Wind power project gets Brookhaven IDA assist

The Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency has closed on a package of economic incentives for Sunrise Wind’s transmission project that will connect its offshore turbines to Long Island’s electric grid. 

The IDA tax breaks will go towards the construction of 18 miles of transmission cables to a Long Island Power Authority facility in Holbrook, according to an IDA statement. 

Sunrise Wind is a 924-megawatt offshore wind project located about 30 miles east of Montauk. The project by itself will achieve roughly 10 percent of the state’s offshore wind goal of 9,000 megawatts by 2035, while also bringing $700 million of investment to Suffolk County and creating 800 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs in the state, according to Sunrise Wind’s joint venture partners Eversource and Ørsted.   

Last November, the New York Public Service Commission approved the project’s underground transmission route that will deliver electricity from Sunrise Wind to the existing Long Island electrical grid via a 124-mile submarine export cable. The onshore transmission cable will make landfall deep below the beach at Smith Point County Park in Shirley and follow an 18-mile route below publicly owned roads and rights-of-way to an interconnection point at the existing Holbrook substation.  

“We’re extremely pleased to continue to play a key role in the town’s clean energy leadership,” Frederick Braun, chairman of the Brookhaven IDA, said in the statement. “This project will bring new investment to the town and many good-paying jobs. We are proud to work with Ørsted and Eversource on the Sunrise Wind project and look forward to seeing this transmission cable providing critical support for the regional development of offshore wind.” 

Melville-based Haugland Energy Group was awarded a contract worth at least $200 million to install an underground duct system for Sunrise Wind’s onshore transmission line, which is expected to create more than 400 union jobs. 

Haugland Group had already completed similar work for Eversource and Ørsted’s 132-megawatt South Fork Wind project, which will power some 70,000 homes annually when it begins operations at the end of the year.  

The Brookhaven IDA also previously awarded economic incentives to Sunrise Wind for its $37.8 million project to redevelop a vacant 59,525-square-foot building on 4.5 acres at 22 Research Way in East Setauket. The facility will house operations and maintenance for the joint-venture partners and offshore wind developers.  

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