The Commissioners hired Germany's leading renewable energy company, Juwi International, to determine the feasibility of building a 20 megawatt wind turbine demonstration project, 3-6 miles off the coast of Lake Erie. The company will get help from Case Western Reserve University, which has established a new Great Lake's Institute for Energy Innovation in it's School of Engineering. The new Institute's first project is to use a $200,000 donation from the university to create a Wind Research Center to assist Juwi International in it's feasibility study. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason is heading up the effort.
Bill Mason: If that's determined to be feasible and we do, do that, then that potentially opens the lake and the great lakes up to that type of development in the future.
Mason says a successful demonstration project could lead to more significant installations on the Lake and possibly a new Wind Energy manufacturing sector.
Lisa Ann Pinkerton, 90.3.