One year after the Block Island Offshore Wind project, the first offshore wind farm in U.S. waters, went into full commercial operation, the budding industry has high hopes for replicating that success in other states.
On Dec. 12, 2016, Deepwater Wind's $300 million, 30-MW project began producing electricity for residents on Block Island and mainland Rhode Island, and Block Island Power Company Inc. shut down its diesel generators. Since Block Island Offshore Wind has become fully operational, the company has not run their diesel generators other than a brief weekly test run, Block Island Power Company CEO Jeffery Wright said in an interview.

"There has been nothing but good things to report," he said. "Power quality is better than it has ever been. The cost is stable and less than it has ever been, and all in all, I think everyone is happy."
Block Island residents, whose electricity bills had historically fluctuated widely on a month-to-month basis, are spending less on energy bills; Wright said the average customer using 500kWh of electricity has seen their monthly bill go down from about $140 to $120. And those prices should be stable going forward.
"There are things we can do now we're connected to the wholesale energy markets that we were never able to do before, like getting long-term contracts that are reasonable-priced for our customers," said Wright. "We are not subjected to the monthly up and downs of the fuels market."
Birth of a market
Block Island has also changed the game for the nascent domestic industry. East Coast states, including Massachusetts, New York and Maryland, have created renewable portfolio standards that include an offshore wind procurement target and encourage developers such as Statoil ASA, Ørsted A/S and Avangrid Renewables LLC to tap into the domestic, 24,000-MW project pipeline. Exploration is also occurring on the West Coast; the California Energy Commission will vote on a memorandum of understanding with Scotland to share offshore wind expertise on Dec. 13.
Developers and energy companies are expected to spend more than $27 billion on building 5.9 GW of offshore wind projects that are scheduled to come online by 2027, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. The U.S. Department of Energy officially announced on Dec. 12 that it would fund a $20.5 million offshore wind research and development initiative to address industry technology issues.
With just one offshore wind farm in operation, though, renewable energy companies, utilities and state and federal agencies have to create larger, more cost-efficient projects and address several issues that could hold back the fledgling industry, such as building up a domestic supply chain and bringing down the cost of energy from offshore generation. The success of Block Island contrasts with the fate of Cape Wind Associates, which finally this month decided to close the books on its 16-year battle to complete the controversial Nantucket Sound Offshore Wind Farm (Cape Wind) project.

Driven by developers
Cape Wind failed because it was completely developer-driven, Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said at the Southern New England Offshore Wind Energy Science Forum on Dec. 11. Cape Wind faced backlash from residents, businesses, environmental groups and Native American groups over the developers' lack of community engagement. At one point, Grybowski said, Deepwater Wind considered building the Block Island project at a larger scale with 100 turbines, but the company realized that the wind farm had to fit what the community would accept. The final project has five turbines.
"That process of interaction with state and stakeholders was really important to get to a project size that could be successful," Grybowski said.
But now, the domestic industry must tackle larger projects in order to grow. Just as Block Island Offshore Wind came online, Statoil won a lease for development in New York federal waters for more than $42 million. Now, the state and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are working on a plan to accommodate at least four more offshore wind leases in the region. Neighboring Block Island, Eversource Energy, Unitil Corp. and National Grid USA are waiting for bids to fulfill a a request for proposals in Massachusetts for 800 MW of offshore wind generation, due Dec. 20.
Brian Gemmell, vice president of transmission strategy and performance at National Grid, said he is interested in seeing what bids the request for proposals will get in the coming weeks, given that the projects will be much larger than Block Island's 30-MW wind farm.
"That will really be a catalyst for the offshore wind industry more so than the Block Island project," he said in an interview. "The size is really going to allow the industry to kick off."
Ashleigh Cotting contributed to this article.
