During the University of Maine’s May 31 event celebrating the launch of VolturnUS 1:8 – the first offshore floating wind turbine to be deployed in U.S. waters and grid-connected, and also the first to include a tower constructed of a fiber glass-reinforced composite material – attendees and members of the DeepCwind Consortium stand in front of the wind turbine prototype. PPG Industries’ (NYSE:PPG) fiber glass business provided reinforcements to its customer Ershigs to create the composite materials used in the tower. (Photo courtesy of the University of Maine)
PPG Industries’ fiber glass business is helping its customer Ershigs support the first grid-connected offshore wind turbine in U.S. waters, deployed May 31 near Brewer, Maine, by the University of Maine as leader of the DeepCwind Consortium. The approximately 65-feet tall wind turbine prototype includes a tower Ershigs constructed using a fiber glass-reinforced composite material – a first for a wind energy installation, according to Kevin McDonald, PPG general manager fiber glass reinforcements.
The prototype turbine, called VolturnUS 1:8, is part of a program aimed at reducing the cost of offshore wind energy to compete better with other forms of electricity generation. It is one-eighth the scale of the 6-MW VolturnUS offshore floating wind turbine the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center plans to launch in the coming years, McDonald said, and it will let project participants validate and improve technologies used in this application, such as the strong, lightweight and corrosion-resistant composite material comprising the tower.
The DeepCwind Consortium, led by the University of Maine and headed by Habib J. Dagher, a professor of civil engineering at the university and director of its Advanced Structures and Composites Center, has a goal of generating 5 gigawatts of power by 2030 with floating wind turbines located 20-50 miles off the coast of Maine. The consortium is a public-private partnership funded by organizations such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation-Partners for Innovation and more than 30 industry partners including PPG.
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Filed Under: News, Offshore wind, Turbines
