Floating wind off Morro Bay, and what it would mean for your meter

I. What 'floating' actually means out there

Morro Bay's leased call area sits in water roughly 500 to 1,100 meters deep at last public report, far past the roughly 60-meter limit where a wind tower bolted to the seabed still pencils out. So each turbine would ride on a floating steel or concrete platform, held in place by mooring lines run down to anchors on the seabed, like a boat on a very long tether. That is the whole idea behind floating wind: go where the water is too deep to stand on.

This is not science fiction. Pilot floating arrays already spin off Scotland and Portugal, small by the standard being discussed here. Nothing at this commercial scale has been built in United States waters, though, so the honest unknowns are cost and how fast the supply chain can grow, not whether the engineering exists.

II. The port problem

A floating turbine is assembled lying at a dock, platform and tower and blades together, then towed out to the lease whole. That needs a port with deep water, heavy-lift ground, and no low bridge between the dock and the open sea. San Francisco's working piers sit behind the Bay Bridge and inside a busy shipping gate, and air draft (the clearance under a bridge) is a real constraint for a structure that tall.

So the early port money points elsewhere, mainly at Humboldt Bay up the North Coast, which the state and the local harbor district are rebuilding as a heavy assembly terminal, and at Southern California proposals such as the Port of Long Beach's "Pier Wind" concept. Whether the central coast gets a nearer staging port is unsettled, and it matters, because no assembly port means a slower everything.

III. Getting the power north

Even if the turbines spin, the Bay Area only gains if the power can travel. The leases sit off San Luis Obispo County, closer to the Central Coast grid than to the Sunset or the Mission. The landing point people discuss is a switchyard near the retired Morro Bay plant or the Diablo Canyon area, where high-voltage lines already run, and CAISO (California's grid operator, which runs most of the state's high-voltage system) studies those connections through its interconnection queue.

Moving large amounts of power north from there toward Bay Area and Silicon Valley load is its own project, likely requiring new or upgraded transmission, and those studies are ongoing and contested. Ask when the power arrives and how much, and the honest answer is that it depends: on which upgrades CAISO and PG&E find necessary, on permitting, and on federal policy, none of which is final today.

IV. Where the leases stand now

In December 2022 BOEM (the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which leases the seabed) held California's first offshore wind lease sale, awarding five leases, three of them in the Morro Bay area, for winning bids totaling roughly $757 million at the time. Those are rights to study and develop a stretch of ocean, not permits to build anything.

Since then the leaseholders have been doing site assessment: ocean and weather measurement, wildlife and fisheries survey, and early design. A construction and operations plan, then a full environmental review, comes before any steel goes in the water. Most public timelines point to power sometime in the 2030s, and schedules like these slip, so treat any firm date with caution.

V. Worth watching this month

1. Watch BOEM's California activities page for any construction and operations plan filing or public comment window on the Morro Bay leases, which would signal the projects moving from study toward build.

2. Watch the California Energy Commission's AB 525 offshore wind work, where the state's megawatt targets and port strategy get updated, usually routine but occasionally consequential.

3. Watch CAISO's interconnection queue reports for central coast landing points, to see whether the Morro Bay projects are advancing through study phases or stalling.

4. Watch Humboldt Bay port construction updates, since the pace of that terminal sets the pace for assembly up and down the coast.

5. Watch for any PG&E or state transmission planning notice touching the central coast, which would hint at whether and how this power ever moves north.

Frequently asked questions

References

• BOEM, California Activities (federal, .gov), Lease records, maps, and project filings for the Morro Bay and Humboldt wind areas, straight from the agency that issues the leases., www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/state-activities/california.
• California Energy Commission, Offshore Wind / AB 525 (state, .gov), The state's planning goals, megawatt targets, and port strategy for offshore wind, updated as the program develops., www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/topics/offshore-renewable-energy.
• California ISO (CAISO, grid operator), Interconnection queue and transmission planning, where you can see which central coast connection studies are underway., www.caiso.com.
• CleanPowerSF (SFPUC program page), The city program that buys your electricity, useful for how local supply and procurement decisions actually get made., www.cleanpowersf.org.
• Humboldt Bay Harbor District, The port district rebuilding the North Coast assembly terminal that much of California's floating wind depends on., humboldtbay.org.