Last March, while sharing a ski lift in Vail with Robert Mitchell, CEO of power transmission company Trans-Elect, renewable-energy investor John Breckenridge got to chatting about undersea electric cables. The conversation turned out to be as inspiring as the scenery.
Last month Breckenridge, head of the North American investment team for Good Energies, a New York–based green-energy investment firm, and Mitchell unveiled an audacious venture to build an underwater transmission line from northern New Jersey to northern Virginia to carry electricity generated by offshore wind turbines.
Called Atlantic Wind Connection, the venture is expected to cost around $5 billion and provide transmission capacity for 6 gigawatts of offshore wind power — enough to supply nearly 2 million households along the Eastern Seaboard — when it’s completed in 2030. “This project will solve the bottleneck issue of wind power development — the very limited capacity to transmit power from the offshore wind farms to the onshore grid,” contends Breckenridge.
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