New England States Harness Collective Power to Procure 460 MWs of Renewables
To gain greater economies of scale and reduce the costs of equipment Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island partnered on the three-state Clean Energy RFP. Earlier this week, Oct. 25, the Clean Energy RFP announced that the effort has resulted in the selection of seven wind and solar projects that will supply the states with up to 461.2 megawatts of clean energy generation.
The scope of the Clean Energy RFP is unique in that three states partnered on it. However, the three states together are smaller than many western states and the amount of land ideal for utility-scale solar and wind projects is harder to come by than in the western US, so this approach represents a way these geographically smaller states can come together to make larger projects possible. In another such instance, MIT and partners recently announced that they are funding a 60-megawatt solar farm in North Carolina through a power-purchase agreement.
The majority of the energy projects selected will come from solar power—306.4 megawatts and 154.8 megawatts will come from wind power. The biggest single awardee was Maine’s Ranger Solar, which proposed five solar farms across Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire. Those projects total 220 megawatts. Other solar projects included the 26 megawatt Deepwater Wind and 20 megawatt Ameresco projects, which will be built in Connecticut.
“RES Americas also moved forward with two proposals that have all their details redacted, including technology, size and location,” according to Platts, an analytics company. “The combined size of the projects appears to be about 40 MW based on the sizes of the other projects that have moved to the contract negotiation phase.”
The largest wind project that was approved for the next step is the 126-MW Cassadaga Wind Farm by EverPower Wind which will be built in New York. The other wind project selected in the RFP is the 26 megawatt Antrim Wind Farm which will be built in New Hampshire.
Though the projects were selected to move forward, the Clean Energy RFP said that each project still needs to negotiate with the states to meet their statutory and regulatory requirements. “Not all projects selected to advance to contract negotiation at this stage will necessarily obtain approved contracts, which may affect the total contracted MWs resulting from this RFP,” the Clean Energy RFP site stated.
Tweet
You must be Signed in to leave a Comment
To Sign in click this link: Click here to Sign inIf you have not yet registered on the site then you can Click here to register as a new user or Click here to register as an installer