Up Close & Personal with the South Fork Wind Farm

It was just below 70 degrees, with a light breeze, the sun shining bright, and mild seas – perfect sailing weather.

Passengers on this excursion drove almost to the end of Sound Avenue early on a Wednesday morning – a rare trip if you don’t live or work on the North Fork – and saw the village of Greenport wake up. It was far from the Manhattan-level autumn traffic on the North Fork or the bustling party town that is Greenport in the summer.

But this was not a trip to Claudio’s, a trip for pumpkin picking, or for a ride on the Orient Point ferry to Connecticut. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see green energy firsthand. Ørsted, a Danish multinational energy company, hosted a ride on the Julia Leigh, a high-speed ferry, out to see their wind farms located up to 30 miles east of Montauk Point, as well as educate visitors on how they work and discuss future plans.

Leaving out of Greenport was apparently the most efficient route – and also the most scenic. The ferry ran through Greenport Harbor, passing Shelter Island, the Orient Point Lighthouse, Camp Hero, and the Montauk Lighthouse before finally making it out onto the open ocean.

“We’re one of the closest ports to accessing this very special place,” Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi, who went on the trip, told Dan’s Papers. “Climate change is front and center every day of the year in Greenport, whenever there’s a storm or a surge that threatens our waterfront, and wind energy is an important component of dealing with this and getting ourselves off fossil fuels.”

Once the ferry passed Montauk, the first set of windmills came into view – the Block Island Wind Farm, the first of three projects off of the East End that Ørsted undertook.

“Block Island was the very first and was built in [Rhode Island] state waters,” Kevin Hansen, head of government and marketing affairs at Ørsted, told Dan’s Papers. “We started with Block Island, which has five turbines, then South Fork Wind has 12, and our next project – Sunrise – is going to have 84.”

The Sunrise Wind Farm is the second planned Ørsted wind farm for New York. It will be located close to the South Fork Wind Farm, about 30 miles east from Montauk Point.

South Fork Wind was completed in March, with the 12 turbines plus a workers’ substation – ironically resembling that of an offshore oil rig – standing tall in the Atlantic Ocean.

While Block Island Wind was the first offshore wind farm, South Fork Wind is the first commercial-scale wind farm; Block Island generates 30 megawatts of power, enough to power 17,000 homes – South Fork Wind generates 132 megawatts, enough to power more than 70,000 homes.

“South Fork wind has really been a trailblazing project, not just for New York, not even just for the Northeast, but for the entire U.S.,” Hansen added. “It’s helped establish a national and regional supply chain and created hundreds of jobs across dozens of states.”

The facts are in line with Hansen’s claims. Up to 350 workers across three states – New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island – were employed in the construction of South Fork Wind. Assembly of the turbines took place in Connecticut, while crew vessels and a helicopter for the construction were based out of Rhode Island, and workers from New York installed the turbines in the ocean.

“We’ve been building and operating offshore wind farms around the world now for over 30 years,” Hansen added. “We’re excited to take that expertise to the U.S. and to New York, and we’re investing $20 billion into the U.S. clean energy supply chain. So it’s an incredible opportunity. It’s clean energy, it’s jobs, it’s investment.”

Union workers were involved in the construction of the wind farm, and local labor leaders praised the project.

“I’m very proud that Long Island is leading the way towards our green energy future,” Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties President Matthew Aracich said in March. “The South Fork Wind project is the culmination of efforts by Governor Hochul, NYSERDA, Ørsted, and Eversource. This industry defining project, which was the nation’s first industrial scale offshore wind project on the Eastern Seaboard, will continue to provide residual benefits for years to come. Long Island’s youth should expect to see new opportunities in the very near future through apprentice training programs.”

As the ferry approached the wind turbines, passengers remarked how pictures did not do them justice. The poles of the turbines alone stand nearly 500 feet above sea level, with the blades at full height reaching nearly 800 feet above sea level – just like standing next to a skyscraper.

It’s not all perfect, though. Offshore wind farms have faced criticism, with opponents claiming that the turbines are hazardous to whales and birds. However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims that there are “no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.” Regarding bird deaths, the MIT Climate Portal acknowledged that the turbines do occasionally kill birds, “but only a fraction as many as are killed by house cats, buildings, or even the fossil fuel operations that wind farms replace.”

“What’s hazardous to marine life and birds is fossil fuels, because fossil fuels are the things that are creating climate change, warming our waters in the ocean, and causing acidification of the ocean,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment, told Dan’s Papers. “If we are interested in protecting birds, protecting whales, protecting fish species, then we need to support the transition from oil to renewables. On Long Island, there are training programs now in Stony Brook University, Suffolk County Community College, SUNY Farmingdale, that have these training programs, or retraining programs, as we call them. We can make this transition together where everybody wins – local jobs, good paying jobs, cleaner air, better technology, technology of the future. It’s all here.”