Bidding has resumed in the California offshore wind seabed rights auction, which has reached $422m with all six bidders returning.
In round 21, the first of the second day of the sale, the only area to see a change in bidding price was OCS-P 0565, which has an estimated installation capacity of 976MW. This increased from $75,300,000 to $95,300,000.
In addition, its live bids went from two down to zero.
The remaining four areas retained their prices from the previous day.
The 769MW OCS-P 0561 stayed at $62,700,000; 838MW OCS-P 0562 held at $78,800,000; 972MW OCS-P 0563 was steady at $85,000,000; and 976MW OCS-P 0564 remained at $100,300,000.
The only other changes were the live bids – 0563 and 0563 have gone from one to two.
Once bidding resumes, the auction will run round by round until one developer is left for each of the areas, matching the highest price.
Five sites will be sold off, two in the northern Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA), OCS-P 0561 and 0562, and another three in the central Morro Bay WEA, 0563, 0564 and 0565.
The two Humboldt areas are between 63,338 and 69,031 acres, while all three Morro Bay areas are just over 80,000 acres. Combined, they have the potential to produce at least 4.5GW of renewable energy.
BOEM started the bidding at a minimum price of $100 per acre, setting the initial bids at between $6m and $8m.
A total of 43 developers have qualified to take part in the auction, including major companies with established presences in the US, such as Avangrid, Equinor and Orsted.
Each bidder can only bid on one of the offered leases per round. They can switch between different Lease Areas from round to round, but ultimately a developer can only acquire one of the leases.
At the start of each round, BOEM will state an asking price for each area, and any bidders can say they are willing to meet the price.
The first round is expected to last about 30 minutes, with subsequent rounds likely to be much shorter.
If two or more developers are willing to meet the price for a lease area, the auction will move to the next round, with BOEM raising the asking price. The increase will be set at BOEMs discretion.
Once there is only one developer willing to meet the asking price for all five leases, the auction will conclude.
Certain bidders have qualified for non-monetary credits, representing their commitments to support workforce training programmes or work with local communities, among others.
When making a bid, these credits will form an additional percentage added to their cash bid, equalling the asking price.
Once the auction is concluded, BOEM will announce the provisional winners.
From there, the US Department of Justice will conduct an antitrust review of the auction, which can last a maximum of 30 days.
The sites are all in deep water, meaning that the California auction will be the first US auction for commercial-scale floating wind projects.
Furthermore, the auction will help California to fulfil its ambitions to produce up to 5GW of electricity from offshore wind by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045.