Opinion: Keeping the lights on with offshore wind

The bursts of hot weather that we all experienced during our bumpy transition towards summer during May 2026 strained our regional electricity grid, echoing the particularly intense pressure on the grid during the brutal cold of winter. But during both those hot days and the harsh winter hours a new resource was available to keep the lights on: the new offshore wind farms augmenting our regional wind energy fleet,

Vineyard Wind, which is now in commercial operation after installing all its turbines, and Revolution Wind, which has already started producing power while still in construction, are now the largest components of a regional wind power fleet that is now regularly producing over a gigawatt of power – roughly what’s drawn from the grid to power about a million New England homes (elsewhere in the U.S., where homes are less efficient, that number would be smaller).

Those offshore wind farms are part of a portfolio of energy resources that meet our electricity needs. That portfolio also includes the solar power that is so valuable during sunny summer days and the beginning of what looks to be a massive wave of regional deployment of utility-scale batteries – following in the footsteps of Texas and California, which have shown the nation how batteries that it is possible efficiently shift power from one time of day to another.

An energy portfolio must do more than keep the lights on – it needs to keep costs stable and reasonable, ensuring that energy spending stays local, creates jobs and boosts the economy. Offshore wind farms do just that, maintaining energy affordability and pulling in the direction of local reinvestment. In stark contrast to power costs driven by volatile fossil fuel prices, wind farms sell their power through stable, long-term contracts, insulating customers from market swings thanks to their “fuel” (wind!) being free. 

Offshore wind farms are also massive local projects that employ thousands of local workers and suppliers during development and construction, and hundreds of operating employees during the decades that follow. Focusing our energy expenditures on projects that employ our neighbors and cultivate local industry makes a lot more sense than providing revenue to fossil fuel producers located in other states—or even countries.

The reality of fossil fuel economics makes even less sense when you consider the administration’s legally questionable deals to “buy out” planned offshore wind projects under the premise that those funds will be channeled toward fossil fuel infrastructure. Those deals are now the subject of a lawsuit by a coalition of seven states that could benefit from offshore wind (led by New York and including Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut). But if those “deals” go forward as planned, we will face the once inconceivable situation of spending U.S. taxpayer money to prevent creation of valuable local energy assets in favor of helping U.S. fossil fuels get sent overseas.

People want their leaders to focus on what’s happening at home. Considering the practical reality of our recent hot spells, it is striking to consider where we could be with even one more of the offshore wind projects that have been purposely sidetracked by the federal government was in place.

Beginning at sundown on March 19, New Englanders reached for their air conditioners to get through an unusually warm mid-March night. During that time, wind generation in New England — with much of it coming from offshore wind — ramping up to well over one gigawatt by early morning March 20. Had a wind farm like the once imminent SouthCoast Wind project been spinning that night, demand from hundreds of thousands more air-conditioned New England homes could have been satisfied by that facility. Instead, the regional grid operator drew on natural gas fired power plants and high polluting oil-fired generation as the wholesale price of electricity moved past $400 megawatt/hour – literally 10 times the price that same market saw earlier that day, due to skyrocketing demand and limited supply.

This is part of the real consequences of stopping planned offshore wind projects. The federal government doesn’t cover the cost of those overnight electricity prices—they flow directly into a household’s monthly utility bill.  

Burning natural gas and oil during the heat of the night is literally burning money while adding pollution to the air. It is not too late to advance projects like SouthCoast Wind and the other offshore wind energy projects that have been needlessly sidelined.  

Seizing those opportunities would be an essential step towards meeting New England’s energy needs without resorting to panicked use of expensive fossil fuel plants during a dark and hot night.

Seth Kaplan is vice president of Grid Strategies LLC and a former employee of SouthCoast Wind (formerly Mayflower) who helped set up the relationship between the project and the SouthCoast Community Foundation as well as the other Ocean Winds offshore wind project.