Swansea and Somerset hear plans for SouthCoast Wind and Prysmian - Fall River Herald News

Swansea and Somerset hear plans for SouthCoast Wind and Prysmian

'Would you want this in your backyard?': SouthCoast Wind and Prysmian plans in Somerset
Audrey Cooney

SWANSEA — Two companies planning to bring the wind industry to Brayton Point held a public meeting in Swansea on Wednesday to address questions on topics like noise levels, construction impacts and the scope of the projects.

“I would ask you, would you want this in your backyard?” said Swansea resident Ann Seery, of Save Our Bay Brayton Point, who stepped in to help moderate during Wednesday’s meeting. “Our homes are our most important and valuable properties that we have.”

Around 70 people, mostly Swansea and Somerset residents, crowded into a room at the Swansea Council on Aging for the meeting.

Brayton Point used to be home to the Brayton Point Power Station, formerly the largest coal-fired power plant in New England. The power plant shuttered in 2017. Now, two different projects connected to the growing wind energy industry are planning to build on the 300-acre site. SouthCoast Wind intends to build a substation for its planned nearby offshore turbines and Prysmian Group plans to build a manufacturing plant that will produce undersea cables for use in turbine projects.

Plans for the SouthCoast Wind substation

SouthCoast plans to build a 65-foot-tall substation that will occupy around 10 acres on Brayton Point. Cables will travel there from an offshore wind turbine farm they plan to build around 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, bringing onshore power that will then be plugged into National Grid’s energy grid. National Grid already has a hook-up at Brayton Point because of the former power station.

Trees and other plants in the area will likely shield most of the substation from view for Somerset and Swansea residents, with the exception of lightning rods that will stand at around 85 feet tall, Kelly Smith, Onshore Package Manager for SouthCoast Wind, said during Wednesday’s meeting.

National Grid already operates a separate electrical substation on Brayton Point.

“It’ll look a lot like the utility infrastructure that’s already on the site,” Smith said.

Noise levels from the substation

SouthCoast plans to begin construction on the Somerset substation in early 2025 and take around two years to complete.

Locals have raised concerns that the substation and its construction will generate unwelcome noise in the area, a worry echoed by attendees at Wednesday’s meeting.

The company anticipates that it will stay within state regulations and local bylaws in Somerset regarding noise levels, Smith said. The substation, which SouthCoast representatives have previously described as a low hum, will likely add 10 decibels of noise to the existing ambient noise levels.

SouthCoast wants to rebid contracts

Earlier this summer, SouthCoast Wind revealed in a filing submitted to the Rhode Island Energy Facility Board that it plans to terminate its contracts with energy providers in the state to provide wind-generated electricity. The developer has said economic pressures mean it’s no longer able to provide power at the rates included in the original contracts and it now wants to rebid its contracts, called power purchase agreements, under new terms.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and the state's electrical companies are currently soliciting bids for potential wind energy projects. SouthCoast says it plans to bid again for the project during the current bidding cycle.

Kelsey Perry, community liaison coordinator for SouthCoast Wind, pointed out that other wind projects besides SouthCoast have backed out of existing contracts because of economic pressures. This includes Avangrid, the developer behind another turbine farm planned for off of Cape Cod and projects in New York and New Jersey.

Speaking after the meeting, she said the company is working off the same construction timeline as before it announced it would withdraw from its original contracts.

“It’s a ‘nice to have,’ of course, we want that guarantee that we have a buyer when we’re injecting this power, but we’re able to move forward with the permitting process without this power purchase agreement,” Perry said.

Prysmian’s plans for the site

Prysmian intends to construct a 47-acre manufacturing plant on Brayton Point that will produce high-voltage cables used to bring electricity generated by offshore wind turbines on to shore.

The plant will include the manufacturing facility itself, a dock for ships picking up the completed cable, a few other smaller buildings such as testing laboratories and a tower that it will be used to coat the cables with insulation.

The tower would be 600 feet tall and around 80 feet wide. The former Brayton Point Power Station included two cooling towers that were each around 500 feet tall and 300 feet wide. Unlike the former cooling towers, Prsymian’s tower would not release exhaust.

Will there be noise from the Prysmian plant?

Like with the SouthCoast project, residents have raised concerns that Prysmian’s facility will cause too much noise pollution. Somerset and parts of Swansea across the water from Brayton Point spent decades dealing with noise and air pollution from the power station, then problems like noise, dust and airborne metal scraps from a scrap metal company that moved in after the power station closed.

“You guys are going to totally disrupt our lives and destroy our home value that we worked so hard for, just like the people in Somerset did,” Swansea resident Krissy Burke said.

Later this month, the company plans to present a video of a similar facility in Finland to the Somerset Board of Health to give them a sense of how loud the Brayton Point plant would be.

Paul Vigeant, a local consultant for the project and a Westport resident, said the company operates a similar plant in the busy city of Naples, Italy.

“They understand what it means to be where people live,” he said. “I remember the scrap metal ships. This is not that.”

For the most part, Vigeant said, Prysmian anticipates that it will operate within Somerset’s local regulations governing noise levels. The one exception would be a 40-day period when workers are laying the foundation for the tower. According to a study the company performed, they would go past the noise limits if every piece of equipment on the construction site was running at once and they did not use any sound barriers. But, Vigneant said, they plan to use barriers around loud machinery like trucks and take other steps to mitigate noise.

Ships will dock near the Prysmian plant

Ten or 12 times a year, ships will dock near the plant for around two weeks at a time to load up completed cables. At previous meetings, Somerset residents have objected to the company’s plan to use ship-to-shore power, which would involve running the ships’ engines continuously, to load the cables.

Scott Lindgren, an engineer with firm VHB who is working with Prysmian on the project, said the company is currently building a new ship for its fleet that would be equipped to use shore-to-ship power to load cables, while also retrofitting an existing ship to do the same thing. Some ships from the company would not be able to utilize shore-to-ship power, but the company plans to use ships that can as much as possible, he said.

“Prysmian is committed to utilize, when they can, shore power and not have engines running for those 10 or 15 days,” he said.

Could Prysmian back out?

Some residents asked whether Prysmian would change its plans to build the facility given that multiple wind turbine projects have moved to change their contracts. Representatives for both SouthCoast Wind and Prysmian both stressed that the two projects planned for Brayton Point are not connected as Prysmian Wind is not making the cables that will be used by SouthCoast Wind.

“Prysmian is committed that they are coming here no matter when is happening with the offshore wind industry,” Lindgren said.