Bluewater Wind’s plan to erect 66 turbines some 11 miles east of Rehoboth Beach hasn’t reached the construction stage yet but the company has selected a site for a onshore facility for maintenance employees.
Rob Propes, the company’s Delaware project director, told the Sussex County Council that the facility would be built in that county. He said it would include four or five boat slips to get workers to the wind farm to monitor the turbines daily and to get there in a hurry if something breaks. The wind farm’s operations center could be built on that site, or at a separate one, Propes said.
The wind park’s first turbines are expected to be constructed by 2012. Some 400-500 workers may be involved during the project’s three-year construction phase. After that, as many as 60 workers will be employed in operations and maintenance. The wind farm will generate as much as 200 megawatts of electricity at any given hour for Delmarva Power — enough to power 50,000 homes.