While much of the attention on New Jersey’s transition to offshore wind energy has been focused on lease areas off the Atlantic coast, work has quietly but rapidly progressed at the massive onshore site where the majority of wind turbines for East Coast wind farms will be assembled.
Since breaking ground on the first phase of the project in September 2021, contractors have completed about a fifth of the work and are on track to hit their deadline in early 2024, said Jonathan Kennedy, the managing director of infrastructure at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the agency overseeing the wind port.
To date, the state has $478.2 million in public funds secured for the project.
“The reason we have such an aggressive schedule is that we’ve got a user — Ørsted, specifically — that needs this thing up and running in early 2024,” said Kennedy, who was joined by several project managers in one of about a half-dozen trailers situated beside the wind port construction site.
About a mile of water sits between the shoreline and the shipping channel. In the spring, Public Service Enterprise Group received a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a channel approach and turning basin for the Parcel A loading dock. Over the summer, the work was completed. From here, it is 52 miles to the mouth of the Delaware Bay and the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean.