Ørsted To Acquire US Offshore Wind Seabed For $625 Million

Danish RE major Ørsted has agreed to acquire 50% interest from Eversource Energy in the uncontracted federal offshore wind lease area currently owned jointly by the two companies against a consideration price of $625 million.

In addition to the seabed, which is in early-stage development, the agreement also includes contracts and partnerships for key operational assets in the US Northeast.

Ørsted says that the deal strengthens its leading position in US offshore wind energy. The lease area, OCS-A 500 (Lease 500), contains about 187,000 acres of uncontracted seabed for offshore wind energy. This has a potential capacity of up to 4 GW of wind energy generation.

As part of this agreement, Ørsted will acquire contracts and leases for strategic port facilities and other assets. Ørsted will take full ownership of partnerships with the Port of Providence, the Port of Davisville, and Quonset Point, all in Rhode Island, and with Connecticut’s New London State Pier.

Ørsted will also take full ownership of the operations and maintenance hub in East Setauket, New York, and the charter agreement for the first American-built offshore wind service operation vessel, which is under construction at Edison Chouest’s facility in Houma, Louisiana, and is more than 50% complete.

David Hardy, CEO of Region Americas at Ørsted, said, “In addition to taking full ownership of seabed that is familiar to our team after years of work in this area, we will also be the sole bidder in our New York 3 and Rhode Island 2 active offshore wind solicitations.”

“We continue to expect that offshore wind projects built in our partnership’s lease area, including the three now under development, will play a critical role in decarbonizing the generation mix of Southern New England and New York,” said Joe Nolan, CEO, Eversource.

Recently, Ørsted acquired a 160 MW capacity Irish solar project Garrenleen from RE conglomerate Terra Solar. Google has also contracted the renewable energy firm to source 150 MW of wind energy for its datacentres based in USA.