The company behind a long-planned wind farm off the coast of Ocean City hit a new milestone Thursday, announcing construction of a multimillion-dollar staging area at the Port of Baltimore, where turbines will be assembled and then shipped out to sea.
The Skipjack Wind Farm will eventually have 15 turbines erected about 20 miles northeast of the beach town.
But first, the firm behind the project needs a hub to construct the massive turbines, whose components can weigh as much as 4 million pounds apiece. Right now, only one offshore wind operation is up and running in the United States — off the coast of Rhode Island. Projects planned for elsewhere up and down the Eastern Seaboard will also need someplace to put together the turbines, officials said, and could eventually use the Baltimore facility as well.
The portside renewable energy operation is being constructed on the former site of Bethlehem Steel Corp. The 50-acre facility is part of a Tradepoint Atlantic project redeveloping an area of the Port of Baltimore known as Sparrows Point.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Erin Cox over at the Washington Post