Susan Kraemer writes in Clean Technica about
Google Builds First US Off-Shore Superhighway for Clean Energy:
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.
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.
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.
-jsq
Seth Gunning from Atlanta spoke at the Southern Company (SO) meeting 23 May 2012 at Callaway Gardens; he was representing the Georgia Sierra Club with 97 shares. SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning graciously greeted him. Gunning brought up health effects of coal plants. Then he talked about two paths.The way I see it, Southern Company sits at a crossroads. That one path Southern Company continues to drag its feet on the development of renewable energy economies in the southeast. The other path, Southern Company becomes a leader in creating jobs and economic development in clean energy in the south.
He thanked SO for recently partnering with Santee Cooper in the Palmetto Wind Project in South Carolina. It’s curious how there’s been no news whatever about that.The state of Georgia is the only Atlantic state not currently working with the Department of Interior to streamline the permitting processes for offshore wind development.