With construction now thrumming along a key stretch of the Vineyard Haven waterfront, the CEO of Vineyard Wind said this week that he expects the company’s first turbine to be installed by late summer, and construction of its Island facilities likely to be completed by next spring.
“This will be the core of the next 30 years when we will be operating Vineyard Wind,” Klaus Moeller said in a press conference held Monday at the Packer marine terminal, attended by local officials, company employees and members of the Cape and Islands legislative delegation.
Slated to be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S., Vineyard Wind will include 62 turbines situated 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard,
The press conference was held to celebrate the ongoing construction for the company’s three facilities on the Island. Standing on the future site of its marine terminal on Beach Road, Mr. Moeller said Vineyard Wind is hoping to install 10 turbines a month and have buildout completed by summer 2024.
Once the turbines are up and running, the Island will become a hub for the project. An operations and maintenance facility is currently being built next to the Tisbury Marketplace on Beach Road, and construction on the marine terminal near the drawbridge is underway. A helicopter hangar facility is also under construction at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.
Technicians will travel to and from the turbines via sea and air, making daily repairs and performing preventative maintenance.
A Dane who has begun vacationing on the Vineyard, Mr. Moeller said the helicopter hangar will be finished first.
“That needs to be operational around October this year,” he said, as construction noise rang out all around him.
The two Vineyard Haven facilities are expected to be done by spring 2024. High-decibel noise from massive pile driving at both the marine terminal and the maintenance facility has at times rocked the downtown area in recent weeks. That is expected to end soon, Mr. Moeller said. Once the facilities are complete, he said up to 90 employees will be working out of Vineyard Haven. The first Vineyard Wind technician, Islander Gabe Bellebuono, was on hand for the event. He is expected to be one of 45 employees that will live on the Vineyard, Mr. Moeller said.
“In many ways, Martha’s Vineyard is playing a starring role in this first-in-the nation project,” he said. “It’s not only where our company gets its name, it’s also going to be our long-term home for O&M [operations and maintenance] for 30 years, creating good paying year-round jobs for Islanders.”
Power from the offshore turbines will run through undersea cables and enter the grid along the southern shore of Barnstable, enough for roughly 400,000 homes.
Vineyard Wind is one of several offshore wind projects planned for the ocean waters south of the Island, and the first to gain all the permits needed.
The company is still facing lawsuits, including one from a Nantucket group and another from the fishing industry, but the litigation has not halted construction.
This week, a Massachusetts federal judge ruled against the Nantucket group, saying it hadn't shown that regulators' approval of the offshore wind project violated enviromental laws.
Scientists continue to raise concerns about the potential for the turbines to disturb sea life and potentially harm endangered right whales, which swim through the area. A panel of experts assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently began an evaluation of the potential impacts of offshore wind development on the whales.
State Rep. Dylan Fernandes and Sen. Julian Cyr were both on hand Monday to praise the moment.
“This is on par with Massachusetts going first on health care. This is on par with Massachusetts going first on marriage rights,” Mr. Fernandes said.
Mr. Cyr called it a crucial “down payment” in the fight against climate change for coastal communities.
“We are at a critical moment,” he said. “What we do today on the climate crisis will determine whether future generations can prosper or even survive.”
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