Turn, Turn, Turn: First Offshore Wind Turbine in New York Goes Live

The mood was celebratory and the beer was flowing on the Julia-Leigh as the ferry made its way back to Greenport following a day-long December 7 trip to the South Fork Wind offshore wind-turbine project, which is underway about 35 miles southeast of Montauk Point.

There, a bustling and bundled-up boatload of wind power advocates and industry representatives, elected officials and state agency employees, union workers and journalists had witnessed, firsthand, New York State’s first offshore wind turbine in action: It began producing energy one day earlier.

The seaborne industrial site was in full swing, with turbines under construction, workers aloft on a permanent electrical substation affixed to the seabed, and the tow and supply ship the C-Fighter standing by, along with a couple of other large ships bobbing alongside turbines-in-progress. The project eventually will be a 12-turbine, utility-scale 132-megawatt operation helping to serve the power needs of Long Island, equaling about 70,000 residents.

This December 7 was no day of infamy, but it was historical in its own right.

“It is really eye-opening to see this massive, intricate process out here,” said David Cataletto. The second-term East Hampton Town Trustee was one of three — including Jim Grimes and Susan McGraw Keber — to hop aboard the Julia-Leigh that morning for a roughly three-hour sail out to the site.

“It’s exciting,” Cataletto said. “And this is just the start.”

Before it reached the South Fork project, the Julia-Leigh, a high-speed ferry that typically runs from Rhode Island to Martha’s Vineyard, paused for a little while at a wind-turbine operation already up and running, the Deepwater Wind/Ørsted project that went online in 2016 and produces 30 megawatts of power across five turbines spread in a picket line off the coast of Block Island.

That was the first commercial wind-turbine project in the United States. The South Fork is the first in New York State. Its first turbine went online December 6; the project completion, expected by the end of this year or early in 2024, is dependent on the whims of Mother Nature, said Meghan Wims, vice president of public affairs at Duffy & Shanley, which is handling PR for the project on behalf of the developers. “It all depends on the weather,” Wims said.

The weather on this day was ideal for landlubbers, kind of cold in the sun, but with little to no wind and seas rolling at a comfortable 2 to 3 feet.

At both locations, the turbines are revealed to first-time observers as huge and alternately awe-inspiring and rousing a bout of megalophobia — that’s the irrational fear of very large things — featuring blades that are as long as a football field and an overall height that’s roughly three Statues of Liberty stacked on top of one another.

As the turbines rotate, a deep sort of whooshing sound can be heard, the steady rotation, prompting a sort of mesmerizing if not downright meditative sense, especially when you’re standing on the bow of a boat mere yards away from the structures. A one-third spin of the three-blade turbines, said one Ørsted official, was enough to power one house for one day.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone also went along for the boat ride and held court for a while in the bow of the Julia-Leigh.

“This is a really historic day for Long Island and for the country as a whole,” Bellone said, signaling “the very beginning of a brand-new industry that is going to help to begin to mitigate the impacts of climate change, which is as important as it gets for Long Island. It’s a great day.”

Bellone said the county’s role was primarily to support the project and the state’s push for it as it pursues a highly ambitious carbon-reduction strategy.

The county also worked with other agencies and government bodies to provide outreach to local communities on the various issues that came up during the project’s development, which included the installation of underground cable off the beach at Wainscott, and a yearslong struggle to get buy-in from the region’s robust commercial fishing industry, which feared, and continues to fear, impacts to its livelihood.

“So this is really, I think, an example of the kind of partnership that it takes with all levels of government and the community,” said Bellone, who is leaving office at the end of December and said with a laugh that he’s “not running for anything” after that. “What you’ll see out of this project is that in 50 years the East Coast and beyond will be dotted with wind farms.”

Grimes and McGraw Keber both highlighted how revenue from the wind farm could be used for long-standing Town Trustee wish-list projects yet to be undertaken because of cost issues, including an especially long-desired plan to dredge and seed Napeague Harbor with scallops, a body of water described as “the cleanest in New York State” by Grimes, who offered a cautious embrace of the turbine project for its ability to possibly fund that project.

He likened the yearslong battle in Montauk with community members intent on protecting the commercial fleet there over offshore wind as similar to when the railroad comes through and wants to put a station in your town. The choice is to either say no or go along for the ride. But, said Grimes with a laugh, “the train is still going to come through here — it’s just not going to stop.”

The funding mechanism is part of a nearly $30 million agreement between South Fork Wind, the town and the Trustees enshrined in what’s known as a host community agreement that will provide lease payments derived from where the cable delivers the wind power to a landbound Long Island Power Authority substation in Wainscott. That cable was installed within rights-of-way of town-owned roads and beaches and under the public beach and parking lot at the end of the Beach Lane in Wainscott.

“We’re intent on putting the revenue from this project to good use,” Grimes said.

Also aboard was longstanding environmental activist Adrienne Esposito of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has supported offshore wind for nearly 20 years, she said. “Now to see it finally implemented is a dream turned into reality,” she said.

The day before the boat ride, Governor Kathy Hochul issued a press release celebrating December 6 as the day the first turbine went live in New York. The state has pledged a $55 billion roll-out on large-scale renewable energy projects across New York as it sets out to achieve 70 percent renewably sourced electricity by 2030.

A press conference that afternoon at East Hampton Town Hall featured state officials including Doreen Harris, the president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, among others.

Trustee McGraw-Keber attended the meeting and recalled a poignant moment where someone pointed out that the lights at Town Hall that morning were powered, in part, by the turbine that had gone live that day.

It was a long time in coming, with vocal opposition from the local commercial fishing industry attending any discussion of offshore wind farms for more than two decades.

East Hampton Councilman David Lys noted that “the process from inception, to design, to first power has been a long and arduous one for the project. I commend the community and the developer for participating in this process by such a dynamic and meticulous means. I am proud that East Hampton’s long-term energy sustainability goals will be bolstered by this project and also call upon the developer to continue to openly engage with the fisheries industry throughout the project’s entire lifespan.”

Back out at sea, the Julia-Leigh hung around the South Fork Wind turbines and associated work vessels while reporters deployed drones and industry representatives were on hand to provide explanations and information, along with snacks and drinks.

The ferry had to slow to 10 knots when going through certain ocean areas where right whales have the right of way, in order to avoid ship-whale encounters that can end very badly. Whales have emerged as a hot-button issue, if not a red herring, for wind-farm detractors over claims that sonar systems on the cable-laying ships may be harming the mammals.

So it was kind of ironic that just as the Julia-Leigh was about to make the journey back to Greenport, the ship’s captain announced that he had spotted a whale spouting, drawing lots of oohs and aahs, but perhaps not as many as when the invited boat guests took their first gander at the looming but elegant South Fork Wind turbines, two of which are completed while a third awaited delivery of the blades from a nearby ship that was standing by.

Back at the Greenport docks the ebullient crowd dispersed in the late afternoon and folks started to make their way back to their home ports of call.

The bucolic drive west on Route 25 offered its own sort of history of wind and its industrial applications on Long Island. The Town of Southold was at one time one of the leading producers of windmills in the country, and there are reminders all along the way both old and new of their historical provenance on the North Fork. A lone windmill popped out of fields where Pindar grows their grapes; another, smaller windmill was whipping along west of Pindar in an otherwise empty field, and a historic windmill in Southold was lit up for the holiday season — but it kind of felt like it, too, was marking this possibly pivotal day in renewable energy history.