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Ørsted Greenlights Seventh US Offshore Wind Farm as it Gets BOEM Approval

March 27, 2024 — The U.S. continues to push forward with its efforts to develop renewable offshore wind energy with the Biden administration highlighting that it has approved the seventh offshore wind farm. This comes as the latest in the series of rapid developments as the efforts reach the conclusion of the long permitting process and the administrations seek to add more opportunities into the pipeline.

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today issued the Record of Decision for the Sunrise Wind project to provide power to New York State. It is a key hurdle for the project that was first auctioned in 2013. BOEM’s issuance of the Record of Decision formally concludes its National Environmental Policy Act review process and precedes the anticipated approval of Sunrise Wind’s Construction and Operations Plan, expected this summer.

The lease area is located approximately 16.4 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and approximately 26.5 nm east of Montauk, New York. The project calls for a capacity of 924 MW which they report will provide power for the equivalent of 600,000 homes in New York State.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

South Fork Wind’s 12 turbines completed

March 15, 2024 — The last of 12 turbines in the South Fork Wind project 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y., were completed March 14.

South Fork Wind, an array of 12 turbines 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y., became the first fully operational offshore wind energy project in U.S. federal waters on March 14. This milestone for the U.S. industry was one of its earliest and most bitterly fought projects.

With a maximum nameplate rating of 132 megawatts, South Fork Wind was first approved by the Long Island Power Authority in 2017. Partners Ørsted and Eversource began construction in February 2022, and completion was announced Thursday.

“When I broke ground on the South Fork project, I made a promise to build a cleaner, greener future for all New Yorkers,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. With more projects in the pipeline, this is just the beginning of New York’s offshore wind future, and I look forward to continued partnership with the Biden Administration and local leaders to build a clean and resilient energy grid.”

The Hochul administration aims to have 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 and recently announced two new project awards, Empire Wind I, and Sunrise Wind, for over 1,730 MW.

Read the full article at Workboat

NEW YORK: New York Completes First Utility-Scale Offshore Wind Farm in the U.S.

March 15, 2024 — Elected officials in New York State joined with industry leaders and Ørsted and its partners to mark the completed construction of South Fork Wind. The 132 MW project is considered to be the United States’ first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. The offshore work was completed in approximately nine months with 12 turbines and is being hailed as a symbol of what is going to be coming to the U.S. clean energy industry.

“We’re thrilled to celebrate the completion of the South Fork project,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “Today is further proof that America’s clean energy transition is not a dream for a distant future – it’s happening right here and now.”

With all 12 of South Fork Wind’s turbines installed, the wind farm is delivering power to the local Long Island electric grid while commissioning is in its final stage. At full capacity, the wind farm, which is located roughly 35 miles off the coast of Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island will generate enough renewable energy to power approximately 70,000 homes and will eliminate up to six million tons of carbon emissions over the 20-year life of the project.?

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

NEW JERSEY: Better days ahead for offshore wind, advocates argue

February 26, 2024 — New Jersey’s offshore wind industry is beginning to see brighter prospects ahead, after stumbling through a series of setbacks over the past several months.

On Halloween, clean-energy advocates were stunned when Ørsted, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind projects, abruptly walked away from its state-backed plan to build two wind farms off the New Jersey coast.

The decision came after a few brutal months for the offshore wind industry. Dead whales, dolphins and seals washed ashore on beaches. Critics blamed vessels working to prepare sites for offshore-wind installations for their deaths. The pandemic crashed the sector’s supply chain, pushed borrowing costs much higher and sparked the steepest inflation in years. Critics argued the projects were too costly for customers.

Earlier this month, Ørsted announced it was also pulling out of projects in Norway, Portugal and Spain, once again citing supply-chain disruptions and high interest rates.

Read the full article at New Jersey Spotlight News

Offshore wind faces economic reckoning

February 16, 2024 — As pleas for government assistance mount, the odds of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power coursing through the nation’s transmission lines by 2030 are growing longer.

The pendulum has indeed swung against offshore wind as Northeast developers lump insufficient federal and state tax relief with skyrocketing costs, nagging supply chain bottlenecks and cumbersome permitting for, at best, delaying project start-ups. Ørsted’s bombshell decision on Oct. 31 to scrap two wind farms under development off New Jersey put a punctuation mark on a year that saw no less than 4.7 GW of planned wind power temporarily, or perhaps permanently scrapped.

That’s not to say some projects haven’t advanced on schedule, particularly for the consortiums that managed to lock in supplier contracts before inflation and interest rates rose. As of late November, a combined 932 megawatts of first power were on target to begin flowing through the grid at year-end 2023 from two wind farms off Massachusetts and New York. (The first of 12 turbines began delivering power in early December to New York’s Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) grid, marking the first utility-scale wind generation in U.S. federal waters.)

No new projects are scheduled to come online until 2025 when US Wind is expected to begin generating roughly 270 MW from its MarWin offshore wind farm off Ocean City, Md. 

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Wind power giants find little shelter from sector troubles

February 10, 2024 — The world’s three biggest wind power groups – Siemens Energy, Orsted and Vestas on Wednesday gave a sober view of the year ahead for an industry buffeted by project delays, equipment problems and inflation.

Siemens Energy, the world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines, expects a 2024 loss before special items of around 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) at Siemens Gamesa. The wind division has had to deal with the cost of addressing quality problems affecting some onshore models.

In addition, rising prices for raw materials and components as well as regulatory delays have caused writedowns and losses across the wind industry despite robust demand for renewable technology. Turbine makers have been particularly hit.

“You see the terms and conditions of the projects being too difficult for investors and project developers to take. So we are in a standstill,” said Danny van Doesburg, senior portfolio manager at Dutch APG Asset Management, which according to LSEG data owns stakes in Vestas, Orsted and Siemens Energy.

Read the full article at Reuters

Orsted Sets Out Cost-Saving Plan After U.S. Wind Projects Cancellation

February 7, 2024 —  Orsted the struggling European wind-energy giant, said it will cut costs, pause dividend payments over several years, sell assets and refocus business priorities as it tries to right itself from a costly move into the U.S. offshore wind market.

Orsted, which transformed itself in recent years from what was Denmark’s small state oil company into a global giant in wind energy development, has recently hit major headwinds as it pushed aggressively to expand into new markets, particularly in a push in the U.S.

After betting big on offshore wind development on the U.S. East Coast, it has pared back dramatically, and seen its stock-market valuation—at one point eclipsing that of some of its more traditional oil and natural gas peers—crater.

It has struggled with supply-chain bottlenecks in the U.S., higher interest rates and trouble getting tax credits there. Late last year, it said it would pull out of two high-profile wind projects off the coast of New Jersey due to spiraling costs.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal

Ørsted agrees to acquire Eversource’s 50% share of Sunrise Wind project

January 30, 2024 — Danish company Ørsted has agreed to acquire utility company Eversource Energy’s 50% stake in a 924-megawatt offshore wind farm in New York, Sunrise Wind.

Eversource, based in Hartford and Boston, previously announced that it would divest its 50% ownership stake in three offshore wind projects in New York and Connecticut, including Sunrise Wind.

As a result, Eversource will take a 2023 fourth-quarter charge of up to $1.6 billion.

Read the full article at Hartford Business 

Will 2024 be all about offshore wind?

January 17, 2024 — Will 2024 prove as monumental a year for the offshore wind industry as last year? Reading the respective press releases and news stories brought to mind the opening line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That describes the East Coast offshore wind industry today.

The best of times. Avangrid Inc., a member of the Iberdrola Group, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners CI II fund are jointly developing Vineyard Wind 1, an 806-megawatt project located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. According to a Jan. 3 press release, the first turbine undergoing commissioning sent five megawatts of power to the New England grid at 11:52 PM the night before. Is it still sending power? Our inquiry to Avangrid has not been answered, but the press release talked about further testing being needed. Sounds like it isn’t sending power.

The press release claims this power is the first to come from a commercial-scale U.S. offshore wind project. However, Ørsted and partner Eversource claimed they sent the first power from their South Fork Wind farm off Long Island to the New York grid in early December. Funny, we haven’t heard anything more from them. But how could Avangrid have missed that announcement? Maybe there is a back story we don’t know yet.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

U.S. gives final nod to Rhode Island’s $1.5 billion offshore wind farm

December 8, 2023 — The U.S Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council on Thursday approved the construction of a $1.5 billion offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

The project, Revolution Wind, is run by Danish company Orsted and U.S.-based Eversource, and would bring a total of 704 megawatts (MW) clean energy to Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Another offshore project by the two wind energy developers, the South Fork wind farm off the coast of New York, delivered its first power to the state’s power grid on Wednesday.

Read the full story at CNBC