Stony Brook Team Gets Up-Close Look at the Future of Offshore Wind Energy

An interdiscplinary team of faculty, students and staff from Stony Brook University visited the offshore wind farm off Block Island on October 25. Photos by John Griffin.

In 2016, the five diesel generators that powered Block Island, Rhode Island, were replaced by five offshore wind turbines, making the area the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States. On October 25, a 50-person multidisciplinary team from Stony Brook University embarked on a research vessel and visited the installation, getting a rare close-up look at the wind turbines.

Wind power is a key part of research taking place across Stony Brook, the anchor institution of The New York Climate Exchange.

"We've worked to integrate offshore wind into a number of classroom activities and student events," said Heather Lynch inaugural director of Collaborative for the Earth (C4E), professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and the first Endowed Chair for Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook's Institute for Advanced Computational Science.

Lynch led the expedition along with Reuben Kline, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, and David Taylor, associate professor and faculty director of the environmental humanities major in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS).

"It's important to get faculty and students out of the classroom and into the wild," said Lynch, noting the importance of allowing students and faculty to be able to get to see the turbines up close. "Then they can make some decisions about how they think about this new development on our shorelines."

Linda O'Keeffe, professor and chair of Stony Brook University's Department of Art, anda sound artist specializing in acoustic ecology, social soundscapes, and sound and installation art, hoped to get some recordings that combined the sounds of the ocean and the wind turbines.

"I've been researching wind turbines for over eight years and on landscapes," she said. "This is my first time in an offshore wind farm. In my research I'm thinking about how many wind turbines we put into our oceans, and where."

O'Keefe said that we are in the beginning stages of documenting what's going on, which is important considering the offshore wind farms planned around New York in the future.

"What's the concern for sea life? There hasn't been a whole lot of research in relation to turbines," she said. "But there is concern that they replicate the sound of underwater predators. I read in a research paper that some schools of fish were avoiding areas where hydrokinetic turbines were because it sounded like sharks. If these frequencies are deterring certain schools of fish from a particular zone that they've inhabited or that they have to pass through, we need to think about what that means if we go bigger and bigger with these offshore wind farms."

"I'm looking to go into green energy and permaculture," said senior Iris Rosenhagen, a media/art/culture (MAC) major. "Specifically, I'm looking into eco-villages as well as green urban design."

Permaculture is a holistic approach to agriculture and land management that aims to create sustainable, productive ecosystems by mimicking natural systems. Rosenhagen also runs a local community outreach program called Beach Bucket Brigade, which fosters environmental stewardship by promoting green initiatives.

Jason Jiang, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, also hoped to get a glimpse into what might become his future career.

"I got introduced to this at a convention for solar wind," he said. "As a mechanical engineer, I'm looking into different options I could have in the future, and wind power is one of them."

Sharon Pochron, an assistant professor in SoMAS and faculty director of the sustainability studies program, is interested in ways to ameliorate climate change.

"One of the projects I'm working on is a carbon sequestration project where we're trying to use a water fern to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil," she said. "It'll be fun to see a wind farm up close and personal. I'm also interested in the controversy. Some people think they are too close to land or are an eyesore. I want to see that for myself."

In February, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced the second round of nearly $4 million in Offshore Wind Training Institute grants awarded for workforce development, supporting programs at Stony Brook University and seven other State University of New York (SUNY) campuses preparing students for careers in the emerging offshore wind industry.

More than a dozen academic departments were represented on the trip to Block Island, ranging from mechanical engineers, artists and political scientists to civil engineers, ecologists and marine scientists.

"Many of the people on this boat have never met with those in other departments," Lynch said. "This is a chance to realize that artists and engineers and marine scientists can all be thinking about the same things."

- Robert Emproto

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