Falmouth Offshore Wind Company Lacks Electric Grid Access

The Falmouth offshore wind company had first proposed landing its cables in Falmouth but the onshore electric grid is antiquated and does not have the capacity to send the power off Cape to proposed locations. The grid needs to be rebuilt by electric ratepayers.

The onshore high-voltage wind cable plan also ran into opposition from Falmouth residents who cited health and environmental concerns from the high-voltage cables. In addition, the wind company is seeking an exemption from the Falmouth wind turbine bylaws 240-166. The bylaw was enacted and modified over ten years as a direct result of the eventual removal of the two town-owned nuisance megawatt wind turbines. The bylaw was enacted by town meeting and approved by the Massachusetts Attorney General who is now the Governor.

The company moved the Falmouth plan after a meeting on June 8, 2022, to one set of cables for 800 megawatts and another for 400 megawatts to Brayton Point, Fall River by way of ocean submarine cables. The company will come back to Falmouth after ratepayers pay to upgrade the onshore electric grid.

The route of the cables to Brayton Point, Fall River is through Island Park in Portsmouth, Rhode Island which is the best available route because the cables need to run up the Sakonnet River. The Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board has put these hearings on hold and in this case, now there is no land access by the wind company anywhere.

The selection of the Falmouth offshore company concluded a rigorous solicitation and evaluation by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and the Commonwealth’s Electric Distribution Companies.

The offshore wind solicitation was monitored by an Independent Evaluator that was jointly chosen by the Department of Energy Resources and the Office of the Attorney General who is now the Governor and was responsible for overseeing the process to ensure that all proposals were evaluated in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner.

Under the terms of its 20-year contract with the state’s three utilities, the offshore wind company agreed to an average price of 7.77 cents per kilowatt hour but also agreed to lower that price if the federal investment tax credit for offshore wind, which was being phased out, was retained and/or improved. (aka the PPA, power purchase agreement)

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities last month determined that the contracts, which the wind developers and utility companies agreed to in May, "are in the public interest." But now the offshore wind company wants the new Massachusetts Governor to step in and change the PPA, power purchase agreements due to economic conditions have made it much harder to finance its project since when it was selected.

The other issue is the lack of planning for ocean submarine cables

The offshore wind company selected the least expensive option for their cables the "generator lead line.” As the wind companies build sections of their project they run their own sets of submarine cables to whatever land location to get to grid transformer locations along the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. There could be up to 15 community landings that may require placing sets of 220,000 high voltage direct current buried under parks, and residential zoned locations including environmental justice communities and there are no health studies of high voltage direct current cables in the United States as this type of voltage is not used. This method will undoubtedly lead to multiple lawsuits similar to failed land-based projects.

The "planned" approach requires four large ocean submarine cables from an offshore wind platform 30 miles out to sea to locations Boston, Fall River Massachusetts, Providence RI, and Hartford Connecticut. As each wind company adds to its project they simply hook up to the wind platform negating the need for running up to 30 cables onshore.

The "planned" approach would save the Falmouth wind company enough to go forward with the project and avoid multiple cable landings on Cape Cod.