ACTEON’S BREADTH OF EXPERTISE TO SERVICE THE U.S. WIND INDUSTRY

February 16, 2022 | Renewables | Energy Facts Staff Writer | 2min

In early 2021, the Biden-Harris administration set up the USA’s first national offshore wind targets. The strategy supports rapid offshore wind deployment and job creation, targeting 30 GW of offshore wind power by 2030.

In 2021 the U.S. made significant progress towards this goal with the approval for the first two commercial scale offshore wind farms: 800MW Vineyard Wind and 130 MW South Fork.

AMBITIOUS PLANS

It is expected that more projects will be approved over the course of 2022 for installation from 2024 onwards. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the U.S. government agency in charge of managing the development Outer Continental Shelf energy and mineral resources, expects to review at least 16 plans to construct and operate commercial offshore wind energy facilities by 2025. This would represent more than 22 GW of offshore energy in U.S. waters. Commitment to wind energy has also grown at the state level and construction has started on the New Jersey Wind Port, the first facility purpose-built for staging, assembling, and manufacturing activities for offshore wind projects on the U.S. East Coast.

Recently BOEM announced a new leasing round for seven offshore wind sites by 2025. This includes the New York Bight area of the New York and New Jersey coast, areas offshore Carolina and California for lease in 2022, to be followed by lease sales for the Central Atlantic, Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of Mexico, and offshore Oregon. The New York Bight allows wind developers to bid on six lease areas; the largest number offered in a single auction in the USA to date. The results of this auction are expected by late February 2022. If the recent UK round 4 and Scotwind lease bidding rounds is anything to go by, the New York Bight auction should be hotly contested by bidders.

ACTEON’S COMMITMENT TO THE U.S. OFFSHORE WIND MARKET

Acteon and its strategic business segments and brands have long been involved with offshore energy in the U.S. including wind. MENCK, the lead brand for Acteon’s foundations and cables segment provided piling hammers for the Block Island project, offshore Rhode Island in 2016 and TerraSond, a product and services line brand within our Geo-service segment, is providing a geophysical survey to support several of the wind park developments on the U.S. East Coast, such as a cable survey for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot project.  Siemens Gamesa and Acteon have also partnered on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project to jointly provide a fully integrated offshore wind turbine operations and maintenance (O&M) package.

Ivan Harnett, Director, US Renewables, says “The U.S. offshore wind market could be at an inflection point as we are starting to see a significant pipeline of projects set to achieve the target of 30GW by 2030. Acteon is actively supporting developers for site investigation surveys through our TerraSond brand, and we are currently closing contracts for installation services in 2023 and 2024. TerraSond will be growing its existing local staff through additional hires as well as developing a presence in additional states because of recent awards, demonstrating our commitment to providing long term support to U.S. projects.”

Acteon recently joined the Business Network for Offshore Wind and will exhibit at the International Partnership Forum on 26-28 April 2022 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Building on its deep cross-disciplinary knowledge and solid track record of mooring large energy assets in the Gulf of Mexico, Acteon is also very active in the emerging floating wind market in the U.S., having completed many pre-FEED and FEED mooring and cable studies for hull manufacturers and developers. Acteon’s experts will deliver three presentations on mooring, cable engineering and asset integrity at the upcoming Floating Wind Solutions Conference in Houston, 1-3 March 2022.