The US has issued an action plan to bring electricity generated by offshore wind farms in the Atlantic to shore and to eventually build a grid network at sea.
The energy and interior departments made recommendations for short- and longer-term action in their jointly issued strategy.
To enable a full buildout of offshore wind, the departments recommended that before 2025:
- Collaborative bodies should be established across the Atlantic coast region;
- Some of the building blocks of transmission planning should be clarified, including updating reliability standards and identifying where offshore transmission may interconnect with the onshore grid; and
- Costs should be addressed through parties volunteering to pay or applying for tax credits.
In the second half of the decade, the government recommended:
- Federal officials should convene and coordinate with states to plan for an offshore transmission network;
- They should also collaborate with the offshore wind industry to standardise requirements for high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) technology; and
- They should work with federal and state agencies, tribal nations and other stakeholders to identify and prioritise transmission routes on the Outer Continental Shelf.
The government departments also recommended that a national HVDC testing and certification centre should be established between 2030 and 2040 to ensure compatibility when interconnecting multiple HVDC substations to form an offshore grid network.
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