Massachusetts’ first offshore wind manufacturing facility coming to Somerset’s Brayton Point

Colin A. Young

Gov. Charlie Baker and top deputies joined lawmakers from southeastern Massachusetts and officials from Vineyard Wind’s parent company Avangrid to celebrate plans to establish the state’s first offshore wind industry manufacturing facility at Brayton Point in Somerset.

The event highlighted a physical representation of the shift that Massachusetts and other states are trying to make from fossil fuels to cleaner alternatives like wind power: Prysmian Group’s subsea transmission cable manufacturing plant will be built on land that until about five years ago hosted a coal-burning power plant.

The manufacturing facility will come about as a result of the selection of Vineyard Wind’s Commonwealth Wind project to generate 1,200 megawatts of offshore wind power for Massachusetts. “I do want to say to Prysmian and Avangrid how much we appreciate your role in all of this and your fortitude, and your patience, and your determination, and your perseverance, and your discipline, and your commitment to what is a very significant long-term opportunity to take what was once an energy generator in a different era and take it into the next century and make it an energy generator for the next century as we go forward from here today,” Baker said.

The 1,505-megawatt Brayton Point facility that ceased operations in 2017 was the last power plant run on coal in Massachusetts and the largest coal-fired power plant in New England, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It went into service in 1963.

Prysmian Group, an Italian company that lists more than 25 European offshore wind projects as part of its portfolio on its website, already manufactures underwater cables in Arco Felice, Italy, and Pikkala, Finland, and the Somerset facility marks its first major foray into the American market as U.S. states grow their appetites for offshore wind power. The company has done some work already in Dighton. Prysmian Group’s relationship with Vineyard Wind extends beyond the subsea cable manufacturing facility tied to the Commonwealth Wind project. The company has a $300 million contract to connect the developer’s 804 MW Park City offshore wind farm to the grid in Connecticut by 2026. Those cables will be manufactured in Italy and Finland, the company said.

For the Commonwealth Wind project, Prysmian will “design, supply, install, and commission as many as three export submarine power cable links” to deliver the project’s power to Massachusetts, a $580 million project. Those cables are expected to come from the new Somerset facility, Italy and Finland. The cables will be installed by the Leonardo da Vinci and Ulisse vessels.