Vineyard Wind, the nation’s largest federally permitted and built offshore wind project, is fully operational about 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.
Getting to this point has been a journey filled with starts and stops, and then more starts and stops. At times, it seemed unclear whether the project — which served as a test case for the country’s burgeoning offshore wind industry — would ever make it across the finish line.
But now, more than eight years after Massachusetts selected the project in its first offshore wind auction, it has reached its final major milestone.
“On Thursday, October 29, Vineyard Wind 1 reached full commercial operation, further strengthening New England’s energy supply,” Craig Gilvarg, a spokesperson for Vineyard Wind, wrote in an email to WBUR.
The news comes just hours after another offshore wind project in the region, Revolution Wind, announced it had reached full power. And that means that as winter approaches in New England, the grid has a lot more clean energy than in previous years.
“New England is better off now that we have not one but TWO projects fully operational commercially,” Katie Segal, senior director of offshore wind for the Environmental League of Massachusetts, wrote in a text. “We are going to have a tough winter and the wind will help reduce costs and reliability.”
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is also celebrating the news, calling it a “major milestone for America’s offshore wind industry” and a “major boost” for New England’s power grid.
“Vineyard Wind has already saved Massachusetts families and businesses millions of dollars on their electricity bills. With the project fully operational alongside Revolution Wind, offshore wind energy will drive down the price of electricity in New England even further,” she said in a statement. “My administration will continue to support this industry and its workers.”
Vineyard Wind’s 62 wind turbines are capable of producing 800 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 400,000 homes in the region. The slightly smaller Revolution Wind project can generate 704 megawatts and power around 350,000 homes.
Offshore wind has long been a cornerstone of New England’s energy plans. All six states have no oil or gas reserves, and there isn’t much open land to build renewable energy like solar and onshore wind. But the region presents phenomenal conditions for offshore wind: the relatively shallow waters off the coast are subject to some of the strongest and most constant winds in the world.
Yet what looks good on paper has proven differently in practice. The U.S. offshore wind industry has faced years of economic and political difficulties. Even today, the future of all but a handful of projects remains uncertain.
Vineyard Wind, in particular, has had a rough ride. The project’s timeline has been pushed back several times, starting in 2019, when the first Trump administration indefinitely delayed the permitting process.
The project finally got the green light to start construction when President Biden took office, but even that process hasn’t always gone smoothly. In 2024, a faulty turbine blade broke, sending debris plunging into the ocean. Much of it washed up on the shores of Nantucket, causing public outcry and triggering a federal investigation that further delayed the project’s schedule.
Then, in late December 2025, when the project was 95% complete, the Trump administration ordered work to stop at Vineyard Wind and four other projects under construction. The U.S. Department of the Interior claimed the projects posed a threat to national security, although several federal judges disagreed and the projects were ultimately allowed to resume.
In mid-March, Vineyard Wind announced that it had completed construction and was working to commission and connect the final turbines to the New England grid. In total, the $4.5 billion project employed about 3,500 people, many of whom were union workers.
What happens next for the US offshore wind industry remains to be seen. Since taking office in early 2025, the Trump administration has attempted to obstruct it with executive actions, stop-work orders, and a blanket pause authorizing a pause that has effectively frozen progress on all but five projects already under construction.
Wind energy supporters hope that a federal permitting reform bill, currently being negotiated in Congress, could provide more certainty for projects and prevent future administrations from discriminating against projects or energy sources they don’t like. But the future of this legislation is also up in the air.
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