Last December, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auctioned off lease rights for developing offshore wind in the New England Wind Energy Area.  The auction brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Recently, the five New England offshore wind leaseholders – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Ørsted, Eversource, and Vineyard Wind – jointly submitted a uniform turbine layout proposal to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The five developers joined forces to respond to feedback from key

stakeholders in the region including the fisheries industry, the Coast Guard,

the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and coastal communities.

The proposed layout specifies that wind turbines will be spaced one

nautical mile apart, arranged in east-west rows an north-south columns, and the

rows and columns will be continuous across all New England lease area.  Independent expert analysis confirmed that

this uniform layout would provide for robust navigational safety and

search-and-rescue capability by providing hundreds of transit corridors to

accommodate the region’s vessel traffic.

Vessels up to 400 feet in length can safely operate within the

proposed turbine layout and will allow the region’s many fishing vessels to

follow a wide range of transit paths as they come from many different ports and

head to a variety of fishing grounds.

The New England Wind Energy Area is expected to be able to provide as

much as 8 GW of electricity generation for the states in the region.  Getting approval for this planned layout is

one of multiple steps required before the offshore wind complex becomes a

reality.  Overall, states along the U.S. East Coast are

seeking to procure more than 19,300 MW of offshore wind capacity through 2035

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New England offshore wind developers submit uniform layout proposal to the U.S. Coast Guard

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.