“If South Carolina moves quickly on this, it could be in the works within two to three years,” he said, noting that in order to move forward with such a plan, federal, state and private collaboration, as well as funding, would have to come together.

“The state would benefit from clean electricity versus coal-based, plus in terms of economic development, it provides a new sustainable business value.”

Richard Horton, manager of the renewable team at the South Carolina Energy Office agreed.

“Offshore wind farms represent South Carolina’s best potential opportunity for large-scale, cost-effective and clean renewable energy production,” he said. “It may be a win-win-win situation for South Carolina in terms of environmental benefit, economic development for the state and reasonable electricity prices for consumers.”

Santee Cooper, one of the sponsors of the upcoming Offshore Wind Power Symposium, has been offering ‘green power’ from landfill sites since 2001 and has committed to using revenues from green power to invest in future renewable energy projects.

“We’re very committed to renewable energy and seeing the benefits and where technology is with it,” said Laura Varn, spokeswoman for Santee Cooper. “We have a lot of opportunities there. We know there are a lot of challenges; for instance, solar power is still costly from a base-load perspective, and there’s still a lot of cloud cover to deal with, but the technology is continuing to evolve.

“With offshore wind, we’re still investigating it to see where it makes sense to be involved. That’s part of the purpose of the upcoming conference in February: to hear the experts and look into the feasibility of it, to see the benefits and challenges.

“We’re in a growing state and the energy needs are tremendous. We have a responsibility to meet those needs, and we need to look at changing habits and what programs we can offer and how to get people to think about using energy wisely.

However, the state’s other large utility company, Scana, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new technology.
“We definitely try to keep our eyes and ears open when it comes to ‘green power’ and ‘green energy,’” said Robin Montgomery, manager of public affairs for SCANA. “But keep in mind that we’re a utility regulated by the Public Service Commission of South Carolina, and we have a responsibility to our rate payers to spend money prudently.

“One of the issues we face as a company is not having the budget necessary to do independent research and development, so we have to rely on studies done in the marketplace. We do some research, but not to the extent that would be required for something like (wind power).”

Montgomery said the company has evaluated several types of alternative energy sources.

“We haven’t found anything that we think really works well in South Carolina, something feasible from an economic standpoint for our company to pursue,” he said, adding that the technology needs to improve and be proven before the utility would consider making an investment.

“That’s not to say we won’t one day,” he said. “We’ll certainly keep our eyes on it.”

Rigas estimated that $150-200 million per year would be generated from an offshore wind cluster, and he said Charleston would be the perfect location.

“It’s not just the farms themselves,” he said. “You also have several peripheral industries that will spring up to support it. You need ships to take the mills out. You need operations and construction. It generates a whole industry.

“But the state has to move quickly. There are lots of areas getting interested in offshore wind farms. We don’t want to lose because a neighboring region made the commitment first.”