The state of New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has revised formerly adopted regulations regarding the process of offshore wind farm approval. The BPU will issue a rule proposal later this month in the New Jersey Register.
New Jersey aims at generating 1,100MW of electricity through offshore wind, but the obstacle towards achieving that is the unsolved issue of the way that developers will be compensated for the electricity their systems produce.
Although, the NJ Spotlight news site says that the real problem is the concern among developers that the state could divert the revenues intended for power generation projects to deal with New Jersey’s budget issues.
Furthermore, the state will readopt the other rules on evaluation of offshore wind farm applications. The regulations outline the procedure as well as the detailed information the developers need to provide in seeking projects’ approval.
Among all that, it is required that the offshore wind developers must display a net economic benefit for ratepayers. According to the rule proposal, the development of the aimed amount of offshore wind is expected to have considerable economic and rate effect, if the developers meet the net economic benefits threshold.
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Offshore WIND staff, August 13, 2012; Image: Alpha Ventus