The company planning to build a wind farm just over the horizon off the northern Outer Banks has scheduled a pair of local open houses for this week.
Avangrid wants to build the Kitty Hawk Wind Project in phases at least 24 miles off Corolla, with the first phase planned to have a capacity of 800 MW.
The entire development would have total generation capacity of up to 2.5 GW, once all phases are built, according to an updated Construction and Operations Plan submitted to the federal government last year.
The first phase is expected to begin construction in 2024.
Open houses on the Outer Banks to gather public input and answer questions are scheduled for Wednesday, March 15, at the Kitty Hawk Pier House adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn, and Thursday, March 16, at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head. Both sessions will run from 4:30 to 7 p.m.
Another pair of open houses will be held March 20 at the Havelock Tourist and Event Center, and March 21 at the Crystal Coast Civic Center in Morehead City.
Carolina Coast Online reported last fall the project still is in the permitting stage from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and it will be a lengthy process.
While transmission lines from the wind farm are expected to run into Virginia, there is a possible second landing site in Carteret County along Atlantic Beach in the second phase.
In an update last summer, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said that the project name was changed from Kitty Hawk Wind Project to Kitty Hawk North Wind Project, to reflect the segmenting of the project.
The Kitty Hawk North Wind Project is proposed to comprise up to 69 wind turbines, one offshore substation and two export cables that would make landfall in Virginia Beach, and connect to the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) Interconnection energy grid.
Iberdrola’s U.S. arm Avangrid secured the rights to develop the 122,405-acre lease area in May 2017.
Kitty Hawk is the first offshore wind lease area to be secured off North Carolina. In May this year, TotalEnergies and Duke Energy secured two further leases in the Wilmington East Lease Area offshore of southeast North Carolina and northeast South Carolina.
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