Google Inc. To Invest In Wind Farms

Google Inc. has agreed to invest in a transmission network project that would harvest electricity from wind farms off the Mid-Atlantic coast.

Google will buy a 37.5 percent stake in the development stage of the Atlantic Wind Connection project, Rick Needham, director of green business operations at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, said on Google's blog. The project will cost about $5 billion and Google's initial investment will likely be about $200 million, according to project leader Trans-Elect Development Co. of Chevy Chase.

The network, running from New Jersey to Virginia, would tie into the electrical grid that serves 13 states and Washington D.C. It would carry enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

The transmission network is likely to spur the development of wind farms, including one planned off the coast of Ocean City, which could produce 1 gigawatt of electricity, according to the Maryland Energy Administration. Ian Hines, spokesman for the agency, said the network would make offshore wind farms more affordable.

Hines compared the transmission line to a power-strip that homeowners would use to connect many appliances. Instead of each wind farm sending electricity back to shore, "you've got a big power strip, a 350-mile power strip that these wind farms can plug right into, and that will direct the energy right onto the land. The point is that if there are four places where that energy is coming onto the land rather than 14, that makes it much more cost-effective for everybody."

The network and Google's involvement will help spur the wind energy industry in the U.S., which has lagged behind China in installing turbines, said Charlie Hodges, a wind industry analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. Wind-power investment may reach $202 billion within two decades, according to estimates at industry group Global Wind Energy Council.

"The North American wind industry hasn't had any players involved with the motivation and financial heft to really move this market forward," Hodges said. "Google could play that role."

Google and Good Energies, an investor in renewable-energy projects, agreed to each buy 37.5 percent of the equity portion of the project. Japan's Marubeni Corp. will own a 10 percent stake and a group led by Trans-Elect will own the remaining 10 percent, said Trans-Elect CEO Robert L. Mitchell.

The transmission network will span 350 miles and will be able to connect to 6,000 megawatts of power from wind turbines, according to the companies.

The group will conduct a feasibility study by 2013 and plans to start the first phase in 2016, Marubeni spokesman Yo Nomura said, declining to comment on the cost of the project.

Mitchell says the first phase will run 150 miles in federal waters from New Jersey to Delaware and will be complete by early 2016. It would be capable of delivering 2,000 megawatts of wind energy, enough to power about 500,000 homes.

Hines said that while the Maryland Energy Administration had not been involved with this specific proposal, it has worked with Trans-Elect in the past year and a half to encourage the federal government to consider state priorities when deciding energy regulations.

Trans-Elect, formed in 1999, owns and manages more than 12,600 miles of transmission lines in North America, according to its Web site. Over the years, the company expanded its business to develop and build new transmission projects.

In 2004, Trans-Elect partnered with Pacific Gas and Electric and the U.S. Department of Energy's Western Area Power Administration to build a $250 million power line in California to address transmission deficiencies that contributed to the rolling blackouts a few years earlier.

Google made its first direct investment in clean energy in May, buying a $38.8 million stake in two North Dakota wind farms.

"We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy," Needham wrote in a blog post Monday. "We're willing to take calculated risks on early stage ideas and projects that can have dramatic impacts while offering attractive returns."

Google has also been trying to rely on renewable energy sources for its data centers, whose demands for power are increasing as the company sets up more computers in its bid to index all of the world's online data.

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