They are planning to build 84 wind turbines three times taller than the Statue of Liberty. A 123-mile ocean cable will connect them to the mainland and then run 17 miles to a switching station. They’ve designed a new operations center and a training facility and have commissioned a 262-foot-long ship to service the windmills. They’re even paying $140 million to the town and county for allowing the cable to come ashore at Smith Point.
All of this, and Long Island ratepayers will only see their monthly bills go up $2.09.
That’s the number the proponents of the Sunrise Wind green energy project are sticking to, even in the face of inflation, supply chain problems, and Executive Orders against the industry signed by a President who believes windmills are environmentally hazardous and too expensive.
Currently under construction by the Denmark-based Ørsted, the total estimated cost of Sunrise Wind remains shrouded in mystery. Neither the company nor NYSERDA, the state agency championing the project, will say how much it will cost, though they do boast of a $700 million economic benefit to those building, operating, and servicing the 924-megawatt system.
The offshore wind industry was on thin ice even before President Trump hit pause on offshore new wind leases and permits. He ordered an assessment of the economic costs associated with the intermittent generation of electricity and the effect of subsidies on the viability of green energy. Ørsted had been reporting problems with its wind portfolio, posting a $1.7 billion impairment charge in the fourth quarter due to delays and cost overruns on Sunrise Wind and other U.S. projects. This was on top of a $4 Billion loss the company reported in October 2023.
They’ve extended the completion date of the East End turbine array another year to 2027, citing "considerably increased project costs," including high bids for foundations to support the 968-foot-high turbines, which will have blade diameters stretching the length of two football fields. The windmills will dwarf the Statue of Liberty which reaches up only 305 feet.
Gov. Kathy Hochul threw Ørsted a lifeline last year, rebidding the project to allow the company to charge more for its electricity than initially planned. Rather than a savings for the highly touted renewable power project, rates will go up, albeit the couple of dollars per month promised by the state, keeping Long Island among the regions with the highest rates in the nation. Suffolk County residents are currently forced to pay 26 cents per kWh on average, with monthly electric bills of about $282—32% above the national average. By comparison, Louisiana has the lowest rate in the U.S. at approximately 11.23 cents per kWh, while Hawaii has the highest at 40 cents.
"We must be prepared to meet the challenge of the federal government walking back commitments to offshore wind, a key energy source, in our transition to renewables,” Gov. Hochul stated in her budget address. “Changes at the federal level will create new challenges for the state and for programs New Yorkers care about.”
To turn a profit on Sunrise Wind, the largest turbine project in America, Ørsted has only three sources to pull from: the ratepayers, federal tax credits, or bailouts from the state. With Trump’s position on the industry, New Yorkers could be left holding the bag in more ways than one if the governor decides to subsidize the project. “It is too soon to determine what impact, if any, federal actions might have on New York reaching its ambitious renewable energy targets,” the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority said in a statement, reiterating that “the average bill impact for residential customers over the life of the Sunrise Wind project was projected to be approximately two percent or about $2.09 per month.”
To many, New York’s high energy costs are a shame since the state sits on a Saudi Arabia-sized supply of natural gas that could be used to generate electricity in an environmentally safe way. Just on the other side of the border in Pennsylvania, natural gas extraction is permitted, leading to a much lower energy cost of 17.49 cents per kWh for its residents. Rethinking the state’s energy policies is a constant battle between Republicans, who believe the safe utilization of natural gas would substantially raise the standard of living of its citizens, and the Democrats, who want to eliminate fossil fuels altogether. Through their Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, they mandated a reliance on the intermittent power sources of wind and solar energy stored in massive battery depots backed up by new nuclear plants, a strategy that landed flat with the environmentalists the green energy movement is meant to satisfy.
Ørsted is a publicly traded, for-profit company. Its shares fell as much as 17% after Trump’s Executive Orders and its stock lost about 80% in value since its peak in 2021. The company is majority owned by the Danish government and has developed numerous offshore wind farms globally, including Hornsea 1 and 2 in the North Sea, the world’s largest wind farm. Ironically, Denmark claims control over Greenland, the world’s largest island, which the President wants to take over.
While the Danish company has yet to install the giant turbines slated for 30 miles off Montauk Point, it is moving along with the installation of the cable to feed the offshore power into the grid. Conduit work is proceeding up William Floyd Parkway, and the company has built a temporary dock at the Shirley Marina to facilitate the movement of equipment to Fire Island. Barges will be used since the machinery is too heavy for the Smith Point Bridge.