Dominion’s Offshore Wind Farm Reaches 50% Mark as Costs Soar Past $10B
Dominion Energy reports its offshore wind farm project remains on schedule and is making good progress. Known as Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the 2.6 GW project will be the largest in the United States when it is completed at the end of 2026.
Offshore work for the wind farm began in 2024 and the company says it has now approached the 50 percent mark with milestones in the installation. After completing the installation of 78 monopole foundations and four offshore substation foundations during the first season which ended in November 2024, Dominion highlights that the first 16 transition pieces are now in place. The completed project will have 176 wind turbines. The company continues to stage materials at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal with the next phase of monopole installations due to start in the spring.
The first three of the 4,300-ton offshore substations arrived in late January in Virginia. Among the next steps, Dominion reports that wind turbine tower and blade fabrication is now underway and nacelle fabrication is scheduled to begin later this quarter.
Substations arrived as materials are staged onshore in Virginia (Port of Virginia)
While the project is making good progress on the installation, Dominion also revealed costs are up approximately nine percent from the November 2021 budget submitted to the Virginia State Corporation Commission. They noted that the increase, which is due to higher onshore network upgrade costs assigned by grid operator PJM, has driven the total budget to $10.7 billion up from the original estimate of $9.8 billion.
The company emphasized that the costs are controlled with robust cost-sharing mechanisms and an unused contingency that stands at $222 million. Dominion Energy last year sold a 50 percent stake in the project to investors Stonepeak which will cover half the costs up to $11.3 billion. Above that there is a cost-sharing mechanism. While costs are up, they also said it is only for the grid portion with other project costs including offshore having remained in line with the original budget. The company reports the project will cost the average customer 43 cents per month over the life of the project.
As part of the project, Dominion Energy is building the first U.S. wind turbine installation vessel at Seatrium’s shipyard in Texas. Named Charybis, they report the vessel is now 96 percent complete. It has commenced sea trials. Its first project will be the installations for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.
The company has been successful in managing the project to keep it on track and avoid some of the challenges that other projects are experiencing. It retrained DEME for the first phase of the installation using DEME’s large install vessel Orion.
Dominion’s long-term plan calls for expanding its offshore wind energy presence. In 2024, Dominion acquired an adjoining property from Avangrid which is said could provide an additional 800 MW of power. In August 2024, Dominion also won a lease from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a site 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The company has said the lease area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of offshore wind energy generation according to BOEM’s preliminary estimates. These additional projects require planning and eventually permitting which would likely be delayed under the Trump administration’s energy policy.