Saving Seafood

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

Ørsted hires Coast Guard waterways chief

August 23, 2019 — The former Coast Guard waterways management chief for New England has joined offshore wind energy company Ørsted, as the emerging U.S. industry comes to grips with pushback from commercial fishermen and other interests.

Ed LeBlanc, a former Coast Guard officer and most recently chief of the Waterways Management Division for Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England, will be manager of marine affairs for Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind, the Denmark-based energy company’s American division.

In his last position of 16 years with the Coast Guard First District, LeBlanc was in the forefront of planning to how the newly arriving offshore wind industry could coexist with commercial fishing and maritime transportation traffic in the Northeast. An element of that will be safe vessel transit lanes through planned wind turbine arrays off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

MARYLAND: Many React to Wind Farm Plans for Ocean City

July 25, 2019 — On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford and other state leaders joined Tradepoint Atlantic and Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind in Sparrows Point to announce their partnership to develop the first-ever offshore wind energy center in Maryland.

The announcement is the latest development of Ørsted’s Skipjack offshore wind farm located 19.5 miles off the coast of Maryland, and the expansion of the state’s offshore wind energy industry and workforce.

The project is a continued push for the state to reduce its carbon emissions for years to come.

In addition to the environmental benefits, local leaders like Mike Dunn with the Greater Salisbury Committee says there could also be a boost to the local economy as well.

“Once the build out comes we think there’s the possibility for several hundred jobs here on the lower shore over the next twenty five years,” he said.

Read the full story at WBOC

Jeffrey Grybowski stepping down as CEO of offshore wind company Ørsted

July 24, 2019 — Jeffrey Grybowski is stepping down as co-CEO of Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind after nine months in the position and a decade before that with the Rhode Island startup that built the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

He assumed his current position in October when Ørsted, the Danish company that is a global leader in offshore wind, paid $510 million to acquire Deepwater Wind, the Providence-based company that completed the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm in 2016. His last day on the job was Tuesday.

By proving that an offshore wind farm could be built in the United States, Grybowski is arguably more responsible than anyone for ushering in the current rush of development, which has seen projects proposed along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Virginia.

Grybowski, 48, of North Kingstown, said in an interview that he will take some time off before figuring out his next move. He plans to stay in Rhode Island and use his experience to start a new energy venture.

“I think there are a lot of interesting opportunities to transition from the old way of producing and using energy to the new way of doing it,” he said.

His decision comes less than a week after Ørsted and its partner Eversource, the New England utility, were selected by New York to develop an 880-megawatt offshore wind farm and a month after New Jersey chose Ørsted to build a 1,100-megawatt project that is the largest proposal so far in the United States.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Ørsted Announces Maryland Offshore Wind Staging Center

July 24, 2019 — Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind has announced an agreement to develop Maryland’s first offshore wind staging facility, which will be located at Tradepoint Atlantic, a 3,300-acre global logistics center in Baltimore County.

According to Ørsted, establishing this facility marks a milestone in the development of the company’s Skipjack Wind Farm, to be located 19.5 miles off Maryland’s coast. The announcement was made today alongside Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford and John Olszewski, Jr., Baltimore County executive.

“Together with Tradepoint Atlantic, we are making history by developing the first offshore wind staging center in Maryland,” comments Claus Møller, chief operating officer of Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind. “This new center will create good-paying jobs, leverage Tradepoint Atlantic’s outstanding location and logistical assets, and put Maryland on the map as a global offshore wind industry hub. We are proud to work with Tradepoint Atlantic to make clean energy the newest chapter in the storied history of the Sparrows Point site as we pursue our vision of a world that runs entirely on green energy.”

Read the full story at North American Wind Power

New York signs biggest deal yet for offshore wind energy

July 22, 2019 — New York state officials struck deals with two offshore wind energy developers to build 1,700 megawatts of capacity off Long Island, aiming to have turbines in operation by 2024 that could potentially power more than 1 million homes.

The projects would also bring 1,600 jobs and $3.2 billion in economic activity, according to state energy planners. Ørsted,one of the winners in the New York power agreement bidding, says its investments in the state will include training programs for new workers – seen as a critical need for the budding U.S. wind industry.

Ørsted also plans a new operations and maintenance center near Port Jefferson, N.Y., to include dockage for a 250’ service operation vessel.

Building a Jones Act-compliant vessel of that size for the U.S. market would be a jump up from a first generation of U.S.-built crew transfer vessels now under construction for Ørsted, and could be a signal for other offshore operators to take on the risk of investing in a first U.S.-flag wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) ahead of an anticipated tight global market for those specialized assets.

“Sunrise Wind will bring renewable energy and new economic development to New York,” said Lee Olivier, executive vice president of enterprise energy strategy at Eversource, Ørsted’s partner in that 880 MW project on a federal lease 30 miles east of Long Island. “We look forward to partnering with New York State as a clean energy leader in the Northeast as well as with the local communities and businesses on Long Island and throughout the state.”

The other contract winner is Equinor, one of the early arrivals in the New York Bight when it acquired a 79,350-acre federal lease, tucked between two traffic separation lanes in and out of New York Harbor. Dubbed Empire Wind, that 816 MW project together with Sunrise Wind will total almost 1,700 MW capacity, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency that manages the state’s renewable energy planning.

Read the full story at WorkBoat