Credit score: By Colin Younger | State Home Information Service | January 2, 2024 | gloucestertimes.com ~~
Foundations for 3 of Winery Wind 1’s 62 generators had been seen above the water on Aug. 1. The foundations are one nautical mile away from one another.
The calendar flipped to 2024 on Monday, however Massachusetts nonetheless has not gotten any energy from the Winery Wind 1 offshore wind farm, the second time the venture has failed to satisfy the “first energy” goal set by high officers.
A spokesman for Avangrid, which together with Copenhagen Infrastructure Companions makes up the Winery Wind 1 three way partnership, mentioned Tuesday morning that the primary of the venture’s 62 generators generated energy Sunday night however that extra testing was required earlier than any wind energy may very well be transmitted to the grid. The spokesman gave no new particular timeline for the supply of first energy.
“We’re at present working via all of the required exams, each inner processes and with ISO New England, and synchronizing all elements to ship energy to shore quickly,” he mentioned.
A high venture official mentioned in August that the primary energy generated by the offshore improvement about 15 miles south of Martha’s Winery would circulate onto the grid by mid-October. The official mentioned on the time that the roughly 800-megawatt venture can be ramped as much as between 200 and 300 MW by the tip of 2023, after which it will be totally operational by mid-2024.
“The primary energy is scheduled October 2023 and last business operation can be mid-2024,” Sy Oytan, Avangrid’s chief working officer for offshore wind, advised state lawmakers and reporters throughout an August boat tour of the venture website.
When the mid-October timeline was not realized – which meant Winery Wind 1 missed out on being the primary utility-scale wind farm within the nation, a designation that venture officers had been touting for years – officers went again to what that they had maintained for years: That generators can be producing energy by the tip of 2023.
“We’ll truly be turning on the change in 2023 and producing clear electrical energy. We anticipate about 30,000 properties in Massachusetts will get clear energy from this facility this 12 months,” Ken Kimmell, vp of offshore wind improvement at Avangrid, mentioned Dec. 14.
On Dec. 27, Winery Wind wrote in a public e-newsletter that it was “on observe to ship the primary energy … by the tip of the 12 months.”
Whereas the primary turbine generated energy earlier than 2023 formally got here to an in depth, it’s nonetheless not clear when the power will truly circulate onto the grid and into Massachusetts properties.
As soon as it’s totally operational, Winery Wind 1 is projected to generate cleaner electrical energy for greater than 400,000 properties and companies in Massachusetts, produce at the very least 3,600 jobs, cut back prices for Massachusetts ratepayers by an estimated $1.4 billion over 20 years, and remove 1.68 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions yearly.
The continued improvement of the offshore wind sector is seen as essential to assembly the brand new local weather and emissions objectives Massachusetts has adopted, particularly the requirement to realize net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Winery Wind 1 was the primary offshore wind venture chosen by Massachusetts utility firms with enter from the Baker administration to meet a part of a 2016 clear power legislation, and is prone to be the one Massachusetts offshore wind venture to develop into a actuality till at the very least 2028 as subsequent initiatives have run into headwinds that builders decided threatened their means to finance their initiatives and resulted within the termination of these contracts.
