This study quantifies the potential impact of offshore wind on a future electricity system in the northeastern United States by analyzing the power system in 2024 for scenarios with 0, 2, and 7 gigawatts (GW) of installed offshore wind capacity. The analysis identifies potential points of offshore wind interconnection on the New England and New York transmission systems, and uses hourly wind profiles from the Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit.

The study finds that power system operations can accommodate offshore wind by adapting the system’s generation dispatch and offshore wind curtailment levels of 4%–5%. The number of hours with transmission congestion increases due to the addition of offshore wind, with impacts varying geographically. Offshore wind’s capacity credit was found to be 14.5%–28.3%, which is lower than estimated in some other studies, in part because this analysis included higher shares of solar photovoltaics and land-based wind. The 7-GW scenario shows a reduction in locational marginal price of 11% with production cost savings of up to 18% compared to a scenario with no offshore wind.

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