South Fork Wind Turbine Components Arriving in New London

August 16, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

Wind turbine components for the South Fork Wind Farm, New York’s first offshore wind farm, have started coming into New London ahead of the installation at the project site that is expected to start later this summer.

Ørsted shared photos of the first shipment of wind turbine blades arriving on board United Heavy Lift’s cargo vessel UHL Fierce on 15 August.

View on Twitter.

According to the vessel’s AIS data, UHL Fierce sailed out of Port of Aalborg in Denmark on 4 August.

The 132 MW South Fork offshore wind farm will comprise twelve 11 MW Siemens Gamesa turbines installed on monopile foundations, all of which are now in place.

In 2020, Ørsted and Eversource, through their joint venture, signed an agreement with the Connecticut Port Authority (CPA) and the terminal operator Gateway Terminal to redevelop New London’s State Pier through a combined public-private investment of USD 157 million and re-make it into a heavy-lift facility capable of supporting offshore wind turbine staging and assembly, and a broader range of cargo businesses.

The following year, the joint venture signed a Host Community Agreement (HCA) with the City of New London, Connecticut, that facilitates the redevelopment of State Pier and provides the city with USD 750,000 in base revenue over a seven-year period during the construction of the South Fork Wind, Revolution Wind, and Sunrise Wind projects which, with other payments by the Connecticut Port Authority and Gateway Terminal, is expected to amount to more than USD 1 million per year.

In March this year, the Connecticut Port Authority announced that the Northeast Bulkhead, a heavy-lift platform also known as the “delivery berth”, was completed at State Pier. With the entire upgrade, the terminal will feature two heavy-lift platforms for offshore wind turbine components.

This spring, the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) authorised the turbine construction offshore Rhode Island and New York for the South Fork project, after the Department of the Interior transferred regulations governing offshore renewable energy activities, including workplace safety and environmental compliance, from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to BSEE in January.

South Fork Wind, for which Ørsted and Eversource reached the final investment decision (FID) at the beginning of last year, will be New York’s first offshore wind farm and the first commercial-scale project of this kind to be built in the US.

The first offshore wind farm of this scale to be approved is the 800 MW Vineyard Wind 1 in Massachusetts, which is also under construction with the first wind turbines soon to be installed. However, being a bigger project than South Fork, Vineyard Wind 1 will be completed and put into operation in mid-2024.

The 132 MW South Fork Wind is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2023.