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All five offshore wind farms being built in the U.S. are on track to hit key construction and operational milestones this month — even as the Trump administration continues its campaign to halt their development.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a 2.6-gigawatt project near Virginia Beach, Virginia, is expected to begin delivering power to the state’s energy-hungry grid by the end of March, according to its developer, Dominion Energy. As the first turbines start spinning, construction will proceed on the rest of the 176-turbine wind farm, which is now more than 70% finished.
Farther up the east coast, near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind is effectively complete.
Iberdrola, the parent company of Avangrid, which is one of Vineyard Wind’s developers, said on Feb. 25 that the final two of the 62 turbines would be installed “in the next days,” and that about 85% of the turbines are either operating or approved to begin exporting electricity.
Ørsted, which is developing the 704-MW Revolution Wind near Rhode Island, said the project was expected to begin generating electricity “within weeks” of a Feb. 6 earnings call. At that time, the Danish developer was pushing to install the last of its 65 turbines before its contract with a specialized turbine-installation vessel expired in late February. As of Tuesday, 60 of the total turbines have been installed, a spokesperson confirmed.
The vessel, called Wind Scylla, is now at the Port of New London in Connecticut, where its equipment is being recalibrated as part of ongoing construction operations at Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project. Work on that 924-MW installation, off the coast of New York, was nearly halfway complete as of last month’s earnings call.
Meanwhile, Equinor’s Empire Wind just notched another legal victory. On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s latest effort to further delay construction on the 810-MW wind farm near New York. The project, which is more than 60% complete, is set to receive a new turbine-installation vessel this month to start putting towers and blades in the ocean.
Offshore wind companies have been charging ahead since federal judges gave them a temporary reprieve in January and early February from the Trump administration’s stop-work order. On Dec. 22, the Interior Department required all five projects to pause for 90 days, citing unspecified “national security” concerns. Most recently, the administration tried to pause Equinor’s lawsuit against the stoppage by 45 days, which the D.C. judge declined to do.
Interior’s sweeping suspension order threatened to derail the multibillion-dollar energy projects — which are meant to supply huge amounts of carbon-free power to a region that’s barreling toward an electricity shortfall. Developers said the forced pauses cost them millions of dollars a day and put them at risk of losing access to the specialized vessels they need to install turbines and other offshore equipment.
An attorney for Vineyard Wind said in court that the $4.5 billion project was “at a grave risk of failing to meet its construction schedule, and in turn, its financial obligations” if it couldn’t reach full commercial operations by the end of March, The Martha’s Vineyard Times reported in January. He noted that Vineyard Wind’s contract for a turbine installation vessel expires on March 31.
While Vineyard Wind nears completion, many of its turbines have already been supplying electricity to the New England grid — including during a major winter cold streak that forced grid operators to run expensive oil-burning power plants to avert blackouts.
The completed South Fork Wind farm, which came online in 2024 and delivers power to New York’s Long Island, was also a crucial resource. During that period, market electricity prices frequently exceeded the long-term, fixed rates that utilities pay for the offshore wind power, said Stephanie Francoeur, senior vice president of communications and external affairs for the Oceantic Network, which advocates for marine renewable energy sectors.
“We’re really encouraged by this real-world performance data,” she said. “It’s going to be exciting to see more of it as more projects come to completion this year.”
Yet even after offshore wind farms come online, they won’t necessarily be spared from future attacks by the Trump administration, which has indicated that it sees operating turbines as the real purported threat. In its Dec. 22 memo, the Interior Department noted that “the movement of massive turbine blades” creates radar interference — though experts say such potential impacts are manageable and often minor, as IEEE Spectrum reported this week.
In the meantime, offshore wind developers continue stressing the need for their large-scale energy projects to get built. Robert M. Blue, Dominion Energy’s president and CEO, recently pointed to the soaring demand from AI data centers that’s straining the grid in Virginia and the broader mid-Atlantic region.
The utility sees Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind “as the fastest way to get a significant amount of electricity at a low cost … for our customers who are leading the AI race, who are building ships for the Navy,” he said during a Feb. 23 earnings call. The project, which was initially expected to finish later this year, is now likely to wrap up in early 2027.
“Slowing it down, as was demonstrated with the last stop-work order, adds costs, and adding costs and delays in the data center capital of the world, we think, doesn’t make sense,” Blue said.
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