Google Inc has joined an estimated $5 billion undersea cable project to carry power from offshore wind farms to the east coast of the United States, Reuters reported.

The power transmission cable will stretch for 350 miles off the coast from New Jersey to Virginia, with the capacity to connect 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines, or enough to meet the power needs of 1.9 million homes, Google said in a blog post on its website. (googleblog.blogspot.com)

The Atlantic Wind Connection project is being led by Trans-Elect Development Co., Google said. Trans-Elect operates transmission lines and is a wholly owned subsidiary of AES Corp.

Google said it would invest 37.5 percent of the equity in the initial development stage. The other investors are private equity firm Good Energies and Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp., which announced on Tuesday that it was investing in a 15 percent stake.

Details of the remaining equity holdings were not immediately available.

Currently, there are no offshore wind farms in the United States. But companies have proposed about five major offshore projects for the New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware region in a move to enter the fast-growing clean-energy market.

“An expansion in renewable energy sources in the U.S. and policy incentives in an otherwise regulated power business make it a market worth tapping,” a Marubeni spokeswoman said.

The venture aims to start construction of an initial 1,500-megawatt segment of the cable network in 2013 and begin operations in 2016, Marubeni said.

Marubeni estimated the initial segment would cost $1.2 billion.

The New York Times reported the cost of the entire project, which would provide power to New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, at around $5 billion.