PHOTOS: First-Ever American-Made Offshore Wind Service Operations Vessel Comes to ProvPort

PHOTOS: First-Ever American-Made Offshore Wind Service Operations Vessel Comes to ProvPort

 

Local and federal officials welcomed a first-in-America vessel to Rhode Island on Thursday after the Revolution Wind project reached its official “steel in the water” offshore construction milestone last month. 

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein, and U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Kevin M. Sligh, Sr. joined Ørsted and Eversource at the developers’ ProvPort construction hub to showcase the progress of construction on Revolution Wind.

 

 

They welcomed the arrival of the ECO EDISON – the first-ever American-built, owned, and crewed offshore wind service operations vessel (SOV).

“Rhode Island is the birthplace of American offshore wind, and the state is continuing to harness the true potential of offshore wind to transform its ports, workforce, and economy,” said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted. “Thanks to our local union and supply-chain partners and our talented construction team, we’re building and delivering Revolution Wind. And it’s only fitting that the Ocean State will host our state-of-the-art, American-made service vessel, the ECO EDISON, during the construction of this historic project for New England.”

 

 

Southern Built

The ECO EDISON was built by more than 600 workers – across nearly 1 million work hours – at ECO in-house shipyards in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, with components of the vessel sourced from 34 states, from Alabama to West Virginia.

The company refused to disclose the cost of building the vessel.

Ørsted and Eversource have invested $100 million in the work at their ProvPort hub – the largest offshore wind supply chain investment in Rhode Island’s history.

 

 

About Vessel

According to Revolution Wind officials, ECO EDISON is the first vessel of its kind ever built in the U.S. 

The state-of-the-art, 262-foot-long liveaboard ECO EDISON will serve as a floating, year-round home base for the first American offshore wind turbine technicians, who will work at sea over the life of the wind farms, servicing and maintaining the wind turbines. The vessel will play an integral part in the operation and maintenance of Ørsted and Eversource’s Northeast projects.

 

 

The 704-megawatt Revolution Wind project will be the first commercial-scale offshore wind project for Rhode Island and Connecticut and the first multi-state offshore wind farm in the country.