Block Island Wind Farm: America's First offshore Wind Farm

Block Island Wind Farm: America's First Offshore Wind Farm

By: Jacqueline Ray

Period C

Block Island is about to be home to the first offshore wind farm in the nation.  The goal of this project is to provide energy to markets within 15 miles of the shore.  Deepwater Wind, the company in charge of the offshore wind farm, started the project with $35 billion of assets.  With this money, they have begun to create wind turbines off the coast of Block Island that will harness the strong ocean winds and transform them into clean and cost-effective electricity.  The wind turbines use similar technology to oil rigs in order to ensure performance.

The wind farms off the shore of Block Island are hardly visible to the naked eye.  They mimic the design of those used in Europe in both the structure of the wind turbine and the creation of jobs.  In fact, Europe has 2,500 wind turbines off of its coast.  This has caused a lack of competitiveness with Europe in the energy market, which Rhode Island is about to change.

One of the reasons that these wind farms are starting to pop up is due to major advancements in energy production, which has lowered the greatly lowered the cost of such a large-scale project.  This includes lowering the cost of building and servicing these energy plants.


These wind farms are the future in energy because they have virtually no impact on public health compared to traditional power plants that emit tomes of fossil fuels and harmful pollutants.  The use of wind is a clean and abundant alternative to traditional methods.

Building offshore wind farms requires a wide array of professions working together.  First and foremost, environmental service companies monitor the impact that the wind farms will have on the environment in a given are.  Engineers design the wind turbines to be effective off the coast of block Island.  Marine biologist research the effect that the wind farms will have on the marine life in the ocean and strive to protect their habitat.  Therefore, this projects requires engineers to work as a team of scientists.