Troubled windfarm is producing less than half the promised output, sensors are repeatedly tripping offline, and it’s engaged in a legal battle with its turbine manufacturer.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Two summers ago, we began following the saga of the Vineyard Farms offshore wind project and its blade failure near Nantucket.
After one blade failed and fell into the water, the beaches were littered with sharp fiberglass shards, creating a suboptimal condition at the height of the summer tourist season. The continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
Subsequently, residents of Nantucket began demanding the end of these mammoth offshore wind farms, and fishermen protested at the site of the blade failure.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey declared victory last month, celebrating the completion of Vineyard Wind as a shining beacon of “energy independence” that would slash electricity costs.
“Vineyard Wind is a key part of our all-of-the-above strategy to lowering energy prices,” Healey said. “Throughout one of the coldest winters in recent history, Vineyard Wind turbines powered our homes and businesses at a low price and now that price goes even lower with the activation of these contracts. Especially as President Trump is taking energy sources off the table and increasing prices with his war in Iran, we should be leaning into more American-made wind power to lower costs, create jobs, and make our country more energy independent.”
This past winter, Vineyard Wind lowered electricity prices by competing in wholesale electricity markets. In those markets, it consistently offered lower prices than other sources of electricity. This activation of the utilities’ contracts further lowers the price of electricity generated by Vineyard Wind.
However, the celebration may have been premature. Apparently, the wind farm is producing barely 300 megawatts (less than half the promised output), and sensors are repeatedly tripping offline.
In a May 1 court filing, Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller said the project’s current average output is roughly 300 megawatts, and 13 of the 62 turbines are not yet activated.
Significant remedial and repair work is needed to address “recurrent operational issues,” Vineyard Wind officials said in court documents.
The problems include sensors that repeatedly trip, causing the turbines to shut off and curtailing their performance and power generation.
Vineyard Wind is struggling with operational defects and legal battles after the completion of its first major U.S. offshore project off the Massachusetts coast. https://t.co/t9sfVd7DQ8 pic.twitter.com/nCxTz7VGIs
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) July 5, 2026
Furthermore, the developer is locked in a bitter $853 million lawsuit to stop turbine-maker GE Vernova from walking away from the project, which would essentially leave it a “dormant wind farm graveyard”.
A Boston judge has affirmed his own ruling that temporarily blocks GE Renewables from exiting its contract with Vineyard Wind, compelling the subsidiary of GE Vernova to continue servicing and maintaining the wind farm southwest of Nantucket.
Judge Peter Krupp this week rejected a pair of motions from GE Renewables that asked him to reconsider his previous order and send the case to arbitration. GE Renewables, the manufacturer of the offshore wind turbines used by Vineyard Wind, has been trying to leave the project, arguing that the offshore wind company owes them $300 million.
Vineyard Wind has countered by claiming that it is actually GE Renewables that owes them $500 million stemming from the collapse of a GE-manufactured turbine blade in July of 2024, which littered Nantucket’s beaches with debris and forced the wind farm to temporarily shut down while the cause of the break was identified. Ultimately, more than 60 blades had to be replaced. Vineyard Wind has also said that GE Renewables’ exit would endanger the very existence of the project, possibly leaving behind a “dormant wind farm graveyard”. So far, the courts have sided with Vineyard Wind.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ latest offshore wind procurement round has been delayed yet again, pushing the contract completion deadline to January 29, 2027, and leaving the process roughly two and a half years behind schedule.
Massachusetts selected 2,678 megawatts of offshore wind power spread across three projects in September 2024, kicking off contract talks that are expected to result in higher prices for power than past projects. During the repeated delays, one of the selected projects has removed itself from consideration and another raised the potential for a multi-year delay.
Officials say contract negotiations are still ongoing and are expected to result in higher power prices than in previous rounds, extending uncertainty for developers, ratepayers, and the region’s climate and energy planning.
It appears that when you build a $4.5 billion monument to green ideology on the Massachusetts coast, break a 351-foot turbine blade and dump 57 tons of fiberglass debris onto Nantucket’s beaches, then run out of money to pay the contractor who installed your turbines, the laws of physics and finance remain very strongly in place.
Here’s hoping the good people of the region have enough energy for both “heat domes” and the winter season.
It’s almost time to not only bury the defective wind machine blades, but bury the whole thing ~ the whole technology. It will never pay enough in electricity to pay for itself.
How much did it cost for each unit to be manufactured and then transported from China by ship, and then transported by truck (and include the costs of all the pilot cars and police escorts) to those locations where wind often happens. Roads had to be built and massive and deep holes had to be drilled. Then rebar cages put into these holes before all the concrete had to be transported to these “windy” (often on the highest slopes of big hills), and then the cranes and the people had to be brought in to assemble each wind machine. Then from the wind machines location big diameter cable had to be buried so the produced electricity could be delivered to a substation, hopefully without a lot of line loss.
Please show us how much. Maybe we guessed wrong. I have been wrong before. I am not that proud that I can’t admit it.
You seem to be talking about onshore wind. These are offshore. Still no good but different. No concrete. Boats not trucks. Mostly US built except the bad blades came from Canada.
plenty of concrete still
Each cable still needs an anchor, and those are usually concrete.
And the illegal balsa wood from South America used for the blades.
I read it as fiberglass blades for this case. Neither balsa nor fiberglass show up well on a rich kid’s vacation-ending X-ray.
The Chicken Littles sure like to cluck other people ….
😉
Now with chiggers…(actually they are chards of fiberglass, but they feel like chiggers).
So each wind farm is equivalent to the output of one Westinghouse style nuclear reactor which is good for 60 or so years without storage or replacement and is available 90% of the time. Wind farms output is about 30 % of nameplate so one nuclear reactor is equivalent to all three wind farms. Plus the reactor would be built on shore. Who are these people that think it is a good deal? Just imagine a wind storm in the dead of winter and your blade snaps off. Who picks it up and replaces it? At what cost and hazard to personnel. Don’t even talk about hazards to navigation and creatures of the sea. Remember Indian Point reactors provided 25% of the power for NYC and could still be generating now. How dumb can people be? It boggles the mind.
Working offshore and at great height is good money if you can get it from already biased politicos.
The solution couldn’t be simpler. We need to take Governor Healey at her word, Vineyard Wind power is cheap and driving power costs down. With power that cheap there is no need for federal or state tax dollars to prop them up. Remove all government support immediately and let Governor Healey lead the way to future prosperity.
Vineyard Wind has guaranteed prices. The wholesale price talk is a scam.
Here’s one version of the green project failure hit parade. I’ll let you research each one and their excuses used in the project collapse.
Solyndra Solar CA
Ivanhoe solar concentrator, nay gas fired plant CA
Crescent Dunes solar concentrator NV
Blue Mountain Geothermal NV
Blue Oak urban miner AR
Political forces were behind each project funding effort.
Abound Solar in Longmont, Colorado left taxpayers with millions in toxic waste cleanup costs, in addition to the millions the DOE lost in loan guarantees.
Shit pays for itself and stinks to boot.
Longmont is about 15 miles outside of Boulder Colorado. I looked at a map to check: “Is this a place where people OTHER THAN solar plant workers would live?”. Answer: “Yes, people live there.”
Then I thought: “China is pretty big.” and “I hope they didn’t build factories that spill all the toxic chemical stuff Europeans didn’t want in their cities on the best Chinese land.”
Then I thought: “They did a pretty good job cleaning up Boston Harbor in the 1990’s. Mostly by moving the big sewer pipe farther from shore, but other stuff too.” and returned to “China is pretty big.”
Resisting urge to consider the combination of one-child-policy-consequences and future cleanup costs. Maybe the robots will fix it?
Ivan’s pa objects to you calling his son a ho.
It appears to me that Maura Healey has lost the connection with reality.
You can’t lose something that you never had to start with.
That seems to be a feature with leftists.
They are also convinced that this time, socialism will work.
As experience shows, socialism works just fine until you run out of other peoples money.
jvcstone comment raises questions about USA and Social Security as the fallback retirement plan.
energy independence” that would slash electricity costs. Not going to happen. Massachusetts has the 3rd highest cost of living by State, including the 2nd highest utility cost thanks to the 3rd highest Democrat Control. Check it out ask X is there a correlation between Democrat Control and the Cost of Living!
“It appears that when you build a $4.5 billion monument to green ideology on the Massachusetts coast, break a 351-foot turbine blade and dump 57 tons of fiberglass debris onto Nantucket’s beaches, then run out of money to pay the contractor who installed your turbines, the laws of physics and finance remain very strongly in place.”
At least bovine dung is useful as fertilizer. More than I can say for Vineyard Wind. Bovine dung won’t cost you $4.5 billion.
And if you dry bovine dung out and put it in a furnace you can burn it to generate heat to turn water into stream to turn turbines to produce electricity.
Oh it’s a minor disagreement on who owes who at the project. 😄😄
I found it impossible to suppress a smile at reading that passage
Not to worry. The dems will eventually get back in power and bail out both Vineyard and GE, national security/saving the planet or whatever, put it on the tab.
I dream that we have achieved a state of sustained singular improbability, like being permanently at 4:30 in the afternoon, as on HHGTTG’s planet NowWhat.
“Vineyard Wind is a key part of our all-of-the-above strategy to lowering energy prices,” Healey said.
Sounds like an underpants-on-the-outside strategy to increasing clothing comfort. I worry the zipper would feel “scratchy”.
It is a complete lie to say that Vineyard Wind supplies cheap power. It has guaranteed prices.
The wholesale price means nothing for such suppliers. It is easy to offer lower prices when you are paid a guaranteed higher price.
Just one more reason why I think the whole thing is a fraud. They wouldn’t lie incessantly if these stuff were any good.