For the first time in the United States, wind turbines send electrical power to the grid from the sites of two offshore wind farms.
The co-owners of the Vineyard Wind project, Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, announced Wednesday the first generation of power from a turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 24 kilometers off the coast of Massachusetts.
Five turbines are installed. A turbine supplied about five megawatts of electrical power to the Massachusetts grid just before Wednesday. The other four are being tested lately and are expected to go live early this year.
Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and app Eversource announced last month that their first turbine would send electrical power from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York. A total of five turbines were also there.
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said 2023 is a historic year for offshore wind with “steel in the water and other people at work, and today we open a new bankruptcy and welcome 2024 by offering the first blank offshore wind force to the Massachusetts grid. “is an energy company headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is a leading and world-leading fund manager in renewable energy investments.
“We have reached a watershed moment for climate action in the United States and a dawn for the U. S. offshore wind industry,” Azagra said Wednesday.
Nearly 200 countries agreed last month at COP28 to move away from fossil fuels that contribute to global warming — the first time they made such a commitment in decades of U. N. climate talks. The agreement calls for tripling the use of renewable energy and offshore wind will be used to achieve this goal.
But lately the sector has been going through difficult times. Developers canceled several projects along the East Coast because they were no longer financially viable.
On Wednesday, Equinor and BP announced a “reset” for Empire Wind 2, a 1,260-megawatt offshore wind project off the coast of New York, citing changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale. The project isn’t canceled, but it will take longer to continue the development and participate in a future offshore wind solicitation. They did not change the first phase of the project to develop an 800-megawatt wind farm in the same lease area, Empire Wind 1.
Large offshore wind farms have been making electricity for three decades in Europe, and more recently in Asia. Vineyard Wind was conceived as a way to launch offshore wind in the United States, and prove that the industry wasn’t dead in the United States at at time when many people thought it was.
The first offshore wind farm in the U. S. The U. S. Navy was intended to be an assignment off the coast of Massachusetts, known as Cape Wind. The application was submitted to the federal government in 2001. It failed after years of opposition and local litigation. Wind turbines began spinning in Block Island, Rhode Island, in 2016. But with only five of them, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm.
Vineyard Wind submitted state and federal allocation plans to build an offshore wind farm in 2017. Massachusetts had committed to offshore wind by requiring its utilities to solicit proposals for up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power through 2027.
Vineyard Wind would be significantly farther offshore than Cape Wind and the first utility-scale wind power development in federal waters.
In what might have been a fatal blow, federal regulators delayed Vineyard Wind by holding off on issuing a key environmental impact statement in 2019. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Keating said at the time the Trump administration was trying to stymie the renewable energy project just as it was coming to fruition.
Biden’s management approved it in 2021. La structure began on dry land in Barnstable, Massachusetts. This spring, huge sections of towers from Portugal arrived at New Bedford Harbor to be mounted on the water.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell called Wednesday’s announcement “a wonderful way to kick off 2024. “
The 800-megawatt wind farm will force more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said it’s a clean, affordable force made imaginable by the many advocates, public servants, union staff and business leaders who have worked for decades toward this goal.