The US has completed an auction for the 800MW-plus New York offshore wind lease area, which drew unprecedented interest and spilled over into a second day.
The latest posted bid of $39.5m smashed the previous record of $8.7m paid by Renexia/US Wind in 2014 for the Maryland site.
Six companies entered the fray making it the most competitive sale held thus far in the US.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) expects to reveal the provisional winner shortly.
However, the winner has the option to revoke its final offer if the second-place bidder is a government entity.
More than a dozen developers as well as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) were eligible to bid on the 32,000-hectare site off the coast of Long Island.
It’s the first time a government agency has competed for a federal offshore wind lease.
If NYSERDA is successful, it plans to package the lease with an offtake mechanism and then issue a competitive call to developers.
Developers that pre-qualified for the auction include big hitters Dong, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Innogy, Statoil, EDF and Iberdrola business Avangrid.
Other experienced players include Deepwater Wind, WPD, Energy Management, Fishermen’s Energy and Sea Breeze Energy. Convalt and Clean Power Northeast Development also qualified.
Today’s sale is BOEM’s sixth such auction. Commercial leases have been awarded for areas off the coasts of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia.
BOEM expects to auction the Kitty Hawk lease area off the coast of North Carolina next year and planning is underway for sites off South Carolina, California and Hawaii.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
