Empire Wind begins assembling massive offshore turbines

A massive ship loaded with six visible, roughly 379-foot-long rotor blades on its deck arrived at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, announcing that the age of heavy industry is back on the Sunset Park waterfront.

These wind turbine blades are part of Empire Wind, an offshore wind project that has been in the works for about 10 years.

The ship Fusion departed from the industrial port of Nakskov, Denmark, on April 19, according to MarineTraffic.com, loaded with the wind turbine parts. After 21 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the 150-meter ship, with the words “United Heavy Lift” on its side, arrived in Sunset Park on May 10. The equipment is being unloaded at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT), the newly built wind turbine hub that cost $861 million to build.

“The arrival of these first components signals South Brooklyn Marine Terminal’s successful transition to a working port for New York City, serving as an assembly and staging site for the project,” stated a spokesperson from Equinor, the Norwegian energy giant developing the wind farm.

Ursula and Sam, residents of 47th Street in Sunset Park, walked along the pier looking at the large ship on a recent Saturday afternoon. Asked about her thoughts on the large wind turbines that would soon be assembled on the piers, Ursula commented, “If they take care of the Canadian geese I don’t mind.” She also voiced concern about what so many turbines installed off the coast will look like.

“When conditions allow good visibility, turbines at the near end of the site may be visible from the closest point on land, Jones Beach State Park,” according to a study by NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority). “From the shoreline, they will appear roughly the size of existing distant coastal power plants or cargo ships.”

Sam, who was walking with Ursula, mentioned, “Europe has this all over the place.”

The transformation of SBMT, located between 33rd and 39th streets, took two years of construction to complete.

Vestas, one of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers, describes SBMT on its website as “one of the nation’s largest dedicated port facilities for offshore wind and a world-class offshore wind hub.”

Empire Wind continues to move forward despite efforts by the Trump administration to halt offshore wind projects on the East Coast, including Empire Wind. In December 2025, the U.S. Department of the Interior paused five large-scale offshore wind leases, citing national security concerns. In January, a federal judge granted Empire Wind a preliminary injunction, allowing construction activities to resume while the underlying lawsuit continues.

The 54 wind turbines will be located 15 to 30 miles off the coast of Jones Beach and Long Beach, with more than 100 miles of cable running underwater between wind turbines and connecting to an offshore substation. From the substation, about 94 miles of export cables, designed to handle high voltage and ensure efficient energy transmission, will run under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and through the harbor to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal facility.

The power will then run to a Con Edison facility in Gowanus, where it will enter the New York City grid and power about 500,000 homes. The life of the turbines is expected to be 30 years. The wind turbines are planned to be online by 2027, according to Equinor.

Visible from elevated points of Sunset Park is a tall yellow crane on the waterfront used to do the heavy lifting. Known as Big Benny XL, the Sarens SGC-140 ring crane has a lifting capacity of 3,530 tons and is one of the largest cranes in its category used in oil, gas, mining, nuclear and offshore wind projects, according to Sarens’ website.

The 54 wind turbines will reach a height of about 886 feet, according to Vestas’ website. NYSERDA states that the tallest one on its pedestal could be 950 feet tall out of the water. In comparison, 30 Rockefeller Center, at 69 floors, reaches approximately 850 feet into the air.

Anastasiya Grishkevich, a Sunset Park resident and member of Iron Workers Locals 40 and 361, was part of the crew building the offshore substation when she heard about the arrival of the wind turbine parts, only after a reporter from the Sunset Post asked her about it via email.

Grishkevich reported that the crew was focused on building the infrastructure and had not received many updates from land. When learning that the first parts for the turbines had arrived, she wrote, “It’s cool that everything is coming together.”