Bath Iron Works has been building warships in mid-coast Maine for 125 years, and no doubt hopes to still be making them a hundred years from now. However, BIW -- which is a subsidiary of engineering giant General Dynamics -- is now also seriously considering moving into other areas.

And by other areas, says BIW's Director of Fabrications Jim Favreau, we're most likely talking about offshore energy production. "We're always open to opportunities, and if the energy field or windmill market opens up for us, we'd certainly look for that synergy with our shipbuilding."

Favreau and other BIW representatives spoke before the city of Bath's planning board on Tuesday night, which approved the shipyard's plans to expand the size of its Ultra Hall indoor facility by two thirds, to more than 112,000 square feet -- all underneath a 106 foot roof.

The City Council meets to make a final decision early next month. The more space BIW has inside, says Favreau, the more efficiently the company is able to operate, whether it's building ships or wind turbines. "The primary use, of course, is for building ships inside the covered area, but with that, a large section of these windmill projects requires large craneage and large space and this certainly will be another opportunity for us."

"I'm really excited that BIW has chosen to make such a determined and dramatic move," says Peter Arnold, of the Chewonki Foundation, a non-profit based in mid-coast Maine that promotes sustainable living. "They have been a large player in the Ocean Energy Task Force, have been kind of 'up and thinking' about how to move offshore wind as an industry ahead in Maine, so we're really excited about it."

Arnold says the size of BIW means it has the ability to make a huge impact. "As you know, they're the largest employer in the state and they have all the equipment necessary, not only to be a player in manufacturing of turbines, but in the manufacturing of support ships for the whole industry."

"The shipyard right now is well suited to produce a lot of the floating components, if you think of the floating wind turbine components that we're designing here right now," says Professor Habib Dagher, Director of UMaine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which has been at the forefront of the state's offshore wind research. "You can think of them as a different kind of floating structure or a different kind of ship or a boat, and the market could be potentially very big, not only in Maine, but beyond Maine."

Dagher says UMaine has been working with BIW, as well as Cianbro and other boatbuilders, to look at ways of expanding into the offshore energy market. Among the floating components that BIW would be well-suited to produce, says Dagher, are spar buoys -- tall upright buoys used to stabilize an ocean platform.

"Spar buoys for floating offshore wind turbines, for 5 megawatt turbines, are about 27 feet in diameter under the water, 20 feet in diameter above the water, and these spar buoys could be up to 500 feet long, so these are very large floating structures, large ships that Bath Iron Works and Cianbro and others could be manufacturing, in addition to what they do today," Dagher says.

State officials this week identified three offshore wind-power test sites off the coast of Maine. Professor Dagher says Maine plans to have the first floating turbines in place in 2011, and larger windmills deployed two years later.