In 2005, federal lawmakers signed off on a new law that set the regulations for large-scale offshore wind farms eyed for a wide swath of ocean south of Martha’s Vineyard.
Now, after more than 20 years’ worth of planning, construction and legal fights, Massachusetts has its first completed offshore wind energy project in Vineyard Wind.
Crews hoisted the last turbine blade and attached it to the 500-foot tall tower on March 13, polishing off the construction at the 62-turbine farm that sits in the water about 14 miles off the Island’s south coast.
A much-needed renewable energy source to some, and an abomination to others, Vineyard Wind is now the largest offshore wind energy farm in the country, and officials are counting on it to bring power to 400,000 homes in the state.
Supporters also hope that it can serve as a blueprint for other projects that are looking to come online, despite the current presidential administration’s distaste for the power source.
“I’m relieved and delighted that Massachusetts has brought the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind project to fruition,” said Cape and Islands state Sen. Julian Cyr, who has been a longtime champion of the project.
Elected in 2016, just a year after Vineyard Wind won a lease for a 167,000-acre area along the outer continental shelf, Mr. Cyr said the project has involved years of work from the region and at the state house.
“It’s only dampened by the reality that we have a federal administration which is intent on clinging to the vestiges of a fossil fuel economy from the last century,” he said.
A partnership between Avangrid, an energy service company, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, an international energy investor, Vineyard Wind has long been dubbed the “forever first” wind project in the country because it was the first large-scale wind farm to make it through the arduous federal permitting process.
But the project has hit several roadblocks, meaning that the smaller South Fork Wind off New York was finished first when the 12-turbine development completed construction in 2024.
Vineyard Wind is the first farm to connect to the New England regional power grid in Massachusetts, and advocates said its timing is crucial because it follows the closure of the so-called “Filthy Five” power plants in the state.
“We have replaced coal and brought in renewable energy in a very timely way,” said Barbara Kates-Garnick, a professor at Tufts University with a focus on energy policy.
The former undersecretary of energy and utilities regulator for Massachusetts, Ms. Kates-Garnick watched Vineyard Wind ping-pong through the federal bureaucracy in the wake of the ill-fated Cape Wind project that sought to put 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound.
“I see it as a very positive impact now that the process has been completed,” she said. “I’m very optimistic that this will serve as an example moving forward.”
Vineyard Wind completing its project was no sure bet, though.
The wind farm project has been challenged several times in federal court, and has been met by opposition from fishermen and residents alike.
Vineyard Wind famously also had the largest mechanical failure in the nascent industry’s history in the U.S., when in July 2024, one of its blades (equivalent in size to a football field) folded over and broke off into the ocean. The incident resulted in thousands of pieces of fiberglass washing up on beaches throughout the region, including the Vineyard, though mostly on Nantucket.
The blade maker blamed the failure on a manufacturing defect, and Vineyard Wind was ordered to replace several blades that had been already installed. The manufacturer eventually paid Nantucket $10.5 million in a settlement over the debris, which shut down the island’s beaches in the height of summer.
The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) launched an investigation into the incident, though nearly two years later the agency has not publicly come out with a report on what happened. A request for comment to BSEE was not returned this week.
Vineyard Wind also had to weather attempts by the Trump administration to shut down the project in late 2024. In December, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, one of the agencies tasked with overseeing offshore wind projects, issued a stop work order, citing security concerns from the Department of Defense.
The halt stopped Vineyard Wind when it had built 61 of the 62 turbines, but was later overturned by a federal judge in January after the company sued the federal government. That lawsuit is ongoing.
Part of the reason Vineyard Wind has made it to completion when others have struggled is it had many contracts secured prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and the escalation of the war in Ukraine, which sent markets, particularly the steel market, into freefall.
Being one of the first applications also meant that the project was able to avoid some of the political headwinds that other projects have faced. Vineyard Wind was approved in 2021 during the Biden Administration. Project further down in the queue have fallen under officials in The Trump administration, which has now put permitting on hold as part of an anti-wind energy executive order.
Mr. Cyr said there were other roadblocks locally that were overcome to get Vineyard Wind, and its operations and maintenance headquarters in Vineyard Haven, built, including one of the preliminary cable landing sites on Cape Cod.
Vineyard Wind initially proposed to connect to the grid in Yarmouth, but the company received a warmer welcome when it floated Covell’s Beach in Barnstable as the place to make landfall.
The location of the 220-kilovolt transmission cables also ruffled feathers on the Vineyard as it went through the Island permitting process.
“I am also 100 per cent in support of renewable energies. But I am also 100 per cent opposed to Vineyard Wind’s project,” fisherman Preston Butler said in 2019. “Our cod stocks are finally coming back … and all of a sudden you guys want to sit there on a boat and pile-drive the crap out of the ocean floor for god knows how long.”
Anti-offshore wind signs are a common sight on the Island, and the project also drew opposition once Islanders, despite assurances, realized that much of the farm was visible from the south shore.
John Keene, the president of the Fishermen’s Preservation Trust and a liaison between Vineyard Wind and the Island’s fishing fleet, said some members felt the Vineyard community had no real say in the project being constructed, and the whole process left them jaded.
One issue was the siting of the turbines. When fishing stocks plummeted in decades past, the area where the turbines are was preserved to ensure fishing for future generations, he said. Then as fishing got better, it was allocated for offshore wind energy.
“That right there was the real diversion of tolerance for this,” he said.
Now that Vineyard Wind has completed its last turbine, final commissioning efforts will begin to produce power from all the turbines. A representative from Vineyard Wind did not respond to a request for comment this week on the next steps.
The operations and maintenance headquarters in Vineyard Haven will now likely become the focal center of the project moving forward. Just before the blade broke in 2024, Vineyard Wind was putting the final touches on the large building that sits up on stilts above Beach Road.
The gray-shingled building between Wolf’s Den Pizzeria and Tisbury Marketplace will be the brains of the wind farm’s operations, with several dozen maintenance and operations employees expected to be stationed there to keep the 62 turbines running.
The building has a cavernous warehouse for turbine parts, and several offices and a control center, where employees will monitor the turbines. Engineers, warehouse employees, safety officials and technicians will all work out of the building.
“They will be operating from here and have access to everything,” Nuria Soto, the vice president of operations and maintenance at Avangrid, told the Gazette during a hardhat tour in May 2024.
Three vessels were also expected to run out of the harborside terminal across the street to shepherd technicians to the wind farm. The wind farm also has a helicopter hangar at the airport.
Mr. Keene said that the company told him that communication with the fishing liaisons will scale back now that construction is wrapping up, which he believed would hurt the Island.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to look at what’s been done and look at the science that’s been collected along the way.”
The largest offshore wind farm in the country, several scientists said the completion of the project will be a chance to learn about how offshore wind interacts with the ecosystem in the U.S.
Though he worries about the future, thus far Mr. Keene has said that there has been good tuna fishing near the turbines, which are spread one mile apart.
“Right now, the structures are bringing in the bait and the bait is bringing in the bigger fish,” he said.
Rafael Valotta Rodrigues, an assistant professor of engineering at UMass Boston who had previously worked with the offshore energy industry in Europe, said he plans to watch Vineyard Wind to help other projects run more efficiently in the future.
Part of his work will be looking at how neighboring farms can affect one another.
“It’s a very rich study case for us,” he said.
Right now, there’s only one other farm coming in behind Vineyard Wind. Revolution Wind, which is the closest farm to the Island, started generating power earlier this month, and is expected to finish soon.
Several others are in some stages of planning, but there is expected to be a gap in construction given the current administration’s halt on further permitting.
For Ms. Kates-Garnick, though, Vineyard Wind could be the blueprint moving forward for the whole country.
“As world events take their course, we are demonstrating in New England that offshore wind is a viable technology,” she said. “I feel very strongly that this is a proof of concept.”
This article appears in March 27, 2026.
Let’s not forgot before construction began their website stated that someone on South beach could possibly see about 25% of the top of a turbine from the beach. They quickly deleted that as soon as construction began. If you believe anything that Vineyard Wind says then I’ll be glad to sell you a discounted tunnel pass to the island.
This article reads like a finish-line celebration, but not everyone sees Vineyard Wind that way. For many of us, it marks the permanent industrialization of beautiful open ocean south of Martha’s Vineyard.
And the damage is not just what people now see above the waterline from the south shore. It is also what is happening below it — pile driving, seabed disruption, cable disturbance, vessel traffic, noise, and the steady transformation of a living marine environment into an industrial zone. These are not empty waters. Fish live there. Whales move through there. Nature was there long before developers arrived with towers, cables, and public-relations language.
The article reads like the uncertainty is over. Maybe not. This project has already been halted before, fought over in court, and still carries unanswered questions from a blade failure serious enough to send debris across regional waters. Add in the long-recognized radar interference risks tied to offshore wind, and the victory-lap tone becomes even harder to swallow.
And one report of tuna being drawn to turbine structures does not settle the bigger question. Pointing to tuna gathering around artificial structure does not answer the larger question of what industrializing a living marine environment means over time.
So yes, the last blade is up. But that does not erase the shutdowns, the failures, the fishing conflicts, the broken assurances about visibility, or the damage done to a marine environment many of us never believed should have been industrialized in the first place.
Some call it progress. Some of us call it permanent damage.
What is your alternative? More of the same fossil fuel-based generated electricity from off-island power plants that we don’t have to see or breath in the pollution from? What about the damage – health, environmental and otherwise – being foisted upon the communities who live near those power plants sending electricity our way. Talk about permanent damage.
John — my point here was about the south shore. For many of us, it was never just empty space on a map. For many decades, it was a place of bonfires, stars, open ocean, and a horizon that felt untouched. It is possible to oppose offshore wind farms while still supporting other forms of clean energy — solar, geothermal, hydro, and even nuclear — and while still objecting to turning that open ocean into an industrial horizon. Calling that “progress” does not make the loss any less real.
All for debatable benefit.
Well written comment. I will add in stronger terms, the wind turbines are a waste of resources; both economic and environmental.
We are glad it is finished! I hope Vineyard Wind keeps its promise to the community to turn off the hundreds of red lights at night. They ruin the night sky over the beautiful Atlantic Ocean horizon. Thank you.
The horizon is already ruined………
I believe that the continued use of fossil fuels will hasten the demise of the ocean environment far faster then wind turbines. I remember when Beach Road, downtown Edgartown and the 5 corners did not flood after a moderate coastal storm. And when there were still eels and eel grass in the salt ponds. Sustainable, non global warming energy is the key in my opinion.
Ever since the revolution wind project started off of the Rhode Island coast the effect on our Fisheries has been disastrous. I am a commercial fisherman who has made a living in Rhode Island State Waters since 1985. Ever since construction started in 2023. Our Catch rate has been off by 50%. Pile driving dredging cable laying electrical current has changed the ecosystem in our state waters. Building this Wind Farm has been at the expense of our natural resources. It never should have been allowed. Not to mention our Electric bills have increased tremendously to finance this project. Nothing about this project makes sense.
It is unconscionable that this is a reality. I am NOT a political person but if this occurred under a ‘different administration’ this would read completely different. This is all foreign investment influence and dollars, and the economic and enviormental data to support a project of this scale in this type of ecosystem is non existent. “Viable technology” has nothing to do with reality and real world consequences, just ask Robert Oppenheimer. In addition “a very rich study case for us” means we’re lab rats and nothing more. There is zero baseline data for comparison. Everyone needs to wakeup to the fact that every tower has 500 gallons of grease in it. Also the amount of diesel and aviation fuel used to maintain these is staggering. Hopefully we don’t ever see a cat 4, let alone cat 5 hurricane.
Not mentioned at all in the article is what’s the cost per KWH to the consumer compared to fossil fuel / nuclear power plant generation? All wind and solar electrical generation is just supplemental power to the grid, when there is no wind or sunshine, we all get nothing!
Believe in the long term, perpetuity. This will be a “boon doogle “ and a mighty big mistake for the ecosystem and our island home…..
The project has provided jobs and will continue to do so for numerous locals on the island. People who grew up there, some have been there for 35 + years with generational ties to the island. A lot of people who work in the building and also service and have helped build these turbines. This is a job where people love what they do and are trying to support their families and make a living just like another other job that people don’t agree with or aren’t in support of what a company produces.
My son works on these turbines and went through ACE MV. We have been on the island for 65 years. Change has come whether we like it or not. Our family promotes encouraging people to do what they want to do in life if they find happiness. There are over half a million turbines in the world and they aren’t going anywhere today. Complaining with negativity won’t seem to get us anywhere positive so we continue to have that mindset because people in general will always look in that direction if they don’t agree with something. I appreciate the project providing jobs for locals on the island.
Yes, the turbines are in the ocean, but the extra high voltage transmission lines (two) from Vineyard Wind were landed at a beautiful Nantucket Sound beach in my community. VW then built a duct bank that runs for 5.3 miles through mostly residential neighborhoods to a massive new substation on top of Cape Cod’s sole source aquifer. We are being exposed to high levels of ELF-EMF 24/7 at the beach and in front of homes, the duct bank is generating a great deal of heat that we believe will negatively affect the drinking water supply and delivery system in two villages, and an accidental spill of the system’s toxic dielectric fluid (used to cool transformers) could catastrophically contaminate the aquifer lens that serves the mid-Cape. The same company wants to commandeer two more beaches and put another 5 of these giant cables through village centers and residential neighborhoods in our town. Yeah — big fans here. These projects are a disaster, in my opinion, at sea and on land. Sorry, but we’ve been fighting them for four years, with little more than our desire to protect our environment for our children and grandchildren. (FB Save Greater Dowses Beach for more information)