South Fork wind turbine blades return to state pier pending ‘lifting equipment’ repair

Three turbine blades returned to the New London State Pier where Ørsted and Eversource say workers are addressing an issue with lifting equipment that kept them from being unloaded at the South Fork Wind construction site. Three more blades and tower sections sit on the pier waiting to be loaded and taken away.

NEW LONDON — A barge carrying wind turbine blades returned to State Pier on Sunday with the blades uninstalled pending the repair of lifting equipment off Montauk.

Eversource and Ørsted told CT Examiner on Monday that there wasn’t anything wrong with the turbine blades shipped from State Pier last week.

A Crowley Marine Services barge took pieces of the first turbine of the companies’ South Fork Wind out of the redeveloped State Pier late Tuesday night, tugs pulling the barge out the mouth of the Thames River to be assembled about 35 miles off the coast of Montauk, New York.

On Sunday, the barge returned to New London with the three 330-foot blades but without the two sections of the 350-foot tower and the 520-ton nacelle that houses the generator. 

Justin May, spokesman for the wind partnership of Ørsted and Eversource, told CT Examiner that the barge returned for maintenance on lifting equipment for the blades. There is no issue with the blades themselves, he added.

The towers and the nacelle were successfully transferred off the barge to the jack-up installation ship Aeolus at the construction site off Montauk, he said. The barge will return the blades offshore after maintenance and when weather allows, May said.

Workers could be seen standing atop a yellow structure on top of the stack of three blades on the barge on Monday. Three more blades were stacked on the pier, along with multiple partially assembled tower sections.