Cape Wind: America's First Offshore Wind Farm on Nantucket Sound
America's first offshore wind farm is growing. 130 wind turbines will be placed over part of the Nantucket Sound, called Horseshoe Shoal, making the generators about 13.8 miles away from the town of Nantucket. This 700-megawatt project will be on the shores of New Jersey and Massachusetts. Each turbine can produce up to 3.6 megawatts. Altogether, these turbines will produce 75% of the electricity for Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. These generators will be driven 80 feet into the floor of the seabed. The wind turbines will not be noisy and have been tested to survive winds up to 150 miles per hour. Plus, if the wind changes direction, the generators will be able to sense the difference and make up to 360-degree turns to adjust to the wind. Birds have been observed on offshore wind farms in Europe, and because the wind turbines rotate so slowly there have been very few collisions, even in places where there are many sea birds. The turbines revolve at 8-16 rotations a minute. The turbines will be spaced apart in a parallel grid. The turbines in a row will be spaced .34 nautical miles apart (about 6 football fields), and the rows itself will be .54 nautical miles apart (about 9 football fields).
By Olivia and Veronica