August 23, 2018 — Offshore wind farm developer Orsted worked with the fishing community in designing its proposed 800 megawatt Bay State Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and intends to do the same thing with its Ocean Wind project planned for off Atlantic City, a company biologist said Wednesday.
The company scrapped plans to scatter its 180 turbines to be most efficient in capturing wind, adopting instead a grid pattern at the request of fishermen. The patterned layout would be easier for fishing vessels to maneuver through and fish in, said Laura Morse.
Morse gave a presentation at a symposium on Fisheries and Offshore Energy at the American Fisheries Society’s annual meeting, which opened at the Convention Center here on Sunday and runs through Thursday.
Developers have acknowledged that the construction phase can disrupt fisheries with noise, heavy ship traffic, sediment increases in the water, and other factors. But the operational phase is much less disruptive to fishing, they have said.
Orsted also added two transit lanes, each a mile in width, for vessels to use to get into and out of the busy fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Morse declined to say how much less efficient the new design will be for generating electricity, calling the information proprietary.
Norway-based Equinor, which is proposing to develop Empire Wind in the New York Bight off North Jersey, has used ‘statements of common ground’ when negotiating with fishermen in the United Kingdom, said its representative Martin Goff.