Moving Skipjack farther offshore would cut room for future wind turbines

The Town of Ocean City wants Ørsted’s Skipjack wind farm moved farther offshore, however, this would affect opportunities to install more wind turbines in the developer’s lease area in the future, according to discussions from hearings held as part of the consultation process for the project’s wind turbine model change from an 8 MW to 12 MW output.

On 20 August, Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the use of 12 MW wind turbines at the Skipjack offshore wind farm, after Ørsted decided in 2019 to go with fewer but more powerful wind turbines, which are now available on the market, and to install GE Haliade-X 12 MW instead of the Siemens Gamesa 8 MW model.

During the consultation process, Ocean City officials voiced concerns on bigger wind turbines being more visible from the coast and reiterated the town’s standpoint from a few years ago that Skipjack needs to be moved farther offshore to minimise viewshed impacts – irrespective of which model is used.

In its application, submitted in 2016, Ørsted included Siemens Gamesa 8 MW model in the project design plan.

The PSC approved the project in 2017, however, a specific wind turbine model was not set out to be used neither in PSC’s approval nor in the developer’s application, which served as the main basis on which the change was now authorized. Rather, the developer stated in its project application that the best turbine available on the market at the time of deployment would be used.

While the PSC greenlighted the switch to GE Haliade-X 12 MW, Ocean City representatives argued that its size would increase visibility from shore and that the wind farm should be moved farther from the town’s coast to minimise impact on its tourism and economy.

Ocean City’s Mayor Rick Meehan said that bigger 12 MW units at Skipjack project site could have an adverse effect on property value, since property in Ocean City is purchased because of the view of the beach.

The wind farm was initially planned to comprise 15 wind turbines, but will most likely have twelve or less now that it is set to use a model with a higher output.

While it has been pointed out during the hearings that the project will have smaller cumulative impact on the viewshed with less turbines in sight, its distance from Ocean City coast has been a long-standing issue for the town.

Ørsted’s development director for the Mid-Atlantic program, Jens Hieronymus Gravgaard, said at the hearings that Skipjack’s wind turbines would be installed some 36.5 kilometres (22.7 miles) off the coast at their closest point.

Regardless of the wind turbine size, the proximity of the wind farm to the coast could negatively impact tourism in the town, whose iconic ocean view of the sunrise is one of the things that attract around 8 million tourists annually, according to Mayor Meehan.

The project will be located over 30.5 kilometres (19 miles) from the Maryland-Delaware border and some 42 kilometres (26 miles) from the Ocean City pier.

The town’s officials, who stressed that they are in favour of bringing renewable energy to their energy mix, officially voiced their concerns on the wind farm’s positioning in a resolution unanimously approved by the Mayor and the City Council in 2018.  

Ocean City reaffirmed its position on the matter at the latest PSC’s hearings (case No. 9629), held in June.

Timothy Maloney, an attorney at Joseph, Greenwald & Laake who represented the Town of Ocean City’s, asked Ørsted’s development director if the turbines closest to the coast could be moved farther out in the sea.

Gravgaard said that they could not be moved by much and, during the discussion, added that moving the project site farther within the lease area would prevent Ørsted to utilise the remaining area later on – which would bring “a tremendous loss in value” to the developer.

“We have the full lease area, and for future solicitations we would like to be able to place turbines all over the lease area potentially. If we receive a ruling that we cannot place turbines closer than a certain distance, that would harm the company”, Jens Hieronymus Gravgaard said.

He said that there was an ongoing solicitation in Maryland where adding more turbines to the lease area could be explored, such as in the Garden State wind area.

Gravgaard also pointed out that moving the wind farm farther from the coast would bring additional costs, as the project would then need more cables.

In April, Ørsted announced it was postponing the Skipjack project completion by a year, due to delays in the federal permitting procedure including receiving the federal Notice of Intent later than originally anticipated.

Skipjack was first expected to have been built by the end of 2022, but is now scheduled to be up and running at the end of 2023.