- Vineyard Wind has announced the first delivery of power to the grid from one of its turbines located 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.
- Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said this is a historic moment for the U.S. offshore wind industry, bringing clean power to the Massachusetts power grid.
- The U.S. offshore wind industry faces challenges, including project cancellations due to concerns about financial feasibility.
For the first time in the United States, turbines from the sites of two large offshore wind farms are feeding power into the grid.
Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, co-owners of the Vineyard Wind project, announced Wednesday that the 62-turbine wind farm located 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts will generate initial power from a single turbine. announced that it would supply the
Five turbines are installed there. Just before midnight Wednesday, one turbine pumped about 5 megawatts of power into the Massachusetts power grid. His remaining four units are undergoing testing and are expected to be operational early this year.
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Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and power company Eversource announced last month that the company's first turbines will transmit power from South Fork Wind, a 12-turbine wind farm located 55 miles east of Montauk Point, New York. Announced. A total of five turbines are now installed there as well.
Huge wind turbine blades from the Vineyard Winds project are stacked on racks at the port in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on July 11, 2023. The Vineyard Winds project has announced the first delivery of electricity to the grid from one of its turbines located 15 miles away. Massachusetts coast. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Pedro Azagra, CEO of Avangrid, said 2023 will be a historic year for offshore wind, saying: “There's steel in the water and people working. Today, we're entering a new chapter. “We will begin 2024 by delivering the first clean offshore wind power to the Massachusetts power grid.” Avangrid is an energy company headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is a large fund manager and global leader in renewable energy investments.
“We have reached a turning point in climate action in the United States, and the dawn of the U.S. offshore wind industry,” Asagura said in a statement Wednesday.
At last month's COP28, nearly 200 countries agreed to move away from fossil fuels that cause global warming. This is the first time in decades of UN climate change talks that this important commitment has been made. The agreement calls for tripling the use of renewable energy, and offshore wind power will be essential to achieving that goal.
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However, the industry has been in a tough spot lately. Developers have canceled several projects along the East Coast, saying they are no longer financially viable.
Equinor and BP on Wednesday announced a “reset” of Empire Wind 2, a 1,260-megawatt offshore wind project off the coast of New York, citing changing economic conditions across the industry. The project will not be canceled, but it will take more time to continue development and participate in future offshore wind calls. They did not make any changes to the first phase of the project, which will develop an 800-megawatt wind farm called “Empire Wind 1” in the same lease area.
Large offshore wind farms have been producing electricity in Europe for 30 years and more recently in Asia. Vineyard Wind was conceived as a way to kickstart offshore wind power generation in the United States and prove that the industry was far from dead in the United States at a time when many thought it was.
The first offshore wind farm in the United States was to be a project off the coast of Massachusetts known as Cape Wind. This application was submitted to the federal government in his 2001, but the application failed after years of local opposition and litigation. Turbine launched his spinoff in 2016 in Block Island, Rhode Island. But there are only five of them, and they are not commercial-scale wind farms.
Vineyard Wind filed state and federal project plans to build an offshore wind farm in 2017. Massachusetts has been working on offshore wind power by requiring utilities to solicit proposals for up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2027.
Vineyard Wind is located further offshore than Cape Wind and will be the first utility-scale wind power development in federal waters.
In what could have been a crushing blow, federal regulators delayed Vineyard Wind's operations in 2019 by not issuing a significant environmental impact statement. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., said at the time that the Trump administration was trying to block renewable energy projects. It was bearing fruit.
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The Biden administration signed the plan into law in 2021, and construction began on land in Barnstable, Massachusetts. This spring, a huge tower section arrived in New Bedford Harbor from Portugal and was assembled on the water.
Bedford's new mayor, John Mitchell, said Wednesday's announcement was a “great way to kick off 2024.”
The 800-megawatt wind farm will provide power to more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. This is clean, affordable energy, made possible by the many advocates, public servants, union members, and business leaders who worked for decades to achieve this outcome, said Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. He said it had become.
