This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

August 07, 2013

Deepwater Wind Wins Offshore Wind Lease Auction

Deepwater Wind on July 31 was selected as the provisional winner of two offshore wind energy sites located off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held the first-ever competitive lease auction in the United States for commercial offshore development. Deepwater's winning bid of $3.8 million for the two sites came in the eleventh round of the competition for two parcels, totaling more than 164,000 acres, in BOEM’s Wind Energy Area located roughly 17 miles south of Rhode Island, between Block Island, Rhode Island, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

The company plans to develop the Deepwater Wind Energy Center (DWEC)—a utility-scale wind farm of up to 200 turbines with a capacity of up to 1,000 megawatts—with a regional transmission system linking Long Island, New York, to southeastern New England. Construction could begin as early as 2017, with commercial operations by 2018. Most of DWEC’s turbines will be located 20 to 25 miles from the nearest landfall, and no turbine will be located any closer than roughly 13 miles from land. DWEC will produce enough energy to power approximately 350,000 homes and displace over 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. See press releases from the Department of Interior and Deepwater Wind, as well as a lease map on the BOEM website.