New York's first offshore wind project starts delivering electricity

An 800-foot tall turbine off the coast of eastern Long Island has begun sending electricity to the U.S. grid from what's set to be the country's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, beating the Massachusetts-based Vineyard Wind project for the distinction by a matter of weeks.

Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced Wednesday the first electricity from what will be a 12 turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York.

It’s a milestone many years in the making, but a modest step toward the amount of clean electricity experts say is needed to address climate change.

South Fork's working turbine is not alone in the water; a second is complete and undergoing testing before it can begin producing power. When all 12 turbines are spinning by early next year, the wind farm will be able to generate 132 megawatts of offshore wind energy, enough 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.

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 the coast of 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 United States, South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind. Vineyard Wind will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. It has not started generating power yet, the developer said Monday. They’re installing and testing five turbines first.

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. Ørsted announced it's cancelling 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 the company wanted. Developers in New England recently canceled power contacts too, saying their projects were no longer financially feasible. The series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry jeopardizes the clean energy goals.

Other projects though, are advancing. Ørsted is moving forward with Eversource on construction of Revolution Wind, Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm. The 704-megawatt project will power roughly 400,000 homes. Tower sections, blades and nacelles are expected to begin arriving in New London as early as this spring.