Wind in our Sails

Friday’s secondary editorial suggests local leaders seek ways to capitalize on a major new wind facility planned for Charleston.

Thanks to a $98 million kickstart (dare we say stimulus?) announced this week, coastal South Carolina may find itself poised at the forefront of a the nation's developing wind-power industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy selected Clemson University's Restoration Institute campus at the former Navy base in Charleston for a new facility to test the drive trains, a critical component of the electrical generators in the giant turbines built to harness wind. The project (funded by $45 million in tax dollars from the stimulus bill matched with $53 million from state and private sources) will create 100 jobs during its construction over the coming three years, then 21 full-time jobs and hundreds of indirect jobs once it's open, but the significance hardly stops there.

The Charleston site was chosen because of its proximity to the port there – the massive turbines will likely be transported by sea. Further, the facility itself be designed to test larger-than-previously-available drive trains and is thus expected to draw other wind-industry firms to locate near it, creating a corridor of wind-related jobs (some say they could number in the thousands) along the South Carolina coast.

At the same time as the Low Country is gearing to test and (hopefully) build turbines, then, Santee Cooper and Coastal Carolina University are conducting their own tests of where these turbines might be put. Again, the ocean is key. Wind speeds over land in South Carolina are generally to slow to generate power, but just offshore runs a wind belt of 18- to 19-mph speeds. That belt's closest point to shore is in the Winyah Bay, just off the coast of Georgetown, where a port and a steel mill lay nearly unused.

Clearly, the potential is now enormous. Projects in Massachussetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware may be better funded and farther along, but the Clemson facility should provide South Carolina's effort with a major jolt. As Horry County leaders consider how to diversify the economy beyond tourism and Georgetown leaders seek to revitalize their own manufacturing economy, further exploring the potential of wind should be rising on their list of priorities.

The U.S. Department of Energy selected Clemson University's Restoration Institute campus at the former Navy base in Charleston for a new facility to test the drive trains, a critical component of the electrical generators in the giant turbines built to harness wind. The project (funded by $45 million in tax dollars from the stimulus bill matched with $53 million from state and private sources) will create 100 jobs during its construction over the coming three years, then 21 full-time jobs and hundreds of indirect jobs once it's open, but the significance hardly stops there.

The Charleston site was chosen because of its proximity to the port there – the massive turbines will likely be transported by sea. Further, the facility itself be designed to test larger-than-previously-available drive trains and is thus expected to draw other wind-industry firms to locate near it, creating a corridor of wind-related jobs (some say they could number in the thousands) along the South Carolina coast.

At the same time as the Low Country is gearing to test and (hopefully) build turbines, then, Santee Cooper and Coastal Carolina University are conducting their own tests of where these turbines might be put. Again, the ocean is key. Wind speeds over land in South Carolina are generally to slow to generate power, but just offshore runs a wind belt of 18- to 19-mph speeds. That belt's closest point to shore is in the Winyah Bay, just off the coast of Georgetown, where a port and a steel mill lay nearly unused.

Clearly, the potential is now enormous. Projects in Massachussetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware may be better funded and farther along, but the Clemson facility should provide South Carolina's effort with a major jolt. As Horry County leaders consider how to diversify the economy beyond tourism and Georgetown leaders seek to revitalize their own manufacturing economy, further exploring the potential of wind should be rising on their list of priorities.