Empire Wind is a proposed utility-scale offshore

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used Wind power, to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundre ...

on the

Outer Continental Shelf The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is a feature of the geography of the United States. The OCS is the part of the internationally recognized continental shelf of the United States which does not fall under the jurisdictions of the individual U. ...

Offshore

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. It will be located in

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior, established in 2010 by Secretarial Order. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) states: "...the outer Continental Shelf is a vi ...

(BOEM) lease area OCS-A 0512 (known as Hudson North) in the

New York Bight The New York Bight is the geological identification applied to a roughly triangular indentation, regarded as a bight, along the Atlantic coast of the United States that extends northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on ...

about south of Jones Beach,

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

. The first phase of the project is expected to have a 816MW nameplate capacity generated by 60-80

wind turbines A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. ...

(each with an installed capacity of more than 15 MW), while the second part of the project is expected to generate 1,284 MW for a total of 2.1 GW of power. When both phases of the project are completed it will be able to power over 1,000,000 homes in New York and is expected to come on line in late 2024, but postponed to late 2026.

Background

On September 8, 2011, the

New York Power Authority The New York Power Authority (NYPA), officially the Power Authority of the State of New York, is a New York State public-benefit corporation. It is the largest state public power utility in the United States. NYPA provides some of the lowest-co ...

Long Island Power Authority Long Island Power Authority (LIPA, "lie-pah") is a municipal subdivision of the State of New York that owns the electric transmission and electric distribution system serving all of Long Island and a portion of New York City known as the Rocka ...

, and

Con Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...

(the Offshore Wind Collaborative) filed a request with BOEM to issue a commercial lease on the outer continental shelf for the development of the Long Island - New York City Offshore Wind Project. This project would be located in the Atlantic Ocean off approximately 15-30 nautical miles off Nassau County in a long 65,000-acre wedge-shaped area between shipping channels, directionally aligned southwest of

Rockaway Peninsula The Rockaway Peninsula, commonly referred to as The Rockaways or Rockaway, is a peninsula at the southern edge of the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, New York. Relatively isolated from Manhattan and other more urban parts of th ...

. The proposed project would have consisted of 138 offshore turbines, with a total nameplate generating capacity of 2,100MW. Given the lengthy permitting process, the Collaborative's proposed project would not be operational until 2018 at the earliest. On January 4, 2013, BOEM issued a Request for Interest (Docket ID: BOEM-2012-0083) to determine whether other parties were interested in developing the same area.

Development

The project won a competitive procurement for offshore wind renewable energy credits (ORECs) from the

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), established in 1935, is a New York State public-benefit corporation, located in Albany, New York, with regional offices in New York City, Buffalo, and West Valley. NYSERDA ...

(NYSERDA) and is being developed by

Equinor Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. I ...

and BP, the latter of which acquired a 50% stake in the project in January 2021.

Aker Solutions Aker Solutions ASA, an engineering company based in Oslo, provides the products, systems and services required to unlock energy from sources such as oil, gas, offshore wind and capture. The company, founded in 1841, was known as Aker Kværner u ...

is one of the companies that has been contracted for a front-end engineering and design (FEED) to study the design and delivery of concrete foundations for the wind turbine. The project will support the development of a large offshore wind assembly port located at the

South Brooklyn Marine Terminal The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) is an intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It is located along the Upper New York Bay, between 29th and 39th Streets in the Sunset Park and ...

in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and wind-turbine tower manufacturing at the

Port of Albany–Rensselaer The Port of Albany–Rensselaer, widely known as the Port of Albany, is a port of entry in the United States with facilities on both sides of the Hudson River in Albany and Rensselaer, New York. Private and public port facilities have existed in ...

NYISO New York energy law is the statutory, regulatory, and common law of the state of New York concerning the policy, conservation, taxation, and utilities involved in energy. Secondary sources have also influenced the law of energy in the Empire Stat ...

issued a facilities study on June 14, 2021, requiring the project to be grid connected by June 14, 2025. Empire posted $42.6 million to secure that interconnection with

Consolidated Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...

. The project includes substations onshore and offshore, connected by 46 miles of cabling. The cables will be supplied by a new factory built by

Nexans Nexans S.A. is a global company in the cable and optical fiber industry headquartered in Paris, France. The group is active in four main business areas: buildings and territories (construction, local infrastructure, smart cities / grids, e-mobil ...

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

. The permission process and large project timeline is longer than the 4 years between NYISO study and first power delivery, and Empire requested an extension to the timeline. Empire prefers the

Vestas Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Uni ...

V236-15 MW wind turbine for the project. In March 2022, GE Bond was awarded a contract to build an onshore substation for Empire Wind I in Sunset Park Brooklyn. They will also produce interconnection cables for the Brooklyn point of interconnection. The

E. F. Barrett Power Station The E. F. Barrett Power Station (also known as the Island Park Energy Center) is a Power station, power plant in Nassau County, New York, United States. The main plant is in Barnum Island, New York, Barnum Island, with outlying facilities in nei ...

at Island Park,

is planned to serve as the interconnection point to the power grid, after local politicians lobbied for that connection instead of the originally planned Gowanus Substation in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. In September 2022, Empire Wind announced the continuation of a whale tracking program that began in 2019 with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to track whales in lease area through 2028. This will cover the entire pre-construction, construction, and post-construction phases of the project. The near real time data is available for the public at the

New York Aquarium The New York Aquarium is the oldest continually operating aquarium in the United States, located on the Riegelmann Boardwalk in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City. It was founded at Castle Garden in Battery Park, Manhattan in 1896, and moved ...

References

{{Wind power in the United States Proposed wind farms in the United States Offshore wind farms in the United States Wind power in New York (state) New York (state) infrastructure Energy infrastructure on Long Island, New York

Background

Development

See also

References