Large Offshore Wind Farms Are Now Transferring Sweet, Sweet Battery Juice To The US Grid

Photo credit: Worldview films / Vinyard Wind

Offshore wind turbines at two commercial sites are now feeding electricity to the U.S. grid.

Just before midnight Tuesday, a single turbine near Martha's Vineyard delivered 5 megawatts of renewable energy to New England's grid, developers said. The turbine is one of 62 planned for Vineyard Wind 1, an offshore site owned by the energy supplier Avangrid and the wind energy investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP). The companies wanted to deliver offshore wind energy via the site before the end of 2023; They missed this goal by just a few days.

Still, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called it a “historic moment.” Healey said in a statement that the farm will soon generate “the equivalent of electricity for over 400,000 Massachusetts homes.” Avangrid and CIP say the site will have five turbines “early” this year to provide power to homes – and presumably some electric vehicle batteries – in an otherwise natural gas-dependent state.

The news from Vineyard Wind comes about a month after a similar breakthrough was reported at another offshore site near Montauk Point, New York. The offshore wind project, called South Fork Wind, has two turbines installed so far, one of which is in operation. The owners – Danish energy company Ørsted and utility Eversource – say they will install ten additional turbines in early 2024.

But despite support from the Biden administration, which has made offshore turbines a key part of its strategy to reduce climate pollution, U.S. offshore wind energy has suffered some setbacks recently.

In October, Ørsted scrapped two wind projects in New Jersey because of supply chain delays and high interest rates. Around the same time, Avangrid paid $16 million to terminate an agreement to sell power to Connecticut, but the project itself was not terminated. And on Wednesday, fossil fuel giants BP and Equinor canceled their Empire Wind 2 contract with New York – also over interest rates and supply chain issues. In short, commercial offshore wind projects take a long time to come online. Projects that were planned before the pandemic now appear significantly less feasible than before in terms of costs and tariffs.

Several startups want to lower the price of wind energy. SkySpecs, for example, uses drones and AI to monitor wind turbines, predict equipment failures and ultimately reduce turbine downtime. The Goldman Sachs-backed startup has secured $118 million to date, including an $80 million Series D in 2022.

Another wind energy startup is Aerones. The company makes robots that scrub and inspect turbine blades to keep the turbines running longer and reduce pollution from oil leaks. With support from Y Combinator, Aerones announced Wednesday that it received a grant of approximately $4.8 million from the European Union Innovation Fund.

There's also Breakthrough Energy-backed AirLoom, which aims to cut the cost of wind energy in half through a non-traditional design; If you ask me, it's more like a contemporary art installation than a wind farm.