Offshore wind joint development partners Ørsted and Eversource have marked the “sail away” of the first American-built offshore wind substation, which departed a Texas fabrication facility yesterday. 

Kiewit Offshore Services, Ltd. (Kiewit), the largest offshore fabricator in the U.S., designed and built the substation, which will be deployed at Ørsted and Eversource’s South Fork Wind project serving Long Island, New York, and set to begin operations by the end of this year.

Kiewit built the 1,500-ton, 60-foot-tall substation at its Ingleside facility near Corpus Christi. The substation will play a key role in enabling domestic energy production, strengthening America’s energy independence and adding to the nation’s energy mix.

The Kiewit team’s work is just one of several ways that Texas – and the Gulf of Mexico region – is playing a central role in the buildout of a new domestic offshore energy supply chain. America’s first wind turbine installation vessel, Charybdis, is under construction, in Brownsville. Ørsted and Eversource will be the first offshore wind developers to charter the Charybdis.

More than 350 workers across three states supported construction of this South Fork Wind substation, a topside structure that will sit on a monopile foundation within the wind farm, collecting the power produced by wind turbines and connecting it to the grid. The substation was designed and engineered in Kansas, fabricated in Texas, and will be installed in New York.

“We’re putting American ingenuity to work as we build out a domestic offshore wind energy supply chain with investments and job opportunities spanning the Northeast, down to Texas and across the Gulf Coast region,” said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted. “The completion of South Fork Wind’s offshore wind substation is yet another first for this groundbreaking project and moves us one step closer to the project’s first ‘steel in the water.’”  

“South Fork Wind continues to demonstrate the enormous power of offshore wind to create a new, American-based supply chain as we work to grow the clean energy industry here in the United States – spreading economic opportunity to workers and local communities across the nation,” said Mike Ausere, Vice President of Business Development at Eversource Energy. 

Ørsted has signed an agreement to acquire Eversource Energy’s 50 percent interest in the uncontracted federal offshore wind lease area currently owned jointly by the two companies. 

The lease area, identified as Lease Area OCS-A 500 (Lease 500), contains approximately 187,000 uncontracted acres of seabed for American offshore wind energy and has a potential capacity of up to 4 gigawatts. As part of this agreement, Ørsted will acquire contracts and leases for strategic port facilities and other assets. Ørsted will take full ownership of partnerships with the Port of Providence, the Port of Davisville, and Quonset Point, all in Rhode Island, and with Connecticut’s New London State Pier. Ørsted will also take full ownership of the operations and maintenance hub in East Setauket, N.Y., and the charter agreement for the first American-built offshore wind service operations vessel, which is under construction at Edison Chouest’s facility in Houma, Louisiana, and is more than 50 percent complete.

David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted, said:

“This acquisition further demonstrates our long-term commitment to building an American offshore wind energy industry and the value creation opportunities we see in the U.S. market. In addition to taking full ownership of seabed that is familiar to our team after years of work in this area, we will also be the sole bidder in our New York 3 and Rhode Island 2 active offshore wind solicitations. The combination of the seabed and additional components in this agreement further establish a major hub in the Northeast for our activities and future opportunities.”

Joe Nolan, Eversource’s president, chief executive officer, and chairman, said:

“We continue to expect that offshore wind projects built in our partnership’s lease area, including the three now under development, will play a critical role in decarbonizing the generation mix of Southern New England and New York.”

Eversource announced last year it was reviewing its offshore wind energy portfolio and considering whether to sell related assets. In addition to the agreement with Ørsted to sell its uncontracted seabed and other interests, Eversource determined that it is in the best long-term interest of the company to pursue the sale of its existing 50 percent interest in its three jointly owned contracted offshore wind projects (South Fork Wind, Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind).

As part of the agreement with Ørsted, Eversource will provide tax equity for the South Fork Wind project. Securing the tax equity arrangement is a critical milestone for South Fork Wind ahead of its plan to begin operations and delivering renewable energy later this year. Eversource will continue to support onshore scopes of all three projects through construction, ensuring the long-term continuity and success of the portfolio.

The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2023.