Rhode Island and Connecticut’s First Utility-Scale Offshore Wind Farm Enters Construction

August 22, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued a Record of Decision (ROD) for the 704 MW Revolution Wind project, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm which will feed electricity into Rhode Island and Connecticut’s grids. With the ROD in place, Ørsted and Eversource may now proceed with the project’s construction.

The ROD will be followed by the approval of the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for Revolution Wind, which the project developers expect to obtain in November. The COP outlines the detailed construction, operation and maintenance activities, including responsible end-of-life decommissioning, as well as the potential impacts, actions and design alternatives, and the proposed measures to avoid, minimise and mitigate potential impacts from the project.

Construction activities on land are expected to start in the coming weeks and offshore construction will ramp up in 2024, with the project expected to be operational in 2025.

Once up and running, the 704 MW Revolution Wind will deliver 400 MW of offshore wind power to Rhode Island and 304 MW to Connecticut, powering more than 350,000 homes across the two states.

“With the federal Record of Decision, we now advance Revolution Wind to the construction phase, bringing good-paying jobs to hundreds of local union construction workers, keeping local ports busy with assembly and marshaling activities and further growing the local supply chain”, said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted.

The company and its joint venture partner Eversource have already made several investments in relation to the Revolution Wind project worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, including the redevelopment of State Pier in New London and the ProvPort manufacturing facility for foundation components.

Revolution Wind, located approximately 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith in Rhode Island, will comprise 65 Siemens Gamesa 11 MW wind turbines installed on monopile foundations.

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The ROD follows BOEM’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for Revolution Wind that the agency issued last month, which analyses the potential environmental impacts of the activities laid out in the project’s Construction and Operations Plan.

Revolution Wind is the fourth commercial-scale offshore wind project located on the US Outer Continental Shelf approved by the Biden-Harris administration.

For Ørsted, the Record of Decision for Revolution Wind marks another milestone in the US offshore wind market as after the start of offshore construction on South Fork Wind in New York, the company also recently obtained BOEM’s green light for the 1.1 GW Ocean Wind 1 project in New Jersey.