Up-close look at early development of $4B wind farm off Massachusetts coast - WCVB Boston

Up-close look at early development of Vineyard Wind project off Mass. coast

Up-close look at early development of $4B wind farm off Massachusetts coast

The company behind Vineyard Wind, the nation's first commercial-scale offshore wind project, provided an up-close look at the early stages of development happening off the Massachusetts coast.

The company, Avangrid, arranged a tour of the construction site for Vineyard Wind 1, which is about 15 miles south of Martha's Vineyard.

Foundations are already in place for the wind farm's 62 wind turbines, which will be one nautical mile apart from each other. The electricity generated by the dozens of 850-foot-tall turbines will be fed into a remotely-operated substation, which will then send the power back to shore through underwater cables.

"All of the cables are buried under the sea bed and, compared to fossil generation or other methods to generate power, this is one of the most environmentally conscious," said Sy Oytan, who is Avangrid's deputy chief executive officer of Vineyard Wind.

Vineyard Wind 1 will produce 800 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. State Rep. Jeffrey Roy, who was part of Wednesday's tour, co-chairs the joint committee that oversees energy and said one of the many benefits of the $4 billion investment in clean, renewable energy will be the state's reduced dependence on energy from other states and countries.

"We haven't had energy independence in over 100 years. It was whale oil in New Bedford that lit the land 100 years ago," Roy said. "We're going to be back to energy independence, which means stability in pricing and those price hikes that we see, that are seasonal, are going to go away."

Vineyard Wind will end up creating thousands of jobs when combining the work done during the construction phase and the workers who will be employed once the wind farm is fully operational.

"These jobs are going to give a lot of union members a lot of work and be able to build within their own communities," said John Dunderdale, the business manager of the Piledrivers and Divers Local 56.

Oytan said the turbines will begin to be installed at Vineyard Wind 1 next week and that the wind farm will be exporting its first power to the grid in October.