Multinational public company, Google, has poured out billions of dollars in an ambitious project that would see some east coast states getting energy from wind. The announcement from Google came at a conference on October 12, 2010 in Washington at the NPC (National Press Club).
Google has embarked on a project to construct a network of transmission cables in deepwater to transmit power from wind farms that are offshore to states in the East coast of America. The estimated costs of the cables are around $5 billion in the coming ten years.
The expected capacity of the project as planned will provide energy for half a million homes. The plan will produce two thousand megawatts and will provide energy 20 miles off the coast, stretching from Virginia to New Jersey.
Google has joined with some investment firms and technology oriented companies to fund the project however, Google owns more than a third of the project. Robert L. Mitchell, Chief Executive officer of Trans-elect, said the first stage of this project will cover one hundred and fifty miles starting from New Jersey all the way to Delaware and will be worth one point eight billion and will be done by the year 2016 and will begin in 2013.
“This will have a dramatic impact on accessing offshore wind, and we think it’s one of the things that’s almost required to take advantage of all of that potential,” Rick Needham, Green business operation director at Google said.
Google is now increasingly depending on renewable energy due to the number of computers they are adding in their centers, which demand more power to be able to index online data worldwide.