The Salem facility is expected to play a crucial role in the expansion of offshore wind installations since its location north of Boston could provide developers with better access to
offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Maine that the federal government is moving towards selling as early as this year.
And MassCEC is working on other expansion projects as well. Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said last year that the Healey administration is
pursuing an expansion of MassCEC's Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown.
The Charlestown site opened in 2011 as the first facility in North America capable of testing the blades that power offshore wind turbines, replicating the stress of a 25-year lifespan at sea in the course of just a few months. But when the testing site got a 107-meter blade built for the GE Haliade-X turbines, the kind used on the Vineyard Wind 1 project, a section of the blade had to be cut off to allow for testing.
MassCEC's website says the current facility can test blade sections up to 90 meters in length and a fact sheet provided by EEA in 2023 said that the testing facility would need to expand from about 300 feet to between 460 and 490 feet long, and from 85 feet to at least 131 feet tall to be able to test new blades of up to 150 meters. In all, the project was estimated to cost between $60 million and $70 million.
The MassCEC Board recently approved the allocation of $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to fund the initial design work to get the project to shovel-ready status and the center is working with the Mass. Port Authority as its agent for the procurement and management of design and construction services,
the center said. MassCEC said Massport has issued an RFQ on the center's behalf for design services.
