South Fork Wind Offshore Substation Being Installed

The first American-made offshore wind substation is being installed in the Atlantic Ocean in the latest milestone in the ongoing offshore South Fork Wind farm construction project, officials said.

The 1,500-ton, 60-foot-tall substation was built by more than 350 U.S. workers with Kiewit Offshore Services, Ltd., designed in Kansas, fabricated in Texas and shipped to the offshore location off the coast of the South Fork. The structure will sit on a monopile foundation within the wind farm, collecting the power produced by wind turbines and connecting it to the Long Island electrical grid.

“The completion of South Fork Wind’s offshore wind substation is yet another first for this groundbreaking project,” said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted, which is developing the project with Eversource.

South Fork Wind is on track to be the first completed utility-scale offshore wind farm in federal waters, with the project expected to be operational by the end of 2023. The project will be New York’s first offshore wind farm and will power approximately 70,000 New York homes each year with clean, offshore wind energy.

The development comes after South Fork Wind installed the project’s 68-nautical mile submarine cable from its landfall below Wainscott Beach linked to the wind farm site roughly 35 miles east of Montauk, where the project recently began work on the dozen turbines.