The winners of the first US offshore wind lease sale on the Pacific coast and the first-ever to procure floating wind capacity in the country are: RWE Offshore Wind Holdings, Equinor Wind US, Invenergy California Offshore, California North Floating (Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners), and Central California Offshore Wind (Ocean Winds).

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has brought in $757.1 mil to the Treasury from the winning bids for the 5 lease areas & said that this well exceeded the first lease sales that were held in the Atlantic.

The sale included a 20% credit for bidders who committed to a monetary contribution to programmes or initiatives that support workforce training programmes for the floating offshore wind industry, the development of a US domestic supply chain for the floating offshore wind energy industry, or both.

This credit will result in over $117 mil in investments for these programmes or initiatives, BOEM says. The California offshore wind auction will also yield much bigger installation capacities than initially estimated due to advancements in offshore wind technology.

Equinor, RWE, Ocean Winds, and CIP announced that their lease areas have the potential to host around 2 GW (Equinor), 2 GW (Ocean Winds), 1.6 GW (RWE), and over 1 GW (Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners) of installed capacity. Invenergy also said that its lease area has an installation capacity of 1.5+ GW.

This is well beyond the originally estimated lease area capacities and almost double the expected total capacity of 4.5 GW, which now climbed to at least 8.1 GW.

The Vidi Energy View – this is fantastic news for the US and for the floating wind industry. The investment in these areas will enable a fantastic new capacity (approx. 8.1GW) for California and the surrounding areas, as well a trained workforce and a domestic supply chain, benefitting the local area in multiple ways. Exciting times!

Original article by offshorewind.biz