Dive Brief:

  • The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority announced Friday that the state won’t be going forward with the three projects it provisionally awarded in its third offshore wind solicitation due to “material modifications” to the projects, including GE Vernova’s pivot away from an 18-MW turbine model.
  • The solicitation has concluded with no final awards being made, NYSERDA said. The three projects canceled are the 1,404-MW Attentive Energy One, the 1,314-MW Community Offshore Wind and the 1,314-MW Excelsior Wind — a total of 4 GW of capacity.
  • “Going forward, we expect to center our offshore wind business around a workhorse product, the Haliade-X 15.5 MW-250,” GE Vernova said in a February SEC filing. 

Dive Insight:

NYSERDA’s announcement comes as the U.S. offshore wind industry had begun to recover from 2023 economic headwinds — including supply chain issues, inflation and higher interest rates — that led to several project cancelations and exited contracts contract exits.

It also sets New York back in its state goal to deploy 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035.

Attentive Energy One was being developed by TotalEnergies, Rise Light & Power and Corio Generation; Community Offshore Wind was being developed by RWE Offshore Renewables and National Grid Ventures; and Excelsior Wind was being developed by Vineyard Offshore.

NYSERDA had provisionally awarded $300 million of grant funding to GE Vernova and LM Wind Power for local nacelle and blade manufacturing “associated with the provisionally awarded projects.”

“Subsequent to the provisional award announcement, material modifications to projects bid into New York’s third offshore wind solicitation caused technical and commercial complexities between provisional awardees and their partners, resulting in the provisionally awarded parties’ inability to come to terms,” NYSERDA said.

GE Vernova had initially proposed supplying 18 MW Haliade-X turbine platforms, then pivoted to a 15.5/16.5 MW platform, which caused “material changes to projects proposed,” NYSERDA said.

At last week’s BNEF Summit in New York, panelists during a session on offshore wind had discussed the drawbacks of the “turbine arms race,” with Vestas Wind Systems Global Senior Vice President Morten Dyrholm saying that the company thinks that arms race is partially responsible for the “pretty horrific period” of supply chain issues the industry recently went through.

“In order to get back on track, and in order to scale up to the ambition levels we’re seeing — not just in the U.S., but also in Europe and other places — it’s really time to industrialize, standardize, materialize our supply chains and our products,” Dyrholm said. “Because otherwise, we’re not going to make it.”

Dyrholm said that Vestas “can’t speak to what our competition does,” but is betting on its V236–15 MW turbine.

Ørsted Americas CEO David Hardy said during the BNEF session that while he wants bigger turbines because they lower the levelized cost of electricity, he “actually [leans] toward Vestas’s position on this.”

“When we talked about vessel supply imbalance – if people are investing in vessels and they can only be used for two years because they’re not big enough for the next turbine, then they need to reinvest,” Hardy said. “And same thing with foundations, same thing with cranes, same thing with lots of things. We’ve got to let the whole supply chain progress together.”