About six months after Danish wind farm developer DONG Energy established its US headquarters in Boston, the company is already making a move to expand beyond New England.
DONG unveiled plans on Tuesday to acquire the rights to develop an offshore area near Atlantic City, N.J. The area in question is about 10 miles offshore, covers about 160,000 acres, and has an average water depth of 80 feet. DONG didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal.
“The site conditions are quite similar to those we currently work with in North-Western Europe, which means that the project could be developed using well-known technology,” DONG wind power executive Samuel Leupold said in a prepared statement.
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DONG is already a leader in building and operating wind farms in Europe. The New Jersey project would be DONG’s second wind farm in the US, following a project of a similar scale that would be built south of Martha’s Vineyard. To develop the Massachusetts project, DONG is lobbying the state Legislature for a bill that would, among other things, require big electric utilities in the state to purchase a certain amount of offshore wind power.
For both projects, DONG acquired the development rights from another company, RES Americas Development Inc., that had initially won the rights for both sites in auctions held by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. In both cases, the leases could accommodate wind farms that can generate as much as 1,000 megawatts in capacity.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.