Half of the turbines at Vineyard Wind are generating electricity off Massachusetts, delivering a boost to the offshore wind industry as it struggles to navigate withering attacks by President Donald Trump.
The 800-megawatt project has long been a bellwether for offshore wind in the United States. It was the first large-scale project permitted by the federal government before suffering a major setback last year when a turbine blade detached and crashed into the ocean. The project has inched forward this year even as the Trump administration temporarily halted construction at two other offshore wind projects in the Atlantic.
Executives at Iberdrola, one of the two companies building Vineyard Wind, were asked about the future of the project when they appeared before financial analysts in London last month.
“Fifty percent of the turbines are exporting energy at Vineyard Wind,” the company’s executive chair, Ignacio Galán, said during a question and answer session at Iberdrola’s annual capital markets day presentation. He said the project was desperately needed to help check rising electricity prices in Massachusetts, which signed a 20-year contract to buy its power.
“We are helping the state … to keep the lights on in a very competitive manner,” Galán said.
Iberdrola CEO Pedro Azagra Blázquez said the company was communicating with the Trump administration “all the time,” adding that he and Galán had met with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright at energy conferences in Houston and Milan in recent months.
Azagra Blázquez alluded to a deal Trump claimed to have struck with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) that led the Interior Department to lift its stop-work order on a 54-turbine offshore wind project, Empire Wind, in exchange for the state permitting two natural gas pipelines.
“We have gas pipelines in New York, so we are party to those negotiations,” Azagra Blázquez said. “Right now, what we need to do is to continue working with the new administration.”
Iberdrola executives said they expected Vineyard to be completed in “the upcoming months.”
The 62-turbine project, which Iberdrola is building with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, will be able to generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. It’s about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.
The project was supposed to be completed last year. But progress slowed when one of the 350-foot blades plunged into the ocean after breaking free from a turbine, which stand about 800 feet tall.
GE Vernova, the blade maker, blamed the accident on a manufacturing “deviation” at its factory in Canada. As part of Vineyard Wind’s deal with the Biden administration to resume construction, the project agreed to remove blades manufactured at the Canadian factory and replace them with ones made at a GE Vernova facility in France.
Since then, the project has advanced enough to begin producing power. Four turbines were delivering electricity to Massachusetts at the end of the first quarter of this year. That number leaped to 17 power-making turbines by the end of June.
“Vineyard Wind continues to make progress and is delivering needed power to the New England grid, with a current capacity over 400 Megawatts,” Vineyard Wind spokesperson Craig Gilvarg said in a statement.
Even as the project moves forward, the Trump administration has announced plans to revoke permits for other offshore wind farms being planned by Iberdrola. Interior said last month it would remand the permit for New England Wind, a phased development that could eventually accommodate up to 2,600 MW of wind capacity.
Iberdrola was provisionally awarded a contract by Massachusetts for 791 MW of power for the first stage of New England Wind. It has been unable to close the deal with the state amid uncertainty over the Trump administration’s attempts to shut down wind projects.
Iberdrola executives did not directly address Interior’s plans to revoke its permits, but expressed confidence that New England Wind would eventually move forward. The company is helped by the fact that it purchased its ocean lease south of Martha’s Vineyard at an affordable price in the early days of U.S. offshore wind development, said José Antonio Miranda, who leads Iberdrola’s U.S. subsidiary Avangrid.
The lease was initially purchased for $150,000 in 2015 and later acquired by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The lease was later split into three leases for Vineyard Wind, New England Wind 1 and New England Wind 2.
“I think these leases, they are there for the future, and there is a long runway for them to be exploited because they are affordable to maintain,” Antonio Miranda told analysts. “Therefore we have to see in the future if there is any change and there is any possibility to move forward.”
Correction: A headline on an earlier version of this story contained incorrect information on the number of turbines generating electricity. It is more than 30.
