Bristol Community College's Wind Power Lab is open to visitors - SouthCoastToday.com
Bristol Community College's Wind Power Lab is open to visitors
Vineyard Wind teams with Bristol CC on new wind power lab geared to families and students
Kathryn Gallerani
NEW BEDFORD — Imagine climbing the ladder of an offshore wind turbine all the way to the top, all thanks to virtual reality.
It’s possible to experience it in the new educational exhibit in Bristol Community College’s Wind Power Lab.
Education Manager Jeannine Louro said the exhibit is a joint venture with Vineyard Wind, and two educators from Bristol will be on hand to answer any questions about offshore wind and educating the community by engaging students and families in the process.
“What I’m really excited for is it’s really geared toward families and community members who come into this space to learn about offshore wind, Vineyard Wind and all the planning, environmental research and fishery studies we have been doing,” she said. “We want to engage them and make them part of offshore wind.”
There are games for friends and families who race against each other to build offshore wind, aspiring wind engineers tasked with building a turbine by designing and testing, and a virtual reality game with players putting on headsets to climb a turbine and learn about the day in the life of a wind technician.
The exhibit will be open this summer from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the Wind Power Lab, located at 800 Purchase St. Admission is free.
Taking first steps to entering the workforce
Young people from a weeklong Massachusetts Maritime Academy program, a Grimsby, U.K. exchange student along with UMass Dartmouth students and the Youth Opportunities Unlimited summer camp have already been to the lab to explore the exhibit.
“Overall we’ve already engaged more than 75 students and about 200 from the general public,” said Louro.
Upstairs and to the left of the lab is the Vineyard Wind offshore wind energy exhibit that she said offers visitors the opportunity to dive into offshore wind energy and learn about the Vineyard Wind project along with the latest updates.
'Our generation's Hoover Dam.' Getting up close to Vineyard Wind as turbines are built
The impact of wind power at Bristol
Bristol Community College President Laura Douglas said the new National Offshore Wind Institute training center on Herman Melville Avenue will help supply workers to wind turbine companies and if all goes as planned it will open its doors in about two weeks.
Douglas said the college was thinking about how it could make an impact in terms of offshore wind through the creation of jobs when she started six years ago and has implemented a one-year certificate program for a power technician as well as a two-year associate degree in engineering that partners with UMass Dartmouth.
Douglas said what’s exciting is that they are all square in the academic space with their certificates and degrees and will also begin short-term training in the basic technical training, basic safety training and a whole slew of specialty skills that they will develop to create a diverse workforce.
She said the accreditation process is ongoing, and at the same time they are in the process of training trainers so that they will be able to begin training the students as soon as they possibly can once the facility is open.
A brief update on Vineyard Wind
Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller said the exhibit is a step in the right direction when it comes to job creation and passing along knowledge of the industry and opportunities to the next generation.
He said the hiring of the first operations and maintenance technicians after Bristol helped develop the technician training is significant and he’s thankful to be partners in the creation of jobs.
As for the wind farm, he said foundations have just been installed at the lease area for the offshore substation, the biggest part of the project, and the biggest risk for an offshore project, and the first great blades have been unloaded at the terminal. He said the project will reach first power in a few months.
“It’s very cool equipment, it can help save the world, and together with New Bedford, Bristol Community College, we are really happy to trailblaze this industry,” he said.
Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.