The rise, fall and future of wind power on the Outer Banks

The three wind turbines with no functional blades are seen on Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (Photo by Lizzie Stoner)

By Lizzie Stoner, intern

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North Carolina’s northernmost barrier islands, commonly known as the Outer Banks, were formed thousands of years ago at the hands of wind and water. From 19th-century windmills to the Wright Brothers’ first powered human flight in 1903, wind has not only shaped the Outer Banks, but powered it. 

In the last 15 years, five high-profile wind turbines on the Outer Banks have been installed and subsequently destroyed or deconstructed. At Jennette’s Pier, Outer Banks Brewing Station and Jockey’s Ridge State Park, the once-operational turbines now sit silent. 

Wind power’s power 

North Carolina’s coasts are ideal for offshore wind farms because of the shallow waters and consistent winds, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce website. 

When the wind blows, the turbine blades spin and turn a rotor connected to a generator that produces power. Large-scale wind farm operations have transformers on the site that increase the voltage so that it can be sent to the national grid to be used to power homes and businesses, according to NationalGrid.com. Small wind farms or a single wind turbine can also generate electricity that is used privately by an individual or a small set of homes or businesses.

Wind energy is renewable, and its use lowers the demand for less sustainable energy sources like fossil fuels. There are tens of thousands of operating wind turbines across the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but only four offshore wind farms, Reuters reported in a Jan. 25 article.

Offshore wind on the Outer Banks is challenged by public opinion, changing policies and long permitting processes. Still, the Outer Banks has seen turbines come and go throughout the years and may see an offshore wind farm off its coast in the next 10 years. 

Jennette’s Pier

Since being erected in 1939, Jennette’s Pier has withstood its fair share of storm destruction, rebuilding and remodeling. 

In 2002, the North Carolina Aquarium Society bought the pier and in 2007 donated it to the state, which set out to transform it into a hub for marine education. Hurricane Isabel damaged the pier in 2003, and by 2008, the state had demolished what was left to make way for what the current pier signage calls “the future of piers.”

Coastal storms and hurricanes have taken out several piers on the Outer Banks, but Jennette’s Pier was reconstructed with concrete pilings—as opposed to wood—to increase the strength of the pier against storms. 

Jennette’s Pier is a LEED-certified operation—a designation given by the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). When the pier reopened in 2011, its reclaimed water system, solar panels, renewable heating and cooling system and three 90-foot-tall wind turbines cemented its commitment to sustainability.

Because of Hurricane Dorian in 2019, eight of the nine blades on the turbines were torn off and washed to sea, with the ninth blade dangling off its tower, according to Jennette’s Pier Director Mike Remige. He told Outer Banks Coastal Life in 2022 that they hoped to have the blades replaced in a couple of months. Three years later, the turbines are still down.

The turbines, when fully functional, operated 24/7 and generated about 20% of the energy for Jennette’s Pier, according to Remige. 

Rick Probst, who worked at the pier for five years and who continues to volunteer there, said he found that overall, the turbines provided an additional attraction for tourists frequenting the pier. 

Before Hurricane Dorian, he said that routine maintenance and repairs to the turbines would only infrequently disrupt fishing and close parts of the pier for some of the day.

“So the only time that anything interfered with fishing would happen when they had to replace blades and so forth up on them, because they would have actually have to block off the pier,” Probst said.

The biggest roadblock to getting the turbines up and running is getting the certifications that approve the technology for use, according to Mike Bergey, the co-founder of Bergey Windpower. That Oklahoma-based company makes the blade technology that was used at Jennette’s Pier. The company is in the process of getting National Electric Code certification, but the delays are out of the pier’s control.

“The pier has been particularly patient with us; we appreciate that,” Bergey said. “This stuff has not gone as quickly as we hope. We want to get them operating wind turbines. We think it’s a great project, and we're looking forward to having Bergey turbines operating again on Jennette’s Pier.”

One of three wind turbines without blades is seen on Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (Photo by Lizzie Stoner)

The original turbines at Jennette’s were built to withstand 120-mph winds, according to Bergey. Their new turbine technology is built to withstand wind speeds up to 130 mph.

Jennette’s Pier has never recorded wind speeds higher than 101 mph, according to Remige. During Hurricane Dorian, the National Weather Service recorded a maximum wind speed of 78 mph in Nags Head. 

The device that measures wind speed is called an anemometer, and at Jennette’s Pier, the device sits at the end of the pier. 

“We’ve never achieved a wind speed here at that excessive speed [of 120-plus-mph],” Remige said. “But our anemometer sits easily 50 feet lower than the wind turbines, so we can’t accurately say what the wind speeds are up at the wind turbines.”

Remige said pier staff would like to see the turbines operating again, as would some pier-goers. 

“We are looking forward to having these things back up and spinning again,” Remige said in an interview on Monday, Oct. 6. “I’m actually excited about the possibility, and I think we’re closer now than we’ve ever been.”

Pittsburgh native Colette Schultze has owned a beach house in Nags Head for 36 years and often fishes on the pier. Sunday morning, while she was fishing, she told Outer Banks Insider that the turbines were loud when they were functional, but she was able to tune them out.

“Didn’t bother me, and I thought it was a pretty good idea,” Schultze said. 

Richmond natives and frequent Jennette’s fishers, Ken and Janette Morgan, agreed. 

“It was just a buzz like that,” Ken Morgan said. “It was just cool to see them running.”

Janette Morgan also thought they were cool but worried about the reliability and wildlife consequences of wind energy as a whole.

“Still, I wonder about how sturdy they are,” Janette Morgan said. “I don’t know what they do to wildlife here. I know they can kill birds.”

Outer Banks Brewing Station

The wind turbine without blades since mid-August is seen behind the Outer Banks Brewing Station in Kill Devil Hills the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (Photo by Lizzie Stoner)

The Outer Banks Brewing Station on its website touts itself as “the first wind-powered brewery in the United States” and as the first business on the Outer Banks to generate its own renewable energy. 

Its 80-foot wind turbine offset some of the daily energy use of the business, but the turbine is currently broken. 

The turbine was installed on Earth Day in 2008, with the expectation of it producing 10% of the brewpub’s power and generating payback for installation costs in 12-15 years, according to a June 22, 2009, National Geographic article.

Local founding owners Aubrey Davis and Eric Reece sold the business in March 2023 to out-of-town owners Keith and Heather Acree and Steve and Dee Cordea, who agreed to keep the staff and to continue operations as they were, the Outer Banks Voice reported on March 10, 2023.

This August, offshore Hurricane Erin’s winds led to at least one snapped-off blade, as photos shared with Sam Walker OBX showed. 

The brewery has applied for grants to repair the turbine, but with the current state of the government, a manager said they are unsure if or when the money for repairs will be allocated. 

The business’ website says that the turbine “is down for maintenance.”

Co-owner Steven Cordea did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Jockey’s Ridge

In 2010, Jockey’s Ridge State Park installed a 73-foot turbine near the entrance of the visitor center. It was removed in 2018 after damage from various storms caused it to wear down and become very loud at times, according to Justin Barnes, a park ranger at Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

The turbine began malfunctioning between 2015 and 2017, and despite the park’s attempt to fix the turbine, the state did not have the budget for repairs, according to Barnes. 

“Some of those decisions were made above our heads in Raleigh,” Barnes said. “I guess they did kind of a cost analysis and decided that at the moment, it wasn’t worth repairing.”

The park did years of research before installing the turbine, and specifically focused on studying bird loss in the park before and after the turbine. 

The turbine at Jockey’s Ridge is a self-supporting design called a monopole as opposed to a tension cable design called guy wire, in an attempt to reduce harm to migratory birds.

“We found that the monopole design would be more beneficial to migratory birds, because all the studies at the time were stating that guy wires actually caused more injuries to birds than the actual wind turbine itself,” Barnes said. 

Barnes has worked at the park for 20 years and recalls assessing bird loss near the turbines multiple times a week. 

“I can only remember a handful of times finding a bird, and we didn’t know if it was attacked by a fox or if it was actually hit by the wind turbine,” Barnes said. 

In the first year of operation, the turbine generated anywhere between 400 and 1000 kilowatt-hours per month. The turbine was built to withstand wind speeds of 135 mph, but when winds got intense, the park would often turn the blades away from the wind to prevent potential damage.  

Jockey’s Ridge, like Jennette’s Pier, used its turbine as a tool for education. The park used to host three panels about wind energy, according to Barnes. Panelists discussed the power of wind as a renewable energy source; the history of wind power in the Outer Banks, including the historic windmills used to pump water and grind grain; and the park’s turbine and its impacts on park operations. 

There are no blades on the turbine, but the pole still stands. The park has no plans to repair the turbine, but currently uses it for radio antennas and weather monitoring and has floated the idea of attaching a camera to the top, according to Barnes.

A turbine with no blades stands behind the visitor center at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, as seen on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)

Future of wind energy on the Outer Banks

Last year, Dominion Energy acquired a lease for 40,000 acres offshore of Kitty Hawk, which is part of a larger lease area. Dominion purchased the lease for “Kitty Hawk North” from Avangrid for $160 million, while Avangrid retains ownership and associated rights of “Kitty Hawk South.” 

Dominion Energy is currently building an offshore wind farm in Virginia, called Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW). The new site in federal waters off of Kitty Hawk has the potential to support 800 megawatts of offshore wind generation capacity and will be known as CVOW-South.

Dominion Energy has not committed to developing the project and has not taken any further steps toward development beyond acquiring the lease. Its other project, CVOW, took 10 years between getting the rights from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in 2013 to beginning construction at the end of 2023. 

“Our most recent long-term planning document forecasts this project, if we develop it, for the mid-2030s,” Jeremy Slayton, a Dominion Energy spokesperson, wrote to the Outer Banks Insider. “At this time, we do not have a firm timeline or cost for developing this lease area.”

Offshore wind projects in North Carolina require approval from the BOEM, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and N.C. Utilities Commission, as well as an environmental impact assessment, which can take years to complete. 

Between hurricanes, high winds and salt spray, the wind turbines in the Outer Banks have slowly lost their power. With the lack of government funding and slow permit processing, the efforts to get local turbines operating again have yet to be realized, and it remains to be seen if or when more wind power will be harnessed. 

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