US launches grid action plan for Atlantic offshore wind
The US has issued an action plan to bring electricity generated by offshore wind farms in the Atlantic to shore and to eventually build a grid network at sea. The energy and interior departments made recommendations for short- and longer-term action in their jointly issued strategy. To enable a full buildout of offshore wind, the departments recommended that before 2025: — Collaborative bodies should be established across the Atlantic coast region; — Some of the building blocks of transmission planning should be clarified, including updating reliability standards and identifying where offshore transmission may interconnect with the onshore grid; and — Costs should be addressed through parties volunteering to pay or applying for tax credits. In the second half of the decade, the government recommended: — Federal officials should convene and coordinate with states to plan for an offshore transmission network; — They should also collaborate with the offshore wind industry to standardise requirements for high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) technology; and — They should work with federal and state agencies, tribal nations and other stakeholders to identify and prioritise transmission routes on the Outer Continental Shelf. The government departments also recommended that a national HVDC testing and certification centre should be established between 2030 and 2040 to ensure compatibility when interconnecting multiple HVDC substations to form an offshore grid network.
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.