Orsted, a giant in offshore wind farms, makes his way to the United States

Orsted, a Danish company that ranks among the world's largest developers of offshore wind energy, announced Monday that it would buy out a competitor from Rhode Island, Deepwater Wind, for $ 510 million, a sign that states United States become an attractive market for offshore energy. generators.

Orsted has a global portfolio of projects in countries such as Britain, Germany and Taiwan, as well as in Denmark. But this year, it failed win a bidding process organized by Massachusetts to develop what is probably the largest offshore wind facility in the United States.

The acquisition of Deepwater Wind appears to be Orsted's attempt to better navigate the regulatory and political systems of the United States.

In a statement, Martin Neubert, Orsted's chief executive for offshore wind, cited "Deepwater Wind's long-standing expertise in initiating, developing and approving offshore wind projects in the US" .

Deepwater Wind, headquartered in Providence, RI, and owned by D. E. Shaw, a hedge fund, appears to have the gift of doing business. It built the first offshore wind farm off the United States, a five-turbine facility off Block Island, in its original state, commissioned in 2016.

The company has several other projects underway, including one that is expected to generate significant amounts of electricity for Rhode Island and Connecticut from an area off Martha's Vineyard.

In an interview, Mr. Neubert suggested that Orsted should act after failing to win the contract with Massachusetts and the other for a project off the coast of Connecticut.

It was clear, Neubert said, that the offshore market in the United States would grow rapidly in the coming years and that Orsted wanted to be in a good position to face the competition.

"For us, the US offshore wind market is a very attractive and strategically important market," he said.

Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said his company is looking for investors or partners to give it the scale and expertise to compete in what could become a much larger industry. D.E. Shaw was also interested in taking advantage of his investment.

A new entity created as a result of this agreement, Orsted US Offshore Wind, will be headed by Mr. Grybowski and Orsted's head of North America, Thomas Brostrom.

The two men said that Orsted could rely on his expertise to build and manage the projects awarded by Deepwater. "They can build big, complicated things in the middle of the ocean," Grybowski said.

Northern European countries, such as Denmark, Britain and Germany, dominated offshore wind, which, until recently, required significant subsidies to be economically viable. Costs have been falling rapidly in recent years, and developers, including Orsted, have agreed to build some projects without subsidies.

By paying more than $ 500 million for a relatively small company with only one wind farm, Orsted seems to confirm that the United States is considered the next big source of growth for this sector.

Lower costs for offshore projects have attracted the attention of electricity suppliers and investors in the United States, especially in the shallow waters off the northeastern and central Atlantic littoral states. By planting large turbine batteries at the bottom of the sea, developers say they can build large facilities that are mostly out of sight of the land, while still being easily accessible in major cities such as Boston and New York.