The heavily taxpayer-funded floating offshore wind technology developed by the University of Maine at Orono and touted by the Mills Administration has failed to advance to the third round in a prize contest held by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The so-called “FLOWIN Prize” contest was conceived President Joe Biden’s DOE as a way to identify the most viable technologies to float industrial-scale wind power generating facilities in the deep coastal waters off the U.S.
Unfortunately for UMaine and lead project researcher, Dr. Habib Dagher, the university’s VolturnUS design, which was piloted via the Aqua Ventus research project, was found inferior to five other submitted designs in the eyes of the Biden Administration.
Neither UMaine nor the Mills Administration have issued any statement responding to the DOE’s May 15 announcement of the list of finalists — a list which did not include UMaine’s taxpayer-funded project.
According to the press release from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the finalists in the contest include: FloatHOME of Emeryville, Calif.; PelaStar of Seattle, Wash.; Technip Energies of Houston, Texas; Tetra Triple-One of Boston, Mass.; and, WHEEL U.S. of Coral Gables, Fla.
A review of federal spending records by the Maine Wire found that, while the UMaine project has received more than $113 million in taxpayer-funded grants, the five finalists have received far less government money for offshore wind.
In some cases, four out of five cases, project competitors that beat out UMaine received no DOE grants.
Dan Burgess, the director of the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO), did not respond to a request for comment on the DOE’s announcement that the VolturnUS design lost out to private sector competitors.
None of the federal media contacts listed on the press release responded to an inquiry as to why the UMaine project didn’t make it to the finalist round or what method was used to evaluate proposals.
Dagher, who earned more than $500k in 2022, making him the highest paid employee of the UMaine system that year, also did not answer questions about the news that his project lost out to private sector innovations.
Unlike the five finalists, the VolturnUS project has been almost entirely subsidized by taxpayers via grants to the UMaine system from both the federal government and the state of Maine, according to government spending records.
The UMaine system received a $7.1 million grant for its “DeepCwind Consortium National Research Program” via the 2009 Recovery Act.
Around the same time, the DOE allocated a $10 million grant to UMaine for the study of offshore wind structures from July 15, 2010 to Nov. 25, 2015.
In 2013, the New England Aqua Ventus pilot project, which uses the VolturnUS technology, was granted more than $40 million in federal dollars with an additional $20 million in state funds dedicated to the project.
Although the initial federal grant process began in 2013, the $40 million was officially transferred in 2017.
The New England Aqua Ventus project received another federal grant in 2014 totaling $6.7 million, plus $750,000 in matching funds.
In June 2019, Governor Mills signed into law LD 994, a measure that required the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) to approve the contract for Maine Aqua Ventus.
In Jan. 2020, the UMaine system received another round of matching DOE and state-funded grants totaling $8 million to demonstrate the viability of a 10-12 megawatt floating wind turbine by 2022.
In Feb. 2021, taxpayers once again foot the bill for the UMaine system to receive matching DOE and state-funded grants totaling $12.3 million — this time to demonstrate “a reduced-footprint synthetic rope mooring system that minimizes fishing impacts and costs for a 10MW+ floating wind turbine,” according to federal spending records.
Taxpayers opened their wallets for Dagher and the UMaine system once again in Sept. 2021 for matching grants totaling $3.3 million to study “harsh-environment” wireless sensors, presumably for use on massive floating objects in the Gulf of Maine.
The UMaine system was awarded another $8.7 million grant to fund research on the VolturnUS project from Sept. 25, 2023 to Sept. 24, 2026.
All told, the various taxpayer-funded grants dedicated to the UMaine system for the study of various aspects of offshore wind platform development total more than $113 million.
UMaine’s offshore wind research has featured heavily in the taxpayer-funded marketing materials the Mills Administration has used to convince voters that putting several floating wind mills in the Gulf of Maine is a prudent use of public recourses.
The university is cited 16 times in the Mills’ so-called “Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap” and an illustration of how the VolturnUS platform would work — in theory — is featured on the executive summary page.
“Over the course of the past decade, the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center has completed in-depth, collaborative research and development in floating offshore wind Volturn-US hull technology, establishing a high level of technical readiness for commercial deployment,” the Governor’s Energy Office claimed in the roadmap.
Despite this “high level of technical readiness,” the massively subsidized project lost out to five other competitors in the “US Floating Offshore Wind Readiness Prize” contest.
Some of the floating turbine designs that the DOE found superior to UMaine’s design also received taxpayer assistance.
Principle Power, Inc., one of the companies involved in the FloatHOME finalist design, has received $2.7 million, $10.2 million, $5.2 million, and $5.7 million in taxpayer-funded grants over the past two decades for wind power-related research.
A search of the federal spending database for the other projects and their parent companies did not find any federal awards.
Despite the private sector projects proving, in the eyes of the Biden Admin, to be superior to the UMaine’s scheme, State Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) urged in colleagues in a June 21 letter to join a letter calling on the MPUC to enter into a power purchasing agreement with the yet-to-be-built off-shore wind facility.
In his letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Maine Wire, Lawrence and his co-signatories urged the MPUC to plow forward with approval for a Gulf of Maine wind-power project based on the VolturnUS design, saying that the stakes are high because of recent storms and the urgent threat of climate change.
“We have repeatedly acted together to support offshore wind, because we know it is the single biggest lever that our state can pull to address the climate crisis, create family-sustaining, high-quality jobs, and advance equity,” the letter states.
Lawrence did not respond to an email requesting comment on VolturnUS’s failure to out-perform five other contest competitors — including competitors that received far less or no taxpayer dollars.
The power purchase agreement is not open for inspection by the public, as the documents submitted by developer Pine Tree Offshore Power, LLC remain confidential.
That means lawmakers and taxpayers have no way of knowing just how much more expensive the offshore wind-generated electricity will be than the majority of electricity consumed in Maine, which presently comes from natural gas and nuclear power.
However, electricity from the project is broadly expected to be far more expensive than energy generated by more time-tested, currently-viable means, a cost burden that will be shouldered by businesses and residents in Maine through the form of higher electricity costs.
The MPUC will meet on June 28 to discuss the power purchase agreement for the facility that has not even begun construction.
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