Maine recently received $3.7 million to develop a floating, deep-water wind farm, but needs much more than that to get the project going. Their goal is to win the full $47 million grant from the DOE, which would attract enough private investors to finance the $100 million project. [This article is from November, 2015; if anyone has an update on the status of the grant for Maine, it would be greatly appreciated if they could pass that information along].

From Portland Press Herald contributor, Tux Turkel:

“Clearly, some good news came out today,” said Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association. “But we don’t know yet how good the news is.”

Payne and others were reacting Monday to word from U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King that the Department of Energy is committing additional money to the Maine Aqua Ventus project.

Led by a University of Maine partnership, Maine Aqua Ventus had been competing with demonstration projects in other states for a $47 million grant, but was passed over last year in favor of ventures in New Jersey, Virginia and Oregon. Instead, Maine got $3 million to continue engineering and design work.

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The prototype Volturn US generates power off the coast of Castine. The prototype is a one-eighth-scale model of the floating turbines to be used in a full-scale pilot wind farm planned for deep water off Monhegan Island. 2013 Associated Press File Photo/Robert F. Bukaty