27 March marked the bidding deadline for the novel tri-state collaborative auction between Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The three neighboring states decided to join forces and resources to mitigate the recent economic turmoil in the US offshore wind market.
- Massachusetts seeks to award up to 3.6 GW of offshore wind, Rhode Island 1.2 GW of capacity, and Connecticut 2 GW of capacity.
- The states received four bids in the auction. All bids are from known players that have submitted bids before for the same projects, albeit with different names and specifications.
- Two bids are from legacy projects that have previously had contracts with the states – contracts that they cancelled last year due to macro-economic turbulences.
- This includes Avangrid, an Iberdrola subsidiary, which submitted bids for its mature projects Park City Wind and Commonwealth Wind – both of which previously had offtake contracts with Connecticut and Massachusetts, respectively. The projects are re-submitted under the names New England Wind 1 (Park City Wind) and New England Wind 2 (Commonwealth Wind), with the option for states to choose only New England Wind 1 or both projects.
- Another re-submitted legacy project is the SouthCoast Wind 1 project from OW Ocean Winds, which is also a mature project that cancelled a previous PPA with Massachusetts.
Tri-state auction: US offshore wind continues re-set after tumultuous 2023
What does it mean for the future dynamics of the Atlantic US offshore wind market if more old projects get new contracts in the tri-state auction, such as it happened in the recent New York auction?
Dive deeper with our next Wavelength Intelligence Briefing on 9 April at 14:00 CET, where Head of Research Maria Holm Bohsen and Senior Research Analyst Signe Sørensen will discuss what the tri-state auction signifies as part of the ongoing reset of the American offshore wind sector.