Huge turbines will soon bring the first offshore wind power to New Yorkers

The pier on the Connecticut coast is filled with so many enormous oddities that it could be mistaken for the set of a science fiction movie. Sword-shaped blades as long as a football field are stacked along one edge, while towering yellow and green cranes hoist giant steel cylinders to sit like rockets on a launch pad.

It’s a launch point, not for spacecraft, but for the first wind turbines being built to convert ocean wind into electricity for New Yorkers. Crews of union workers in New London, Conn., prepare parts for 12 of the giant fans before they are shipped for final assembly 15 miles offshore.

“They look a little like a space station,” said Christine Cohen, a Democratic state senator who toured the staging area last week. “When you see the components up close, it’s breathtaking how big they are.”

The turbines will be part of South Fork Wind, a wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean whose completion is crucial to the northeastern states’ hopes of switching to renewable energy sources. Recent setbacks at several other offshore projects in the region have raised concerns about whether and when they will all be built.

One of the South Fork developers, Denmark-based Orsted, recently canceled plans for two much larger wind farms off the New Jersey coast because they were no longer feasible.

The company also planned to build Sunrise Wind, another wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean that would supply electricity to New York. But after state regulators declined to increase subsidies for that project and three others, Orsted said it was unsure whether it would bid for that contract again. New York officials said they would seek new bids starting Nov. 30.

In the meantime, New York’s best bet for entering the offshore wind era is on the waterfront in New London.

The pieces are so large that it took a cargo ship three voyages to transport them from Germany and Denmark, where they were made by Siemens Gamesa, a leading turbine manufacturer. The ship will return shortly with the last cargo.

Orsted and its partner Eversource expect electricity to start flowing from the first South Fork turbines before the end of the year. But the weather at sea – sometimes it can be too windy to build a wind farm – as well as all kinds of mechanical issues and a simmering labor dispute at the pier can slow the flow of the ocean to Long Island.

In early November, the first ship to leave New London, loaded with turbine parts, had to return with three blades still on board due to a mechanical problem transferring them to a ship. It was only two weeks later that the ship was able to make another eight-hour round trip and make a successful transfer.

The task is immense in all dimensions, including distance, time and cost. In the ocean more than 30 miles east of Montauk Point, the mission is to erect a dozen towers and attach 98-foot-long fiberglass blades to each. Picture the 50-story General Motors Building with three Statues of Liberty spinning around the top, pinned with the tops of their torches.

The central role at South Fork is played by the Aeolus, a heavy lift ship. The Aeolus uses its crane to lift the turbine parts from an arriving ship and then transforms itself into a platform by plunging its four legs onto the ocean floor and rising out of the water.

Once one of the structures is intact, crew members from a supply ship will enter the tower and, ascending on a three-passenger elevator inside, tighten bolts and connect cables to prepare the turbine to generate power.

Paul Murphy, an Orsted director overseeing the project, said he expected South Fork to get past remaining hurdles, including sparring among powerful unions on the pier.

In September and October, busloads of dock workers set up picket lines outside the pier gates, objecting to the operation of cranes there by members of the International Union of Operating Engineers. Their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, has stopped blocking work at the pier for now, but a union official said the matter remains unresolved.

“We have temporarily changed our method of protest,” said James H. Paylor, the union’s assistant general organizer. He said the union had distributed flyers outside Orsted’s offices in New York, Boston and other cities.

Mr. Murphy said that after “some growing pains,” South Fork was “in the final stages.” If the wind is not too strong, workers at sea can assemble a turbine in less than three days.

“The first time you do any activity, you want to make sure you do everything nice and slow,” to ensure it’s done right and that novice installers learn the steps, Mr. Murphy said.

The installation, which will take several weeks, will involve more than 200 workers, both on land and on board various ships. Last Monday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced the installation of the first South Fork turbine. “a momentous step” toward the state’s goal of getting 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

The pace of work could be faster if not for a century-old law known as the Jones Act, which prevents the Dutch-flagged Aeolus from picking up parts from the pier itself and delivering it to the site. The Jones Act requires the involvement of American-made ships.

But the ships will no longer be needed once there is an American ship that can install turbines in the ocean. The first, the Charybdisis under construction in Texas, with a price tag of $625 million and completion expected in early 2025.

The Charybdis should be able to operate at least twice as fast because it can carry two turbine towers at once, said Ulysses B. Hammond, interim director of the Connecticut Port Authority.

“It’s huge,” Mr Hammond said of the ship. “I mean huuuuge.”

Gesturing to the nearby section of Interstate 95 that crosses the Thames, he added, “It’s going to stop traffic on the Gold Star Bridge.”

Mr Hammond has overseen the conversion of the State Pier, which sits at the Thames Estuary opposite General Dynamics’ submarine shipyard, into an offshore wind turbine assembly hub. Because there are no bridges between the pier and the ocean, the pier along the northeast coast has the rare advantage of providing access to ocean-going vessels without any practical restrictions on height or width.

The cost of the project is now estimated at around $300 million, more than triple the Port Authority’s original estimate. South Fork developers Orsted and Eversource are contributing about $100 million and the state is contributing the rest.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont called expenditure an investment in carving out an outsized role in a burgeoning regional industry.

“Connecticut’s deepwater ports, direct water access and long history of advanced manufacturing make our state a natural home for offshore wind projects serving all of New York and New England,” Mr. Lamont said in October.

Both the state and developers are counting on the pier as a collection point for more wind farms. Orsted and Eversource have formed joint ventures for two more offshore projects: Wind of revolution And Sunrise wind – which they plan to build after the completion of South Fork.

Revolution Wind, more than five times the size of South Fork, would provide Connecticut and Rhode Island with enough power for about 350,000 homes, Orsted said. Sunrise Wind would provide New York with enough power for nearly 600,000 homes, it says.

But right now, South Fork is the one to watch as the nation’s First commercial scale offshore wind farm.

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about offshore wind,” Mr. Murphy said. “We will be using it in the coming months.”