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Planning & Analysis

South Fork Wind’s history spans over a decade of pre-development, development, permitting, and construction. Its story began on August 18, 2011, when BOEM published a Call for Information and Nominations for Commercial Leasing for Wind Power on the OCS Offshore Rhode Island and Massachusetts as well as a Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environment Assessment (EA) for a Commercial Wind Lease. This action effectively started the lease sale processes for offshore renewable energy.

Leasing

By July of 2012, the draft EA was completed and by December of that year BOEM posted a proposed sale notice for the lease areas. On June 4, 2013, BOEM released the final EA along with a Finding of no Significant Impact (FONSI) indicating that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the offshore area was not necessary. Shortly after, on July 31, 2013 BOEM held an auction for the Wind Energy Area, and in October Deepwater Wind was announced the winner of lease areas OCS-A 0486 and 0487. The sale process had around $3 million in fees and leased a total of 97,498 acres at $3.00 per acre over a 30 year period.

Site Assessment

Site assessment did not start until April 2016, when the site assessment plan was filed and subsequently completed that October. . As the site assessment was initiated, the LIPA solicitation process was initiated and by January 2017 the LIPA Board approved a new offshore wind project off the coast of Long Island. As the entity responsible for procuring and delivering power, the approval from the LIPA board was a critical step in the process. By October 2017, the site assessment plan for the lease area was approved by BOEM.

Permitting

The project’s Construction and Operations Plan (COP) was submitted to BOEM in June of 2018, detailing the construction specifications, the amount of turbines to be installed, and the power capacity.

The submission of the COP initiated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process, with a Notice of Intent to Prepare an EIS published by BOEM in October 2018, NYS followed by a month long public comment period. In September 2018, the developers submitted an Application for Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need for the construction of the export cable and associated interconnection infrastructure to the New York Department of Public Service (DPS).

The COP went through multiple revisions - in May of 2019, February of 2020, July of 2020 and May of 2020. In between revisions, in January 2020, the lease was transferred from Deepwater Wind New England to Deepwater Wind South Fork, after the sale of Deepwater Wind to Ørsted. 13,700 acres of the initial lease area was transferred to Deepwater Wind South Fork for this project, and the lease area was reassigned as OCS-A 0517.

In January 2021, the first draft of the updated COP was completed, with the final EIS published August 2021. Shortly before this, in March 2021, South Fork Wind and the Town of East Hampton agreed to a Host Community Agreement, where the developers would pay the town a total of $29 million over the 25 years of the project’s lifetime. By January 2022, the COP was approved by BOEM and the DPS approved construction of the export cable, allowing all construction to proceed.

South Fork Wind started delivering partial power at the end of 2023. In its first full year of operation, the project reached a 46% capacity factor, climbing to 53% in the first half of 2025. That capacity factor is on par with New York’s most modern and efficient natural gas power plants. In 2025, South Fork generated electricity on ​“99% of days and 90% of all hours”. The project created 1,000 jobs across New York and four other states. South Fork wind is expected to run for 25 years. Once the project’s lifespan is over, it will be decommissioned. The cost to decommission the export cable and associated equipment is projected to be around $5 million. Based on 2024 projections done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (now known as the National Laboratory of the Rockies), the cost to decommission the project as a whole will be around $19,140,000, or $145 per kilowatt.