Not so long ago, a race was on to build the first
offshore wind farm in
the United States.
Rewind five or six years and developers up and down the
East Coast were competing against each other to
reach a milestone known in their industry as "steel in the
water."
The pack included
Bluewater Wind, which was touting a project
off the
Delaware coast, Fishermen's Energy, with a pair
of proposals in
New Jersey, and, most notably,
Energy Management, the
Boston-based company that was moving ever closer
to bringing to fruition the attention-grabbing
Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound.
As anyone who follows the industry knows,
Providence-based
Deepwater Wind prevailed in the competition, this
summer completing the Block Island Wind Farm, a
five-turbine test project in
Rhode Island waters. As for the other projects,
some have fallen apart (Bluewater's proposal), some appear
permanently stalled (Cape Wind) and
some are still crawling ahead (Fishermen's Energy's
projects).
Undeterred by these decidedly mixed results, a new wave
of companies, many with financing from overseas, has come
forward with plans to build offshore wind farms off
Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and beyond -- the mid-Atlantic,
the Great Lakes,
Oregon,
California and
Hawaii.
They want to tap into an energy source with huge
potential -- the
U.S. Department of Energy
estimates that total offshore wind capacity in American
waters is double the amount of electricity the nation
generated in 2015. And in the Deepwater project they have a
model of how it can be done.
"Worldwide, leaders are sensing and seeing the
opportunity here in the
U.S.,"
Tom Kiernan, CEO of the
American Wind Energy Association, said in a statement.
"The completion of the Block Island Wind Farm is
far more than just a ribbon-cutting -- it is the dawn of an
entirely new source of
U.S. energy."
On a recent afternoon at the Crowne Plaza
hotel in
Warwick, some of the old and new developers were
on hand at AWEA's annual offshore wind conference to update
regulators, suppliers, government officials and the hundreds
of others in attendance on their projects.
Chief among the developers is still Deepwater -- "the
reason we are in
Rhode Island
today," as one conference emcee said. The company has proven
itself with the Block Island pilot project, which is
expected to start generating enough power for 17,000
Rhode Island homes before Thanksgiving.
Deepwater is also planning a wind farm of up to 200
turbines in federal waters in Rhode Island Sound and is
negotiating to sell power to the
Long Island Power Authority from what would be the
90-megawatt first phase of the project.
Fishermen's Energy isn't far behind. CEO
Chris Wisseman said the company is close to
securing a power purchase agreement for its
Atlantic City project that could put it on track
for installation in 2018. And there is also US Wind, which
is planning a project off
Maryland that could start construction in 2020.
But, in a telling sign that the industry is maturing
beyond a single project in
Rhode Island, companies with connections to
Europe -- where 12,000 megawatts of offshore wind
has been installed since the mid-1990s -- have set their
sights on U.S.
waters.
Lars Pedersen, co-CEO of Copenhagen Infrastructure
Partners, said his firm joined up with OffshoreMW on a
project off
Massachusetts
because of "fundamentals" that include major cities near the
coast with large energy needs and relatively shallow waters
that are easier to build in.
Danielle Lane, of
DONG Energy, which is also planning a wind farm off
Massachusetts, said the potential for the
industry in the
United States could exceed what's been achieved
so far in Europe.
"It's not just about one state," she said. "There's an
opportunity on the whole Northeast coast and perhaps the
Pacific as well. We're potentially on the threshold of
something great."
Competition is critical to the growth of the industry,
said Deepwater CEO
Jeffrey Grybowski.
"The fact that they're here and competing is a good thing
for our market, a good thing for ratepayers," he said. "With
competition, price comes down. It's the way we build a
market that is real and sustainable and not just based on
government subsidies."
The Block Island project has been criticized for the high
price of power it will charge utility
National Grid -- the starting price of 24.4
cents
a kilowatt hour is far higher than the rates from fossil-fuel
energy sources -- and for state legislation that some
critics say tilted the regulatory process in its favor.
But coal-fired generators and other older fossil-fuel
power plants are shutting down, creating a need for
alternatives.
Paul Rich, managing director of US Wind,
described this as a "pivotal moment" for offshore wind
power. Grybowski agreed.
"We're living through a moment in history where the
entire energy sector is changing before our eyes," he said.
He and the other developers hope that offshore wind will
be part of the new mix.
"How many times in your lifetime can you create an
industry?" said
Alla Weinstein, founder of Trident Winds,
which is proposing a wind farm off
California.
--
akuffner@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7457
___
(c)2016 The Providence Journal
(Providence, R.I.)