Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind farm under construction south of Martha’s Vineyard, hopes to start generating power by the end of the year after completing five of its planned 62 wind turbines this week.
Avangrid, which owns 50 per cent of Vineyard Wind, announced the construction milestone in a statement Wednesday, and a spokesperson confirmed the plan to generate power in the coming weeks. The first five turbines have a projected output of 65 megawatts of power.
The company must first do several tests before the power enters the New England region grid in Barnstable.
“Our team has worked tremendously hard, through nights, weekends, and holidays to put us in the position to deliver the first power from Avangrid’s nation-leading Vineyard Wind 1 project before the end of the year,” said Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra in a statement.
Once the project’s 62 planned turbines are complete, the wind farm will contribute 806 megawatts to the grid, enough to power 400,000 homes and businesses in the state.
Vineyard Wind received approval from the federal government to build the wind farm in 2021. The project is one of several slated for an 800,000-acre area south of the Vineyard.
The turbines will stand as high as 837 feet, with blades as long as a football field. The first turbine was finished in October.
Work continues at Vineyard Wind’s operations headquarters in Vineyard Haven, and the company was expected to finish a helicopter hangar at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport this fall.
A spokesperson for Vineyard Wind did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. In previous interviews with the Gazette, Vineyard Wind officials said they had planned to have six turbines done by the fall and have enough turbines to generate 300 megawatts of power by the start of 2024.
If Vineyard Wind starts generating power this year, it will be the first to contribute energy to the Massachusetts grid. South Fork Wind, a project that is 35 miles off Montauk, New York, sent power to Long Island on Wednesday, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm to do so in the U.S.
That project plans to be much smaller than Vineyard Wind, with only 12 turbines.
