The US Department of Interior has approved Avangrid’s New England Wind project, the country’s eighth approved commercial-scale offshore wind project under the current administration.
With this project approval, the US has approved more than 10GW of clean energy from offshore wind projects, enough to power nearly 4m homes.
Originally two phases of one project, New England Wind 1 and 2 – formerly Park City Wind and Commonwealth Wind – were reviewed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The project will be located some 37 km south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, near the first major US offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind.
The New England Wind project is expected to generate up to 2.6GW of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes with clean renewable energy. The project developer proposed a two-phased project plan comprising up to 129 wind turbine generators with up to five offshore export cables transmitting electricity to onshore transmission systems.
With this approval, the Biden administration has reached the halfway mark in its promise to approve 16 offshore wind projects by 2025. That, in turn, would allow the development of 30GW of offshore wind power by 2030.
The project, albeit under its previous names, has run into trouble previously. Avangrid, Iberdrola’s US subsidiary, terminated the power purchase agreements it signed for both City Wind and Commonwealth Wind.
The company then rebid the projects into a combined solicitation for offshore wind power from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, under the new names.
In related news, partners in the 924 MW Sunrise Wind project, Ørsted and Eversource, took a final investment decision in the project after the US Department of Interior gave it the all-clear last week.
The Sunrise Wind offshore wind project was the US’ seventh approved commercial-scale offshore wind project under current leadership. It will be located some 48 km east of Montauk, New York.
