Avangrid planed to build an 18-acre construction and maintenance staging area in Bridgeport's East End to support its 804-megawatt offshore wind project. Image courtesy of Avangrid
Bridgeport will be the home of ships and workers who service a planned, 804-megawatt offshore wind farm under a proposal accepted by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection yesterday.
Developer Vineyard Wind was selected to advance to contract negotiations with the state’s electric distribution companies to provide power through the development of its Park City Wind project after a competitive RFP process.
“Connecticut is diversifying its offshore wind portfolio with this latest procurement selection, which sets up Connecticut as a regional leader in the creation of a thriving industry that will bring tangible benefits for our state and the entire region,” Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement.
The Park City Wind project will invest in the redevelopment of port facilities in Bridgeport Harbor to facilitate local outfitting and assembly of the turbines foundations and an operations and maintenance base needed to deploy the project. The project will also establish America’s first Tier 1 offshore wind supplier in Connecticut through the Kerite cable manufacturing facility in Seymour. These investments in the local supply chain are expected to bring an estimated $890 million in economic development benefits directly related to the Park City Wind proposal, DEEP said in its announcement Thursday, and are expected to attract additional economic development benefits as regional offshore wind purchases continue in the future.
Vineyard Wind estimates 2,800 direct full-time employment years will be created in Connecticut through the project. The company plans to rebuild a 18.3-acre waterfront industrial property at 567 Seaview Ave. in Bridgeport’s East End to serve as its home base in partnership with McAllister Towing and Transportation Co., and then build an operations and maintenance hub in the city.
“This significant procurement firmly places Connecticut as a leader in clean energy,” DECD Commissioner David Lehman said in a statement. “Vineyard Wind’s investment will help develop our supply chain and create good, high paying jobs.”
The selection comes as Massachusetts and Rhode Island plan their own offshore wind farms, and the Lamont administration pitched upgrades to New London’s port in an effort to turn that city into a wind industry hub as part of a 304-megawatt project by developers Ørsted and Eversource that will be based out of there. Massachusetts’ offshore projects are running into delays at the federal level, with the Trump administration citing fishermen’s concerns the projects will effectively close some fishing grounds.
The selection of this project, which will provide the equivalent of 14 percent of the state’s electricity supply, represents the largest purchase of renewable energy in Connecticut’s history. It will more than double the amount of new zero-carbon renewable energy procured by DEEP to date.
DEEP said the Park City Wind project was picked because it offered at a price lower than any other publicly announced offshore wind project in North America. The project scored also the best among its competitors in its design and plans to address environmental and fisheries impacts. When it comes online in 2025, the project will enable Connecticut to avoid emitting more than 25 million short tons of carbon dioxide while improving electric grid reliability in cold winter periods, a critical feature that will speed Connecticut’s transition away from reliance on natural gas power plants.
