Federal officials designated a large swath of ocean about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard yesterday as the potential site for a massive wind farmthat would dwarf Cape Wind, the long-stalled project that is planned for Nantucket Sound.
After two years of meetings with local and state officials, environmental groups, and others, including local tribes, officials at the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said they are launching an environmental assessment of about 1,300 square miles that could give rise to hundreds of soaring wind turbines within several years.
They said the area could produce as much as 4,000 megawatts, 10 times as much electricity as the proposed Cape Wind project, which is slated to sprawl over 25 square miles. That is enough, they said, to power up to 70 percent of homes in Massachusetts.
