Even as evidence grows that offshore wind energy will never meet is over-hyped cost and production projections, Ocean State lawmakers doubled down in 2026 on their non-sensical and dangerous commitment to their green energy Act On Climate agenda.

Now, new data proves how unreliable offshore wind can truly be. Because of misguided public policy by RI lawmakers, not only will New England residents see rapid increases to their already high electricity bills, many may suffer from brownouts or blackouts.

The column below, drawn from a recent Substack post by national energy expert, Allen Brooks, details three significant findings:

• Amid continuing uncertainty about the future of the U.S. offshore wind industry, RWE US – a major energy player, which had acquired multiple offshore wind leases – has decided to relinquish those leases and instead focus on natural gas generation and renewable energy projects in the U.S. stating that it saw “no path forward” to develop related wind farm projects.
• Block Island Wind Farm, continues to underperform, failing to deliver its promised output, producing only between 15% and 34% of its theoretical capacity in recent years
• Vineyard Wind 1, off of Massachusetts, is also under-performing and is producing power at a declining rate since 2025. Since one of its massive blades broke off and dumped tons of toxic material into our oceans and onto our shores … Vineyard Wind is battling through a lawsuit that may leave it bankrupt.
• Revolution Wind, off of both RI and MA, has not yet reported monthly generation data

A financial disaster on the horizon? If windfarms produce less electricity than they forecast, they have less electricity to sell to power companies, they will see less money than they planned, and they may not be able to pay off their billions of $$ in loans without dramatically further increasing prices … or go bankrupt.

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Offshore Wind Is Back In The News, But Not Out Of Trouble

Last week, RWE U.S. Offshore announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior to relinquish its offshore wind leases in exchange for $1.22 billion in settlement funds. Instead of continuing amid uncertainty about the future of U.S. offshore wind, the company will use the funds for other natural gas generation and renewable energy projects in the U.S. being undertaken by its parent company, RWE Americas.

The company’s press release stated that it had “invested more than $1 billion toward the leases and the development of these projects.” Given the changed environment, it determined that there was no path forward for developing the projects for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it was decided that using these funds in energy projects that can progress with certainty was in the best interest of shareholders.

RWE plans to acquire an indirect 16% interest in the Louisiana LNG Project, helping to fund the construction of the terminal. It also signed a $300 million turbine reservation agreement securing future natural gas generating capacity to meet growing U.S. electricity demand. RWE is developing a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaking projects in selected U.S. markets. These projects are part of its plan to invest approximately €17 ($19.7) billion in the U.S. over the next six years to grow its generation capacity from approximately 13 gigawatts (GW) to 22 GW in projects located in 27 states by 2031.

Block Island Wind Farm

The oldest offshore wind farm – Block Island Wind – is having a difficult year. The cumulative output for 2026, based only on the first five months of the year due to the Energy Information Administration’s lag in reporting the data, is not as informative as the second chart. However, what we do see is that strong performance during the wind farm’s early years has not continued in recent years. The sharp decline in 2021 reflected extensive maintenance work undertaken, but since then the wind farm has underperformed. We remind readers that the 47.6% theoretical capacity factor is what Deepwater Wind, the developer, and GE Vernova, the supplier of the wind turbines, told regulators and the public during the publicity campaign to win approval for building the wind farm. The current owner says the capacity factor is lower, but that is probably a publicity rationalization. As can be seen, that target has never been attained in the nine full years of operation. Based on the first five months, that shortfall will likely extend through year 10.

Block Island Wind fails to deliver what it promised.

By converting the monthly wind output data into daily output, we can track how the wind farm has performed monthly. Of the five months of 2026, February and May were the lowest output months compared to comparable months in the wind farm’s history. April was the second-worst April on record.

Block Island Wind has experienced two of the worst output months on record.

It will be interesting to see what output Block Island Wind generates during the normally low-wind summer months.

Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind

The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind test wind farm of Dominion Energy continues to perform better than expected. However, it is only two 6 MW turbines. The output during the winter months is considerably better than during the summer months, which is consistent with the expected New England wind pattern. Offshore wind is attractive for New England utilities, which need power during the winter to supplement their limited natural gas-generated electricity because of pipeline capacity issues. We are not sure Virginia has a similar seasonal need, but the state’s power demand is growing rapidly, so it will need whatever additional power it can get.

Vineyard Wind 1

Vineyard Wind 1 is an offshore wind farm about 15 miles south of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It has 62 GE Haliade 13 MW wind turbines. These turbines will produce 804 MW of power. The project cost $2.3-2.8 billion and was the subject of a wind blade falling off and causing toxic material to land on the beaches of the islands and coastal areas. The blade failure disaster led to the discovery that all the blades made at GE’s plant in Canada were defective and had to be replaced with blades manufactured at the company’s French plant. This added to the project’s cost due to the cleanup effort, penalties, and the removal and reinstallation of blades, in addition to the cost of shipping blades to France and back. The government-mandated report on the accident has yet to be completed after two years.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved the project in 2019, and construction began at the end of 2021. First power from turbines began flowing in January 2024. The project was declared completed in March 2026. However, it is now the subject of legal action by GE Vernova, the provider of the wind turbines, over unpaid invoices. Vineyard Wind says GE owes it more money than it owes GE; therefore, it was justified in not paying the invoices. A judge refused to allow GE to exit the contract. The problem is that the project is producing substantially less power than expected, which will cause problems for the project’s developers who must repay the loans used to construct it.

We learned of the electricity purchased by ISO-NE, the region’s electricity grid operator, that has been reported quarterly by the purchaser to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the second half of 2025. We then contacted the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which collects and reports the electricity generated by power plants.

The EIA person responsible for collecting the data was unaware of the existence of the FERC data that we provided. He told us that Vineyard Wind 1 was listed as under construction, which meant it did not have to report power generated. Failure to report generated power data is a felony. The EIA contacted Vineyard Wind 1, which said it did not know it had to report the power generated while it was still building the project. We found the explanation hard to believe, given that all the parties developing the project are experienced developers of U.S. electricity generating projects. The EIA accepted the explanation and allowed the project’s status to be updated, with monthly reporting to begin in early 2026. Therefore, Vineyard Wind 1 was not charged with a felony and fined. This was clearly an example of an employee within the bureaucracy possessing an agenda that supports building offshore wind, bending the rules to protect the developers.

The biggest problem with the FERC data is that it is only reported quarterly. The EIA generation data is reported monthly. Here is the total quarterly sales data for Vineyard Wind 1 for 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Vineyard Wind is cranking out power, but at a declining rate.

What we found strange was the steady decline in power sales from the peak in 2025 4Q. This fits with the information disclosed in the testimony of officials with the wind farm during the court hearing over the contract dispute. The officials noted that the project was producing half of what it was supposed to generate, which they blame on operational failures of GE.

Before digging into that problem, let’s look at the first three months of Vineyard Wind 1 generation data reported to the EIA. The problem this data presents is that it represents the final month of Q1 and the first two months of 2Q. What we know from the Block Island Wind data is that its May daily output declined over 19% from the April daily data. In the case of Vineyard Wind 1, its May output rose about 2% over its April daily output. It is possible that the wind was sufficiently different between the two areas where the wind farms are located. More likely, the increase in Vineyard Wind 1 daily output reflected more turbines operating.

Limited Vineyard Wind 1 data doesn’t help explain its underperformance.

Vineyard Wind 1’s 806 MW capacity, over 24 hours and 365 days, could generate 7,060,500 MWh. That translates into a monthly capacity potential of 588,380 MWh. Since Vineyard Wind 1 says it should be achieving 50% capacity, that makes the monthly capacity factor 294,190 MWh. Based on that measure, performance for March was 45.6%, putting it close to the target. However, April (37.9%) and May (39.9%) each fell short of the target capacity generation. However, those two months represented only 26% of the estimated 50% quarterly output capacity target.

If June produces the average of April and May’s output, the quarter will only reach 39% of the quarterly capacity target. That leaves a significant shortfall in revenues needed to repay the loans that financed the construction of Vineyard Wind 1. We will need to wait for a few more weeks to see the June production data from the EIA.

Revolution Wind

Another offshore wind project underway is Revolution Wind. The 65-wind-turbine, 704 MW wind farm is located 15 miles off Point Judith in Narragansett, between Rhode Island’s Block Island and Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard. Rhode Island and Connecticut utilities have purchased the power output. The project is costing $6.2 billion, up from the original $5 billion cost estimate due to delays from Trump administration stop-work orders, general inflation, and the higher cost of the turbine installation vessel. Revolution Wind is being constructed by Ørsted and partner Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables, who acquired its interest from former project partner Eversource, which remains obligated to pay for project cost overruns.

Unlike Vineyard Wind 1, the EIA has published no monthly generation data for Revolution Wind that we can find. We have requested information on the project from the EIA but have not heard back as of the time of writing this article. What we do have is the FERC data for the first and second quarters of 2026. The project only began sending power to the ISO-NE grid in May, so little power was delivered in the first quarter. Output grew dramatically, as 45 of the 65 turbines were installed during the second quarter.

Revolution Wind power output is building as more turbines come online.

We will continue to track the FERC and EIA data for Revolution Wind.

Conclusion

We know from historical data that wind patterns often go through cycles, both seasonal and annual. Offshore winds are the strongest during the winter months, which makes their power desirable for natural gas-constrained New England. However, winter can also experience wind droughts, which are a problem for utility planners.

Based on the years of Block Island Wind data, is the region in a wind downcycle? If so, it could be years before Vineyard Wind 1 reaches its targeted capacity factor. That will be a financial disaster for the offshore wind developers, but also a disaster for the utilities depending on this power to achieve their clean energy targets, which also carry a financial penalty for failure to meet that mandate. It will also be a disaster for Revolution Wind, which is also nearing completion and being counted on to meet New England states’ clean energy targets.