By GREGORY ZELLER //
Reports of the death of the offshore Beacon Wind project have been somewhat exaggerated.
While the 2.5-giggawatt offshore-wind duplex has withdrawn its interconnection application with New York Independent System Operator – the organization responsible for managing New York’s electric grid and the state’s competitive wholesale electric marketplace – British energy giant BP plc is hardly scuttling the ship.
On Feb. 19, the British conglomerate announced the withdrawal of its New York State transmission interconnection application and NYISO offshore-wind queue position. That certainly sounds like an ominous omen for New York’s wind-power strategy, especially with fossil-fuel-focused President Donald Trump huffing and puffing over federal offshore-wind development permits and otherwise trying to blow down the nation’s burgeoning wind-power industry.
Despite the president’s hot air, New York is still gung-ho on offshore wind – and BP’s withdrawal is less a death knell than an honest reflection of Albany’s new offshore-energy strategy.
According to the details of its forthcoming 2025 offshore-wind open solicitation, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is now considering generation-only projects, with a state-owned and -operated transmission system alleviating producers from the responsibility of beaming electricity from ocean-based farms to the land-based power grid.
Donald Trump: Wind is bad.
Up to this point, electricity producers have been tasked with creating independent sea-to-land transmission systems (and acquiring permits for them, not always an easy road).
But if Albany’s forthcoming 2025 offshore-wind solicitation – New York’s sixth open solicitation to date – plays to form, the state will handle the transmission of juice generated by myriad producers, such as the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind, the 130-megwatt South Shore Wind and many more offshore farms on the drawing board, including Beacon Wind.
Previously owned jointly by BP and Norwegian energy company Equinor, now the exclusive domain of BP, the Beacon Wind lease area is located about 60 miles east of Montauk Point and 20 miles south of Massachusetts. While technically situated in Massachusetts waters, the bifurcated Beacon Wind farm – scheduled to be developed in two phases – is slated to feed electricity exclusively to New York State.
Beacon Wind’s withdrawn application, submitted in 2022, involved a proposed 115-mile underwater transmission system that would connect the farm’s carbon-free electricity to a grid connection point at the Astoria Power Complex in Queens. With wind-generated electricity producers likely to be removed from New York’s transmission equation, BP decided to withdraw its transmission interconnection application and see what happens next.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management started the permitting process for Beacon Wind’s Construction and Operation Plan in June 2023 and issued a positive environmental assessment in May 2024.
The farm’s 1,230-MW Phase 1 project is currently listed as “under development,” though actual construction is yet to begin. While the BOEM has yet to issue final approvals for BP’s master construction and operation plan, Phase 1’s 25-year offtake agreement with NYSERDA remains in effect.
Beacon Wind’s future is definitely hazier after the Feb. 19 announcement, but the project is not dead – and BP is actually applauding New York’s new approach to coordinated distribution, which the world-class utility considers a smart cost-cutter.
“Since the project submitted its application and queue position, New York’s approach to offshore-wind project interconnection has evolved in the direction of coordinated offshore transmission,” BP said in a statement. “We support the Public Policy Transmission Need project approach sponsored by NYISO, which is designed to help reduce the cost of electricity delivery from offshore-wind projects to the New York grid.”
