Melville firm gets contract for land-based cable for South Fork Wind Farm
Saturday, January 15, 2022
This article was written by Mark Harrington for Newsday.
Developers of the South Fork Wind Farm have awarded their first and largest construction contract to date to Melville-based Haugland Energy Group for the project's land-based cable and interconnection infrastructure in East Hampton.
Construction of what is planned as New York's first offshore wind farm is expected to start by early next month, as developers Orsted and Eversource await a federal green light to begin work on LIPA-contracted project.
Haugland will employ more than 100 unionized workers in Suffolk County, and locally source everything from "breakfast sandwiches to concrete" during the work, Haugland president Billy Haugland told Newsday Thursday.
Haugland has previously done cable work for Orsted's Block Island Wind farm, the first offshore wind project in the nation.
"Our being able to leverage the labor pool and experience we have really allows us to mobilize" to complete the work quickly and safely, Haugland said.
"It's going to be a dialed-up effort. We have to do big quantities in a short amount of time and leave the area as if we weren't ever there … We have a long resume of doing these projects," Haugland said.
The $2 billion, 130-megawatt wind farm, consisting of up to 12 turbines located off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is expected to begin producing energy in late 2023 — enough to power 70,000 homes, Orsted and Eversource say.