Duke Energy to fund offshore North Carolina wind project

By Jim Brumm

WILMINGTON, North Carolina (Reuters) - Duke Energy Corp has agreed to fund a pilot study of commercial wind turbines in the waters offshore of North Carolina, the utility holding company said on Tuesday.

The company had contracted with the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to place up to three wind turbines in Pamlico Sound.

The project builds on a study, completed in June 2009 by the university for the North Carolina General Assembly, which found the state was well positioned to develop utility-scale wind energy production, Duke Energy said in a statement.

The scope of Duke Energy's funding for the project had not been established yet, company spokesman Tim Pettit said, noting the utility was now selecting a supplier for the turbines.

Pettit said while the company had a lot of experience with wind farms on land, it was interested in the cost of offshore projects to determine how commercially viable these might be.

The goal was to have the project in operation in one year.

The pilot study would focus on Pamlico Sound, between North Carolina's Outer Banks and the mainland, rather than areas with more wind further offshore, because waters in the sound were under state control, University of North Carolina Vice Chancellor Carolyn Elfland said.

She is project manager for the UNC Coastal Wind Study which was presented to the state legislature in June.

In August, the U.S. Interior Department said it would be at least a year before it was ready to consider permits for wind farms in federal waters.

UNC's Elfland said the planned demonstration turbines could be the first turbines placed in U.S. offshore waters. She added Rhode Island was also going ahead with a pilot offshore wind energy commercial project.

Various European countries have been operating offshore wind farms since the early 1990s.

The pilot turbine installation will facilitate utility-scale wind energy development by enabling studies to optimize measuring and predicting the wind resource, quantifying ecological impacts, and demonstrating turbine performance in tropical storm conditions, Duke Energy said.

Duke Energy has 634 megawatts (MW) of land-based wind energy in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming, another 99 MW under construction and an additional 251 MW of wind projects scheduled to begin operation in 2010.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher)