OFFSHORE WIND TURBINE STARTS SENDING ELECTRICITY ONTO GRID
Progress in N.Y. builds foundation for other U.S. projects to follow
Despite some recent financial setbacks, U.S. offshore wind power has hit a milestone. An 800-foottall turbine is now sending electricity onto the grid from a commercial-scale offshore wind farm on pace to be the country’s first.
The moment is years in the making and at the same time a modest advance in what experts say needs to be a major buildout of this type of clean electricity to address climate change.
Danish wind energy developer Orsted and the utility Eversource announced Wednesday the first electricity from what will be a 12turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles east of Montauk Point, N.Y. It will be New York’s first offshore wind farm.
Orsted and Eversource met Wednesday with New York officials to celebrate this “first power” milestone, in East Hampton, N.Y., where the wind farm connects to the onshore electric grid. They say the achievement builds a foundation for other large U.S. offshore wind farms that will follow.
So far, two of the 11-megawatt turbines are up. The second is undergoing testing, then it can begin producing power too. When the other 10 are spinning and South Fork opens by early next year, it will be able to generate 132 megawatts of offshore wind energy to power more than 70,000 homes.
The first power announcement is “an incredible moment in the American clean energy story,” said Stephanie McClellan, executive director of the nonprofit Turn Forward, which advocates for offshore wind. She said South Fork will be a source of clean, reliable, domestically-produced energy.
Offshore wind is central to New York’s plan to transition to a carbon-free electricity system by 2040. The state aims to install 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035.
“New York’s nation-leading efforts to generate reliable, renewVineyard
able clean energy have reached a major milestone,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Wednesday. “South Fork Wind will power thousands of homes, create good-paying union jobs and demonstrate to all that offshore wind is a viable resource New York can harness for generations to come.”
Some Long Island residents at first objected on both environmental and aesthetic grounds to the transmission line running through their community. In a lawsuit, four alleged that trenching under roads would spread contaminated groundwater. A judge dismissed their complaint in July.
The project has also overcome objections from fishers and some environmentalists.
Large offshore wind farms have been making electricity for three decades in Europe, and more recently in Asia. The first U.S. offshore wind farm was supposed to be a project off Massachusetts known as Cape Wind. The application was submitted to the federal government in 2001. It failed after years of local opposition and litigation.
Turbines began turning off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016. But with just five of them, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm.
Currently there are two commercial offshore wind farms under construction in the U.S., South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind.
Wind will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off Massachusetts. It has not started generating power yet, the developer said Monday. They’re installing and testing five turbines first.
At State Pier in New London, Conn., blades and massive tower sections for South Fork are lined up, ready to leave port for the sea where they will be erected in the coming weeks. The nacelles that house the generator for each wind turbine are there, too.
On Monday, a barge carrying three blades and a nacelle for the third turbine left port.
Large, ocean-based wind farms are a linchpin of government plans to shift to renewable energy in populous East Coast states with limited land for wind turbines or solar arrays. The Biden administration aims to power 10 million homes with offshore wind by 2030 and establish a carbon-free electric grid five years later.
But the industry has had hard times recently. Orsted announced it is canceling two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits it wanted. Developers in New England recently canceled power contacts too, saying their projects were no longer financially feasible.