Two years ago, when New York state announced the first round of winners in its annual renewable energy procurements, upstate wind farms were the star of the show — including one of the largest wind projects ever put forward east of the Mississippi River.
Jump to today, and solar utterly dominated New York’s latest onshore renewables round, reflecting the general direction in which the U.S. power market is expected to move over the next few years.
In its third annual land-based renewables round, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, selected 21 large-scale projects totaling 1.3 gigawatts to receive around $1 billion of state support. The projects will be built over the next few years.
The list of winners includes just one large wind project — a 145-megawatt development backed by Terra-Gen — alongside a handful of refurbishments of existing wind farms, known as repowerings, that will add a fairly small amount of new generating capacity.
The rest of the projects are all large-scale solar arrays, from a series of 20-megawatt projects to the massive 270-megawatt South Ripley solar development in western New York that will be built with 20 megawatt-hours of storage by developer ConnectGen.
Other big winners include NextEra Energy Resources, which went home with 380 megawatts of solar capacity spread across two projects, and SunEast Development, whose haul includes eight projects totaling 220 megawatts. The round also saw the launch of veteran Canadian developer Boralex into the U.S. solar market, with four projects totaling 180 megawatts.
Wind fighting the tide of solar
2020 is expected to be the biggest year in history for American wind farm construction, as developers take advantage of the final year to complete projects qualified for the 100 percent federal Production Tax Credit (PTC).
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