The smallest state is getting a big upgrade.

The United States is getting its first offshore wind farm, off the coast of Rhode Island.

The weather off the coast of Rhode Island, and specially around the tiny Block Island, can get rough which makes it a good but challenging place for an offshore wind farm. Building the Block Island Wind Farm required its creators, a company called Deepwater Wind which partnered with General Electric, to build four inter-array cables connecting five wind turbine foundations with an export cable connecting the wind farm to a new substation on Block Island.

However, the payoff is that they get to build big, without any complaints about noise or how the windmills are ruining someone’s view. Although its been proven that wind farms don’t actually harm their surrounding environments, creating new space on the ocean allows for breathing room. GE built fifteen turbine tower sections and fifteen blades, each of which is 250 feet long, each roughly the size of a commercial plane’s wing with a surface area around the size of three football fields.

To deal with any more extreme weather, engineers can either lock the blades into a set motion when winds get too unpredictable or shut them down altogether. In addition to that, they’ll automatically stop if the weather gets below 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The average temperature in Providence, R.I. in January is 21 degrees, so they should be able to operate year round.

Block Island, part of the town New Shoreham, is a popular destination for tourists and is notable for its Fourth of July celebrations. It’s expected that the wind farm will be able to supply 90 percent of the island’s power, with 10 percent going towards mainland Rhode Island. It’s almost finished; all that’s needed now are nacelles from France. Everything is on schedule to have the farm generating power by September.

Source: WIRED