This story has been updated.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After 17 rounds of bidding, a wind-energy area auction bidder has submitted the winning amount of $9,066,650 to lease more than 122,000 acres of Atlantic Ocean waters off the coast of Kitty Hawk.
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Avangrid Renewables Inc., operator of the Amazon Wind Farm in Pasquotank and Perquimans counties, submitted the winning bid in the auction held Thursday.
Avangrid CEO James P. Torgerson said the company was excited about the opportunity to play a leading role in the growing U.S. offshore wind industry and its job-creation potential.
Avangrid Renewables has about 6.5 gigawatts of wind, solar and other renewable generation facilities in service or under development in 20 states.
“Between our leading position in the United States, including North Carolina, where we operate a wind farm near Elizabeth City, along with the expertise and experience of our international affiliate, Iberdrola Group, in developing offshore wind in Europe, we felt we were well positioned to secure this bid,” Torgerson said. “We are confident in our ability to leverage those channels, along with our supply chain knowledge and our development and transmission expertise, in order to deliver a competitively priced product to our eventual customers.”
According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a federal agency under the Department of the Interior in charge of the lease, the leased area begins about 24 nautical miles from land and extends 25.7 nautical miles to the southeast. Its extent goes 13.5 nautical miles north and .6 nautical miles to the south.
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Throughout the day, four bidding companies were narrowed down to one.
