By GREGORY ZELLER //
A major milestone for Long Island’s offshore wind industry has put to sea – off the Texas coast.
International offshore-wind development partners Ørsted A/S and Eversource Energy are trumpeting the “sail away” of the first American-built offshore wind substation – a 500-ton, 60-foot-tall substation that departed its Texas fabrication facility May 25.
The substation – constructed by Kiewit Offshore Services, which stakes a claim as “the largest U.S. offshore fabricator” – is traveling by barge from Ingleside, Texas, through the Gulf of Mexico and up the East Coast.
It’s a slow boat for sure: The substation isn’t scheduled to be installed at the South Fork Wind project site until mid-summer (though it’s on course to “begin operations by the end of this year,” according to a statement from South Fork Wind).
David Hardy: Groundbreaking (at sea).
South Fork Wind – already billed as “America’s first completed utility-scale offshore wind farm” – is a 132-megawatt farm situated 35 miles east of Montauk Point. Via underwater and underground transmission lines, it’s projected to deliver enough electricity for 70,000 Long Island homes directly to the regional power grid via a Town of East Hampton onshore relay station.
The slowly transiting substation will play a key role in that effort – and in America’s new, globally independent domestic-energy market, according to Ørsted CEO Americas David Hardy.
“The completion of South Fork Wind’s offshore wind substation is yet another first for this groundbreaking project and moves us one step closer to the project’s first ‘steel in the water,’” Hardy noted.
Installation of South Fork Wind’s 68-nautical-mile submarine cable – which will make landfall at East Hampton’s Wainscott Beach – is currently underway. Monopile foundations to support the approaching substation will be installed over the next several weeks, with “vessels from several Gulf ports” supporting the construction effort, according to the company statement.
Ørsted and Eversource are also pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into shipbuilding across the United States, including the Louisiana-based construction of the U.S.-flagged ECO Edison – the first purpose-built ship for offshore-wind service operations, ticketed for deployment off Long Island.
Eversource Energy Vice President of Business Development Mike Ausere said the hefty investments were worthy of the dynamic energy industry taking shape along the U.S. coastline, and particularly in Long Island’s waters.
“South Fork Wind continues to demonstrate the enormous power of offshore wind to create a new, American-based supply chain … spreading economic opportunity to workers and local communities across the nation,” Ausere added. “Today, we are proud to mark yet another significant milestone that will bring the promise of a low-carbon future ever closer to fruition.”
