really time-tested technology at this point. It has a well over a 30-year track record. There are over 5,000 turbines spinning around the globe. We have a magnificent wind resource, but it's a tremendous resource that only needs to be tapped," Jennifer Garvey, the head of New York market for Orsted Americas, said.
It's named South Fork. It will be the first of five wind farms in the works, with four to five more to come.
New York is pivoting to green energy in a big way, and that takes a big stage. So big, components for the first one are being built in Rhode Island by clean energy developer Orsted Americas and the New England-based utility Eversource.
In Rhode Island, the nation's smallest state, with only five offshore turbines, there is experience. Traditional trades have retooled their skills.
"Concrete, steel, electrical, we're leveraging those core skill sets towards building up this industry. And we know that we need to do it at the speed and scale that climate demands. So there has to be more of this. So we're going to see a tremendous opportunity in a number of jobs that are coming along with the transition to renewable energy," Allison Ziogas, Orsted head of labor relations, said.
They're churning out energy infrastructure. The brains of the operation - suspended platforms - will be dropped inside the towering turbines. Steel cages will protect the towers from salt water corrosion. And concrete platforms allow access to the turbines at sea. A massive metal ring will encircle the base of an 800 foot tower. On top of it are blades the length of a football field.
Their renewable power will be transmitted by the cable buried on the ocean floor.
"The cable itself is about the size of a dinner plate. We bring it ashore through a process that is called horizontal directional drilling. So it basically allows us to bore a hole very deep beneath the road and the beach, and then pull the cable through so we don't have to touch the beach," Garvey said.
Source: cbsnews.com
Categories: New York, Energy