Offshore

Vineyard Wind selects GE as turbine provider, withdraws COP

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), announced that the company has selected GE to supply the wind turbine generators for its Vineyard Wind 1 project, the first utility-scale offshore wind installation in the United States.  

Vineyard Wind 1 will use GE’s Haliade-X wind turbine generators, the most powerful in operation to date.  With this selection, GE Renewable Energy is poised to play a pivotal role in the development of offshore wind power in the U.S., which will be a major source of investments and job creation up and down the supply chain in communities across the region. 

“The selection of GE as our preferred turbine supplier means that a historic American company will play a vital role in the development of the first commercial scale offshore wind power in the U.S.,” said Vineyard Wind CEO Lars T. Pedersen.  “This is a huge moment not only for the future of our project, but also for the future of an industry that is poised for exponential growth in the coming decades.”

“GE Renewable Energy is proud to partner with Vineyard Wind for the first major offshore wind project in the US,” said John Lavelle, President & CEO, Offshore Wind at GE Renewable Energy. “To be selected as the preferred supplier is an important sign of confidence for our proven technology and for all our employees around the world. We look forward to making this important contribution to the growth of offshore wind in the US.”

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) applauded the announcement.

“Today’s announcement from Vineyard Wind and GE Renewable Energy is an exciting step forward for American offshore wind energy, putting the domestic clean power industry on the cutting edge of global wind power development,” said AWEA CEO Tom Kiernan.

 Withdraws COP

As a part of reaching this important milestone, Vineyard Wind has decided to temporarily withdraw its Construction and Operations Plan (COP) from further review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to allow the project team to conduct a final technical review associated with the inclusion of the Haliade-X into the final project design. This information was formally communicated to BOEM earlier this week.

“While the decision to pause the ongoing process was difficult, taking this step now avoids potentially more federal delays and we are convinced it will provide the shortest overall timeline for delivering the project as planned,” continued Pedersen.  “We intend to restart the BOEM process from where we left off as soon as we complete the final review.” 

The Company expects its review to take several weeks, after which Vineyard Wind will resume the Federal permitting process with BOEM.  With buffer built into the project schedule, Vineyard Wind still expects to reach financial close in the second half of 2021 and to begin delivering clean energy to Massachusetts in 2023.

Vineyard Wind 1 is an 800-megawatt (MW) project located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and is slated to become the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the United States.  The project will generate electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and is expected to reduce carbon emissions by more than 1.6 million tons per year. 

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