Installation of the 13 monopile foundations that will support the South Fork Wind farm’s 12 turbines and offshore substation is complete, the wind farm’s developers, Orsted and Eversource, announced last week.
Work continues to connect the wind farm’s array cables and the export cable, which will deliver electricity to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton, to the offshore substation. Additional foundation components, including platforms and anode cages, are also being installed.
The Bokalift 2, the offshore installation vessel built by the Dutch firm Boskalis, transported and installed the foundations at the wind farm site, approximately 35 miles off Montauk Point. A fleet of American vessels at the project site continues to support the construction project.
Vessel and crane operators, boat captains and crew, engineers, welders, scientists, protected-species observers, and others are involved in the work. New York State union members, including ironworkers, pile drivers, divers, operating engineers, electricians, laborers, and other members of the region’s building trades, are also supporting the offshore work.
The wind turbine generators are to be installed later this summer and into the autumn. The first tower sections arrived last month and are being marshaled at State Pier in New London, Conn. Also to arrive in the coming weeks are the remaining tower sections, turbine blades, and nacelles — the part of the turbine that houses the components that transform the wind’s kinetic energy into mechanical energy to turn a generator that produces electricity.
The New York Times reported this month on “widespread alarm” in the offshore wind industry about rapidly increasing costs, due in part to supply chain issues and rising demand. Several developers in the United States have sought to renegotiate power supply contracts, according to The Times, which reported that Orsted “warned that a major project in Britain” could be at risk without more government support.
A spokeswoman for the South Fork Wind farm’s developers said this month that they have not sought to renegotiate its power supply contract with LIPA, nor are there plans to.
The wind farm, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in this country, is on schedule to be operational by year’s end, the developers said.
