Bay State Wind Receives First Offshore Wind Site Assessment Plan Approval in the United States

July 19, 2017

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued its first approval of an offshore wind Site Assessment Plan to Bay State Wind, a utility-scale offshore wind project in Massachusetts located 15 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Bay State Wind is a joint venture between DONG Energy, an offshore wind project developer, and Eversource, a transmission builder in New England. Bay State Wind will submit a proposal for the Massachusetts contracts, which will be awarded in 2018. The project could generate enough electricity to power 1 million Massachusetts homes and create hundreds of jobs throughout the life of the wind farm. The BOEM approval paved the way for Bay State Wind’s next step: deployment of the FLiDAR WindSentinel system off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard to measure wave and wind speeds in the project’s lease area. The system includes a camera to broadcast images from the system as it collects data, viewable online 24 hours per day.