By Michael Kuser

While the U.S. is keen to benefit from the declining costs of developing offshore wind energy, it appears less focused on learning how the industry matured in Europe, where it was pioneered in 1991.

That’s the assessment of two industry experts who, admittedly, have a stake in the issue.

“We see [regulators] focusing on the generation resource and assuming the transmission is going to be there, and not providing for the transmission necessary to get to scale,” said Stephen Conant, partner with Anbaric Development Partners, an independent transmission company.

The U.S. may be late to the game, but East Coast states are moving fast to join in.

In May, New Jersey set a goal of 3,500 MW of offshore wind by 2030, while Massachusetts awarded a contract for 800 MW and Rhode Island agreed to procure 400 MW. In June, Connecticut signed on for 200 MW, while New York regulators this month authorized state agencies to procure 800 MW by next year, the first phase of a plan to develop 2,400 MW by 2030. (See NYPSC: Offshore Wind ‘Ready for Prime Time’.)

Conant and his colleague Kevin T. Knobloch spoke to RTO Insider about Anbaric’s efforts to develop open access offshore transmission grids to facilitate offshore growth, particularly off the coasts of Massachusetts and New York.

Integrated Planning

In contrast to the U.S. approach, the European energy sector first builds out the transmission system and then has generators compete to an offshore interconnection point, Conant said.

“For example, in Germany, rather than have independent generators lead, they have 14 export cables with 34 different generators connecting to them,” Conant said. “That optimizes the export cables so you get the maximum amount of capacity and you optimize the terrestrial interconnection points.”

FERC in February granted Anbaric the right “to charge negotiated rates for transmission rights on a proposed integrated offshore transmission system that includes two HVDC transmission lines connecting Massachusetts offshore wind generation to the ISO-NE transmission system” (ER18-435).

The company’s Massachusetts Ocean Grid project would have two 1,000-MW HVDC transmission lines capable of delivering power from off the coast of Massachusetts to ISO-NE’s Southeast Massachusetts load zone.

Two 1,000-MW offshore platforms with AC switching stations would be linked by a subsea AC cable, and the electric energy would be converted to DC and transferred by two subsea HVDC cables to onshore convertor stations at two separate 345-kV substations.

Legislative Remedy

The Massachusetts offshore wind solicitation (83C) called for an expandable — and nondiscriminatory — transmission system, which means it would be open to all comers and not limited to one developer or generator.

However, nothing in the legislation authorizing the solicitation obligated it to be open to entities other than the generation developers that own the offshore leases.

“We’re in the process right now of some legislative activity to try to make changes in Massachusetts that would allow transmission to be separate from the generation and allow independent transmission companies to participate in that process,” Conant said.

As Massachusetts lawmakers consider a bill (H.4756) to increase the state’s renewable energy and reduce high-cost peak hours, Anbaric is lobbying to include an amendment that would allow independent transmission developers to participate in the next offshore wind solicitation.

“We thought things could be done better, and some of that comes from our looking at what’s been done in Europe, where they really develop the transmission separate from generation, which is really how they do the onshore grid here in the U.S.,” Conant said.

One of the upshots of the European approach: Generators are submitting zero-subsidy bids into the market.

“So you’ve got the generators essentially bidding in at market prices, and we think that’s where folks in Massachusetts and up and down the East Coast want to be,” Conant said. “You don’t need these long-term contracts and subsidies in order to do that.”

New York Groundwork

Anbaric has a history of bringing energy into New York under water. The company was part of the consortium that built the 660-MW Neptune HVDC cable linking PJM to Long Island, and also helped construct the 660-MW Hudson project connecting midtown Manhattan to the RTO.

Knobloch, president of Anbaric subsidiary New York OceanGrid, said the company is preparing a FERC filing for authority to sell transmission rights at negotiated rates both in New York and New Jersey.

Beyond having to navigate multiple regulators, there is also the matter of working through the NYISO interconnection queue, where Anbaric has an advanced position (363) for a 500-MW line connecting into Ruland Road on Long Island because of its work on the Poseidon transmission project, which was intended to bring in power from New Jersey.

“And we have follow-on interconnection requests for an additional 700-MW DC at Ruland Road, and then for a 800-MW AC line up into Ruland Road,” Knobloch said. “Because the queue 363 was part of the Poseidon project, our hope is to win the blessing of NYISO to repurpose that for our offshore wind project, because the on-land route is precisely the same … the material facts are identical.”

Anbaric has also filed an HVDC interconnection request with NYISO for 1,200 MW and additional 800 MW AC into the Farragut substation in Brooklyn for its hoped-for offshore wind grid.

“We wish that the [Public Service Commission] had decided to incorporate planned open access offshore transmission into Phase 1 [of the solicitation], but we note that they signaled that [the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority] should begin thinking about a planned transmission approach now and use the next year or two that way,” Knobloch said. “We appreciate that.”

Anbaric has also nearly completed the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s environmental permitting process for both the on-land and state waters portions of its offshore grid.

The company several months ago submitted an application with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for rights of way and right of use, which Knobloch expects to be approved within a year, given the Trump administration’s willingness to speed up permitting processes. The process from conception to start of construction for any large transmission project takes roughly eight years, he said.

“Any offshore wind generator who wants to develop transmission, they’re going to have to go through these same processes,” Knobloch said. “To our knowledge, no one else has put in their interconnection requests to NYISO for offshore wind.”

Skewed Background

New York is making a competitive solicitation with only one company, Equinor, owning an offshore wind area lease close to the city. BOEM plans to lease two new areas off the Massachusetts coast later this year and is studying a proposal from New York for additional leases there.

“You’ve got some very large European developers who’ve been successful in Europe, and I think it’s fair to say there’s a degree to which they’re trying to corner the market a bit,” Conant said.

“They’re using a lot of influence and spending a lot of time in capitol buildings, and some of it is a little bit of disinformation,” he said.

For example, Conant contends, those developers don’t tell the full story of Germany’s experience. Although they emphasize the mistakes the industry made in the early years of the offshore wind industry, they neglect to relate all of what they learned.

“But the lesson learned is that you need to do the transmission first,” Conant said.

“Early on in Germany, the delays caused costly headaches. Developers cite that as a reason to have control over transmission, but it’s only part of the story, the beginning,” agreed Knobloch. “The Danes and the Germans quickly moved to planning transmission before soliciting offshore wind generation.”