Vineyard Wind sues GE
The developer of the Vineyard Wind offshore project sued GE Renewables this week, asking a Massachusetts court to force the turbine maker to keep working after GE signaled it might walk away. The filings say GE’s performance has already damaged the project and that a contractor withdrawal would cause irreparable harm to the wind farm’s completion and schedule. (boston.com) (ack.net)
Vineyard Wind sued GE Renewables this week to stop the turbine maker from quitting the Massachusetts offshore wind project before it is fully operating. (apnews.com) The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Massachusetts, after GE Vernova said its GE Renewables unit would terminate turbine service and maintenance contracts at the end of April. Vineyard Wind says GE is the only company that can finish the remaining work on its turbines. (boston.com) The money fight is central to the case. GE Vernova says Vineyard Wind owes more than $300 million for work performed, while Vineyard Wind says GE still owes about $545 million tied to the July 2024 blade failure and the delays that followed. (boston.com) (ack.net) Vineyard Wind 1 is not a pilot project. It is the first large-scale offshore wind farm approved in the United States, designed for about 800 megawatts and located roughly 12 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. (boem.gov) The project uses 62 General Electric Haliade-X turbines rated at 13 megawatts each, with power sent ashore in Barnstable after it is gathered at an offshore substation. Vineyard Wind says the full project is meant to generate 806 megawatts, enough to serve more than 400,000 homes. (vineyardwind.com 1) (vineyardwind.com 2) The relationship between developer and turbine supplier was already strained before this lawsuit. On July 13, 2024, one installed blade failed, sending debris into the ocean and onto Nantucket beaches, and federal regulators halted further blade installation and power production until conditions were met. (boem.gov) (boston.com) The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says GE Vernova’s root-cause analysis traced that blade failure to a manufacturing deviation, and the federal government approved a revised plan in January 2025 so Vineyard Wind could remove and replace blades on as many as 22 turbines. (boem.gov) Even after that restart, the project kept slipping. Construction finished in March 2026, power had already been flowing to the grid from completed turbines for more than a year, and full operations were still expected only in the coming months. (boston.com) (wbur.org) Vineyard Wind is owned 50 percent by funds of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and 50 percent by Avangrid Renewables, part of the Iberdrola group. The developer says losing GE now would leave it without the company that designed, installed and services the turbines at the point when the wind farm is supposed to move from construction into steady operation. (vineyardwind.com) (iberdrola.com) GE Vernova said it is exercising a contractual right to terminate for nonpayment and will defend that position in court. A hearing on Vineyard Wind’s request for an injunction is scheduled for April 16. (boston.com) (vineyardgazette.com)
