Power for 30,000 Massachusetts homes generated by Vineyard Wind - WCVB Boston

Power for 30,000 Massachusetts homes generated by Vineyard Wind

Offshore wind farm milestone: Power for 30,000 Massachusetts homes generated by Vineyard Wind

Sixty-eight megawatts of electricity, enough to power 30,000 Massachusetts homes, is now being generated and fed to the New England Electric grid in a significant milestone for the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the nation.

Five of the massive GE Haliade-X turbines of the Vineyard Wind 1 project are now operating at full capacity, four others are already installed, and work is underway on a tenth, according to Thursday's announcement from Gov. Maura Healey's administration.

When the project is completed, it will consist of 62 turbines located approximately 14 miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, generating enough electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. Its impact is expected to reduce carbon emissions by more than 1.6 million metric tons per year, the equivalent of taking 325,000 cars off the road.

The project is also expected to save consumers $1.4 billion during its first 20 years of operation, according to the administration.

“This marks a turning point in the clean energy transition. After many decades of advocacy, research, policymaking, and finally construction, America’s offshore wind industry has gone from a dream to reality,” Healey said in a statement.

“With a surge of clean power from Vineyard Wind to the Massachusetts grid, we’ve entered a new era of energy production in the US,” said Klaus S. Moeller, CEO of Vineyard Wind.

“Each rotation of the blades, and every megawatt flowing to homes across Massachusetts, is a testament to the years of perseverance and partnership that have defined this trailblazing project," said Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra, whose company is behind the project along with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

Avangrid is an energy company headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is a large fund manager that specializes in renewable energy investments.

Video below: Early look at development of Vineyard Wind

Vineyard Wind submitted state and federal project 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 by 2027.

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.

The Biden administration signed off on it in 2021. Construction began onshore in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Last spring, massive tower sections from Portugal arrived at the Port of New Bedford to be assembled out on the water.

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.

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, but 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.

Last year, an 800-foot-tall turbine from a project off the coast of easter Long Island began feeding power to the grid. That project, called South Fork Wind, is expected to grow to 12 turbines feeding enough power for more than 70,000 homes.