The first day of bidding in the auction for offshore wind lease areas in waters off California’s coast attracted proposals with a combined value of over USD 400 million (EUR 382.8m).
The solicitation will enable the construction of 4.5 GW of offshore turbine capacity on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) kicked off the sale at 0700 AM PST/1000 AM EST on December 6 and called a recess at 0520 PM EST after 20 rounds of bidding. The process is due to be resumed at 1000 AM EST on December 7.
The lease sale covers three areas off central California and two sites off northern California, of about 373,267 acres (151,056 ha) in total. If fully deployed, the targeted capacity will generate power to cover the electricity consumption of more than 1.5 million homes.
Bids for the five leases in Day 1 stood at USD 402.1 million. The highest one, at USD 100.3 million, was for OCS-P 0564 off the central coast near Morro Bay. Prices for OCS-P 0563 in Central California were as high as USD 85 million and OCS-P 0565 in the same region attracted two bidders, with prices reaching USD 75.3 million. The Northern California lease areas OCS-P 0561 and OCS-P 0562 received live bids that reached USD 62.7 million and USD 78.8 million, respectively.
The names of bidders were not disclosed during the auction.
A total of 43 parties were qualified to take part in the bidding, including Avangrid Renewables LLC, EDPR Offshore North America LLC, Equinor Wind US LLC, RWE Renewables Development LLC, Shell New Energies US LLC and TotalEnergies Renewables USA LLC.
(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.957)
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