Google Inc. to invest $5b in offshore wind power project

Google Inc. to invest $5b in offshore wind power project

2010-10-12 22:44:25 GMT+7 (ICT)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) -- Google Inc. has agreed to invest in a $5 billion underwater cable off the U.S. East Coast that will provide up to 1.9 million homes with electric power.

Rick Needham, the company's Green Business Operations Director, announced that the Google will be investing 37.5 percent of the equity in the initial development stage, with the goal of obtaining all the necessary approvals to finance and begin constructing the line.

The Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone will stretch 350 miles (563 kilometers) off the East coast from New Jersey to Virginia and will be able to connect 6,000MW of offshore wind turbines, which is equivalent to 60 percent of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year.

The AWC will be built around offshore power hubs that will collect the power from multiple offshore wind farms and deliver it efficiently via sub-sea cables to the strongest, highest capacity parts of the land-based transmission system.

This system will act as a superhighway for clean energy. By putting strong, secure transmission in place, the project removes a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind, an industry that despite its potential, only had its first federal lease signed last week and still has no operating projects in the U.S.

Although the development stage requires only a small part of the total estimated project budget, it represents a critical stage for the project.

The AWC project is led by independent transmission company Trans-Elect and is financed by Google, Good Energies and Marubeni Corporation.

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