Wind Off Rhode Island

Euronews is reporting that GE may buy Alstom.

Why?

Alstom will build the first large off-shore US wind farm. The press release:

Alstom signed a contract to supply 5 offshore wind turbines for Deepwater Wind’s 30-MW Block Island pilot Wind Farm located off the coast of Rhode Island, USA, in the presence of Arnaud Montebourg, French minister of economic recovery; Amy Ericson, Country President Alstom USA and Jeffrey Grybowski, Deepwater CEO. The project, scheduled for commissioning in 2016, will be one of the first offshore wind farms in the U.S. and will be the world’s first to feature Alstom’s Haliade™ 150-6 MW - the largest turbine installed in offshore waters today. The five turbines will produce approximately 125,000 MWh of electricity a year, enough to power over 17,000 homes (I suppose about the size of Williston?).
The contract scope includes the manufacturing of 5 Haliade™ 150-6 MW wind turbines and 15 years of operation and maintenance support for the Block Island Wind Farm owned and operated by Deepwater Wind.

Each wind turbine: 150-meter rotor diameter on a 100-meter tower; rated at 6 MW

I assume that would be five turbines (5 x 6 = 30 MW).

Later in the press release:

This project represents an important technological step for the Haliade 150-6MW. Along with the installation of 2 wind turbines in Europe - the first onshore at le Carnet site (in the western region of France), and the other in Ostend, Belgium - this pilot farm in the U.S. will enable Alstom to develop its offshore technology to the point where it can launch serial production. 

In France, Alstom will equip 3 wind farms (Courseulles-sur-Mer, Fécamp and Saint-Nazaire) won by EDF EN and its partners as a result of the first French call for tender offshore, and today participates with EDF to the second call for tender for Le Tréport wind farm and the two islands wind farm (Yeu-Noimoutier). In Germany KNK Wind (the project development company for Arcadis Ost 1) has chosen the Haliade™ 150-6MW in December 2013 in support of a building permit for a project to install 58 wind offshore turbines on an area of about 30 square kilometres in Baltic Sea.

Newbies may want to put these 30 MW into perspective. At this link, note the amount of new energy placed in service in the US in the entire calendar year, 2013.

The year 2013 was a big year for US wind (tax credits ran out at the end of the year) and a total of 1,032 MW of wind-generated electricity was added for the entire year. This project off Rhode Island would represent about (30/1,032) about 3% of that total. That's just wind.

A start. I guess. My hunch is the lure of tax credits is the prime mover.