The three offshore wind farms, which are already “under construction or in advanced development,” all have long-term power sales contracts in Massachusetts and Connecticut, according to Iberdrola. In total – the company says – they will have a capacity of 2,800 megawatts, “they will create nearly 11,000 new jobs and provide emission-free energy to nearly 1.6 million homes and businesses”. As part of the proposal made when awarding one third of the offshore wind farms, referred to as Commonwealth Wind, Iberdrola is committed to promoting the first cable manufacturing plant for offshore wind energy in Massachusetts. The project is taking shape on the site of a former coal-fired power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts (Brayton Point). This is the facility that United States President Joe Biden visited. The company plans to open the facility in early 2026 and from then on it will supply cables to Iberdrola Commonwealth Wind and Park City Wind.
Biden paid a visit accompanied by 25 American authorities and businessmen. Also in attendance were Gina McCarthy, the President’s National Climate Advisor and former head of the US Environment Agency, and several members of Congress from Massachusetts.
The visit of the President of the United States to the future cable manufacturing plant for offshore wind power constitutes, according to Iberdrola, “a declaration of intent concerning the country’s new energy policy”.
The first of three parks to start producing electricity will be Wind from the vineyard (this will be done at the end of next year). The installation, with a capacity of eight hundred megawatts (800 MW), required, according to Iberdrola, an investment of 2,500 million euros. The park will be one of the company’s largest in the world. The second of the parks is Commonwealth Wind, Massachusetts (the company was awarded a contract for this park in December 2021). With 1,232 megawatts on the horizon, it is currently New England’s largest offshore wind project to date and will, according to Iberdrola, require an investment of $4,000 million. The company is finally developing Park City Wind, an 804 MW project in the same area that will provide clean energy to customers in Connecticut, while revitalizing the Port of Bridgeport, home to port operations and maintenance and storage. components for construction. Iberdrola expects the project to be completed in 2027.
In the United States, Iberdrola is present in 25 states and manages more than 9,300 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity (more than 8,500 MW is renewable, mainly wind and solar photovoltaic) and more than 170,000 kilometers of power lines. It does this through eight distributors in New York, Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts. In addition, the company chaired by Sánchez Galán today declares in the United States a “portfolio of high quality renewable projects” of more than 22,000 MW. Specifically, Iberdrola boasts of being “the leader in offshore wind, with a portfolio of over 5,300 MW at the end of the first quarter of 2022”.
Finally, the company also owns the Kitty Hawk development area (2,500 MW), in the waters of North Carolina and Virginia, and has initiated the process of obtaining permits from the Federal Office of marine energy management (BOEM) for the Kitty Hawk North wind turbine. farm (800 MW), the first proposed project in this area.