I · Where the cable lands
Start with the landfall, because that is the part fixed to a place you can find on a map. The export cable, a heavy bundle of conductors buried under the harbor floor, is built to come ashore at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park. From there it runs to a point of interconnection on the Con Edison system in the Gowanus area, which is the handshake where offshore power becomes city power.
Rebuilt with state support, the terminal is doing double duty. The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal is meant to serve as the staging and operations base, the place where turbine components arrive by barge and crews head out to the lease area. For Sunset Park, that means more marine traffic and a working pier, which is a different neighbor than the quiet one many residents got used to.
II · The megawatts, honestly
Empire Wind 1 is rated at roughly 810 megawatts at last public report, built from Vestas turbines in the range of 15 megawatts each, so on the order of 50 or so machines in the federal lease area in the New York Bight, roughly 15 to 30 miles south of the Rockaways. You will see claims that this powers some large round number of homes. Treat those gently.
A nameplate rating is the most the project can produce in a strong wind, not what it delivers on an average day. Offshore wind in the Atlantic runs at a healthy capacity factor, meaning it produces a solid fraction of its maximum over a year, but that fraction is well under one. The useful way to read 810 megawatts is as a real slice of the city's power, not as a fixed number of homes switched over.
III · Who has to sign off
Four names control this project's calendar. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a federal agency, approves what gets built offshore. NYSERDA, the state energy authority, holds the contract that pays for the power. Con Edison owns the grid the cable plugs into, and the New York Independent System Operator, the entity that runs the state's grid, has to clear the interconnection.
That spread of authority is why the schedule can move even when the hardware is ready. Federal work on Empire Wind was paused in the spring of 2025 and then allowed to resume later that year, a reminder that a decision in Washington can matter as much as weather in the Bight. When a date slips, it is usually one of these four, not the turbines.
IV · Worth watching this month
1. BOEM's Empire Wind project page is the clearest public record of federal approvals, and any new construction or operations plan milestone there is the real signal, not a press release.
2. Con Edison and NYISO interconnection filings for the Gowanus-area tie-in are routine on their face but gate when the cable is allowed to energize.
3. NYSERDA's offshore wind pages are where any change to the in-service target, understood to be around 2027 at last public report, will show up first.
4. Equinor's quarterly updates report turbine installation counts offshore, the most direct sign that steel is actually going into the water.
5. Local notices in Sunset Park about marine terminal work hours and truck traffic are the version of this project a neighbor actually lives with, and routine unless they change sharply.