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Orsted Powers Up America’s First Major Offshore Wind Farm

The South Fork Wind project off the coast of Long Island just delivered the U.S.'s first utility-scale offshore wind power.

Emily Pontecorvo •
12/06/2023
An offshore wind farm.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Out in the Atlantic Ocean, 35 miles off the eastern tip of Long Island, sits a single, mammoth wind turbine. On Wednesday, its oscillating blades started sending power into the New York grid.

The South Fork Wind Farm is officially the first utility-scale offshore wind project operating in the United States.

The turbine was installed just two weeks ago with union labor, and it’s the first of 12 that are expected to be completed by early 2024. Each one will have three blades measuring 318 feet from base to tip, or about twice the length of an olympic-sized swimming pool. When completed, the project will have the capacity to meet the electricity needs of some 70,000 homes on Long Island. New York officials estimate the project will eliminate up to 6 million tons of carbon emissions per year, similar to taking 60,000 cars off the road.

South Fork is one of two offshore wind farms currently under construction in the northeast. The other, Vineyard Wind, will sell power to Massachusetts and will be five times larger, with 62 turbines able to power more than 400,000 homes. Shortly after South Fork powered up on Wednesday, Avangrid, the project developer behind Vineyard Wind, announced that it had installed five turbines which would begin delivering power “in the coming weeks.”

South Fork Wind was first approved by the Long Island Power Authority in 2017. Its operation is a major milestone as the once-promising offshore wind industry has taken a beating of late from inflation, high interest rates, and supply chain constraints. Two projects that were under development further north — Commonwealth Wind and SouthCoast Wind — pulled out of their contracts with Massachusetts earlier this year, citing cost increases.

Then in early November, Orsted, one of the companies behind South Fork, canceled plans to develop two offshore wind farms near New Jersey. A spokesperson for Orsted also told Heatmap that the viability of one of its other, much larger projects contracted in New York — Sunrise Wind — was “extremely challenged.”

The turbulence in the industry threatens climate goals throughout the northeast, where offshore wind offers an ideal solution for dense cities with limited space to put solar or wind arrays on land. New York aims to have 100% clean power by 2040, with 9 gigawatts of offshore wind contributing to the target by 2035. Once the 12 turbines that make up South Fork are completed, it will be 1% of the way there.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this article misstated the percent of progress the South Fork project will represent for New York's offshore wind goal.

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Emily Pontecorvo profile image

Emily Pontecorvo

Emily is a founding staff writer at Heatmap. Previously she was a staff writer at the nonprofit climate journalism outlet Grist, where she covered all aspects of decarbonization, from clean energy to electrified buildings to carbon dioxide removal.

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Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/26/2025
Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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Sparks

An Emergency Trump-Coded Appeal to Save the Hydrogen Tax Credit

Featuring China, fossil fuels, and data centers.

Emily Pontecorvo •
02/18/2025
The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Republicans in Congress go hunting for ways to slash spending to carry out President Trump’s agenda, more than 100 energy businesses, trade groups, and advocacy organizations sent a letter to key House and Senate leaders on Tuesday requesting that one particular line item be spared: the hydrogen tax credit.

The tax credit “will serve as a catalyst to propel the United States to global energy dominance,” the letter argues, “while advancing American competitiveness in energy technologies that our adversaries are actively pursuing.” The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association organized the letter, which features signatures from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, and numerous hydrogen, industrial gas, and chemical companies, among many others. Three out of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — the Mid-Atlantic, Heartland, and Pacific Northwest hubs — are also listed.

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Sparks

Why Your Car Insurance Bill Is Making Renewables More Expensive

Core inflation is up, meaning that interest rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/12/2025
Wind turbines being built.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Fed on Wednesday issued a report showing substantial increases in the price of eggs, used cars, and auto insurance — data that could spell bad news for the renewables economy.

Though some of those factors had already been widely reported on, the overall rise in prices exceeded analysts’ expectations. With overall inflation still elevated — reaching an annual rate of 3%, while “core” inflation, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.3%, after an unexpectedly sharp 0.4% jump in January alone — any prospect of substantial interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has dwindled even further.

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