![]() To build a 500 MW wind project in a year with today’s 15 MW turbines requires about 50 acres for movement, storage, and assembly. How Marshalling Ports WorkĪs offshore wind turbines have grown in their capacity to provide clean energy - from an average 3 MW to the current 15 MW designs - so has their size. The Delaware site is already zoned for industrial use and equipped with roads and railways, a plus for access of workers and materials. This will outpace the deployment capabilities of current and planned marshaling facilities, even with the New Jersey port.Īn additional marshalling port in Delaware could provide a way forward, enabling the Delaware Bay to meet projected demand for wind power along the East Coast over the next 15 years, the researchers said. ![]() Based on existing power purchase contracts and projected demand, the Spin In team’s analysis indicates that the wind industry will require more than 2,000 MW of deployment annually for the region beginning in 20. However, even with the announced marshalling port in southern Jersey, the UD report shows it is likely not large enough to meet market demand for offshore wind energy by 2025. Looking from the Occidental Chemical Corporation site in Delaware City, Delaware, into the Delaware Bay. “It’s exciting to see New Jersey take this huge step forward in clean energy,” said Kempton, associate director and co-founder of the Center for Research in Wind (CReW) and a professor in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. The announced New Jersey “Wind Port” is nearly identical to one of the two sites previously identified by Kempton and analyzed by the Spin In team. Phil Murphy about the Garden State’s plans to begin developing an offshore wind deployment port in Salem in 2021. ![]() The UD report comes on the heels of a recent announcement by New Jersey Gov. Each location is large enough to build a port capable of deploying more than 500 MW of clean energy annually, with ample potential to expand. The UD students, most of whom graduated in May 2020, worked together for more than a year to evaluate the viability and logistics of developing marshalling ports in the Delaware Bay to service the offshore wind sector as part of the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnership’s Spin In program.Īccording to the UD report, both sites have the potential to service offshore wind projects as far north as Connecticut and as far south as the Carolinas, shoring up a critical link in the offshore wind production capability. The proposed locations include a Delaware site situated north of Delaware City near the Occidental Chemical Corporation and a location on land transferred from the Army Corps of Engineers around Salem, New Jersey. ![]() (Courtesy: University of Delaware) Two Locations IdentifiedĪ team of University of Delaware undergraduate students, advised by UD Professor Willett Kempton and energy policy analyst and doctoral candidate Sara Parkison, recently released a report identifying two ideal locations for a marshalling port in the Delaware Bay. A University of Delaware study has identified two prime East Coast locations for marshalling ports in Delaware Bay - sites with the acreage, area, and access to support the infrastructure required for deploying offshore wind farms. Those that do are small in area and will not be able to fully support the existing demand for turbine deployment, nor will they be able to efficiently deploy turbines that are ever-increasing in size, as the industry starts to look beyond the 8-MW turbine to 12 and 15 MW. Yet few viable port sites exist along the East Coast that have clear overhead access from port to sea to transport these large turbines - each larger than the Statue of Liberty - and channels deep enough to accommodate the vessels that carry them. Marshalling ports - large waterside sites with the acreage and weight-carrying capacity necessary to assemble, house, and deploy the huge wind turbines ready to ship out into the ocean - will be critical to meeting this current and committed demand for offshore wind. This is the clean power equivalent of 26 nuclear power plants or roughly 10 times the average electric energy used by the entire state of Delaware. The United States offshore wind energy industry is growing, with planned commitments to build 26 GW of offshore wind projects along the East Coast from now through 2035.
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