Next Offshore Wind Procurement Postponed One Month
Delay Could Impact Tri-State Bid for Power Generation
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, AUG. 6, 2024…..The offshore wind future that policymakers have heralded for years just got moved even further away.
The Department of Energy Resources informed the Department of Public Utilities on Tuesday that it and Bay State utility companies have decided to extend the deadline for their evaluation team to select an offshore wind project or multiple projects to advance to the contract negotiation phase of the state’s latest procurement, which also appears to have delayed the selection of a project or projects to advance in the tri-state procurement process among Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Instead of selecting bids by Wednesday, the selection team’s new deadline will be Friday, Sept. 6. The delay also pushes off the already-extended deadline for contracts to be executed from Oct. 9 to Nov. 8, and moves the deadline for contracts to be submitted to DPU from Nov. 13 to Dec. 18.
“The additional time is needed to consider any impacts to this solicitation from the recently announced federal grant to New England states through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Innovation Program (GIP) program for projects to invest in regional electric infrastructure to ready the onshore transmission system for offshore wind,” DOER said, referring to a federal grant announcement made public earlier Tuesday morning.
Rhode Island has made most of the same alterations to its project selection timeline (the Ocean State wants contracts submitted for approval of its Public Utilities Commission by Dec. 13 instead of Dec. 18) and used the same exact language as DOER to explain the rationale for the delay.
It is unclear whether Connecticut, the third state in the tri-state procurement, took the same step as its neighbors. DOER said only that Massachusetts “continues to coordinate the current … solicitation with the simultaneous solicitations ongoing in Connecticut and Rhode Island,” but referred questions about the impact of the Bay State delay on the multi-state process to each individual state.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection did not respond to a News Service inquiry Tuesday.
This offshore wind procurement process has already been delayed by months. Originally, projects were se to have been selected to proceed to contract negotiations by June 12, contracts were to be executed by Aug. 14 and were supposed to be submitted to DPU by Sept. 18.
Massachusetts is seeking as much as 3,600 megawatts of offshore wind capacity in its fourth procurement round, and the tri-state partnership aims to coordinate selections for a combined 6,000 MW of offshore wind energy capacity.
The Bay State received proposals from three developers who also submitted their proposals for the multi-state solicitation: Vineyard Offshore, Avangrid Renewables and SouthCoast Wind. At their maximum, the projects that were bid to Massachusetts in March would represent a cumulative 4,270 MW of capacity.
The developer Orsted also bid a 1,184 MW project to Rhode Island and Connecticut, making approximately 5,454 MW available for the multi-state effort. The trio of states will have discretion to cover their entire procurement authority with a multi-state project, or instead to combine single-state and multi-state projects within their allowable capacity.
Massachusetts is not currently receiving any energy from offshore wind installations since the federal government shut down the under-construction Vineyard Wind 1 project and its 10 operating turbines last month to investigate a wind blade that shattered and later detached from its turbine.
