LIPA/Con Edison to study offshore wind power in NY

NEW YORK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and Consolidated Edison Inc (ED.N) will study the potential for an offshore wind project to be located at least 10 miles off the Rockaway Peninsula in New York, the state's governor, David Paterson, said in a release Wednesday.

Paterson did not estimate the size or cost of any potential project.

There are plenty of wind projects in upstate New York but transmission bottlenecks make it difficult to move that renewable energy to New York City and Long Island, Kevin Law, president and CEO of LIPA, said in the release, noting that offshore wind makes sense downstate.

Several years ago, LIPA proposed the construction of a 40-turbine wind farm that would have produced 140 megawatts of energy off the shore of Jones Beach on the south shore of Long Island.

LIPA shelved the project, however, when it discovered that costs substantially exceeded what was originally anticipated.

Economies of scale now dictate that an offshore wind project would have to be larger and farther out to sea than the one previously considered by LIPA, the governor said. New offshore wind turbine technologies allow for the siting of facilities much farther into the ocean than was possible just a few years ago.

LIPA, of Uniondale, New York, transmits and distributes power to more than 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York.

Con Edison, of New York, transmits and distributes electricity, natural gas and steam to more than 3.5 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through its regulated subsidiaries. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino, editing by Matthew Lewis)