Saving Seafood

Network could deliver wind power across southern New England

November 25, 2019 — The company that is turning the site of a former coal-burning power plant in Somerset into a green energy center has filed a federal application to develop a single transmission network that could deliver power from offshore wind farms to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Anbaric, a Wakefield-based company that focuses exclusively on transmission, said it filed its application with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for “non-exclusive rights-of-way to develop the Southern New England OceanGrid,” which it described as an “independent, open-access” offshore wind transmission system.

If approved, the company said its plan would be to link existing wind lease areas to one common transmission network and then deliver as much as 16,000 megawatts of clean power to the three southern New England states. The project’s benefits, according to Anbaric, would include greater efficiency, improved reliability, and limited environmental impacts.

“As offshore wind’s potential gains momentum, it’s time to think big and plan rationally. It becomes clearer every day that transmission must lead the way towards greater scale, reliability, and efficiency, just as it has in Europe,” Anbaric CEO Edward Krapels said. “Individual wind farm developers have gotten the industry off to a good start, but we now need a networked grid to minimize conflict and create a truly reliable offshore transmission system that will substantially de-risk wind projects.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

How to bring wind energy to shore: Massachusetts company submits 20-year plan for grid to transmit power from Atlantic Ocean turbines

November 22, 2019 — With proposals pending to install giant turbines to generate wind power in the Atlantic Ocean a transmission company announced Thursday a 20-year plan to bring transmission ashore without splaying a mass of power cables along the bottom of the ocean.

Anbaric, a Wakefield, Mass.-based company that specializes in early stage development of large-scale electric transmission systems and storage solutions, filed an application with the U.S. Department of the Interior proposing non-exclusive rights-of-way to develop the “southern New England OceanGrid,” an offshore transmission system intended to boost the region’s offshore wind resources. It’s proposing corridors through which cables would bring power to Connecticut and elsewhere in southern New England.

“A planned grid approach makes sense,” said Peter Shattuck, Anbaric’s vice president for distributed energy. “The desire is to not have cables snaking willy nilly across the ocean floor.”

The transmission network on the outer continental shelf would link wind lease areas using a common system and deliver power to the on-shore grid. Anbaric touts greater efficiency, improved reliability, less of an environmental impact and the ability to direct the energy to specific areas. The Southern New England OceanGrid would be developed in phases and anticipates an offshore transmission network connecting up to 16,000 megawatts of offshore wind to Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Read the full story at The Hartford Courant

Turbine spacing unites offshore wind executives

November 21, 2019 — Executives representing the offshore leaseholders off Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket announced their joint support for a one-nautical-mile width between all their proposed wind turbines.

The executives also announced agreement on an east-west orientation of the wind turbine rows. Orsted North America president Thomas Brostrom, Equinor Wind US president Christer af Geijerstam, Eversource Energy-enterprise energy strategy executive vice president Leon Oliver, Mayflower Wind president John Hartnet, and Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Thaaning Pedersen signed a letter to the U.S. Coast Guard advocating for the one-nautical-mile spacing and east-west configuration. The letter was accompanied by a report executed by W.F. Baird & Associates Ltd. that concludes such distancing and orientation of turbines is advantageous.

For Vineyard Wind, the width is a mile short of what it previously supported. As The Times reported in December 2018, Vineyard Wind was in support of two-mile transit corridors, while fishermen pushed for four-mile corridors. However, the executives contend in their letter that the widths are “responsive to fishermen’s requests.” Among other reasons, fishermen in Rhode Island and Massachusetts have pushed for wider navigation spaces between wind turbines for safety reasons, due to the length of mobile gear some fishing vessels trail. The executives state the width they propose addresses mobile gear concerns.

In a statement to The Times, Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Rhode Island’s Seafreeze Ltd. and a board member of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), found the executives’ announcement foreseeable, and as evidence they may not be taking fishing industry input to heart.

Read the full story at the Martha’s Vineyard Times

MARYLAND: Taller, more distant turbines put Ocean City offshore wind projects back under state review

November 20, 2019 — Two wind farms proposed off the coast of Ocean City, Md., are getting a second look from the state of Maryland.

The Skipjack Wind Farm, led by Danish company Ørsted, and the MarWin Wind Farm by Baltimore-based U.S. Wind, a subsidiary of the Italian renewable energy company Renexia, are being reviewed in response to concerns raised by Ocean City officials about the farms’ impact on tourism to the famous vacation spot.

Both projects submitted updates to the state this fall detailing plans to install taller, more powerful turbines in their respective leasing areas.

The Maryland Public Service Commission, which has final approval on whether the projects receive key ratepayer-funded subsidies, will review public comments on the updated plans and may choose to hold a public hearing. It represents the projects’ first review since the MPSC conditionally approved them in 2017.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

Many fishermen aren’t on board with wind industry’s new plan

November 20, 2019 — The fierce competitors in the local offshore wind industry probably hoped to make a big splash with this news: They teamed up to propose a grid that creates uniform spacing between each tower and a similar orientation for the various wind farm proposals south of Martha’s Vineyard.

One of the chief goals was to assuage concerns among fishermen who worry that an uncoordinated array of hundreds of towers would make the waters hard to navigate — effectively displacing them from rich fishing grounds.

However, plenty of fishermen aren’t taking the bait. For many of them, the one nautical mile distance proposed between each giant turbine tower simply isn’t enough — especially for boats that are dragging big nets behind them.

Persuading fishermen to toe the line could be crucial to the nascent industry’s survival. Construction was about to begin on what would have been the first major offshore wind farm in the US until Interior Secretary David Bernhardt dragged out the permitting in August. Bernhardt ostensibly wants a study of the cumulative impact from all the wind farms in the pipeline, before allowing the first one to proceed.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

US harvesters cold on wind farm industry’s proposed turbine standards

November 20, 2019 — A group of wind farming companies with hopes of building soon off the North Atlantic coast of the United States released on Tuesday their proposal to the US Coast Guard (USCG) for how to consistently position turbines across the region in a way that they believe will satisfy safety concerns raised by commercial fish and shellfish harvesters.

The proposal includes requiring a minimum of one nautical mile (1.2 miles) between each turbine and an east to west configuration, just as harvesters earlier asked.

However, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a group of 160 commercial harvesters and processors with vessels spread across nine states and operating in about 30 different fisheries, said on Tuesday morning that it would rather wait on the results of a scientific study from the USCG — expected soon — before accepting the wind industry’s plan.

And the Fisheries Survival fund, a group that represents Atlantic scallop harvesters, has flat out rejected the wind industry’s proposal, saying it doesn’t meet their needs.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

First Public Meeting For Offshore Wind Task Force Will Take Place In N.H.

November 19, 2019 — New Hampshire will host the kick-off meeting of a federal offshore wind task force for the Gulf of Maine. The meeting is set for Dec. 12 at the University of New Hampshire.

It will be open to the public, with time for public input.

The task force will include state, local and tribal government officials from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine, and from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

New England fishing groups object to latest offshore wind layout proposal

November 19, 2019 — Groups representing New England fisheries are objecting to a recently released proposal regarding the future spacing of offshore wind turbines.

Five companies that hold leases for offshore wind projects in New England – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Ørsted/Eversource, and Vineyard Wind – released a joint statement calling for a uniform layout of the wind turbines. The companies are calling for a 1 nautical mile spacing, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US fisheries rebuff offshore wind’s project layout rethink

November 19, 2019 — The five developers advancing offshore wind farms off the northeast US – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – have put forward a proposal to the country’s US Coast Guard (USCG) to use a uniform turbine layout for the projects, in a bid to defuse ongoing objections from the regional fishery industries.

The New England Offshore Wind Leaseholders (NEOWL), advancing more than 7GW between them, said the layout would have rows of turbines spaced one nautical mile apart, and align to the USCG’s requirement for “robust navigational safety and search and rescue capability by providing hundreds of transit corridors to accommodate the region’s vessel traffic”.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” said the NEOWL in a joint statement. The proposed layout specifies that turbines will be spaced one nautical mile apart, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns, with the rows and columns continuous across all New England lease areas.

Read the full story at ReCharge News

RODA Submits Comments on Proposed Changes to Interpretation on the Jones Act

November 18, 2019 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

On Friday, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) submitted a letter to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection expressing serious concern with proposed modifications to ruling letters that would allow non-Jones Act compliant vessels to be utilized for a wide range of offshore activities, including offshore wind energy facility construction.

For nearly a century, fishermen have complied with the Jones Act. RODA is concerned that the proposed modifications and revocation of ruling letters to CBP’s application of the Jones Act would not hold offshore wind energy developers to the same standards. The proposed definition is too broad and violates the purpose of the Jones Act. Carving out a broad exemption for an entire new industry does nothing to aid the development of U.S. marine commerce.

As the number of proposed offshore wind energy projects continues to grow throughout the U.S., their widely promised economic benefits must accrue to the citizens who are displaced, and to U.S. coastal communities at large. For offshore wind energy-related operations that can be executed with existing American vessels and crew, this means delivering on promises to fully utilize those resources. For larger construction tasks for which there may not currently be qualified vessels, foreign-owned wind energy companies should contract with U.S. shipyards to build the necessary Jones Act-qualified boats.

The actions proposed in the notice also have significant bearing on national security and environmental protection. Monitoring and enforcement of U.S. environmental and security laws on foreign vessels poses extraordinary challenges due the additional permissions needed by the Coast Guard to board non-U.S. flag vessels.

Finally, RODA noted that CBP may only issue Jones Act interpretations relevant to these activities through a public rulemaking process and after conducting thorough interagency evaluations. Due to the highly case-specific nature of ruling letters, any CBP action that affects the maritime community or the public more broadly must follow the Administrative Procedure Act. The notice overreaches a ruling letter’s authority by proposing to adopt a new and unprecedented definition for “vessel equipment.” The inclusion of specific, previously uncontemplated activities—and the materials for use in those activities—in the definition of “vessel equipment” is a new statutory interpretation, and unfit for adoption through modification of existing ruling letters.

The proposed changes are described at page 12 here: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Oct/Vol_53_No_38_Title.pdf. Comments are due by November 22nd and must be submitted by postal mail.

Read RODA’s submitted comments here