Two of the offshore wind developers that won and then lost contingent New York contracts are trying again, submitting proposals into the state’s latest solicitation.
Community Offshore Wind and Excelsior Wind could be the fourth and fifth wind farms off the coast of New York, which is pursuing development of an offshore wind sector vigorously but with mixed results.
Community and Excelsior announced their proposals Sept. 9, the final day to submit proposals without price tags in New York’s fifth competitive offshore wind solicitation (NY5).
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) would not say how many other proposals it received. It said redacted versions of the proposals would be made public in coming weeks.
The process is not complete — developers must submit price tags for their proposals by Oct. 18 — but the door now is closed to additional proposals into NY5.
NYSERDA expects to make contingent awards by Nov. 8, then execute the contracts and announce them to the public in the first quarter of 2025.
Community is proposed by RWE and National Grid Ventures. Excelsior is proposed by Vineyard Offshore, an affiliate of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
In October 2023, Community and Excelsior were awarded contingent contracts in NY3, along with Attentive Energy One. All three contracts were predicated on an 18-MW turbine under development by General Electric.
When the company — now GE Vernova — halted development of that machine, the contracts no longer penciled out. The NY3 solicitation was canceled, and the conditional contracts for 4 GW of capacity from the three projects were canceled in April 2024. (See NY Offshore Wind Plans Implode Again.)
Excelsior announced Sept. 9 it had submitted a 1,350-MW project in NY5 — nearly the same nameplate capacity it had proposed in NY3. Community did not specify the nameplate capacity of the wind farm it is proposing for NY5.
Headwinds
New York’s experiences are among the best examples of the growing pains of the U.S. offshore wind industry as it takes root off the Northeast coast. It has not had a project cancellation, like New Jersey has, but it has gone through multiple gyrations.
New York has the first and so far only completed utility-scale offshore wind farm in U.S. waters, the 132-MW South Fork Wind. It also has Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1 under contract, and Sunrise is in early stages of construction.
Along with the three contracts lost to supply chain problems in NY3, New York saw cancellations of contracts for Beacon Wind, Empire Wind 2 and earlier contracts for Empire 1 and Sunrise when soaring costs made those contracts untenable. The second contracts for Sunrise and Empire 1 carry much higher costs for ratepayers.
Community is persistent if nothing else.
It nearly won then lost the NY3 contract. It submitted a proposal into NY4 but was “waitlisted” and then not chosen. It submitted a proposal into NJ3, then withdrew it after concluding the pricing did not work. It submitted a proposal into NJ4 that is awaiting a decision by the state.
(Community’s lease area is large enough and close enough that it could feed the grid in both New York and New Jersey.)
The drive continues, and new headwinds arise even as previous problems are resolved.
Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind this summer rebid into NJ4 a wind farm already under contract in New Jersey, presumably at higher cost. (See 3 OSW Proposals Submitted to NJ.)
In recent weeks, Leading Light Wind has asked the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for a delay because it is having trouble securing a supply contract for turbines.
Earlier this month, the first-ever multistate solicitation was a decidedly mixed bag: Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island sought up to 6 GW of combined capacity and received 5.45 GW of proposals. But the projects selected totaled only 2.88 GW — 2.68 GW for Massachusetts, 0.2 GW for Rhode Island and 0.0 for Connecticut, which said it was still evaluating bids. (See Multistate Offshore Wind Solicitation Lands 2,878 MW for Mass., RI.)
Vineyard Offshore proposed the 1.2-GW Vineyard Wind 2, up to 800 MW of which was selected by Massachusetts. The developer implied its ability to move forward with the project depended on Connecticut signing up for the rest.
“We look forward to Connecticut’s forthcoming decision on the remainder of the procurement so that we can begin to deliver important economic and climate benefits to the region,” CEO Alicia Barton said in a news release.
In the background to all this, a turbine blade disintegrated at Vineyard Wind 1 in July, littering beaches and waves with fragments and giving offshore wind opponents a camera-ready moment they are exploiting two months later. (See Blade Failure Brings Vineyard Wind 1 to Halt.)
On a positive note, the first turbine recently was hoisted into position off the New England coast for Revolution Wind, which is expected one day to send up to 700 MW to Connecticut and Rhode Island.
But Revolution, too, has had its setbacks. Brownfield contamination where its onshore substation will stand has pushed the anticipated completion date back from 2025 to 2026. (See Revolution, Sunrise OSW Projects Face New Delays.)
