Updated Jan. 3
Although Vineyard Wind missed its 2023 goal to deliver power to the state, Avangrid, the company that owns half of the offshore wind project alongside Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, announced on Wednesday morning that power has been delivered to the New England grid.
In a press release, the company announced that one of the turbines delivered around five megawatts of power on the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 2 — just shy of midnight — for the first time as a part of the “initial commissioning process.”
Avangrid further said that additional testing was expected to happen both on and offshore in the coming weeks with the five already constructed turbines operating at “full capacity.”
“2023 was a historic year for offshore wind defined by steel in the water and people at work. Today, we begin a new chapter and welcome 2024 by delivering the first clean offshore wind power to the grid in Massachusetts,” Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said in the release. “We’ve arrived at a watershed moment for climate action in the U.S., and a dawn for the American offshore wind industry. As we build on this tremendous progress and work to deliver the full capacity of this historic project, we continue to stand proudly with all the partners that made this achievement possible, including the Biden Administration and the Healey-Driscoll Administration.”
The project connects to the New England grid in Barnstable.
Once completed, the project will consist of 62 turbines and is expected to generate 806 megawatts, which Avangrid states is enough to power more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts.
According to Avangrid, the project is also expected to create 3,600 jobs, save customers an estimated $1.4 billion over 20 years, and reduce carbon emissions by over 1.6 million metric tons annually.
However, it remains uncertain whether the delay would impact when the project’s 62 turbines will be fully operational.
The State House News Service first reported that while the project’s turbines had generated power on Sunday evening, additional testing was still needed before wind energy could be sent to the grid in time for an original end-of-year-deadline.
In August, representatives of Avangrid, the company that owns half of Vineyard Wind alongside Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, told various stakeholders during a boat tour to the construction site that six turbines were expected to be constructed in the fall of 2023 and first power would be delivered in mid-October. At the time, the project was announced to be fully operational by mid-2024.
However, by December power had still not been delivered and only five turbines were constructed.
Avangrid spokesperson Craig Gilvarg told The Times last month that the project was still on course to deliver power by the end of 2023 despite delays. Vineyard Wind also said in a newsletter on Dec 27 that the project was on track for the end-of-the-year deadline.
With the delays, Vineyard Wind will no longer be the first utility-scale offshore wind project to deliver power in the United States. South Fork Wind successfully delivered power to Long Island, N.Y., last month.
Still, with Wednesday’s announcement, local elected officials say that delivering power to the grid is a significant milestone.
“Today marks a historic moment for Massachusetts, and indeed the nation,” State Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, said in the release. “Vineyard Wind is now delivering clean energy to the grid produced right off our shores! This milestone is a testament to the achievements we can reach through collaboration, persistence, and a dedication to a green future. Cape Codders and Islanders are proud to pave the way for continued advancement of a clean energy future in Massachusetts powered by offshore wind, one that’s critical to saving our planet and coastal communities.”
It’s just a matter of time before we read about a bankruptcy filing.
John– care to make a prediction about that date ?
Perhaps you and andy can come up with a time
frame. Pick a date–Any date in the next ten years
I’ll bet against it.
Up to a thousand dollars…
I’ll even offer odds depending on how far
out you want to go.
But remember, your buddy andy said this day would
never come. So be cautious.
If the Biden administration hadn’t given this project a pass on the required decommissioning fees the project wouldn’t have been financially viable. Biden gave them 17 years to come up with the fees. When this project fails there’s no money to clean up the mess. Thanks Joe!
And what mess is that, John? Who paid for the
demolition of the Bryant point coal plant?
Who is paying for the ongoing decommissioning
of the Pilgrim nuclear station? Do the owners of the
Sandwich Canal plant have all the money set aside
for disassembling that ? If there is a catastrophic
explosion at that plant, where is the liability?
It could actually blow up and flatten the surrounding
neighborhoods. Does any of that matter to you?
Do you think the windmills can blow up and flatten
Katama ?
As far a removing the wind farm goes. all you
have to do is drain the little bit of oil in the
gearboxes, cut them off at sea floor level and let
them be artificial reefs. Just like when we sink
old navy ships.
Or, at the current market value for
scrap steel of about $230 per ton, someone
might want to take that steel and sell it for
about $82.5 million
You can do the math.
So I’m concerned about
who is going to pay for the Canal plant
cleanup. How about you ? Or does your
BDS interfere with rational concerns ?
How many acres of prime land on the cape
are we going to have to dig up to bury that
building and all the surrounding infrastructure
that goes with it. ?
Spoiler alert, a LOT less than the blades on the mills.
Same goes for nuclear power.
Better to get it right the first time than to
rush and have things go wrong.
After reading this, it seems like the author is surprised that a wind farm developer stretched the truth or provided the public with overly optimistic projections and/or results…
Well, Bill, not every project goes according
to plan. I heard about a guy who wanted to
build a Great, beautiful, impenetrable 1,951
mile long wall that someone else would pay
for. Eight to 12 billion– tops, he said. It turned out,
after 4 years and $15 billion in mostly untraceable
taxpayer funds, diverted from of all places,
the defense department and
the DEA as well as millions fraudulently
fleeced out of the “true believers”, about 400
miles actually got built –I’m being generous …
So — it happens .
I’m just happy that i can feel a little more
“good” about the power that is running my
computer as I write this.
This minor delay doesn’t diminish the excitement that I feel for clean power entering the grid! Can’t wait to see solar on every house! Nearly free electricity is going to change our planet in so many ways. How long would it take for each home owner to see an ROI of 13k to install their own roof solar? Let’s go for it!
Free electricity? Do you know costly it is to provide this. Oh, I forgot that Government pays for it so it’s free.
Yup, party on.
The total dollar amount of oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear subsidies the U.S. government has shelled out from 1950- 2016 is estimated at $739 billion while industry reaps windfall profits thanks to something called the depletion allowance. Since this continues to this day it is logical to assume that figure has crested the $1 trillion mark.
Renewable energy collectively has benefited by $158 billion over the same period.
What I find most interesting is the strong interest on the part of the GOP to do away with giving subsidies to wind power altogether.
Let’s see…why would the GOP want to spread propaganda about wind electricity generation? Or electric cars? Would it have something to do with the oil industry? Maybe?
Andrew, please spend 13k buying your own panels off eBay, build your own wood racks, park your car underneath, buy a backup generator from Lowe’s, hire local electrician to hook up—and in about 3 years you can have your very own free electricity. The big bad government needn’t get involved. I’m not kidding.
Ms Hansen, I could do that but it wouldnt be cost effective and wouldnt take care of all my electricity needs. Wind and Solar are fine for augmentation but wont provide all our needs and that is why you want me to have a generator.
And look at that…just a day later: https://renews.biz/90397/vineyard-wind-1-delivers-first-power/
Roughly a 50 cents a day savings over the next 20 years!!! Maybe I can retire early thanks to this eyesore!
John– so that’s $3650 or $182.50 per year
How about you
document every minute you actually look at
these beautiful machines over the next 20 years.
How many minutes a year do you think you will
actually look at these? Let’s do a base rate
of 3 hours a year that your eyes are actually
focused on these beautiful machines.
That’s 180 minutes per year. I doubt that
you will will actually spend that much time
directly looking at them. but if you do, you
are being compensated at a rate of 60
tax free dollars per hour. Not bad.
But I thought we would be paying more—
much more for
electricity. Were you wrong ?
John, borrow a little money from the bank, install your own solar panels and disconnect from the grid. After about 3 years your solar system will have paid for itself and then you can take the savings, quite a bit more than 50 cents per day, and retire early. For real. Don’t you guys understand what this means to our society? If EVERY family had free electricity? It’s a change to our society that we haven’t begun to fathom.
You want to retire someplace where you can not see the means of the production of the electricity you consume? Leave that to the poor people?
Wah…Wah… Wah… God forbid, we’re try to do our humanly possible best tryin to do better…
give it a shot, come on…
It is always amazing to see how the REDHAT side of society is against clean air and technology that has been used the world over for years.
If we want to reuce our carbon footprint it cannot be done by adding offshore wind for a lot of reasons. The entire concept of zero Co2 is a myth. Sounds great and wouldn’t it be nice but it simply is not possible. Co2 is generated by economc activity. Reducing GWP Gross World Product, now at over $100 trillion would be required and that is simply not going to happen of our own volition. Carbon as a problem has increased visible on a grapph in complete symmetry with GWP and really gained momentum after WW2. Solar panels are a wonderful invention and do provide clean power directly to homes. The possibility of offshore wind providing clean power depends on mining minerals and that is a complete other story. It is effectice, theoretically, on paper. But for what it costs and for the implementation into our oceans requiring vast resources, aesthetic and environmental problems it simply is not a wonderful idea and we would be better off without forcing its propagation. Every environmental organization swore we could reduce Co2 by 45 or 50 percent, and said we needed to by 2030. It is simply not happening. Co2 started as a 1 ppm phenomenon and grew as our economies and population grews. Early on our government considered sprinkling aluminum foil particles over our ocens to reduce Co2 using an albedo effect. It gave up quickly on that plan, thank God. Now we have offshore wind that is in the same category and somehow we allowed it. Co2 increased from 2 ppm to now 3 ppm and is some days at 4 ppm and it is increasing rapidly. If we could convince our governement to cancel all offshore wind contracts it would be a great benefit and to not renew the towers after about a ten year period and remove them all from our oceans. But, alas, this is probably as impossible as halting pollution. A recent story from Tesla stated that they miscalculated the amount of energy and pollution to create electric vehicles by a multiple of extreme severity. It is all pretty much a problem we will not solve unfortunately, but it is what it is.
Frank. I agree with you about almost everything
you say in your comment. Nice to see rational thinking.
I went through the east coast megapolis recently.
Anyone who thinks we will be carbon free in this century
is kidding themselves. The “feel good” carbon offsets
(like thinking someone will plant a tree to offset
the carbon footprint of my impending trip to Barbados)
are delusional. The only way to reduce fossil fuel
consumption is to keep more of it in the ground and let the
free market figure it out. But you bring up the point that
scares me the most. — Bioengineering— Widespread
“tinkering” with the oceans and the atmosphere will
invariably have unintended consequences– as they say,
“what could go wrong” But I disagree about the wind
farms being of no significant value. The bryant point
coal burner burned 13 tons of coal per day and produced
about double the power of VW1. So I look at it and
think ok– 6 1/2 tons of coal stays in the ground every day.
It’s a drop in the ocean, but, 6 1/2 tons is 6 1/2 tons.
You have pointed out the problems, now point out the solutions
Frank, your premise is incorrect. You presume that we are not mining minerals to produce energy now. How many pounds of minerals does your family consume per year? Would your family consume more or less if you used wind power and an electric car?
How much fossil fuel has and will be used to complete this project?
Carl– It seems that people think a new power
plant that burns natural gas or oil or coal just simply
appears without using any energy to build it.
Nuclear also , i guess.
So, yeah, there is a carbon cost.
This detailed analysis from Forbes might be
helpful to answer your question.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/04/28/how-green-is-wind-power-really-a-new-report-tallies-up-the-carbon-cost-of-renewables/?sh=1cdb552373cd
Orsted’s take on it was a little better, but they are
the owners (50% U.S ) so I don’t rely on any
company to be totally objective. Forbes seems to be
pretty well respected so i went with that.
They are rated as slightly left of center
politically.
The complete install will be less than than the annual SSA fossil fuel consumption.
Operation will be less than one percent.
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