Orsted has appointed Declan Flanagan as executive vice president to lead its onshore wind, solar and battery storage business, which has been growing rapidly since it acquired US project developer and operator Lincoln Clean Energy for $580m in October 2018.

The move coincides with the Danish company’s decision to fully integrate Lincoln and re-brand it as Orsted Onshore.

Flanagan, chief executive of Lincoln, a company he founded in 2009, was also named to Orsted’s executive committee. Through Lincoln, Orsted over the last 13 months has made aggressive moves in the US onshore renewables space.

Last November, it made national news here by securing two long term PPAs with ExxonMobil totaling 500MW from wind and solar PV projects that will help power its operations in the Permian Basin in Texas, the nation’s leading oil and natural gas producing region.

From that deal, Orsted began construction this month of its first utility-scale PV plus battery storage project – the 460MW Permian Energy Center due to come online in mid-2021.

In May, Orsted acquired the multi-gigawatt utility-scale solar PV and battery storage development portfolio of California-based developer Coronal Energy. Two months later it bought a 103MW construction-ready wind project from Pattern Energy in South Dakota and is developing other wind facilities on its own.

Orsted is also the pacesetter in US offshore wind with one pilot wind farm in operation along the east coast, five utility-scale projects – three in joint ventures (JV) – with power off-take agreements and three others in JV development.

Wind

Flanagan to lead Orsted Onshore as Lincoln rebadged in US