Vineyard Wind Says Federal Permitting Can Proceed

US offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind is rescinding its recent request to withdraw the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for the Vineyard Wind 1 wind farm, allowing the federal permitting process to resume.

Back in December, Vineyard Wind temporarily withdrew the COP from further review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to allow the project team to conduct a final technical review after the developer switched from the MHI Vestas to the GE Haliade-X wind turbine model.

“We have completed our final review and determined that no changes to the COP are necessary as a consequence of selecting the GE Haliade-X Turbine for the project,” said Lars T. Pedersen, CEO of Vineyard Wind.

“Since there are no changes required to the COP, we expect that BOEM can finalize their review based on the extensive analysis and studies of the project over the last three years. We look forward to completing the permitting phase of the project and to finalizing the engineering, contracting and financing of the first utility scale offshore windfarm in the US.”

Vineyard Wind 1 is an 800 MW project located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and is slated to become the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the United States.

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), still expects to reach financial close on the project in the second half of 2021 and to begin delivering energy to Massachusetts in 2023.