Waiting in the wind: Revolution Wind delayed to 2026
Offshore

Waiting in the wind: Revolution Wind delayed to 2026

Ohhhhh we’re cursed! It’s a curse. It’s cursed, that makes total sense! Okay, with that out of the way, what sort of effigy must be sacrificed to satisfy the Powers That Be dooming U.S. offshore wind?

In all seriousness, let’s take a moment to recognize that bad news is coming in all shapes and sizes, hot and heavy, for one of the clean energy priorities of the Biden administration. The latest blow, a pretty darn big one, came in Ørsted’s latest quarterly earnings call.

Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind developer, announced a timeline delay at its 704 megawatt (MW) Revolution Wind project being built off the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Ørsted now plans to begin commercial operations in 2026 rather than 2025, as initially reported (and now it’s internet official on the project’s website). Revolution Wind is a 50/50 partnership between Ørsted and Eversource.

In the all-too-prescient words of John Lennon and Paul McCartney:

“You say you want a revolution?

All I can tell is, brother, you have to wait.”

And the reason we’re waiting lies onshore.

Eversource is building a substation necessary to connect the project to the regional grid on the site of a decommissioned naval air station, and it’s taking longer than expected to get rid of buried waste and soil contamination.

“This is not supply chain related. It is related to a specific challenge, which of course is frustrating and unsatisfactory,” Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper said on a call with journalists. Ørsted anticipates the delay will add approximately $310 million to the total cost of the project.

“While we were aware of the soil contamination at this site given its past use as a Naval disposal facility, the comprehensive analysis from Eversource as part of the early construction work showed that the level of contamination, and its impacts to the project schedule, are more substantial than anticipated,” Meaghan Wims, a spokeswoman for Revolution Wind, said in a statement obtained by The Providence Journal. “As a result, an update to the site design was required, which has resulted in a delay to the onshore construction activities.” 

Offshore installation is still on schedule at Revolution Wind, but that’s a consolation prize considering the barrage of blows sustained by the U.S. offshore industry over the past few months.

Earlier this week, provisional winning bids in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s latest offshore wind lease sale demonstrated the effects of inflation and supply chain issues on the price developers are willing to pay. Equinor’s top bid worked out to about $739 per acre of ocean; Dominion’s an even $100/acre- a far cry from the 2022 billion dollar bids by Bight Wind Holdings and $10,000+ per acre results. BOEM recently canceled its second Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease sale due to a lack of competitive interest. 

Meanwhile, fiberglass, foam, and other debris have been washing ashore numerous New England beaches over the last few weeks after a suspected “manufacturing deviation” led to a Vineyard Wind 1 turbine breaking apart and falling into the ocean last month. Vineyard Wind GE Vernova released a public overview of its action plan addressing the next steps for the Vineyard 1 site and has since resumed construction.

The preceding months have included a cornucopia of wind procurement delays, blades ending up in other places they’re not supposed to be, utilities pulling out of PPAs, and projects being nixed for all sorts of reasons, generally with a bias toward supply chain and financial uncertainty. Among the lowlights: NYSERDA not going ahead with any of the three provisionally approved projects in its third offshore solicitation and Ørsted canceling two huge projects off the coast of New Jersey last October, Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2. The three New York projects could’ve generated more than 4 GW of clean energy; the Ocean Wind sites, nearly 2.25 GW.

The Biden administration is still targeting 30 GW by 2030, but that’s frankly not going to happen. You can read all about why that’s the case in another tombstone I etched, or more expansively in the American Clean Power Association’s full 2024 Offshore Wind Market Report, accessible here.