‘Next offshore wind in US can compete with gas’

Bloomberg

Massive offshore wind turbines keep getting bigger, and that’s helping make the power cheaper — to the point where developers say new projects in US waters can compete with natural gas.
The price “is going to be a real eye-opener,” said Bryan Martin, chairman of Deepwater Wind LLC, which won an auction in May to build a 400-megawatt wind farm southeast of Rhode Island.
Deepwater built the only US offshore wind farm, a 30-megawatt project that was completed south of Block Island in 2016. The company’s bid was selected by Rhode Island the same day that Massachusetts picked Vineyard Wind to build an 800-megawatt wind farm in the same area.
Bigger turbines that make more electricity have cut the cost per megawatt by about half, said Tom Harries, a wind analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That also reduces maintenance expenses and installation time. All of this is helping offshore wind vie with conventional power plants.
“You could not build a thermal gas plant in New England for the price of the wind bids in Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” Martin said at the US Offshore Wind Conference in Boston. “It’s very cost-effective for consumers.”
The Massachusetts project could be about $100 to $120 a megawatt hour, according to a February
estimate from Harries.