US Could Soon Give Go-Ahead to Another Large-Scale Offshore Wind Farm

This had opened a 45-day public comment period, during which the federal agency received a total of 124 comments from Federal, Tribal, state, and local government agencies; non-governmental organizations; and the public that informed the preparation of the Final EIS.

“Specifically in response to comments received, BOEM developed a preferred alternative that includes fewer turbines to reduce impacts to visual resources and benthic habitat , allows for ocean co-use, and meet the energy needs of Rhode Island”, BOEM stated in a press release issued on 17 July.

Under this alternative (Alternative F) in the now-published FEIS, BOEM could select that the developer installs wind turbines of a higher capacity than proposed in the project’s COP.

For the alternative, BOEM has explored the technology on the market and its availability once Revolution Wind enters construction and has identified 14 MW turbines as the highest capacity turbines that would be commercially available on time and that fall within the physical design parameters of the project design envelope.

Ørsted and Eversource have already selected their preferred wind turbine model in October 2021, when they placed an order with Siemens Gamesa for 77 of its SG 11.0- 200 DD wind turbines, twelve for the South Fork Wind project, now under construction off New York , and 65 for Revolution Wind.

For Ørsted, the upcoming federal decision on Revolution Wind will mark another milestone in the US offshore wind market as, besides the start of the offshore construction in New York, the company also recently obtained BOEM’s green light for the 1.1 GW Ocean Wind 1 project in New Jersey.

If approved, the 880 MW Revolution Wind would be the fourth commercial-scale offshore wind project located on the US Outer Continental Shelf approved by the Biden-Harris administration.

Ørsted and its US partner Eversource, which is now exiting the offshore wind projects it owns together with Ørsted, also plan to build another offshore wind farm in the waters off Rhode Island, the 884 MW Revolution Wind 2.

In March this year, the joint venture submitted a proposal for Revolution Wind 2 in the state’s offshore wind solicitation and was the sole developer to respond to Rhode Island Energy’s request for proposals (RFP).

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