US Eastern Seaboard To Host 1GW Of New Wind Generation

Deepwater Wind Energy announced plans to built a 1000 MW Deepwater Wind Energy Center (DWEC), near the shores of Rhode Island. The project is presented as the "second generation" of offshore wind farms in the United States. The future offshore wind farm is a project that could serve as an offshore wind energy center supplying several US East Coast states with clean electricity. Deepwater plans to begin construction at the wind farm site in 2014, with first wind turbines entering operation state in 2015. This is actually an enlargement of an initially proposed 350 MW offshore wind project two years ago. The newly proposed project will represent an investment of about USD 5 billion.

One of the reasons this project is regarded as a "second generation" is because it will be built further offshore, in deeper waters in Rhode Island Sound. This will make the wind farm barely visible from the shore. DWEC will feature 200 wind turbines. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), with the US Department of Interior, is currently reviewing Deepwater Wind Energy's lease request for the wind farm site. This is only the first layer of the administrative process, as the project still needs to go through the extensive permitting reviews and public discussions.

Additionally, Deepwater Wind Energy is developing a regional offshore transmission network called the New England-Long Island Interconnector (NELI), which is to provide transmission abilities for DWEC, and other such projects. In many ways, DWEC will serve as a pilot project for future large scale offshore wind projects in the United States, putting to the test various legislative and technological concepts. The project itself, due to its size, will engage many domestic and foreign manufacturers and supply chain layers. It is estimated this project will require anywhere from USD 500 to a billion in financing.