Several offshore wind builders bid in a mixed Connecticut-Massachusetts-Rhode Island offshore wind solicitation on Wednesday, together with items of European power corporations Iberdrola and Orsted.
The U.S. offshore wind business is booming to this point this 12 months, with a number of initiatives in numerous phases of improvement and development, after a disastrous 2023 of builders cancelling contracts and taking roughly $9.1 billion in write-offs and impairments on U.S. initiatives.
So far, Avangrid, Orsted and Vineyard Offshore have made proposals within the tri-state public sale, which is anticipated to play a important position in federal and state plans to decarbonize the facility grid and fight local weather change.
Avangrid, a member of the Iberdrola Group, submitted a number of proposals, together with the 791-megawatt (MW) New England Wind 1 and the 1,080-MW New England Wind 2. If mixed, the 2 initiatives may generate sufficient energy to provide practically 1 million properties.
“Avangrid is ready to go,” Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra stated in a press launch, including that development may begin on New England Wind 1 as early as subsequent 12 months.
The firm stated New England Wind 1 may obtain business operations in 2029.
In a separate bid, Orsted, the world’s greatest offshore wind firm, proposed the 1,184-megawatt Starboard Wind mission, which may provide energy to Connecticut and/or Rhode Island.
Vineyard Offshore stated it proposed the 1,200-megawatt (MW) Vineyard Wind 2, which might sit 29 miles (46.7 kilometers) south of Nantucket in Massachusetts. The mission may begin in 2031.
Vineyard Offshore is held by funds managed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
After contracts to promote offshore wind energy to utilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut have been scrapped resulting from rising prices from increased rates of interest and provide chain issues, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island agreed in October 2023 to collectively pursue offshore wind to assist get extra initiatives constructed.
Some corporations that canceled contracts to promote offshore wind energy within the U.S. Northeast in 2023 have indicated they’ve initiatives able to be bid in upcoming solicitations. Those embrace items of Avangrid, BP, EDP Energias de Portugal and Engie.
Although Orsted has not canceled initiatives in New England, it has dropped contracts to promote offshore wind energy in New York, New Jersey and Maryland over the previous 12 months.
(Reuters – Reporting by Scott DiSavino and Laila Kearney; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Josie Kao)
