New York announced yesterday that it has provisionally awarded power purchase agreements (PPAs) to three new offshore wind projects:
Excelsior Wind by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Attentive Energy One by TotalEnergies, Rise Light & Power and Corio Generation, and Community Offshore Wind by RWE and National Grid.

Winning bids on the same high level price as rejected price increases requested by old projects

The announcement comes under two weeks after the state rejected petitions from developers of four already contracted projects to raise PPA strike prices, mainly to protect the integrity of the competitive process and New York’s electricity consumers from higher bills.

However, the state may not have saved much money compared to if it had offered compromise solutions to some of the old projects.

The nominal weighted average strike price of the three winners is expectedly around 145.07 USD/MWh, according to NYSERDAs preliminary calculations.

For comparison, the oldest already contracted projects, Sunrise Wind 1 and Empire Wind 1, had requested increased prices of 140 USD/MWh and 160 USD/MWh, respectively – and NYSERDA had outlined potential compromise solutions where they would be offered 138 and 148 USD/MWh respectively.

New York back on track for offshore wind target

Nonetheless, the announcement of the three winners in New York’s third solicitation shows that the state intends to remain on track to fulfill its target of 9 GW offshore wind by 2035.

The new awards almost perfectly balance out the capacity that will potentially be lost if the developers of the old projects terminate their PPAs: The four old projects have a combined capacity of 4.2 GW, while the three new projects have a combined capacity of just over 4 GW.

The new awardees aim for a COD in 2030, helping the state reach its energy transition goal of having 70% renewable electricity by decade’s end.

Are you interested in a more detailed analysis of the situation in the Northeastern US including the status of various PPAs?

At Aegir Insights we have analyzed the implications of the PPA troubles in New York – both for New York, the neighboring states and the wider US sector.

Reach out to learn more about the New York PPA troubles and Aegir Insights’ market intelligence service.