For the primary time in america, generators are sending electrical energy to the grid from the websites of two giant offshore wind farms.
The joint homeowners of the Winery Wind mission, Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Companions, introduced Wednesday the primary electrical energy from one turbine at what shall be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles (24 kilometers) off the coast of Massachusetts.
5 generators are put in there. One turbine delivered about 5 megawatts of energy to the Massachusetts grid simply earlier than midnight Wednesday. The opposite 4 are present process testing and ought to be working early this 12 months.
Danish wind vitality developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced last month that their first turbine was sending electrical energy from what shall be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Level, New York. Now, a complete of 5 generators have been put in there too.
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra mentioned 2023 was a historic 12 months for offshore wind with “steel in the water and people at work, and today, we begin a new chapter and welcome 2024 by delivering the first clean offshore wind power to the grid in Massachusetts.” Avangrid is an vitality firm headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Copenhagen Infrastructure Companions is a big fund supervisor and world chief in renewable vitality investments.
“We’ve arrived at a watershed moment for climate action in the U.S., and a dawn for the American offshore wind industry,” Azagra mentioned in a press release Wednesday.
Nearly 200 countries agreed last month at COP28 to maneuver away from planet-warming fossil fuels — the primary time they’ve made that essential pledge in many years of U.N. local weather talks. The deal requires tripling the usage of renewable vitality, and offshore wind shall be essential to assembly that concentrate on.
However the {industry} has had arduous occasions just lately. Developers have canceled several projects alongside the East Coast, saying they have been not financially possible.
On Wednesday, Equinor and BP introduced a “reset” for Empire Wind 2, a 1,260-megawatt offshore wind mission off the coast of New York, citing modified financial circumstances on an industry-wide scale. The mission isn’t canceled, however it would take longer to proceed the event and take part in a future offshore wind solicitation. They didn’t change the primary part of the mission to develop an 800-megawatt wind farm in the identical lease space, Empire Wind 1.
Massive offshore wind farms have been making electrical energy for 3 many years in Europe, and extra just lately in Asia. Winery Wind was conceived as a method to launch offshore wind in america, and show that the {industry} wasn’t lifeless in america at at time when many individuals thought it was.
The primary U.S. offshore wind farm was imagined to be a mission off the coast of Massachusetts generally known as Cape Wind. The appliance was submitted to the federal authorities in 2001. It failed after years of native opposition and litigation. Generators started spinning off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016. However with simply 5 of them, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm.
Winery Wind submitted state and federal mission plans to construct an offshore wind farm in 2017. Massachusetts had dedicated to offshore wind by requiring its utilities to solicit proposals for as much as 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2027.
Winery Wind could be considerably farther offshore than Cape Wind and the primary utility-scale wind energy improvement in federal waters.
In what may need been a deadly blow, federal regulators delayed Winery Wind by holding off on issuing a key environmental affect assertion in 2019. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Keating mentioned on the time the Trump administration was attempting to stymie the renewable vitality mission simply because it was coming to fruition.
The Biden administration signed off on it in 2021. Building started onshore in Barnstable, Massachusetts. This spring, large tower sections from Portugal arrived on the Port of New Bedford to be assembled out on the water.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell mentioned Wednesday’s announcement is a “great way to kick off 2024.”
The 800-megawatt wind farm will energy greater than 400,000 properties and companies in Massachusetts. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey mentioned that is clear, inexpensive vitality made attainable by the various advocates, public servants, union staff and enterprise leaders who labored for many years to perform this achievement.
