All Commercial Leasees in Massachusetts File 83C Bids

After Vineyard Wind and Avangrid Renewables announced they filed an offer in response to the Request for Proposals by Massachusetts utilities, Bay State Wind (a joint venture between Ørsted and Eversource) and Deepwater Wind informed they proposed to deliver electricity generated by their offshore wind projects to Massachusetts consumers under the 83C solicitation.

Bay State Wind proposed its project located some 25 miles off New Bedford that would comprise a 55MW battery storage solution, which, according to the company, would be the largest ever deployed in conjunction with a wind farm.

Deepwater Wind is bidding with its Revolution Wind offshore wind farm, which will, in partnership with the National Grid, include an offshore transmission backbone that will support not just Revolution Wind, but also future offshore wind farms. In addition, the developer has teamed up with FirstLight Power to use its Northfield Mountain hydroelectric pumped storage in Northfield to enable delivering clean energy to Massachusetts utilities during peak hours of demand on the regional electric grid.

Under the 83C proposal, Revolution Wind could be built at various sizes up to 400MW in its first phase. The developer previously proposed an initial 144MW phase of Revolution Wind under the state’s earlier 83D solicitation. The project will be built in Deepwater Wind’s federal lease site southwest of Martha’s Vineyard. If approved, local construction work on Revolution Wind would begin in 2022, with the project in operations in 2023. Survey work is already underway at Deepwater Wind’s lease area.

Vineyard Wind and Avangrid Renewables submitted a proposal to deliver power generated by its 800MW offshore wind farm some 14 miles from Martha’s Vineyard, shortly after they applied for federal and state construction permits with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities’ Energy Facilities Siting Board for the construction of the wind farm.

The five utilities looking for up to 800MW of power generated by offshore wind include Fitchburg Gas & Electric Light Company (Unitil), Massachusetts Electric Company (National Grid), Nantucket Electric Company (National Grid) NSTAR Electric Company (Eversource Energy), and Western Massachusetts Electric Company (Eversource Energy). They are carrying out the procurement process in coordination with the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER).

Utilities and state regulators are expected to make a decision on the 83C solicitation in April 2018.