Vineyard Wind Now Has 17 Turbines Operating And Producing Power

The Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project, the state's only active project and one that is already years behind its original schedule, is now exporting power from 17 of its planned 62 turbines and plans have construction completed by the end of the year.

The news came in a quarterly investor report Wednesday from Iberdrola, the parent company of the project's 50-50 owner Avangrid. The New Bedford Light previously reported on the announcement, and said it had also reviewed satellite images that showed at least 40 turbines have been installed so far.

"In the U.S., more than one-third of Vineyard Wind 1 turbines are already installed, with more than 25 percent of them already exporting energy," Iberdrola Executive Chairman Ignacio Sánchez Galán said during the investor presentation.

Materials provided in conjunction with that presentation said the Vineyard Wind 1 project, as of late July, was "exporting 30 percent of the energy expecting to reach full [commercial operation date] at the end of 2025." The materials said 17 of the project's 62 planned turbines are "already exporting" and that 23 turbines have been "fully installed" as part of the joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

In February 2024, Vineyard Wind and Gov. Maura Healey touted 68 megawatts of power flowing onto the grid from five offshore wind turbines. But one of the project's massive wind blades shattered in the summer of 2024, bringing operations to a halt and prompting investigations.

The company this January confirmed it was generating power from one turbine, saying it had met "stringent safety and operational conditions" to resume power production after the blade incident. In May, the governor's team said Vineyard Wind was running four turbines in the waters south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket but project officials declined to answer basic questions about their project.

Nearly a decade after Massachusetts chose to focus its pursuit of cleaner energy generation mainly on offshore wind and Canadian hydro, neither has truly come to fruition and wind especially faces difficult political and economic conditions that have state officials reevaluating all of Massachusetts' climate and emissions mandates, plans and goals. The delayed New England Clean Energy Connect project to bring Canadian hydro to Massachusetts is on track to be completed around the end of the year, officials said. Vineyard Wind 1 is the only project currently in the state's pipeline, and the process of selecting additional wind farms has repeatedly been postponed.