Photo of the Day: Block Island OWF Construction

Offshore WIND’s photo of the day: Full steam ahead at the Block Island offshore wind farm site.

Deepwater Wind started building the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. yesterday, when the installation vessel Weeks 533 and a barge carrying wind turbine foundations met three miles (4.8 kilometres) off Block Island with several crew transfer vessels and tug boats.

Today, a couple of environmental monitoring vessels are preparing to oversee the area during pile driving activities.

The foundations will be lifted from a barge and, once in position, they will be secured to the seabed by foundation piles driven through each of the 4 legs of each foundation.

The installation is expected to take approximately 8 weeks, with cable installation and final erection of the wind turbines scheduled for 2016.

The wind farm, which will comprise five 6 MW wind turbines, is scheduled to be online in 2016.

Image: Jeff Grybowski, Deepwater Wind’s CEO