Saving Seafood

Wind-power developer opens 2nd R.I. office

March 3, 2020 — The construction of more offshore wind farms on the East Coast is on hold as federal regulators reconsider their impacts, but that hasn’t deterred the leading developer in the global industry from opening its second office in Providence.

Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind’s new innovation hub is small, with only two full-time staff members and space for seven other employees of the Danish parent company to cycle through, but Orsted executives say its presence reflects confidence in the future of the American market.

“We are still pretty optimistic,” Thomas Brostrom, president of Orsted’s operations in North America, said in an interview. “We are getting anxious to move on, but nothing to make our hands shake.”

He spoke outside the new office in the Wexford Innovation Center on Monday before the official opening of the work space. In a demonstration of the importance of Orsted to the growth of Rhode Island’s “blue economy” — commercial activities centered around the ocean — Gov. Gina Raimondo joined Brostrom and others at the event.

Offshore wind alone could generate 20,000 supply-chain jobs along the Atlantic coast, said Raimondo, citing one recent report.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

NEW JERSEY: Cape May County Looks to “Co-Exist” With Wind Farm

February 26, 2020 — With the prospect of 90 turbines sitting a mile apart 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City in a wind farm project slated for 2024, a public forum Tuesday laid out some concerns about the possible impacts on tourism, the environment and the fishing industry.

The program, hosted by the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, was held at the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City.

Speakers, including Joseph Fiordaliso, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Cape May County Chamber officials, County Tourism Director Diane Wieland and fishing industry experts, heard from Orsted, the company building the wind farm.

Among the dignitaries in attendance at the standing-room-only event was former Gov. Jim Florio, who did not speak about the project.

The project is touted by Orsted, which has built 26 other wind farms, as one that would supply clean renewable energy, power more than half a million New Jersey homes and create thousands of jobs.

Read the full story at the O.C. N.J. Daily

Block Island Wind Farm to go offline in fall to rebury cable

February 10, 2020 — The electric cables for the Block Island Wind Farm were supposed to be buried in trenches at least four feet below the seabed, but workers couldn’t get down as far as they wanted, and over the last four years waves have exposed portions of the transmission lines that run to and from a beach on the island.

Now, Orsted, the Danish company that owns the five-turbine offshore wind farm that is the first in the nation, plans to rebury one of the two cables starting in the fall. Orsted, which has offices in Boston and Providence, says it should be able to do all the work at Crescent Beach in the off-season and wrap up the project by Memorial Day in 2021.

But for an indeterminate amount of time during construction, the 30-megawatt wind farm, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, will have to go offline.

Orsted says it will be “solely responsible for paying for this work,” according to a statement from the company.

“Ratepayers will not bear any of these costs,” the company said.

It would not disclose the project’s price tag.

Orsted’s cable runs from the wind farm to the island. The second cable, which connects the island to the mainland electric grid, is owned by National Grid, the main electric utility in Rhode Island. National Grid is also working on plans to rebury its cable, which is expected to happen around the same time, but the company has yet to release details to the public.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Offshore Wind to Fund New Study of Right Whales

January 28, 2020 — Ørsted is funding a project to study and protect endangered North Atlantic right whale during surveys, construction, and operation of its U.S. offshore wind facilities such as Bay State Wind and Revolution Wind.

Using data collected from an aerial, unmanned glider and two sound-detection buoys, researchers from the University of Rhode Island, Rutgers University, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will examine the habitat and behaviors of right whales in the wind-lease areas awarded to Ørsted.

An estimated 400 North Atlantic right whales remain, fewer than 100 are breeding females.

The oceanographic data will help studies of additional fish species and improve forecasting for severe storms and other weather, according to Ørsted. The three-year initiative is called Ecosystem and Passive Acoustic Monitoring (ECO-PAM).

Read the full story at EcoRI

Ørsted to Brief Atlantic City Residents on New Jersey’s First OWF

January 27, 2020 — Danish offshore wind farm company Ørsted is set to host an open house in the first week of February to update Atlantic City residents on the progress of Ocean Wind, New Jersey’s first offshore wind project.

Ørsted was in June 2019 selected as preferred bidder for New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, to be located 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City. Construction is expected to start in the early 2020s, with the wind farm operational in 2024.

Ørsted, formerly known as Dong Energy, will host the open house for Atlantic City residents on Thursday, February 6 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Avalon Conference Center at The Claridge Hotel, located at 123 S. Indiana Avenue, Atlantic City. Free, validated parking will be available in The Claridge’s parking garage, the company said. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m.

Read the full story at Offshore Engineer

JOE GILBERT: Wind turbine spacing plan inadequate for fishing safety

November 26, 2019 — From the perspective of Connecticut’s commercial fishermen who provide over $53 million to our state’s economy, nearly 1,000 jobs and food on the table of countless consumers, I wanted to respond to the Nov. 19 Day article, “New England Wind Turbine Plan Proposed to Allay Concerns.”

The four developers advancing offshore wind farms off Connecticut’s coast and competing for Connecticut’s energy contracts – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – released their proposal to the U.S. Coast Guard for how to consistently position turbines across the region in a way that they believe will satisfy safety concerns raised by commercial fishermen and other mariners.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” they said in a press release. It “will allow mariners to safely transit from one end of the New England Wind Energy Area (WEA) to the other without unexpected obstacles.”

It is unclear to me and other fishermen what industry requests these developers are responding to. This proposal certainly does not reflect the position of the Connecticut mobile gear fishermen, i.e., trawlers and scallopers. In fact, the report that this proposal is based on does not even identify Connecticut’s port in Stonington as having a scallop fishery at all. Nor does it mention or account for the needs of the New London commercial fishing fleet. With such an omission, how can the report address the needs of Connecticut’s fishermen? By the report’s own admission, the data used for this analysis may only account for as little as 40% of the total fishing vessels that may transit or fish in the WEA.

Read the full story at The Day

PSEG subsidiary contemplates bigger stake in offshore wind

November 7, 2019 — PSEG Long Island’s sister power company is contemplating a second major offshore wind initiative with Danish energy giant, Orsted, in which it could acquire a stake in a massive New Jersey project, even as the company works to help implement separate Orsted wind farms for the South Fork and New York State.

PSEG Power announced last week that it had begun to seek approvals and analyze the prospect of acquiring a 25% stake in a 1,100-megawatt offshore wind farm for New Jersey called Ocean Wind. PSEG Power already had already been working to support the project. And it has a partnership with Orsted predecessor Deepwater Wind for a separate project in waters off New Jersey south of the planned Ocean Wind farm.

Deepwater Wind is the company that successfully bid for an originally 90-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts that will provide energy to the South Fork. The project was later expanded to 130 megawatts. PSEG Long Island’s power markets group provided the analysis that led to the recommendation of that project, which LIPA’s board approved in January 2017, after nods from town governments in East Hampton and Southampton.

Read the full story at Newsday

Skyscrapers in the sea: Massive wind turbines planned off Delaware coast

October 3, 2019 — The latest plans to harness the power of the wind will feature 853-foot-tall turbines installed east of Delaware’s beaches.

The Danish company Ørsted announced last month that it would install the world’s largest offshore wind turbines in federal water 15 to 20 miles off Delaware’s coast. Built by GE, the Haliade X-12 turbines would stand 853 feet tall in the Skipjack Wind Farm east of the state’s southern beaches. The turbine’s three blades are each longer than a football field.

“We look forward to introducing the next-generation offshore wind turbine to the market,” Ørsted Offshore CEO Martin Neubert said in a statement. Pending full regulatory approval, the turbines are set to be up and running by 2022. The 10 turbines are expected to generate 120 MW of power. Even though the turbines will be built off the Delaware coast, Ørsted has an agreement to sell the power they produce to Maryland.

Read the full story at WHYY

Ørsted to deploy record size turbines in Atlantic City offshore wind farm

September 24, 2019 — The 1,100 megawatt Ocean Wind offshore wind farm to be built off the coast here will deploy a new generation 12 megawatt turbine that will be the largest and most powerful in the world, according to the developer of the project.

GE Renewable Energy will supply the newly developed turbines to the Atlantic City project, which will be the third largest wind farm in the world and open in 2024, Danish company Ørsted announced Thursday.

In March 2018, GE announced it was embarking on producing the world’s first 12 MW turbine, which some in the industry said could not be done.

While Ørsted recently announced it will mainly transmit Ocean Wind’s electricity into the grid at the closed Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey Township, it also is still looking at sending some power through other New Jersey locations.

“There are a couple of other options we are looking at, including B.L. England,” Thomas Brostrøm, CEO of Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind, said of the closed electric generating plant in Beesleys Point, Upper Township.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: Ørsted pitches its Ocean Wind project

August 28, 2019 — Offshore wind energy developer Ørsted is introducing the New Jersey public to its Ocean Wind project – at a planned 1,100 megawatts the largest U.S. waters project to date.

“New Jersey is at the epicenter of offshore wind,” said Kris Ohleth, Ørsted’s senior stakeholder relations manager, as she opened the company’s first meeting in Atlantic City Monday evening. “We can supply the nucleus of the supply chain.”

That’s music to the ears of southern New Jersey political and labor leaders, in a region that never fully recovered from the Atlantic City casino industry’s downturn and construction recession after the 2008 financial meltdown.

Ørsted opened an office in the city last year to prepare for building the Ocean Wind project on a federal lease 15 miles offshore, and it’s expected the company could soon pick a location for its onshore support station and docks on the city waterfront.

That would represent 70 permanent jobs, beyond the 3,000 construction jobs the company predicts for its building cycle through to 2024. The company is already working with the city school system and Richard Stockton University to recruit future workers and plan for training and workforce development.

Read the full story at National Fisherman