Test Wind Turbine Removed From New Bedford's Clark's Cove

NEW BEDFORD (WBSM) — The test wind turbine that was placed in Clark’s Cove in New Bedford’s South End last week was removed from the water on Tuesday.

T-Omega Wind, the company that placed the turbine in the water in order to gather data for its floating wind turbine design, originally expected the research project would last about 60 days.

Instead, it lasted just eight.

“We were the only people in New Bedford praying for bad weather, and we got one hell of a storm this week,” T-Omega Wind Chief Commercial Officer Dave Forbes told WBSM Wednesday. “The data we collected in eight days – millions of data points – is more than we expected to collect in 60 days.”

The purpose of the research project was to find out how the wind and waves would affect the mooring and anchoring system for T-Omega Wind's floating turbine design.

Forbes said the four-to-six-foot waves experienced in the storm “would be analogous to 64-to-96-foot waves at full utility scale.”

“This real-world-in-ocean test has validated results from both computer modeling, and laboratory tank tests,” he said. “We have hugely valuable information for our next steps toward full commercialization.”

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The research project was supported by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, with grants totaling just about $800,000 from organizations such as the National Science Foundation.

Forbes called Tuesday’s removal of the turbine “a safe and smooth decommissioning,” and that the company is now “laser-focused on the next step: a full-scale pilot demonstration.”

“This means building a fully functioning TOW turbine which will be 350-plus feet tall, and will need direct grid connection for pre-commercial certification,” Forbes said.