EDF shores up offshore wind farm in New Jersey

EDF has submitted a plan to build America’s second offshore wind farm in New Jersey.

The energy giant, better known for running France’s fleet of nuclear plants, has partnered with Fisherman’s Energy on the planning application.

If successful, the Nautilus wind farm will be constructed three miles off the coast of Atlantic City, with a capacity of around 25 megawatts (MW), enough to power around 20,000 households. It is hoped the clean energy project could be operational by 2020.

The small size of the wind farm will be used as a demonstration of how to scale-up the offshore wind industry in the US.

EDF will utilise its “global procurement capabilities” to build the project at low-cost and create jobs for the local community. Its North American arm has built over 4,700 MW of onshore wind capacity over the past 15 years.

“These workers will be the first wave of the nearly 40,000 jobs that are expected to be created in the US, building the 8 GW of offshore wind that’s currently in the project pipeline,” the company said in a statement.

According to local press reports, the wind farm’s impact on energy bills will be minimal; “We are estimating it will cost a small cup of coffee,” Doug Copeland, EDF’s regional development manager, told NJ Spotlight. Two other applications have reportedly been turned down on the basis of high costs.

Earlier this year, New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order to implement a goal of building 3,500 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2030. The target exceeds the ambitions of neighbouring New York, which wants to expand its offshore wind industry to 2,400MW by the same year.

So far, the US has only one operational offshore wind farm, a 30MW project located off the coast of Rhode Island.

 

Image: Block Island wind farm.

Credit: US DOE