US Grid Gets First Injection of Offshore Wind Electricity

In a significant yet unheralded milestone, an offshore wind energy turbine has become the first to send power to the US grid. marking the beginning of what many hope will be a critical source of clean power for the country.

Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced on Dec 7 that the first electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 56 kilometers east of Montauk Point, New York. It will be New York’s first offshore wind farm.

So far, two of the 11-megawatt turbines are up, each 144 metres tall. By early next year, the complete farm is expected to generate 132 megawatts of offshore wind energy.

New York has been one of the states to make a big bet on offshore wind, despite misgivings among many people. The state aims to install 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035.

Issues have ranged from the aesthetic as well as environmental, as residents picked on the transmission line running through their community. This was after onshore wind faced complaints of noise and blighting the view earlier, which has slowed down its own spread in the US and even Europe.  In a lawsuit in New York, four residents had alleged that trenching under roads would spread contaminated groundwater. A judge dismissed their complaint in July.

The project has also overcome objections from fishermen and some environmentalists. Fishermen said they were not adequately compensated for their loss of fishing grounds. The group Save The Bay said the energy project shouldn’t be placed near such a rich diversity of fish.

The US joins the offshore flotilla late in the day, as large offshore wind farms have been making electricity for three decades in Europe, and more recently in Asia. The first U.S. offshore wind farm was supposed to be a project off the coast of Massachusetts known as Cape Wind. The application was submitted to the federal government in 2001. It failed after years of local opposition and litigation.