Sunrise Wind cleared to start construction - Martha's Vineyard Times
Sunrise Wind cleared to start construction - The Martha's Vineyard Times
Another industrial offshore wind farm off the coast of the Vineyard is preparing to start construction.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved Sunrise Wind’s construction and operations plan on June 21, according to a press release from the agency. This is the final approval the project needed from BOEM.
According to Ørsted, offshore wind construction will “ramp up” later this year and Sunrise Wind is expected to be fully operational by 2026.
Sunrise Wind, an offshore wind project owned by Ørsted, will consist of 84 wind turbines and produce 924 megawatts of power. According to BOEM, that is enough to power over 320,000 homes annually. The project lease area is located around 18 miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard and will be providing power to New York. By comparison, Sunrise Wind will be located around 30 miles east of Montauk, New York.
BOEM’s approval follows the green light from the U.S. Department of the Interior in March, which included an environmental review of the project.
“BOEM’s approval of the Sunrise Wind project represents another step in building a thriving offshore wind energy industry,” Elizabeth Klein, director of BOEM, said in the federal agency release. “The Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing responsible projects like Sunrise Wind as part of our strategy to foster good paying jobs for local communities, ignite economic development, and fight the harmful effects of climate change.”
Construction is underway for another Ørsted project even closer to the Vineyard. Revolution Wind, a 704-megawatt offshore wind project 12 miles from Aquinnah, will provide power to Connecticut and Rhode Island. The company completed installing its first turbine foundation in mid-May.
Revolution Wind will consist of 65 wind turbines and two offshore substations. The U.S. Department of the Interior stated the offshore wind farm will be able to power over 250,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Meanwhile, Avangrid announced on Tuesday that Vineyard Wind 1 now has a total of 10 offshore wind turbines in operation delivering 136 megawatts of power to the New England electricity grid. Avangrid states this is enough to power over 60,000 homes in Massachusetts.
Vineyard Wind 1 is located around 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. The offshore wind farm will consist of 62 wind turbines generating 806 megawatts of power, which the Interior Department has said would be enough to power 400,000 homes and businesses.
Avangrid states the construction of Vineyard Wind has completed installing 21 turbines and 47 foundations and transition pieces for more turbines.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.