The prospects for harnessing California's abundant offshore wind energy received a boost this month with Monterey Bay Community Power's approval of a memorandum of understanding to negotiate a power purchase agreement with Castle Wind for the output from the Morro Bay Offshore Wind Project (Castle Wind Offshore).
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RegistroThe roughly 1,000-MW floating wind farm is proposed for federal waters off California's central coast.
A joint venture of US developer Trident Winds and EnBW North America, an affiliate of German utility EnBW Energie Baden-Wurttemberg, Castle Wind is one of more than a dozen developers vying for federal leases to develop wind in the area. While US offshore wind development has centered on the East Coast, the agreement reflects strong developer interest in California, which has a goal of completely decarbonizing its power supply by 2045.
The US Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is planning a lease auction for the project site in 2020, according to Castle Wind. Wind developers have expressed concerns over areas that could be excluded from development over potential conflicts of interest with the military and fishing and marine vessel traffic.
CCAs
If another developer receives the lease, "we will negotiate with that entity," Rob Shaw, general counsel for Monterey Bay Community Power, said during a meeting August 14 before the local public agency approved the agreement. The community power supplier hopes the document, though nonbinding, will help the developer obtain project financing, Shaw said.
One of California's 19 operating community choice aggregators, or CCAs, which have taken over a large share of power procurement responsibilities from investor-owned utilities, Monterey Bay Community Power serves customers across Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties and is expanding down the central coast. The agency plans to encourage other CCAs to jointly procure power from the facility, according to a staff report, "thus further aiding in a successful development."
EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE
The facility would utilize existing grid infrastructure built to support the retired Morro Bay natural gas-fired power plant, the report added.
"In addition to creating new, local renewable infrastructure and jobs, we recognize the tremendous potential benefits of economically priced offshore renewable energy, including offshore wind's primary system value coming from its ability to serve the region's evening load when energy prices and carbon emissions are highest," Tom Habashi, CEO of Monterey Bay Community Power, said in a news release August 16.
-- Garrett Hering, S&P Global Market Intelligence, newsdesk@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Bill Montgomery, newsdesk@spglobal.com