With the wind at its back, Vineyard Wind crosses the finish line

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A crew of Americans and Europeans, assisted by a heavy lift crane and high-tech bolting tools, hoisted and secured the 186th and final blade at Vineyard Wind on Friday, closing the lengthy chapter on the project installation, and cementing the “Forever First” project as the second but now largest commercial-scale offshore wind farm to power American homes. 

Though South Fork Wind beat it to full power, Vineyard Wind was the first to go through some of the key regulatory processes. The project, which began with a lease auction in 2015, was marked by high-profile incidents and wound up not once, but twice, subject to a presidential administration that really doesn’t like it. 

Its development spanned a whopping four presidential administrations, illustrating the industry’s significant vulnerability to the swinging political pendulum that can upend anything from permitting to tax subsidies. 

After costly suspensions and delays, Vineyard Wind in recent weeks has been racing to get its final blades in the water before losing its installation vessel on March 31 — and before any final court action was taken in its pending lawsuit against the Trump administration over alleged national security concerns. 

The final blade was installed early Friday evening, a worker on the project told The Light. 

Though the wind farm is physically installed, a few more boxes need to be checked before it pushes the lever to full operation. An unknown number of turbines, the last to be installed, will have to undergo commissioning and testing before they can be brought online. 

Vineyard Wind did not respond to questions. In a statement Friday night, spokesperson Craig Gilvarg confirmed the project “completed its offshore construction program” and continues to deliver power to the grid.

Mayor Jon Mitchell, whose championing of offshore wind dates back more than a decade, highlighted the city’s central role in the project. 

The final blade installation “represents the closing argument of the case we have been making for years: that New Bedford is well-suited to be a center of the offshore wind industry,” Mitchell said in a written statement. “No matter when the next projects are ready to proceed, we and our many partners have shown that the industry can successfully compete and operate projects from here while working cooperatively with the fishing industry.” 

Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner for the state’s Department of Energy Resources, in a statement Friday said the state is “thrilled the Vineyard Wind project is so close to completion.” 

She said the project will provide $1.4 billion in electricity bill savings in the first 20 years. 

“The affordable, homegrown power it will deliver to Massachusetts residents and businesses cannot come soon enough,” Mahony wrote. 

The $4.5 billion project brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the Massachusetts economy and New Bedford, particularly during the construction phase that utilized the state’s port terminal, businesses and thousands of union and nonunion workers. 

The first turbine shipped out of port in September 2023 to head to the lease site, which sits about 15 miles south of Nantucket; the last exited more than two years later in late January. 

The installation period was prolonged by a July 2024 blade failure that required removal and replacement of already installed blades. (Because of that, Vineyard Wind’s employment and economic impact figures may be higher than one can expect for other offshore wind projects.) 

Last year, Vineyard Wind sent enough electricity to shore to power tens of thousands of homes, according to federal data. Between October and December, Vineyard Wind sold about 410,378,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, about three times as much as it sold in July, August and September. 

The project is 800 megawatts, but that’s the nameplate capacity — the amount of energy it could generate if its turbines ran 100% of the time at optimal wind speeds. 

In reality, a wind turbine’s output ranges, affected by wind speeds and downtime for maintenance, so its average output will be lower. 

Once the project reaches “commercial operation date” (also known as COD) with all 62 turbines generating power, its fixed price for energy will be activated. 

The project’s power purchase agreement with electric utility companies sets a competitive price. Without it activated, ratepayers have at times been paying higher than necessary prices, according to state energy officials and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. 

“Massachusetts ratepayers will have to pay at least $11 million more in direct wholesale energy market costs between January 2026 and March 2026 without the Project operating at full capacity,” the office said in January. “And there are additional foregone benefits, as Vineyard Wind’s stable contract price is particularly valuable in cold winter months when the electric grid is constrained and market energy prices are volatile.”

According to the state’s energy department, Vineyard Wind and other renewable energy sources can push more expensive generators out of the “supply stack,” as the grid operator calls it, bringing down wholesale prices for energy. 

GE Vernova, which supplied the turbines, through a spokesperson, declined to answer questions earlier this month about what commissioning work remains for the turbines, and whether GE Vernova staff will exclusively handle Vineyard Wind’s operations and maintenance phase for the first few years. 

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which operates the New Bedford terminal that Vineyard Wind has used as a staging area, also declined The Light’s interview request with its director of offshore wind, Bruce Carlisle. 

“MassCEC continues to support Vineyard Wind as its installation work at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal (NBMCT) moves towards completion,” said Carlisle in an email through a spokesperson earlier this month. “As that work concludes, terminal activities will wind down accordingly. We will continue working with Vineyard Wind as they progress their demobilization at NBMCT and hand back the site to MassCEC.”

At the terminal on Friday, three blades remained, partially covered in plastic. It wasn’t clear whether they are extra blades or removed, faulty old blades. Elsewhere, blue metal cages that once held components were now tightly packed together. The tall, red crane that did years of heavy lifting was still stationed near the quayside. 

Reflecting on the past and future for offshore wind

Offshore wind farms can be considered “megaprojects” with “notoriously long time frames,” said Elizabeth J. Wilson, professor of energy policy at Dartmouth College. 

“They are very complex politically as well as institutionally,” she said, adding that the United States has done a good job at taking something that’s already hard and “making it next to impossible.”

With that in mind, Wilson said it’s a major success that Vineyard Wind reached this stage. 

The project faced two major setbacks. In July 2024, the catastrophic blade failure led to an investigation and months of delays. Then, at the close of 2025, the Trump administration suspended the project, along with four others, over alleged national security concerns. It paused project buildout for weeks before a judge in late January temporarily lifted the suspension. 

Joshua Kaplowitz, an environmental lawyer with Troutman Pepper Locke LLP, called Vineyard Wind a “pioneer.” He was an attorney at the Interior Department, counseling the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a few years as the project entered and went through the regulatory process. 

“I have to credit Vineyard Wind for sheer perseverance. It’s been a rollercoaster,” he said. “They’ve stuck it out and persevered through a lot of challenges, including going through the process during the first Trump administration.”

Amid the industry headwinds, Vineyard Wind joins two offshore projects in the northeast that are fully installed, but much smaller in size: Block Island Wind Farm, five turbines; and South Fork Wind, 12 turbines. South Fork Wind came online in early 2024. 

Soon to follow is Orsted’s Revolution Wind, which was reportedly due to start sending power Friday. It sits northwest of Vineyard Wind and south of Rhode Island, where it will send power in addition to Connecticut.

As of this week, about 60 of its 65 turbines were in the water, according to satellite images. 

After that project wraps, it will be at least three years, or potentially many more, before another offshore wind farm to power New England gets built, experts predict. 

Massachusetts has been counting on offshore wind to meet its ambitious goals for clean energy, including a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2030. It has also been counting on two more projects to supply the electric grid in the 2030s, New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind. But they’ve been severely delayed and put at jeopardy by the Trump administration.

Avangrid, which co-developed Vineyard Wind, has plans to build New England Wind. But contract negotiations with the state have been repeatedly delayed, and the company is battling in court over a possible remand of its construction approval by the federal government. 

The federal government’s request to review its prior approval (which could result in the revocation of it), threatens New England Wind with “extinction,” wrote Avangrid’s attorneys in a January court filing. 

As for SouthCoast Wind, which was set to fill the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal with turbine components after Vineyard Wind, it’s also at risk. The federal government is currently evaluating whether it will revoke its construction approval for that project. 

“The U.S. was slated to be a really exciting big market. That’s not happening now,” Wilson said. 

Before President Donald Trump was re-elected, the industry was already facing challenges: supply chain bottlenecks, inflation, and interest rates, all of which made the projects more expensive to build. But Trump came and “drove the wooden stake” through the sector, she said. 

“We’re in a world where we’ve made this a political issue, whereas in other parts of the world, they just look at it as a good way to produce energy,” Wilson said. “My hope for offshore wind in New England is that it becomes not a big deal… make offshore wind boring.”

Kaplowitz said there’s a significant problem with projects taking too long to get through the regulatory and permitting process. Permitting reform has been on the table in the Senate, but Democrats stalled negotiations over the Trump administration’s suspensions of the five offshore wind projects under construction. 

Factoring in the current political situation, Kaplowitz wondered if Vineyard Wind or a project like it could make it through if it had started the process just a few years later. 

Vineyard Wind isn’t entirely out of the woods. Its lawsuit over the suspension order is still pending a final ruling. 

Like many in the offshore wind industry, Kaplowitz maintains hope. He hopes that people will see Vineyard Wind as a proof of concept for offshore wind. And he hopes it won’t be one of the last wind projects to stand in the Atlantic. 

“I hope people look at this as a sign of things to come,” he said, “and not as a sort of a monument to what could have been.”   

Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.

---