The State of New Jersey has weighed in on the legal battle between GE and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy over the use of Haliade-X turbines at Orsted’s 1100MW Ocean Wind project in the US.
New Jersey filed an amicus brief with the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts in support of GE yesterday, arguing an injunction on the use of 12MW Haliade-X turbines at the project would not be in the “public interest”.
Earlier this year, a Boston jury found that GE had infringed on one of Siemens Gamesa’s patents relating to structural support of large offshore turbines. Siemens Gamesa said in a statement it had been awarded a royalty rate of $30,000 per-megawatt by the court.
Subsequently, Siemens Gamesa is seeking a permanent injunction on the use of GE’s Haliade-X turbine in offshore wind projects.
But in its argument, New Jersey has said such an injunction fails to provide relief to the Ocean Wind project and “would make it impossible to complete the project in a timely fashion, causing irreparable harm to the State and its citizenry”.
The project is scheduled to enter operation in phases between May and December 2024.
Orsted’s proposal to use the Haliade X for the project was approved by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities in 2019 and since then “all steps along the design and permitting process” have assumed that this model of 12MW turbine would be used, the brief states.
Construction of nacelles, the parts that house the generating component of an offshore wind turbine, is currently underway for the Ocean Wind, it adds, while New Jersey has spent over $475m in public money constructing port infrastructure necessary to support the project.
The State concludes that the public interest “simply does not favour the broad injunctive relief sought by SGRE here” and the Court should “exercise its discretion to provide relief as to the Ocean Wind project”.