U.S. Grid Receiving First Ever Power from Offshore Wind Sites
Image courtesy of Ben Paulos under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
Offshore wind sites are sending electricity to the power grid for the first time in the U.S. The wind sites, located off the coast of Massachusetts and New York, started generating power in Jan. 2024. This is a great development for the electric utility industry on a number of levels, so I thought it would make a good topic for today’s blog post!
Details of the Offshore Wind Sites
The first one, the Vineyard Wind Project, is based 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and is jointly owned by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. A total of 5 turbines are currently installed at this location – 4 of them are undergoing testing and should be in operation within months. The fifth one delivered approximately 5 MW of power to the Massachusetts grid on 1/3/24. Ultimately, the plan is to construct a total of 62 turbines at this location.
The second one, which is being developed by Orsted and Eversource, will ultimately encompass 12 turbines 35 miles off the coast of Montauk Point, NY. So far, like the Vineyard Wind Project, 5 turbines have been installed.
This is terrific news for the U.S., and should help close the gap as it relates to the country’s aggressive clean energy goals. Although small-scale offshore wind is being utilized off the coast of Rhode Island, these new projects represent the first 2 utility-grade deployments. Large offshore wind sites have been delivering electricity in Europe for 30 years, and more recently in Asia as well. Hopefully, these 2 new U.S. projects will prove that largescale offshore wind can work here too.
I sincerely hope that these two projects will help jumpstart the offshore wind industry here in the U.S. Simply put, electricity demand is rising, which means we need more generation sources – especially renewable energy sources to help combat climate change. There’s little doubt, the growth and optimization of large offshore wind sites such as these will be critical for future generations.
