The US offshore wind trade suffered a sequence of disappointing blows final 12 months, however experiences of its dying have been enormously exaggerated. As a lot as fossil vitality stakeholders have been aiming to kill the trade off, it simply retains coming again. The most recent instance is the main US offshore wind developer Avangrid, which has simply proposed a pair of large new wind farms for New England totaling 1,871 megawatts. The one query now’s the place they’ll get the boats and the cranes to do the heavy lifting.
Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish agency Ibderola, shouldn’t be the one wind developer eyeballing the New England area, the place massive energy-hungry coastal populations at the moment rely closely on fossil fuels imported from elsewhere. Earlier this week the US Division of the Inside introduced that it’s green-lighting the 924-megawatt, 84-turbine Dawn Wind offshore wind challenge. Undertaken by Ørsted in a 50-50 partnership with Eversource, Dawn will probably be situated within the space between Martha’s Winery in Massachusetts, Montauk on Lengthy Island in New York, and Block Island in Rhode Island.
Avangrid has head begin on the competitors, as a result of it’s re-purposing two earlier tasks that it dropped final 12 months, which was a part of the rationale why 2023 was a disappointing 12 months for the offshore wind trade.
That’s all water underneath the bridge now. Earlier this 12 months, the corporate introduced that its 806-megawatt Winery Wind challenge — billed as the primary business scale offshore wind farm within the US — started delivering electrical energy to the New England grid on a take a look at foundation. The take a look at concerned one turbine on partial energy. If all goes in keeping with plan, 5 generators will start working at full capability later this 12 months. The finished challenge will sport 62 wind generators.
Now Avangrid is bidding on two extra offshore lease areas, with proposals to assemble the 791-megawatt New England Wind 1 challenge and the 1,080-megawatt New England Wind 2 challenge. The corporate has strategically break up its bids to present it a broader shot at successful at the least one lease.
“Avangrid submitted a bid for New England Wind 1, a second bid for New England Wind 1 and a couple of mixed, and extra bids for single-state procurements in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island,” the corporate defined in a press assertion.
Avangrid actually appears positive of itself, particularly with reference to New England Wind 1 which it describes as a “shovel-ready challenge that’s ready to start out development as quickly as subsequent 12 months.”
“With almost all native, state, and federal permits in hand, all interconnection rights secured, and a Challenge Labor Settlement signed with a talented, native, union workforce, Avangrid is able to go,” the corporate states.
Offshore Wind Business To Haters: I’m Not Useless But!
New England Wind I is the brand new title of Avangrid’s former Park Metropolis Wind challenge, which was initially created for connection to the grid in Connecticut. Nonetheless, final October Avangrid pulled the plug on the challenge. Citing “unprecedented financial headwinds dealing with the trade together with file inflation, provide chain disruptions, and sharp rate of interest hikes,” Avangrid said that its current contracts with Connecticut utilities didn’t assist financing for the challenge.
“The explanation for every is similar,” noticed Connecticut Mirror reporter Jan Ellen Spiegel, who famous that two different New England tasks additionally succumbed for monetary stress, together with one other Avangrid challenge.
“The economic system has shifted a lot for the reason that energy buy agreements, PPAs, had been negotiated, that the tasks are now not viable,” Spiegel defined. Particularly, the Park Metropolis PPA was negotiated in 2019, earlier than the trade was rocked by inflation and provide chain points associated to the Covid outbreak and Russia’s unprovoked conflict in opposition to Ukraine.
Avangrid was not the one developer impacted by international occasions. Final fall, Ørsted additionally dropped plans for 2 new offshore farms in New Jersey. Along with inflation and provide chain points, Ørsted cited a scarcity of the specialised offshore vessels wanted to assemble the wind farms.
Avangrid and different wind builders within the US are able to make a recent begin in 2024 (for the file, New England Wind II is the rebrand of Commonwealth Wind, the opposite Avangrid challenge that fell via final 12 months).
What About The Boats?
So, about that boat scarcity. In response to right-wing suppose tanks just like the Cato Institute, the 1920 Jones Act (aka the Service provider Marine Act) is in charge for throttling the US offshore wind trade. The Jones Act regulates which ships are entitled to ferry items and crews from one level to a different inside US waters, with the intention of guaranteeing that the nation’s all-important home service provider fleet is firmly underneath the management of loyal US residents in time of conflict.
The Cato Institute is not any good friend of renewable vitality, which is sensible contemplating its roots within the Koch household fortune. In case you can guess why they’re all of a sudden so involved concerning the US offshore wind trade, drop us a word within the remark thread.
The Jones Act stipulates that service provider vessels used for home transportation should be constructed within the US, along with being primarily owned and crewed by US residents. That does recommend builders might be scrambling to seek out boats for his or her US tasks. There are many Jones-compliant maritime companies with offshore expertise within the US, however the purpose-built ships wanted for offshore wind development will not be really easy to return by.
However, offshore wind builders within the US have begun constructing their wind farms, Jones Act or not, which signifies that numerous workarounds have been obtainable.
Avangrid has completed its Jones Act homework. The corporate plans to find its development logistics hub on the New Bedford Foss Marine Terminal, which the US agency Foss not too long ago expanded particularly to assist the offshore wind trade.
Along with different chores, the terminal will deal with offshore crew transfers, utilizing a purpose-built, Jones-compliant vessel supplied by the Louisiana agency Edison Chouest Offshore. Two different crew switch vessels will probably be operated by the Massachusetts agency Patriot Offshore Maritime Providers, which additionally makes use of Jones-compliant ships.
The Crowley Wind department of the main US fleet proprietor Crowley additionally stands to profit from the brand new burst of offshore exercise. “No one can rival our Jones Act licensed fleet of vessels or expertise advancing the success of vitality suppliers,” Crowley Wind explains.
Two different US companies within the area, McAllister Towing and the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Steamboat Firm, are additionally wanting ahead to supporting New England Wind I via their Barnum Touchdown website in Connecticut.
One other supporter is the Danish agency Liftra, which expects to provide its wind turbine development cranes for New England Wind 1 — presumably to be ferried out to the location by Jones-compliant ships or tugboats.
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Picture: Avangrid is proposing two new wind farms for New England, to be situated off the coasts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (courtesy of Avangrid by way of businesswire.com).