Status Report on the Hull Offshore Wind Project

Abstract Hull, MA, is a remarkable Massachusetts coastal community: since 2001 the town’s municipal light plant (HMLP) has owned and operated “Hull Wind I”, the largest wind turbine (660 kW) that had been installed in the state up to that time. More recently (2006), HMLP installed a second, larger (1.8 MW) wind turbine, Hull Wind II. Now the town has begun in earnest a project that is intended to result in the installation of an offshore wind farm, with a capacity of approximately 14 MW. This paper provides a summary of the progress on the Hull Offshore Wind Project. 1.0 Background The project discussed in this paper has two unique features, as least in the United States. First of all, it involves a community owned and operated wind energy facility. This facility will be the third in this community, and the combined capacity will supply a large fraction of the community’s electrical requirement. Second, this third wind energy facility will be sited offshore. Accordingly, this discussion of the project background will consider the town of Hull itself and offshore wind energy, particularly at the community scale. Hull’s location, at the southern side of Boston Harbor, is shown in Figure 1.