Avangrid Nabs Wind Energy Acreage in Atlantic

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--One of two provisional winners for a wind auction for Atlantic waters, Avangrid Incorporated (NYSE:AGR) (Orange, Connecticut) said it will be able to make a 10% dent in federal goals for wind energy capacity.

Avangrid put a combined $11.1 million on the table for two lease areas--OCS-564 and OCS-568--covering a quarter million acres in the Gulf of Maine about 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.

The company said it would consider floating wind technology that's suitable for deeper waters to develop a potential 3 gigawatts (GW) of new wind energy capacity. That represents 10% of President Joe Biden's goals for offshore wind by 2030.

In an economic planning report from August, meanwhile, ISO New England, a regional utility provider, said the region would need at least 30 GW of its own offshore wind capacity by 2050 to meet expected demand and climate goals.

"To reach this goal, a sizable percentage of new offshore wind in New England will need to utilize floating wind technology," Avangrid said.

The company is among the national leaders in offshore wind development, and is now the largest offshore wind developer by acreage in the region with the latest win in the Gulf of Maine.

Invenergy LLC (Chicago, Illinois) was the other provisional winner, spending around $10.7 million on two lease areas--OCS-562 and OCS-567-- covering approximately 215,000 acres. The company had no public comment on the bid, though the federal government said the combined potential from both Avangrid and Invenergy would be able to meet the demands of 2.3 million average households. "With 10 approved offshore wind projects capable of powering over 5 million homes, we are well on our way to a clean energy future," U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said on Tuesday.

Just last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) finished the environmental review of six potential wind-energy lease areas covering more than 488,000 acres off the coasts of New Jersey and New York.

If fully utilized, the BOEM expects the area could support the development of 7 GW of wind energy. A progress report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), however, found there would be some short-term headwinds for the offshore wind energy sector due to inflationary cost increases.

The NREL believes there are already more than 27 GW of projects that are at or beyond the permitting stage, meaning the nation is moving slowly, but surely toward its objectives.

The first offshore windfarm, Block Island in Rhode Island with its 30-MW capacity, started operations in 2016. The Department of the Interior said there are plans for an additional 12 auctions for offshore wind through 2028.

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