A Third Major US Offshore Wind Farm Is Now Fully Operational (canarymedia.com) 58
Despite the Trump administration's efforts to halt development on a $6.2 billion wind farm, it's now "completely up and running," reports the nonprofit energy news site Canary Media, delivering enough electricity to power the equivalent over 350,000 homes:
On Thursday, the Danish energy giant Ørsted said its 704-megawatt wind farm near Connecticut and Rhode Island began "generating up to its full capacity" in October. Revolution Wind began producing smaller amounts of power in the spring, and the company installed the last of 65 turbines in September. The project is the third U.S. utility-scale offshore wind farm to reach full commercial operations, after South Fork Wind near New York and Vineyard Wind near Massachusetts.
Before the start of Trump's second term, BloombergNEF projected America would build 39 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 the article points out, but "Now, it expects just 5.9 GW to come online — an amount that reflects the handful of projects that were already completed or under construction at the start of last year." Despite the diminished pipeline, the carbon-free energy source is still expected to help keep household utility bills in check across the U.S. Northeast, experts say. Revolution Wind and the country's other completed projects have already played a key role in reducing grid stress during extreme weather events this year...
Ørsted hit its power milestone despite being forced to halt construction twice last year. In August 2025, the Interior Department issued a stop-work order for Revolution Wind, due to unspecified national security threats. That order was tossed out by a federal judge one month later. But in late December, the administration issued new stop-work orders to all five offshore wind projects then under construction. Judges struck those orders down one by one — but not before developers had lost huge sums of money and nearly missed key project deadlines...
Meanwhile, Ørsted said it's making progress on another offshore wind development, Sunrise Wind. The developer on Thursday said it has finished installing all of the wind-turbine foundations for the 924-MW project off the coast of Long Island, New York. That installation is expected to be fully operational in the second half of next year.
Before the start of Trump's second term, BloombergNEF projected America would build 39 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 the article points out, but "Now, it expects just 5.9 GW to come online — an amount that reflects the handful of projects that were already completed or under construction at the start of last year." Despite the diminished pipeline, the carbon-free energy source is still expected to help keep household utility bills in check across the U.S. Northeast, experts say. Revolution Wind and the country's other completed projects have already played a key role in reducing grid stress during extreme weather events this year...
Ørsted hit its power milestone despite being forced to halt construction twice last year. In August 2025, the Interior Department issued a stop-work order for Revolution Wind, due to unspecified national security threats. That order was tossed out by a federal judge one month later. But in late December, the administration issued new stop-work orders to all five offshore wind projects then under construction. Judges struck those orders down one by one — but not before developers had lost huge sums of money and nearly missed key project deadlines...
Meanwhile, Ørsted said it's making progress on another offshore wind development, Sunrise Wind. The developer on Thursday said it has finished installing all of the wind-turbine foundations for the 924-MW project off the coast of Long Island, New York. That installation is expected to be fully operational in the second half of next year.
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"The United States consumed about 4.20 trillion kWh of electricity in 2025 and roughly 101 quadrillion BTUs of total primary energy, making it one of the world’s largest energy users."
Basically, we'd need to build a landmass the size of the US, and cover it in Chinese solar panels and wind turbines built with Chinese parts built in India or Pakistan... for either to be made in the US, we'd have to build factories and create jobs _outside of_ AI stuff.
Re:COOL!!! (Score:4, Informative)
for either to be made in the US, we'd have to build factories
Of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers, 4 are in China, one in India, 4 in Europe (which holds #1 spot), 1 in the USA (at #4). It's GE at #4 which was #1 until fairly recently.
Re:COOL!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, we'd need to build a landmass the size of the US, and cover it in Chinese solar panels and wind turbines
You're off by a few orders of magnitude. To supply 100% of the world's electricity, you would need to cover 0.3% of its land area [pv-magazine.com] with solar panels. Considering that urban areas cover 2% of the US [weforum.org], it could probably cover most of its electricity just with solar panels on existing roofs and parking lots.
Of course, the story you're responding to is about offshore wind, which takes up no land at all. And onshore wind can easily share land with other uses like agriculture. Finding enough land for renewable energy is really not a problem.
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Considering that urban areas cover 2% of the US [weforum.org], it could probably cover most of its electricity just with solar panels on existing roofs and parking lots.
About 20% of urban areas are rooftops, but many won't be well-oriented with respect to solar generation (although new building could optimise this) so I'm guessing it'd be equivalent to about 2*0.2*0.3 or about 0.1% of land devoted to solar, but with the current grid and without batteries the utility of that would be somewhat reduced, but that's hard to determine. But it's maybe 20% of the way there taking that into account. It's not nothing, but it wouldn't be enough to cover most electricity, I expect. Ba
Now witness the power (Score:5, Funny)
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Trump can't stop you getting cheaper electricity.
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No, he (or anyone in The Big Chair) can't... if you build the solar or wind on your property and have it _only_ connected to your house... aside from housing rules and regulations.
But, if it's a big array that ties into the grid and goes through your local power company before it gets to you, they can charge you the same rate or even peak rate (they've gotta make money)... not to mention that that wind turbine array off the coast of California isn't really gonna do a frickin' thing for you in Iowa.
There's a
Re:Now witness the power (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is literally trying to destroy the world, opposing anything that could slow down climate change.
When fictional supervillains try to destroy the world, I used to think that was silly. Why would they want to destroy the world? They hurt themselves along with everyone else. Turns out those fictions are more realistic than I thought. There really are people trying to destroy the world without any good reason. His enemies want to prevent the world from being destroyed, and he opposes anything they support. That's all the reason he needs.
Insane world.
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Trump is literally trying to destroy the world, opposing anything that could slow down climate change.
Why would they want to destroy the world? They hurt themselves along with everyone else.
I think Trump knows he has only a few years left on this earth and wants his name blazoned on as many things as he can manage. It's getting to the point where he's not even trying to hide his megalomania and will be signing executive orders to prevent renaming the Trump Oval Office, Trump reflective pool, Trump Kennedy Center, Trump presidential landing circle, Trump Ballroom, and the gaudy Arc de Trump.
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I think Trump knows he has only a few years left on this earth and wants his name blazoned on as many things as he can manage. It's getting to the point where he's not even trying to hide his megalomania and will be signing executive orders to prevent renaming the Trump Oval Office, Trump reflective pool, Trump Kennedy Center, Trump presidential landing circle, Trump Ballroom, and the gaudy Arc de Trump.
Silver Lining: What can live by the EO can die by the EO
Re:Not just Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not just Trump (Score:4, Informative)
For Obama this is a complete lie, typical for the MAGA assholes. What happened is that 4 Chinese (!) wind-farm projects were stopped by Obama for national security concerns.
Re:Not just Trump (Score:4, Informative)
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This would be terrible news (Score:2)
Re:This would be terrible news (Score:5, Informative)
Actually offshore wind is not a problem for birds. This has been studied carefully: Most birds avoid the rotor radius fully, the rest does not get hit. A research project running over two years did not find a single hit on a bird: https://group.vattenfall.com/p... [vattenfall.com]
This is different for onshore wind and buildings (!).
Obviously that offshore wind is dangerous to birds is an often repeadet lie by those that see clean energy as a threat...
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Take away Data centers of course but do that and build out wind and solar and we could have free energy for everyone in the country. No power bills whatsoever you could not possibly use enough electricity at your house. The only things we would have to meter are r businesses
But there is an entire world of billionaires who won't let that happen and an entire world of people currently freaking out about Democ
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Yes, I got that. My comment was not to contradict you.
Why not onshore (Score:2)
Why is this not true for onshore wind, which is killing lots of birds and bats? Or are you making shit up?
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Maybe do some actual research?
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> Why is this not true for onshore wind, which is killing lots of birds and bats? Or are you making shit up?
For example, on land a lot more bird migration at night and off shore a lot more birds with high wind manoeuvrability.
"Seabirds deliberately avoid wind turbine rotor blades offshore" - https://group.vattenfall.com/p... [vattenfall.com]
"Study suggests most seabirds avoid offshore wind farms" - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sc... [bbc.com]
"... painting one blade of a turbine black, which can increase visibility, can reduce bird
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As usual, you are without clue. This is not the US where corporations can fake research without consequences. Vattenfall would have gotten skewered.
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> Got something peer reviewed from a university to read instead?
Just googled it:
"Study suggests most seabirds avoid offshore wind farms" - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sc... [bbc.com]
> one of the biggest differences is that it's hard to track fatalities
Do you have a reference for that?
But seriously, seabirds are good at steering in high winds while night migrating birds on land aren't good at avoiding the blades.
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A moldy oldie!
Funny timing on that one (Score:5, Funny)
A pity they cannot use the current US admin's production of hot air to supercharge these wind farms. Might produce even more energy that way.
Units? (Score:4, Funny)
the equivalent over 350,000 homes
Could we have that in data centers please? Homes is an archaic unit, given as how we will all be living in tents with campfires in order to feed our masters soon.
Re: Units? (Score:2)
In addition I would like to have a conversion between American units and international units. Like the power consumption of one American house would be equivalent to six Costa Rican households (not real ratio)
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Wow... 350,000 homes!
(bing)
"The United States has about 149.8 million total housing units as of Q3 2026, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates."
So, got a little bit to go, right now.
Oh, and... the tech has been there through like the last 30+ years (it's just more efficient in the later years)... why didn't previous Presidents deploy it?
Hate to tell you, there's no "masters".
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the equivalent over 350,000 homes
Could we have that in data centers please? Homes is an archaic unit, given as how we will all be living in tents with campfires in order to feed our masters soon.
Or in Libraries of Congress - it uses power too! :-)
For you youngsters, a "library" is a tax-funded place that has books and magazines that people can check out and read for free -- "books" and "magazines" are like papery blogs. :-)
And for you red hats, "Congress" is ... (sigh)
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Could we have that in data centers please?
One.
Non profit indeed. (Score:2)
The irony is that, at least here in Europe, practically all the windmills are heavily subvented and are literally worth nothing when running at any decent power because whenever it's windy, the electricity spot prices are near zero.
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Who cares about spot prices, when you have:
- a 2 year contract
- week ahead prices
- day ahead prices
???
Asking for a friend.
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Subvented?
Did you mean 'subsidized'?
Of course, it's free energy (mostly, aside from maintenance), but the power company (whoever it is) isn't exactly gonna give it to you at a loss... somebody has to make money.
Lower cost of electricity please (Score:3)
I am very much pro solar, wind, and geo renewables. However these sources need to demonstrably reduce the price of electricity to households. especially after this latest US election where the message is loud and clear. Voters absolutely do not want the virtue signaling of prior administrations nor the object incompetence and corruption of the current administration.
in California, for instance, there has been a tremendous build out of solar and battery storage, which is great. but then the politicians have fumbled on transmission in California has the highest electricity prices in the nation. how can you make a compelling point about renewables being economically viable in that scenario?
And to make matters worse, California regulators are pushing forward strongly on electrification measures, even as the price of electricity remain stratospheric. thatâ(TM)s the sort of tone deafness that gets the electorate turned out and droves. good thing those regulators are appointed I guessâ¦.
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However these sources need to demonstrably reduce the price of electricity to households.
They would, especially right now as they are much lower cost than gas at the moment. The problem is that the price isn't defined by the wind energy projects. The system in the USA is a day-ahead bid from low cost to high cost to determine a market clearance price. That clearance price is the price that is paid. The system isn't too different from Europe's marginal cost pricing system except that in Europe it happens in real time.
The end effect is that the price is set by the least expensive option which can
If it is a solvent investment then YES!!! (Score:2)
Build one off the coast of Mar-a-lago (Score:4, Funny)
and call it the Donald J Trump Presidential Clean Coal Factory
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and call it the Donald J Trump Presidential Clean Coal Factory
They could even re-train coal miners to build / maintain them, assuming Trump forgets that was Hillary's idea during their election competition.