The US' first commercial offshore wind farm kicks off turbine construction - Electrek.co
The US' first commercial offshore wind farm kicks off turbine construction
The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement ( BSEE) has okayed the construction of turbines at the US’ first commercial offshore wind farm.
Now that the BSEE has completed its 60-day review of South Fork’s Facility Design Report and Fabrication and Installation Report and given the offshore wind farm the all-clear, wind turbine construction can start, and that’s expected to be completed this summer. (The BSEE conducted the review because in January, the DOI announced the transfer of regulations governing offshore renewable energy activities from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to the BSEE.)
The 132 megawatt (MW), 12-turbine offshore wind farm, which is being built by Danish wind giant Ørsted and New England energy company Eversource (a 50/50 partnership), will power around 70,000 New York homes when it comes online at the end of 2023.
It’s about 35 miles east of Montauk Point, and it will deliver clean energy directly to the electric grid in East Hampton via a single transmission line – and that subsea export cable was installed just last week. The energy produced will be sold to the Long Island Power Authority under the terms of a 20-year agreement.
Ørsted and Eversource are paying for building, operating, and maintaining South Fork. The wind farm will also feature the first US-made offshore wind energy substation.
Wind turbine installation at the US’ first commercial offshore wind farm marks a major milestone in the US goal to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. The Biden administration released its first offshore wind energy strategy for that deployment last week.
Read more: The world saw a record 9.6% growth in renewables in 2022
Photo: Orsted
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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.