NEWARK — The state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has chosen Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE) over local entity Fishermen’s Energy and three other proposals as the preferred developer of a 350-megawatt wind farm off the coast to power 125,000 New Jersey homes.
The plan from GSOE, a joint venture of PSEG Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, is to build a rectangular grid of 96 wind turbines 20 miles off the coast of Avalon and Stone Harbor.
At 20 miles, the turbines would be barely visible and therefore less of an impact on ocean views for homeowners in the resort towns along the coast. That issue has been one of the major obstacles for similar projects such as the one in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which was approved in 2001 but has yet to begin construction.
“The beauty of our proposal is that it preserves the beauty of the New Jersey shore,” said Nelson Garcez, vice president, PSEG Renewable Generation. “This places New Jersey among the leaders in the U.S. in developing off shore wind energy. It has tremendous potential to create clean energy and hundreds of green jobs for the state.”
Fishermen’s Energy, on the other hand, had proposed a two-phase plan with turbines as close as three miles from the coast.
“PSEG believes that to meet the challenges of climate change, we need to move forward in three areas — expanding energy efficiency and conservation, investing in renewables and planning for additional clean central station power,” said Ralph Izzo, chairman, CEO and president of PSEG. “We believe that offshore energy has great potential to bring clean energy and jobs to New Jersey.”
“Deepwater Wind is excited to partner with PSEG and the State of New Jersey. This project is an important part of our strategy for the Northeast United States,” said Deepwater Wind CEO Chris Brown.
Deepwater Wind was recently selected to build a 100-turbine, $2 billion wind farm 15 to 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.
As the BPU’s preferred developer, GSOE will receive a $4 million grant toward the project, which is expected to cost over $1 billion. The BPU was prepared to award $19 million to the winning proposal, but GSOE needed only $4 million.
According to BPU spokesman Doyal Siddell, the board identified to staff that they wanted to have discussions at its next scheduled meeting on Oct. 22 regarding the next steps for the remaining $15 million.
Rhonda Jackson, of Fishermen’s Energy, Oct. 4 said the company was disappointed they did not win the grant, but that all was not lost.
“On Thursday, we were contacted by the Governor’s office, to schedule a meeting to discuss next steps for continuing our project,” Jackson told the Herald. “After the BPU meeting in Newark yesterday, we went to Trenton to meet with the Governor’s top energy policy advisor, as well as the the two top directors from the BPU. They told us, ‘we want you to build, how can we make that happen’.”
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com
Cape May – Governor Murphy says he doesn't know anything about the drones and doesn't know what they are doing but he does know that they are not dangerous. Does anyone feel better now?
