Energy Musings - April 13, 2026

The recently completed Vineyard Wind farm off Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket is in the middle of a legal battle between the developer and its chief equipment provider. The wind farm could fail.

Bridge Over Troubled Nantucket Waters?

In mid-March, Vineyard Wind, the 806 megawatt (MW), 62-turbine wind farm located 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and near Nantucket Island, announced the completion of construction of the project. It was then entering the commissioning phase, ensuring all the turbines worked while continuing to send power to the New England grid and its Massachusetts electricity customers. The project is suddenly in the middle of a legal battle between the developers and their primary equipment supplier and installer.

Vineyard Wind is a joint venture development of Iberdrola, the parent company of Avangrid, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

Partial power has been flowing to the grid for more than a year, although the developer committed a felony by failing to report the flow properly. We discovered that utilities receiving power were reporting the sales to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), as required. However, the developer is required by law to report the output of its generators to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) simultaneously. Instead, the project was listed with the EIA as “Under Construction.”

When we questioned EIA officials, they were unaware of FERC’s data. The EIA continued to state that Vineyard Wind reported the project was under construction. However, they eventually felt pressured to inquire about the project’s actual status. Vineyard Wind acknowledged that it had been generating and selling power, but believed it did not need to change the project’s status until construction was complete and it entered the commissioning phase. EIA officials accepted the developer’s explanation about the legal requirement to report generation sales, so the felony and fine were dismissed, and Vineyard Wind began reporting monthly power generation data.

Vineyard Wind’s turbines are spinning and generating power.

Having avoided a reporting failure, Vineyard Wind is not facing a more consequential legal problem. In late February, GE Verona, the provider, installer, and servicer of the wind turbines, filed a termination notice with Vineyard Wind for non-payment under the contract. The notice cited more than $300 million in claims unpaid by Vineyard Wind. Now, Vineyard Wind has sued GE Vernova after its subsidiary, GE Renewables (GER), threatened to abandon its contract due to non-payment, before commissioning is completed.

Vineyard Wind’s suit is to stop GER from abandoning the project by April 28 during the commissioning phase. Reportedly, the contract requires GER to commission all 62 turbines and, thereafter, oversee the wind farm for at least the first few years. Vineyard Wind claims that if GER abandons the project, it “will likely fail, leaving the windfarm stranded.” Vineyard Wind says no wind turbine supplier could replace GER and provide the necessary maintenance and support.

Vineyard Wind says that if the wind farm cannot reach its full power, it cannot generate a sufficient return on the $4.5 billion investment and repay the banks that lent $2 billion. In that event, the banks could declare the project in default and foreclose on the project, which Vineyard Wind’s attorneys said would threaten the project’s “ability to survive.” That would leave the project as “a dormant wind farm graveyard.”

Would the U.S. government allow such a situation to continue? If the project is not producing, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) requires it to be decommissioned. However, to secure financing in 2022 for Vineyard Wind, the developers requested and received a waiver from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to provide a decommissioning plan and post financial assurance that the plan would be executed. By not having to provide that money for the first 15 years of the contract, Vineyard Wind was able to secure financing for the project. This potentially leaves U.S. taxpayers on the hook for the decommissioning expense if it fails, as the project is being built through a limited liability company, meaning its only asset is the wind farm. There is no recourse to the financial assets of the two developers who created the LLC. In BOEM’s Record of Decision for Vineyard Wind, the decommissioning process was described as the reverse of the construction; therefore, we assume the estimated cost to dismantle the wind farm would be equivalent to the $4.5 billion spent on its construction, subject to any inflationary cost increases.

GER is claiming it has not been paid the $300 million it was owed under the contract for more than 18 months. However, Vineyard Wind claims that the disastrous wind turbine blade failure in July 2024 and GER’s poor performance during construction of the wind farm resulted in $800 million in costs related to delays and impacts from the blade accident. It has been reported that the $800 million estimate was determined by a project engineer appointed under the contract to evaluate claims. Since Vineyard Wind’s damage claim is greater than GER’s contractual payment obligation, it believes it is entitled not to pay GER.

The wind turbine blade made in GER’s Canadian plant lacked proper bonding, causing it to break and sending toxic debris to beaches across the region. All Canadian blades were replaced, and blades were shipped back and forth to GER’s plant in France for repair.

Interestingly, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has been conducting a study of the blade failure. The Vineyard Wind accident occurred 21 months ago, yet no report has been issued. That is longer than the report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, which was completed in less than a year. Since the expertise in studying offshore accidents is similar for oil and gas as for renewable energy, one wonders what is going on.

The next round in the Vineyard Wind saga will unfold in a Boston state court on April 16. There will be lots of finger-pointing. This project is too important to Massachusetts’ clean energy mandate to allow it to fail. Therefore, we believe the state is actively working to mediate a solution that keeps the project moving forward.