Wind

Port space shortfall looms 'from 2023' as US marshals for giga-scale offshore wind build: study

State-led regional collaboration key to having necessary construction and service infrastructure in place to support Biden administration's 30GW 'national goal' for sector, finds University of Delaware research

Artist rendering of the Arthur Kill Terminal.
Artist rendering of the Arthur Kill Terminal.Foto: AOT
  • Tim Ferry

The emerging US offshore wind sector faces a looming “port area shortfall” from 2023 as it sets about building a planned first wave of utility-scale projects off the country’s eastern seaboard, adding to a growing list of industrial headaches including grid pinchpoints and manufacturing and vessel constraints, a new study from the University of Delaware has concluded.

Meeting the Biden administration’s “national goal” of having 30GW of wind plant capacity in American waters by 2030 will call for at least 327 acres of marshalling space as early as 2024, against an expected availability of 114 acres, some 191 acres short, according to the research by Willet Kempton and Sara Parkison, which was based on benchmark of 1GW of project installation requiring 54 acres of quayside laydown area over 18 months.
The port shortage issue is keenly recognised by government and industry, with major investment underway at a number of coastal facilities in the northeast, including State Pier in New London, Connecticut; Salem Harbor, Massachusetts; ProvPort in Rhode Island; Portsmouth Marine Terminal, Virginia, and Tradepoint Atlantic, Maryland.
New Jersey broke ground, meanwhile, on its massive new New Jersey Wind Port (NJWP) last year, and a marshalling facility is being considered for Arthur Kill, in Staten Island, New York.
Sara Parkison, co-author of offshore wind port studyFoto: Sara Parkison

Most of these ports are too small in scale to handle the industrial requirements of the burgeoning wind power sector, noted the University of Delaware researchers, and the total shortfall is only going to compound over time, with postponed earlier projects knocking-on to hinder the aimed-for giga-scale rollout and the US’ wider efforts at decarbonisation of its power supply.

“It likely will have impacts on deployment time, which in turn will have long term impacts on bidding outcomes, on the electricity costs associated with the project,” Parkison told Recharge, adding that if developers are unable to meet their two-year lease deadline on a contracted port, it will “impact other developers from being able to use those same ports, so [it will have a] domino effect on power, on dates, and associated electricity costs”.
With only two offshore wind projects in construction, the 800MW Vineyard Wind 1 off of Massachusetts and 132MW South Fork off New York, and neither slated to have steel in the water until next year, the paucity of port space is expected to start impinging on plans from 2023.

“Following 2022, however, there is an immediate port area shortfall. From 2023 to 2035, state procurement demand far exceeds our measured marshalling port supply,” the study notes.

The 800MW Vineyard Wind, for example, will be marshalled out of the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal NBMT), the nation’s first purpose-built offshore wind port, but the 29-acre site, originally intended to stage the ill-fated Cape Wind’s 3.6MW turbines, will now need to handle 62 of GE’s 13MW nacelles, each weighing 600 tonnes, along with their 107-metre-long blades.

As New Bedford will be unable to cope with the entire project itself, two additional ports will be drafted into service, adding layers of complexity to what is already a logistically challenging project.

The issue is complicated by the lack of US-flagged Jones Act compliant wind turbine installation vessels (WTIV). The Jones Act forbids foreign-flagged vessels from calling in at two consecutive US ports or points, including an offshore wind turbine. As the US has only one locally-built WTIV, Dominion Energy’s Charybdis, Vineyard will will use barges and tugboats to bring the components to a foreign-flagged WTIV, which will remain at sea.

This ‘feeder barge’ system has already been deployed for the two projects already in the water – the 30MW Block Island array off Rhode Island and the 12MW CVOW pilot off Virginia – but also adds cost, complexity and time to project installation. Estimates are that if a WTIV can come into port to retrieve components directly, total installation time for each turbine is around 32 hours, while the feeder barge system requires about 50 hours.

But even this will not be enough to meet demand estimated at 5GW annually through the 2030 deadline, and such workarounds will not only contribute to a slower installation process but will impede innovation, with newer methods for installation also requiring larger port capacity.

“Opportunities for improved methods exist with more assembly in port and simpler installation vessels, made possible by large ports and turbine support structures designed for in-port assembly and upright transport,” the report states, which will be impossible with the ports currently under development.

The scarcity of large-scale port facilities in the US northeast is often attributed to the dense populations centres in these states and the high costs of coastal real estate that is often either already developed, protected via environmental sanctuaries, or is otherwise unfit for industrial development.

But the University of Delaware researchers say that issue stems more from “developers having built ports to support early, smaller projects, and having located them to incentivise state power contracts rather than developing ports for long-term, large-scale, and economically-efficient use”.

While most offshore wind ports are being constructed by project developers as part of their procurement bids, “an offshore wind developer arguably is a suboptimal party to develop a marshalling port [due to] shorter time perspective and different investment priorities... leading to building of smaller ports, and ports only adapted to today’s deployment methods and turbine sizes”.

The study recommends a state-led regional approach to port development that could maximise economies of scale, citing New Jersey, which has a 260-acre wind port under development in Salem County, as “a great example of the foresight needed to make the necessary moves” to ensure adequate supply of port capacity, Parkison said.

The two-stage New Jersey Wind Port (NJWP), set for completion in 2026, is being built on reclaimed land owned by local utility PSEG, adjacent to the operating Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power generating stations, to support construction of the 1.1GW Ocean Wind 1 project it is developing with Orsted.

A combination of heavy engineering and sizeable investment – along with a slew of permitting and approval documents – will be needed to make the site suitable for use as an offshore wind port. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority spearheaded the investment, and has already accepted multiple bids not only for marshalling but manufacturing and assembly facilities within the NJWP site.

“[The NJWP] is a perfect example of land being out there [for wind port construction] but which requires a heavy amount of investment [and] the vision to have those conversations, to get the permitting underway, and to think about your port from a regional standpoint of servicing a broader market beyond the projects that are just specific to your state,” said Parkison.

Along with calls for further port investment, the industry is responding with innovation, as indicated by moves to develop the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) into a marshalling port for Equinor's Empire Wind 1&2 projects.
SBMT was specifically excluded from the study's list of marshalling ports due to overhead restrictions. Equinor, however, recently announced collaboration with Danish shipping giant Maersk for an innovative WTIV that will deploy feeder barges in a process that it claims will actually cut the time for installation by 30-35%.
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Published 20 April 2022, 22:39Updated 22 April 2022, 20:05
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