There’s More To The South Fork Offshore Wind Farm

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

At 132 megawatts, the South Fork offshore wind farm in New York is small by today’s standards. Nevertheless, the project is playing an instrumental role in the US offshore wind industry. It provides key data on operating capacity and marine life, too, making the case for renewable energy stronger than ever before.

How Did We Forget The South Fork Offshore Wind Farm?

US President Donald Trump has tried, and serially failed, to stop construction work on five forthcoming wind farms along the Atlantic coast in Massachusetts (Vineyard Wind), Rhode Island (Revolution Wind), New York (Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind), and Virginia (the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project), with Connecticut also participating.

The latest effort took place on December 22, when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued an emergency stop-work order against all five wind farms, citing national security concerns. All five resumed work within a matter of weeks after multiple federal judges suspended the order.

The stop-work order seemed all the more specious considering that the 30-megawatt Block Island offshore project in Rhode Island has been operating since December of 2016 without raising similar concerns.

In fact, another even larger offshore wind farm has also been operating without raising the attention of national security experts. The South Fork Wind project was approved for construction in 2022, in an area located off Long Island in New York State. Its 12 turbines began spinning out 132 megawatts just two years later, in March of 2024.

Why Is This Important?

South Fork is important on three accounts. First, it is the nation’s first large, commercial-scale offshore wind farm. Second, both South Fork and Block Island raise serious questions about the December 22 stop-work order. After all, if “national security concerns” arise over projects that are only in the construction phase, perhaps there are similar, if not more serious, concerns involving offshore wind farms that are already contributing to the grid.

To further undermine its own national security case, on December 22 the Interior Department issued a separate letter to Vineyard Wind, where 44 of 62 turbines were already grid-connected at the time. In the letter, the agency’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management advised Vineyard that the stop-work order did not cover the working turbines.

Wait…what? The Interior Department has yet to provide any further explanation of the supposedly dire national security concerns that provoked the December 22 order against projects in construction, but not against projects in operation. Meanwhile, South Fork has been chugging along, and that brings us to the second reason why the project is important.

South Fork has pulled the rug out from under Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has stated that offshore wind turbines are inefficient in the winter. That’s a particularly significant shortcoming in the chilly Northeast, except it’s a lie.

“South Fork Wind, the first commercial offshore wind farm in the U.S., has exceeded expectations, according to the Long Island Power Authority, especially during peak winter demand,” the trade organization Oceantic Network reported last August.

“Offshore wind is especially productive when we need it most — during the harsh winter months, storms, or during the times of day that demand is ramping up and solar is not online,” Oceantic added for good measure.

“Data from one of America’s pilot projects showed an annual capacity factor of 47% — on par with coal plants — off the Virginia Coast,” Oceantic continued, referring to another US offshore wind project that often escapes notice. It comes under the wing of the leading Virginia-based utility Dominion Energy.

Dominion turned on the juice at its pilot project in 2020. The array included just two 6-megawatt wind turbines for a total of 12 megawatts. Modest as it was, the pilot informed Dominion’s decision to move forward with the 2.6-gigawatt CVOW project, which is now nearing completion.

Next Steps For Offshore Wind

So much for the good news. While five new offshore wind farms are moving forward, Trump has successfully stymied other projects on the boards. That’s too bad for ratepayers in who are stuck with the rising cost of coal, natural gas, and oil for power generation and heating. Costs were climbing before Trump took the nation to war against Iran last month, and they have taken off like a rocket since then.

Whelp, you get what you vote for. With a healthy assist from fossil energy stakeholders, Atlantic coast communities and their elected officials have rallied against offshore wind farms ever since the early 2000s. New Jersey has been a particularly instructional case. The state was in the running to host the nation’s first offshore wind farm back in 2014 until former Republican Governor Chris Christie slow-walked a key federal grant to death. His successor, former Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, got things back on track after taking office in 2017, only to see Trump shoot the whole thing down last year.

So, no new wind farms for New Jersey residents. However, they are still getting the wind turbines. The Empire wind farm sits in a corner of the ocean practically equidistant between the coast of New Jersey and New York, though New York gets all the clean kilowatts through a connection in Brooklyn.

At least fishing enthusiasts in New Jersey stand to benefit. Ongoing research at the South Fork wind farm indicates that Empire Wind will attract more marine life to the area. “The new habitat and availability of food resources brings fish and shellfish to the area in what is known as a ‘reef effect,’” the research firm INSPIRE Environmental reports. The firm has documented “numerous commercially, recreationally, and ecologically important species such as black sea bass, lobster, and flounder” near the South Fork structure. Atlantic cod, scup, cunner, barrelfish, flounder, butterfish, jack, mahi mahi, triggerfish, Bermuda chub, winter and summer flounder, sculpin, spotted and red hake, ocean pout, and Atlantic rock/Jonah crabs have also been spotted.

On a darker note, anyone concerned about the dwindling number of North Atlantic right whales may want to turn their attention towards the leading causes of whale mortality, namely, boat strikes and fishing gear. Seriously, call your representatives in Congress, STAT, because things are about to get a lot worse for the whales.

“The Trump administration today announced plans to revoke vessel speed restrictions on the Atlantic coast that protect whales, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, from deadly ship strikes,” the organization Center for Biological Diversity reported on March 3.

“The North Atlantic right whale population began a sharp decline around 2010 as whales shifted habitats in a rapidly changing climate, bringing them into areas where protections from vessel strikes and accidental fishing gear entanglements were not in place,” CBD explains.

The speed limit protections were established in 2008, but loopholes and loose enforcement have limited their effectiveness. If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the discussion thread. Better yet, find your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think.

Photo: The 132-megawatt South Fork offshore wind project has been peacefully churning out the clean kilowatts since 2024, located off the coast of Long Island in New York State (courtesy of South Fork Wind).