Multibillion-dollar project for offshore wind power

A transmission company and investors, including Google, announced a multibillion-dollar project Tuesday to build a network of transmission lines for offshore wind energy from southern Virginia to northern New Jersey.

Trans-Elect Development Co. Llc, based in Chevy Chase, Md., said the project, called Atlantic Wind Connection, would spur development of the nascent offshore wind industry.

The transmission lines, to which wind farms would connect, would provide capacity for 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines, enough to power 1.9 million households.

At a news conference in Washington, D.C., Trans-Elect chief executive Bob Mitchell cited projected costs of a Long Island Power Authority wind farm proposal as one example of why such a transmission line was important.

LIPA, along with Con Edison and the New York Power Authority, seeks to put 100 turbines 13 miles off the coast of the Rockaways and western Nassau, producing 350 megawatts of power at first. That project is expected to cost nearly $4 billion.

Upgrading the power transmission systems onshore would cost $415 million, said Mitchell -- a number that LIPA later confirmed. Referring to investors who would back wind farms, he said, "I don't think you guys could possibly see that kind of extra burden, on top of the costs of the wind farm itself."

Michael Deering, LIPA's vice president for environmental affairs, said LIPA might be able to purchase power from the new transmission line via an existing Neptune power line, depending on where Trans-Elect places its land connection in New Jersey. But, he said, the new line would have to be brought further north before it might also be connected to the proposed LIPA-Con Ed wind farm.

"We are looking into their proposal to see what potential benefits it could have for LIPA's customers," he said.

A spokesman for Trans-Elect, Frank Maisano, said it would not extend the project further north because doing so would bring it into a different electric power grid and force the venture to comply with an additional set of complex regulations.