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A judge in Boston has again denied GE Vernova’s request to leave the Vineyard Wind project. He affirmed his April ruling that temporarily bars the turbine supplier from exiting its contract to service and maintain the turbines.
GE Vernova submitted a request for Judge Peter B. Krupp to reconsider his preliminary injunction, arguing that Vineyard Wind achieving commercial operation and activating its power purchase agreements (thereby locking in a decadeslong revenue stream) belies the project’s earlier argument that it was in great financial and operational peril.
Vineyard Wind secured the injunction “based on this apocalyptic characterization of the project,” argued GEV’s attorney Jennifer Brooks Crozier in a Boston courtroom on May 13.
But Krupp disagreed. “The new information is not really new,” he wrote in an opinion issued Monday.
Vineyard Wind’s activation of the power purchase agreements, the judge wrote, “does not change the fact that the Project requires GER’s expertise and proprietary know-how to bring the turbines up to operational capacity.”
The judge took the matter under advisement for 19 days before ruling. During that deliberation, GEV on May 18 appealed the preliminary injunction.
The activation of the power purchase agreements, which Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced on April 27, is a major milestone that Vineyard Wind had said in filings was critical in order for the project to be financially viable. The agreements require electric utilities to purchase energy from the project starting on its commercial operation date and continuing for 20 years.
However, if the project achieves commercial operation with a “capacity deficiency,” it can exercise a “capacity downsize option,” but has to pay damages, which Vineyard Wind is accruing now. Vineyard Wind announced it reached its commercial operation date on April 24.
Vineyard Wind says the turbines are not performing at full capacity and that GE Vernova needs to do more work on them to fix that.
“The wind farm continues to produce less than half of its expected capacity, which is well below what is needed for the Project to comply with its financing obligations,” wrote Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller in a May court filing. “The Project cannot survive at its current levels of actual power production.”
During the hearing and in recent filings, the companies revealed more about the state of the project: 36 of the 62 turbines are not spinning, with fewer operating since the previous hearing, said Vineyard Wind’s attorney Francis Bivens in court on May 13.
The Light visited the wind farm on May 2. Reporters were at the site for over an hour and observed about 15 turbines spinning amid 10-knot winds. The others were at a standstill.
“We’ve gone backwards in terms of power production,” Bivens said in court on May 13. She said the idea that GEV can hand its remaining work to subcontractors and “not cause this project to fail is simply not believable.”
GEV says of the 200 workers still on the project, only 30% are GEV employees; the rest are subcontractors. A majority of the turbines passed a “trial run,” meaning they operated for 240 hours without intervention or assistance, the turbine supplier told the court.
Moeller said GEV is still “retrofitting” and working on turbines. The turbines that are spinning are being operated by GEV from Barcelona, Spain, Bivens said.
Crozier said GEV won’t immediately abandon the project, but will attend to deficiencies identified before contract termination. As for the subcontractors, GEV said it will share proprietary information to ensure they can complete outstanding work.
The injunction has barred GEV from exiting its contract with the project, which it planned to do on April 28. The contract agreement commits GEV to service and maintain the turbines for the next few years.
Breaking down the numbers
The filings from both companies include a lot of numbers and percentages for different measures.
A recent Vineyard Wind court filing says GEV’s turbines are contractually required to generate the 806-megawatt nameplate capacity at a “97% production availability rate.” Production availability rate is tied to how frequently the turbines are available to come online and generate power, whether at a low or high output.
Actual output is separate. Due to downtime for maintenance and variable weather conditions, a wind farm’s output is measured with capacity factor.
Offshore wind farms have a capacity factor of about 50% (meaning a wind farm with a 100-megawatt nameplate capacity will produce 50 megawatts on average). If the capacity factor for Vineyard Wind is close to 50%, it means the project on average will pump 400 megawatts into the grid.
Moeller in a filing said actual output has been hovering at around 300 megawatts. He said the maximum theoretical output at this time is 75% of nameplate capacity (which would be about 600 megawatts).
Our offshore wind tracker: What’s new with wind projects off Massachusetts and beyond?
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GEV says it wants to exit the contract because Vineyard Wind owes it more than $300 million. Vineyard Wind, in contrast, says it is owed more than $800 million, with costs stemming from the catastrophic failure of a turbine blade in July 2024.
Meanwhile, in federal court, Vineyard Wind’s attorneys are busy challenging the federal government’s December 2025 suspension order. Though the 90-day order was preliminarily halted and has since expired, Vineyard Wind argues the project is still imperiled absent a final judgment. The federal government, on the other hand, argues the case is moot and needn’t be tried further.
In a joint status report filed last month, both Vineyard Wind and the Interior Department proposed a monthslong case schedule should the federal judge agree with Vineyard Wind and proceed to final judgment on the case challenging the suspension order.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
