Some very exciting news for US clean energy today. Google announced on their blog last night that they will invest in building 350 miles of transmission off the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Virginia to tap into a gigantic off-shore wind potential that has only just been opened up this year with the first-ever US approval of an off-shore wind farm, by the Obama administration.Doesn't the Georgia Bight (coast of Florida, Georgia, SC, and NC, aka the South Atlantic Bight) have similar wind potential? Maybe somebody should start building a wind farm off of Savannah and invite google to fund transmission lines from there, too.The new transmission cables, a superhighway for clean energy, will enable the connection of up to 6,000 MW of offshore wind turbines. That’s equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.
Putting this system in place removes the major barrier: the lack of infrastructure, and should – with a friendly administration, jump-start off-shore wind in this country.
-jsq
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