LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK, N.J. — On a wind-swept tract in the shadow of three nuclear plants, New Jersey’s massive $1 billion play to jump start a new energy industry based on harnessing wind power is proceeding apace on the banks of the Delaware River.

Construction of the New Jersey Wind Port, a 200-acre marshaling, manufacturing and logistics hub for the offshore wind sector, is on schedule and on track for completion of the first phase in April. Phase one will be capable of simultaneously handling multiple turbine towers more than 400 feet long, state officials say.

That phase, with a $550 million price tag funded with state money, will be followed by a second phase, expected to begin construction in early- to mid-2024, with an additional expense of about $550 million. The target completion date is 2027 or 2028.

State officials say they are building the nation’s first custom-designed port able to handle the growing offshore wind (OSW) sector and capable of handling several projects at once, including those inside New Jersey and along the East Coast. And on a recent afternoon, as a state official led a tour of the site for RTO Insider, there were few signs that the state’s massive commitment to wind energy has been sapped by the controversy over a spate of whale deaths in the region or recent opposition to turbines that will stretch more than 900 feet into the air.

“We’re at 60% completion; we’re on or ahead of schedule,” said Jonathan Kennedy, vice president, infrastructure, of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA), which is funding the port and has overseen its development since Gov. Phil Murphy first announced the plan in June 2020.

“That’s a pretty rapid mobilization and progression from planning to construction,” Kennedy said. “If you came back here April 1, ‘24, you should be looking at a complete port, fully operational, that’s licensed by the Coast Guard.

“The driver here is that we have a non-negotiable need to get this port complete on time,” he said.

Emerging Need

That driver is the 1,100-MW Ocean Wind 1, the state’s first offshore wind project, which was approved in 2019 and is scheduled to begin construction next year. The state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has since approved two more projects, the 1,148-MW Ocean Wind II and 1,510-MW Atlantic Shores, in the state’s second solicitation in 2021. (See NJ Awards Two Offshore Wind Projects.)

A third solicitation launched by the BPU on March 6 could approve projects totaling 4 GW, and perhaps more, as the state reaches for a goal of 11 GW of OSW capacity by 2040. (See NJ Opens Third OSW Solicitation Seeking 4 GW+.)

The EDA has steadily crafted a sweeping plan to create a support infrastructure around the offshore projects that includes a flagship research hub, small business nurturing programs to provide a groundswell of qualified contractors, and a Wind Institute for Innovation and Training.

At its May meeting, for example, the board approved five grants totaling $3.7 million for programs to train OSW workers and $500,000 for a marketing and communications budget for the wind port, including a new website. The board also backed $6 million in expenditures for construction and test piling done in the land parcel for the second phase of the port.

“New Jersey has a choice of whether we want to lead, follow or be left behind by the clean energy revolution, particularly offshore wind,” Tim Sullivan, EDA’s CEO, told an assembly budget committee hearing on May 17. “And that is an opportunity that if we don’t capitalize on it, I promise you, governors and legislators and other states will. And it’ll be gone, and we will have missed this generational opportunity.”

Hard Hats and Piling

The half-built port, on a recent afternoon, was a hive of activity. A cluster of a dozen half-sunken gray piles soared 30 feet into the air in one section, awaiting attention from a massive yellow crane to pound them down to ground level, ready to support the port marshaling platform. Nearer the water’s edge, workers in black and blue hard hats and bright yellow vests readied rows of steel rebar that would eventually be swathed in concrete to become the berth at the water’s edge.

A few hundred yards away, in the undeveloped section that will become phase two, workers drained water out of sand dredged from the river through a giant sucking pipe.

Workers prepare piles to be pounded into the ground at the New Jersey Wind Port in Lower Alloways Creek, South Jersey. | © RTO Insider LLC

 

The first phase of the port, on about 125 acres, will consist of two berths, a 35-acre marshaling yard and two parcels totaling 55 acres for manufacturing. The first phase of the construction will require 1,850 piles, each 110- to 120-feet long and weighing 100,000 pounds. About half of the piles are in place.

They will support a wharf able to handle 6,200 pounds per square foot, enough to take the weight of two or more turbine towers as they are assembled and readied for shipment out to the wind farm in an upright position.

The second phase will add two berths, a 35-acre marshaling yard and 70 acres of additional manufacturing space.

As construction advances, workers are dredging a nearly one-mile channel to a depth of 45 feet to take vessels from the port to the river’s main navigation route. Although that work has stopped at present, so as not to disturb sturgeon in the river, dredging will resume July 1 for the final push to get the port ready.

Scheduled Marshaling

The need for a custom port lies in the specifics of OSW project creation, the EDA says: Turbines are far larger and heavier than most cargo; a regular port berth typically cannot take the weight or size. And the best way to install turbines is to do most of the construction onshore and ship them to the wind farm upright, which requires a route that has no height restrictions, specifically bridges, on the relevant waterway.

Both Denmark-based Ørsted, which is developing the two Ocean Wind projects, and Atlantic Shores, a joint venture between EDF Renewables North America and Shell New Energies US, have signed letters of intent with the BPU to conduct marshaling for their respective ventures at the port.

When the second phase is finished, the port will be able to handle the marshaling for more than one project at once, but the timing of Ocean Wind I and Atlantic Shores, which were approved two years apart, is such that they are not expected to need marshaling space at the same time, Kennedy said.

“Typically, it takes two to three years to marshal for a project of 1 to 1.5GW,” Kennedy said. “The way this port is designed to work is obviously the marshaling parcels will keep getting flipped. Your new projects will come in, and they’ll take two- to three-year leases.”

The EDA determined that having the capacity to handle more than one project at a time was important, in part, to strengthen the state’s offshore wind sector by “ensuring that no one developer locked up the port,” preserving competition, Kennedy said.

“We want all bidders on the BPU solicitations to have marshaling port capacity available in New Jersey, should they be successful in that solicitation,” he said.

The third phase solicitation document makes clear the port’s importance to the state’s OSW ambitions.

“Consistent with New Jersey’s commitment to position the state as a regional offshore wind hub, the BPU strongly encourages use of the New Jersey Wind Port for project marshaling and for locating Tier 1 manufacturing facilities, where feasible,” the document says.

So far, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (OTCMKTS: GCTAY), Vestas-American Wind Technology (OTCMKTS: VWDRY), Beacon Wind and GE Renewables — all prominent offshore wind players — have expressed interest in the past, but it is unclear whether that interest will move ahead. (See NJ Wind Port Draws Offshore Heavy Hitters.)

Kennedy says the EDA is bullish on the question of whether the massive investment is worth it.

“We think there’s going to be continued demand for marshaling, you know, out 20-, 30-plus years,” he said. “We feel like the pipeline of projects that will need marshaling capacity extends well into 2040, 2050 and beyond.”

Turbine Size Increasing

The need for space is fueled, in part, by the rapid increase in turbine size as technology evolves. While turbines deployed in Europe 25 years ago had a capacity of about 2MW, Ocean Wind 1 will use a 14 MW GE Haliade turbine with 360-foot-long blades and total height of 920 feet. Atlantic Shores will use a 15 MW turbine made by Vestas Wind Systems, with 380-foot-long blades.

“Turbines are getting bigger, more efficient, (with) increased output,” Kennedy said, adding that increased efficiency is good for ratepayers but adds to the burden on ports handling them.

“The weight-bearing capacity of the wharf, the dredge depth, the backlands, strength and acreage — all of those things don’t exist, typically, in a port,” he said. “So that’s why we’re building a port.”

The state picked the site from multiple options, narrowing their choices to the Delaware River site and a 50-acre site that formerly housed an oil-fired power plant in South Amboy, opposite Staten Island at the mouth of the New York harbor. The Delaware River site, on a tract that also includes three nuclear power plants operated by PSE&G, had several benefits, including the fact that it was a greenfield site, and so required little remediation, Kennedy said.

Another benefit is the lack of height-limiting bridges on the 60-mile trip between the port and the sea. Any height limitations from a bridge would require the turbines to be moved in a horizontal position by barge and elevated at the final destination, a more complicated, expensive and time-consuming process, he said.

In addition, the large space available at the New Jersey Wind Port, 220 acres, means turbines can be manufactured and assembled on-site.

“You’re effectively wheeling the components out of the factory doors, straight onto the marshaling parcel,” Kennedy said. “And that, again, is good news for ratepayers, because it means you can manufacture and install these components cheaper than if you had to, say, you know, manufacture them elsewhere.

“Time is money with offshore wind, in terms of vessel costs, and other factors,” he said. “You need a large acreage, because you need to get as many components in and lay them down as possible, so that they’re ready to be assembled and shipped back out. You don’t want to be waiting for pieces to arrive, because the installation vessel is so expensive.”

Growing Competition

Whether all that is enough to make the port attractive beyond state borders remains to be seen. Kennedy and others at the EDA said the state has a first-mover advantage and a prime location.

“Basically, we have fortuitously located geographically in the middle of the (East Coast) wind belt,” which now stretches from Maine to South Carolina, Kennedy said.

Yet, competing marshaling and manufacturing facilities are also emerging along the coast. Wind ports of some scale are planned for New Bedford, Mass., New London, Conn., and in New York, at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, from where turbines will have to head out to sea lying flat on a barge to pass under the 230-foot-high Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

The Port of Virginia in August allocated $223 million to the construction of a 72-acre port, with a staging area and 1,500-foot berth. And in Maryland, Ørsted and US Wind are investing in OSW port and manufacturing facilities at the Tradepoint Atlantic that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced in April “is on track to become the offshore wind capital of America.”

Kennedy, however, cited a 2022 study that suggested the region will need whatever port and marshaling facilities are developed.

The study, by two University of Delaware researchers, concluded that the need for marshaling facilities is a “key bottleneck” in the push to meet state and federal offshore wind policies. The researchers calculated that state and federal offshore wind commitments would create projects with a collective capacity of 40 GW by 2040, stimulating “more demand for marshaling area than is currently available or planned.”

“The shortage of marshaling area supply has incorrectly been attributed to lack of suitable U.S. locations,” the report said. “Instead, we attribute it to developers having built ports to support early, smaller projects … rather than developing ports for long-term, large-scale, and economically efficient use.”