A record-breaking auction buoyed the U.S. offshore wind industry last Friday when a “bidding bonanza” for three lease areas offshore Massachusetts yielded $405 million in winning bids. After 32 rounds of bidding spread across two days, provisional winners were announced for lease areas covering 390,000 acres (see map) in federal waters located south of both Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which conducted the auction, the three lease areas can support 4.1 gigawatts of wind generation capacity. The three winning bids each came in at $135 million.