substation

Revolution Wind installs first turbine

September 27, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Revolution Wind is an offshore wind farm being built by Rhode Island and Connecticut and is the first multi-state offshore wind farm in the United States. Once completed, it will deliver 400 MW of power to Rhode Island and 304 MW of power to Connecticut.

Revolution Wind is a 50/50 partnership between Ørsted, the Danish multinational energy company, and Eversource, a major New England utility company. The wind farm is located about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast and 32 miles southeast of Connecticut. It is fairly close to the recently completed South Fork Wind, the first completed utility-scale offshore windfarm in the U.S. and was built by the same partnership.

The first Revolution Wind turbine was installed at the end of August and construction continues with the installation of foundations for the 65 turbines that will comprise the project. More than three-quarters of the units were in place by the beginning of September. Ships have also arrived on scene for cable-laying operations for the wind farm. Onshore construction continues in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, on the project’s transmission system. The turbines for the project are being assembled by local union labor in New London, Connecticut.

Commercial operations at Revolution Wind will not begin until 2026. Construction of the electrical substation necessary to connect the project to the regional electric grid is taking place on the site of a decommissioned naval air station and it is a time-consuming project because of the presence of buried waste and soil contamination. The construction of the offshore wind farm itself will be completed in 2025.

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Revolution Wind installs first offshore turbine

Photo courtesy of Kate Ciembronowicz / Orsted via Revolution Wind.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Vineyard Wind Prepares For Construction | Earth Wise

November 5, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Vineyard Wind 1 will be the first utility-scale offshore wind energy project in the United States. It will be located 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and will consist of an array of 62 wind turbines, spaced one nautical mile apart. It will generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 400,000 homes.

The project has recently closed on $2.3 billion of senior debt financing, which sets the stage for construction to begin. The joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure partners is one of the single largest investments in a renewable energy project in the U.S. The financial close is basically the final milestone for launching the project following years of clearing regulatory and other hurdles.

With the financial closing, Vineyard Wind will be instructing its contractors to begin work. Onshore work will start this fall and offshore work will begin in 2022.

The project will use Haliade-X wind turbine generators made by GE. These are some of the largest and most powerful wind turbines currently available, each one capable of generating 13 megawatts of electricity. The electricity generated by the turbines will be collected by an offshore substation and then transmitted to shore. Two submarine cables will bring the electricity from the substation to a landing point in Barnstable. The cables will be buried six feet below the seafloor. Underground cables will then route the power to an onshore substation in the village of Hyannis where it will be connected to the New England Grid.

Vineyard Wind is the first of many offshore wind farms in the works for the Northeastern United States.

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U.S.’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project prepares for construction

Photo, posted March 24, 2016, courtesy of Andy Dingley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Largest Battery Storage Substation

March 10, 2017 By EarthWise

At the end of last year, Southern California Edison turned on the largest lithium-ion battery storage facility in the world in Ontario, California. It is a substation with 80 megawatt-hours of capacity, enough energy to power 2,500 households or charge 1,000 Tesla cars a day.