More Offshore Turbines on Horizon
After a two-year installation process, the first offshore wind farm in the United States is now operational off Block Island, and still more may be coming to the waters off Long Island.
On Monday, Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, announced that the Block Island Wind Farm, a five-turbine, 30-megawatt installation situated three miles from the island’s coast, had completed commissioning and testing phases and begun commercial operation.
The wind farm is expected to supply more than 90 percent of Block Island’s electricity needs. Power generated by it will also be routed to New England’s power grid via National Grid’s Sea2shore submarine transmission cable system.
“Our success here is a testament to the hard work of hundreds of local workers who helped build this historic project, and to the Block Islanders and the thousands more around the U.S. who’ve supported us every step of the way of this amazing journey,” Jeffrey Grybowski, Deepwater Wind’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
The country’s second offshore wind farm may move closer to fruition next month, when the Long Island Power Authority’s board of trustees is expected to formally accept Deepwater Wind’s proposal to construct a 90-megawatt wind farm in federally leased waters approximately 30 miles east of Montauk.
LIPA’s chief executive officer, Thomas Falcone, had recommended in July that the board accept the proposal for the installation, known as the South Fork Wind Farm. Hours before it was to take place, however, the board’s July meeting was postponed after officials of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority asked it to delay a vote on accepting the wind farm so that the project could be examined in the larger context of an Offshore Wind Master Plan that was still under development. A blueprint of the master plan, which is expected next year, was released in September.
Also postponed in July was LIPA’s expected announcements about the installation of two energy-storage battery facilities, to be situated in Wainscott and Montauk, that would be used during periods of peak demand, and a related “demand response” program. Under that program electricity consumers, by agreement with the utility, could temporarily reduce or deactivate high-consuming equipment during peak demand periods.
In another development for offshore wind, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) submitted documentation and a bid deposit to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management last month to take part in an auction, scheduled for Saturday, for development rights in a 79,350-acre wind energy area 12 miles off Long Island’s coast. NYSERDA would be the first state entity to participate in such an auction.
Last Thursday, a consortium includ ing the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, the Fisheries Survival Fund, the Garden State Seafood Association, and the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit alleging that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had failed to adequately consider the impact of the wind energy area on the commercial fishing industry. The suit claimed that wind farms in that area would disrupt the harvesting of scallops, squid, sea bass, and summer flounder. On Monday, however, the consortium and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management reached an agreement allowing the auction to proceed.
Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, will take part in a rally outside LIPA’s headquarters in Uniondale on Tuesday morning, during the utility’s board meeting. “It’s not just about LIPA’s decision on the expected vote” on the South Fork Wind Farm, he said, “but also on the offshore wind farm lease that NYSERDA will be bidding on and hopefully moving forward with. We’ll be calling on the governor to move ahead with building an offshore wind industry for the State of New York and Long Island.”
“We are pretty confident that everything is going to work out as planned,” Mr. Raacke said, “but we’ll be there just to be present and look at the calls for action in the larger picture.”
Demand for electricity on the South Fork has far outpaced the rest of Long Island, with particularly high usage in the summer and on weekends and holidays. Electricity demand has also vastly outpaced population growth, with the megawatt peak growing by 44 percent while residential accounts grew by just 4 percent and commercial accounts by 12.3 percent over a decade, according to statistics issued last year by PSEG Long Island, which manages the island’s electrical grid on behalf of LIPA.
“When we looked at the options and alternatives to meet the growing need in East Hampton and Southampton, it turns out this is the lowest-cost proposal,” Mr. Falcone said of the South Fork Wind Farm in July. “It makes sense to bring this generation in while also meeting some renewable energy goals our board has established. It’s not just good for East Hampton and Southampton, it’s good for everybody on Long Island, a very good place to deliver the energy.”
Mr. Falcone said at that time that he hoped to finalize a contract with Deepwater Wind by the first quarter of 2017, and anticipated the South Fork Wind Farm being operational around the end of 2022.