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Amid a continued clampdown on the offshore wind industry by the Trump administration, Vineyard Wind has quietly progressed with project buildout and reached 50% power production, meaning about half of the project’s 62 turbines are sending power to the Massachusetts grid.
“Vineyard Wind continues to make progress and is delivering needed power to the New England grid, with a current capacity over 400 Megawatts,” Craig Gilvarg, Vineyard Wind spokesperson, told The Light in an Oct. 1 email.
Executives from the project’s parent company, Iberdrola, told financial analysts in London last month that “50% of the turbines are exporting energy,” E&E News reported.
Gilvarg did not provide the number of turbines sending power, but 400 megawatts amounts to about half of the 806-megawatt project.
Reaching 30 turbines and 50% power represents progress since July, when company officials said 17 turbines were generating nearly 30% of the project’s power.
The 400 megawatts figure represents the nameplate capacity, which is the amount of energy a project 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; it varies on a given day, week, and month; and it underpins an important concept: capacity factor.
Offshore wind projects have a capacity factor ranging between about 40% and 50% (sometimes a bit higher). If a 100-megawatt project has a capacity factor of 50%, it produces 50 megawatts on average.
This summer, The Light estimated Vineyard Wind produced enough power over April, May and June to power about 33,000 homes. The Light based its estimates on federal data on energy sales from the project for those months.
Vineyard Wind has not provided details on the project’s capacity factor thus far. Generally, capacity factor increases in the winter, when wind speeds are higher and the turbines are able to spin closer to their maximum capacity.
Because of seasonal variability, this metric is best calculated over the course of one year.
ISO New England, the grid operator, publishes data on what resources are powering the grid at any given time. The company does not disclose the electrical output of specific projects, citing “confidentiality rules.”
Over 12 hours on Thursday, the output from wind energy across New England ranged from about 900 to 1,200 megawatts. (Some states have land-based turbines, including Massachusetts.)
Just over two years since it sent the first set of turbine components out, Vineyard Wind has about seven turbine towers left to install.
Satellite images from Oct. 5 reviewed by The Light, which capture the project’s expansive white blades popping against the atmospheric view of the Atlantic, showed 55 towers were standing (one of which still may be going up). Most of the towers have blades, but some don’t.
Last month, Vineyard Wind had only 10 “loadouts” to go, union workers told The Light — meaning 10 more barge shipments, which usually contain three blades, two tower pieces, and one nacelle.
New Bedford’s Marine Commerce Terminal, previously packed with blades, nacelles and towers for Vineyard Wind, has grown sparse, a result of a steady workflow during summer’s prime seafaring conditions.
After all 62 towers are installed, work may continue with the help of a second specialized installation vessel, the Wind Pace. Some blades installed before the July 2024 blade failure still need to be removed and replaced. The new replacement blades are coming from a French factory.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
And yet our Utility Bills continue to sky rocket and if you ask Eversource Customers the majority will tell you the economic relief promised with Wind was nothing more than a myth (We need a new Mayor in New Bedford).
Wind is the second cheapest source for electricity after solar. Your electric bill is going up due to high transmission costs for natural gas.
Sorry no one is buying that.
Not offshore wind! It’s actually the most expensive way to generate electricity. The state signed contracts that pays this project approximately $0.10 per kWh. Electricity generated from Nuclear is getting $0.055 and Natural Gas generation gets less than that in the wholesale market. Onshore wind is about the same as NG generation, but there is very little in New England and the conditions are not right for it here.
And electric rates are stlll going sky high. Why’s that?
Electricity and gas rates are so high because of corporate greed and lack of regulation on oil and gas. If you look at your bill, most of it is delivery charges.
Fuel costs.
While this sounds great, it hasn’t helped our electricity bills at all. Will it ever? Also after installation is finished these things are meant to be set it and forget it. How many jobs do these provide long term? Surely not as many as the fishing industry has(for generations), which also has the benefit of providing nutritious sustenance for hundreds of thousands of people.
To me this seems like a big money project that the people have been forced to pay for so a couple corporations can reap massive profits. Maybe it will end up benefiting the people one day and not be some giant profiteering virtue signal, but I have my doubts.
Vineyard Wind 1 alone will account 30+, $80,000+ a year jobs an ongoing basis. About the same as an equivalent size output hydrocarbon plant.
Zero fuel cost, zero emissions.
Who are the corporations reaping massive profits?
Are they owned by Conservatives?
Good reporting. The blade manufacturing problem set the project back due to shoddy work in France and Canada. That’s why the blades are not all in place and operating. The power generated is still a small fraction of the total used in New England and cannot affect the price of electricity very much. The jobs created peak during construction, but some will remain for regular maintenance. More wind farms should follow. Taking the long view, this is the way of the future.
Wind turbines lose by what is called “Parasitic power” refering to the electricity they consume from the grid to operate their internal systems, even when they are not generating power. This consumption can account for up to 25 percent depending on weather also the down time from maitenance.
Also politicians use the term steel in the water – salt water cuts the life of ocean turbines by years and the blade life is always much less than advertised – The federal government pays for up to 40 percent for the installations and the states building ports for them accounts for another 10 percent. It’s the most expensive power. We should be investing in SMR small safe modular reactors
25% of what value? Using the nameplate rating of 13MW per turbine would mean an internal demand of 3.25 MW. That’s 4,358 horsepower to put it in another unit. The power of more than 7 semi trucks. What could possibly require that amount of energy inside the turbine itself?
Offshore wind generation is 5 or 6 times less expensive than nuclear per KWh. Finally, does anyone want to volunteer their neighborhood for a nuclear power generating station?
“The 400 megawatts figure represents the nameplate capacity, which is the amount of energy a project could generate if its turbines ran 100% of the time at optimal wind speeds.”
And if wishes were horses…
If we would have had the Audit we voted for – they could have discovered if the cost in fees forced on the bills of every electric customer in MA for the turpines was worth paying the foreign compainies to put them up.
Your electric bill would be much lower if there was enough wind generating capacity installed. These represent a small part of the total power needed. Perhaps the turbine areas, which are a small part of the total area offshore, will serve as protected areas where fish stocks can recover from the overfishing and collapse of the stocks. Might be good in the long run that way. The wind generation will also prevent warming water from climate change driving the fish stocks out of our waters.
When a project built with public subsidies and backed by ratepayer contracts cites “confidentiality” to hide basic generation data, that’s a red flag. If offshore wind is truly performing as claimed, the MWh output and capacity factor should be public. Taxpayers and ratepayers deserve transparency to verify results—not marketing headlines.