EDF RE to acquire Fishermen’s 24-MW wind demo off Atlantic City

EDF Renewable Energy (EDF RE) has reached a preliminary agreement to buy Fishermen’s Energy LLC’s 24-MW pilot wind project off the US East Coast.

EDF RE, a unit of French renewable energy group EDF Energies Nouvelles (EDF EN), said on Wednesday it expects to put the wind park on stream by 2020. “The U.S. offshore wind industry is poised for tremendous growth and we believe an early stage project will help New Jersey develop the infrastructure to support this rapidly growing industry,” said Doug Copeland, EDF RE’s regional project development manager.

The demonstration project has been fully developed and will be sited in state waters near the coast of Atlantic City in New Jersey. The scheme was amended in 2015 to include six 4-MW Siemens wind turbines instead of the previously planned five 5-MW turbines made by China’s XEMC. Fishermen’s original plan failed to win court clearance after being rejected by New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) due to concerns over the feasibility of the project.

EDF RE expects the project to contribute to New Jersey’s overall objective for the deployment of 3.5 GW of wind power capacity off the state by 2030. It is also seen to help improve environmental management by providing a laboratory for testing of new avian monitoring and marine mammal sensing technologies, EDF RE said.

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