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Print Edition StoriesFriday, March 13, 2009
Cape Wind wins state OK for power grid connections on the Cape
By Efrain Viscarolasaga
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Cape Wind, the proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm, cleared another regulatory hurdle yesterday with the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board voting unanimously to grant approval of all the project’s necessary local permits with regards to power grid interconnections on Cape Cod.
The approval rolled up nine state and local permits related to electric cables into one certificate, called a Certificate of Environmental Impact and Public Interest. Cape Wind was compelled to file for the bulk certificate — called a “composite certificate” — following a denial of approvals from the Cape Cod Commission in 2007.
The Siting Board, which wields the statutory authority to grant a comprehensive approval, instructed Cape Wind to work with the towns of Yarmouth and Barnstable to reach an agreement on reasonable and customary conditions for the required permits. If the sides cannot come to an agreement, the Siting Board will decide what conditions are reasonable to include, according to a statement from developers Cape Wind Associates LLC.
The Siting Board expects to complete the process and take its final vote within 60 days.
The approval is the second crucial hurdle the beleaguered project has cleared in the past two months. In mid-January, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service approved the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, saying Cape Wind will have “no major impacts on navigation, fishing or tourism.”
Originally introduced in 2001, Cape Wind proposes a 130-turbine wind farm over 24 square miles in Nantucket Sound. If completed as proposed, the farm would produce 468 megawatts of wind power (3.6 megawatts per turbine) at maximum output, with an average production of about 170 megawatts, representing almost three quarters of the average electricity demand for Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
The price tag for the project has been put at approximately $1 billion by Cape Wind Associates.
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