New Jersey wind farm may connect to ex-nuke plant equipment

ATLANTIC CITY — A wind energy farm planned off the coast of Atlantic City could bring its power ashore at the site of a former nuclear power plant.

Orsted, which plans the windmill project, said Tuesday it would run a cable from the Atlantic City offshore site to the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey Township.

There already is extensive electrical transmission infrastructure at the site.

Orsted, the Danish wind energy pioneer, says it bought “capacity interconnection rights” at the Oyster Creek site. It says it still can’t calculate the final cost to bring power ashore, pending additional studies.

“This action provides the project with additional certainty in the interconnection process and advances our efforts to potentially connect the wind farm to the existing electrical grid infrastructure at the retired Oyster Creek nuclear facility,” company spokesperson Lauren Burm said in a statement.

The 1,100-megawatt project would be built 15 miles offshore and could provide enough power for half a million homes.

It could be up and running by 2024.

It would connect to the existing power-plant infrastructure at the Oyster Creek site. The plant, which was among the nation’s oldest, shut down in 2018 and is in the decommissioning phase.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, called the Oyster Creek site "a very good location."

“There are substations and power lines already in place to connect to,” he said. “This is important to get the power on land without building any more power lines. Bringing it farther north also makes it easier to bring power up into areas that need it most, especially in central New Jersey, where there are several proposed natural gas power plants. It is important that the former nuclear station will be replaced by reliable and cost-effective energy that will reduce greenhouse gases and help the state move forward on renewable energy.”