Saving Seafood

BOEM requires transit corridors for offshore wind energy areas

October 22, 2018 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management is requiring offshore wind energy developers to set aside vessel transit corridors, amid intense discussions with the commercial fishing industry.

In a notice published Friday in the Federal Register, the agency announced it would offer an additional 390,000 acres south of Massachusetts for lease on Dec. 13. That would extend large areas already leased from Block Island, R.I., to south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The BOEM notice includes a new requirement for planning safe transit lanes through future arrays of turbine towers on the shallow continental shelf.

“The fishing industry has raised concerns with the ability to safely transit the existing and offered leases, particularly with their ability to quickly and safely return to port during inclement weather,” agency officials wrote.

At a Sept. 20 meeting in Massachusetts, Coast Guard officials and fishing industry groups proposed transit lanes through the leases to BOEM and wind developers Baystate Wind, Vineyard Wind and Deepwater Wind (since merged with Norwegian energy company Equinor, formerly known as Statoil).

“Representatives from the squid, groundfish, scallop, and other fisheries agreed that the two nautical-mile-wide transit corridors through the existing leases would provide the ability to safely transit to and from the fishing grounds. BOEM expects these, or similar, transit corridors to be finalized in the near future, and future lessees will be required to incorporate them into their plans,” the lease sale notice states.

Read the full story at Work Boat   

 

Massachusetts Punts on Big Offshore Wind Decision

April 26, 2018 — Massachusetts has opted to delay by at least one month its much-anticipated choice of a developer to build a 400-MW to 800-MW offshore wind farm—citing the unexpected complexity of bids received, complications of three extreme storms in March and an outside jurisdictional decision affecting the state. The state’s three utilities on April 23 notified officials that the May 23 selection will not affect the July 2 contract execution date, attorneys said in a letter.

Utilities National Grid, Eversource Energy and UNITIL said the three developer proposals received in response to a solicitation last June actually were made up of about 20 separate bids—some with multiple pricing and other options, including several complex scenarios that require detailed and demanding analysis. Baystate Wind submitted two bids with eight project variations. Vineyard Wind proposed two 400-MW wind farms combined with 1,600 MW of expandable transmission and a plan to accelerate supply chain development. Deepwater Wind proposed adding offshore wind incrementally to await falling costs and building grid-scale pumped storage and expandable transmission. It said the incremental addition could save ratepayers from $300 million to $600 million.

Read the full story at ENR

 

President Trump Expands Wind Leases Off Martha’s Vineyard

April 9, 2018 — The Trump administration will expand wind energy leases off Martha’s Vineyard, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior announced Friday.

In a press release, Secretary Ryan Zinke said two more areas off Massachusetts totaling some 390,000 acres would go up for sale for future commercial wind farms. The lease area lies near a 300,000-acre swath of wind-rich deepwater ocean already designated for commercial wind farms, roughly 15 to 25 miles south of the Vineyard.

No wind farms have been built yet off Massachusetts, but a high-stakes business race is on as well-funded developers work their way through a dense bureaucractic process of permitting at the state and federal level. Construction could begin by 2019 and run through 2022.

The next key date in the permitting process is April 23, when bid winners will be announced for state-mandated energy contracts with utility providers. Tied to a 2016 law signed by Gov. Charlie Baker requiring state utility companies to buy 1,600 megawatts of power from alternative energy sources in the next decade, the energy contracts are critical for wind developers since they provide a way for wind farms to transmit electricity to consumers via the grid.

To date, three developers have been awarded leases to build utility-scale wind farms off the Vineyard: Vineyard Wind, Deepwater Wind and Baystate Wind.

Vineyard Wind is a partnership between Vineyard Power, the Island energy cooperative, and the Danish company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which has an offshore wind development arm.

Deepwater Wind, based in Providence, R.I., has already launched the country’s first offshore wind farm off Block Island.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

Massachusetts: Vineyard Wind wins state nod for undersea transmission cable

February 14, 2018 — BOSTON — One of three offshore wind developers hoping to score major Massachusetts utility contracts has made progress in its state environmental review.

Vineyard Wind LLC gained an Environmental Notification Form certificate for a transmission cable from a spot in the Atlantic Ocean to a substation on Cape Cod, the company announced Monday. The ENF certificate lists the issues that must be addressed in an upcoming Draft Environmental Impact Report.

Vineyard Wind plans an 800-megawatt wind farm 34 miles from Cape Cod. The planned transmission cables would travel 40 miles underwater and six miles underground to a switching station in Barnstable, where they would connect to New England’s bulk power grid.

In December, three entities — Baystate Wind, Deepwater Wind and Vineyard Wind — submitted proposals under the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP. The solicitation seeks up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power. The winner, to be announced in April, will gain valuable long-term power contracts with Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil.

Vineyard Wind says it is further along than its competitors, could begin construction in late 2019, and is “the only proposed offshore wind project in Massachusetts that has begun the process of obtaining state and federal permits.”

Read the full story at MassLive