Last year three space-constrained states in the northeastern US – Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – launched the so-called New England Clean Energy Request for Proposal, attracting more than 2GW worth of project bids in Maine alone from many of North America’s pre-eminent wind developers.

Developers had expected the winners to be notified in July or August. But the RFP’s evaluators issued a statement this week saying “additional time is needed” as a result of the “complexity of the analysis and the volume of bids”.

“We