Vineyard Wind I offshore wind farm

Vineyard Wind I, our first offshore wind farm in the United States

Iberdrola projects Offshore wind United States

We drive the growth of offshore wind energy in different countries and growth platforms. Vineyard Wind I, our first offshore wind facility in the United States, is an example of it. Vineyard Wind I is located off the coast of Massachusetts –15 miles south of Martha's Vineyard and 34 miles south of the Cape Cod peninsula– and it has an installed capacity of 806 MW and generates sufficient power to meet the demand from over 400,000 homes and businesses across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

Vineyard WindExternal link, opens in new window. , a company in which Iberdrola Group has a 50 % stake – through Avangrid Renewables, a subsidiary of Avangrid* – and the Danish investment group Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), have been in charge of the development of the wind farm and the management of its commissioning in 2024. Once commercial operation begins, Iberdrola will assume responsibility for controlling the operation and management of the facility, following the agreement reached with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners for this purpose.

Vineyard Wind I has been supported by a $3 billion investment (over 2.7 billion euros at current exchange rates) guaranteed through contracts with the three main energy providers in the state. The wind farm will prevent emissions into the atmosphere amounting to more than 1.6 million tonnes of CO₂ annually – the equivalent to removing 325,000 vehicles from the road, and $3.7 billion will be saved in energy costs in the region of New England. For this, it has received the Ruth H. Silman Award for Climate Change Project of the Year Award from the Environmental Business Council (EBC) of New England, the first organisation in the United States created to support and encourage the development of the environmental industry.

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* AVANGRID, Inc. is 81,50 % owned by Iberdrola, S. A.

Thanks to our projects, we will keep stimulation local employment. In this regard, the wind farm has created 3,600 full-time equivalent jobs and, under the Project Labour Agreement (PLA), it has been guaranteed that at least 500 of the jobs created during the construction phase of the project have been filled by local staff, including high hiring targets for women and various groups facing racial discrimination in the US.

This new development, slated to be the first commercial scale offshore windfarm in the United States, will be Iberdrola's Group's first offshore wind energy project in the country, ratifying its position as a global leader in this area.

Evolution of the project

On 18 November 2021, construction began on Vineyard Wind I, the first large offshore wind farm in the United States, 25 times the size of the only existing facility of its kind at that time in the country, located in Rhode Island.

The project had reached a $2.3 billion financing agreement with nine global lending banks, the first financial close for a commercial scale offshore wind project in the US. The financing included a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) and an electricity interconnection programme, and allowed construction to begin, with the aim of starting to supply clean electricity to Massachusetts in 2023.

Vineyard Wind I achieved all necessary permits for its construction, among them the federal approval from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), to commission Vineyard Wind I. In addition, BOEM issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the park, a comprehensive study to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the proposed project.

After receiving final authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the company has now executed an agreement with ISO New England to connect its generation into the New England electric power grid – at the NSTAR 115kV switch station in Barnstable, Massachusetts–, and signed long-term energy sale agreements with Massachusetts’s electricity distribution companies.

Last October 2023, Avangrid and the Danish investment group Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) announced that Vineyard Wind I project closed a $1.2 billion (approximately 1.135 billion euros) first-of-its-kind tax equity package for commercial-scale offshore wind with three US-based banks.

The components

Vineyard Wind uses GE Renewable Energy's industry leading Haliade-X wind turbine generators, the most powerful in operation to date, with up to 13 megawatts of power and a height of 248 metres. Each of these turbines can save 52,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year and in a single rotation generates energy for a home in Massachusetts for an entire day.

Meanwhile, Windar Renovables has been responsible for manufacturing 62 wind turbine foundations. The contract, worth around 100 million euros, has led to approximately 400 jobs (500 at peak times) at the plant in Asturias (Spain).

The Italian Prysmian Group, after entering into an agreement worth 200 million euros, was responsible for the commissioning of the submarine cabling system that will connect the offshore wind farm with the Continental US power transmission grid. The project required a total of 134 kilometres of high voltage alternating current electric cable.

The U.S. company Southwire was in charge of the design, manufacture and installation of the more than 51 kilometres of high-voltage overland cable. The cable has been manufactured at the Southwire plant in Huntersville (North Carolina), which will use avant-garde technology to produce high and extra-high-voltage cables ranging from 69 kV to 500 kV.

In July 2023, the installation of the offshore substation, which will serve the entire Vineyard Wind I project, was completed. It is the first substation of its kind installed by Iberdrola in the United States and the sixth in the world, weighing more than 5,000 tonnes, making it the largest the company has ever installed. 

Iberdrola, world leader in renewable energies

At Iberdrola, we decided to commit to renewable energies more than two decades ago as a fundamental pillar on which to build our safe, clean and competitive business model. Thanks to this vision, we are today world leaders in renewable energies, reaching 42,187 MW of renewables in operation by the end of 2023.

This commitment is reflected in our Strategic Plan in which we will allocate EUR 15.5 billion gross to renewables. Of this total, more than half is focused on offshore wind in the US, UK, France and Germany, 28% on onshore wind and 18% on solar.