Dominions offshore wind farm reaches 50% mark as costs rise by $ 10B

Dominion Energy reports that its offshore wind turbine partic project remains planned and makes good progress. Known as the Coast Virginia Offshore Wind, the 2.6 GW project will be the largest in the United States when it is completed by the end of 2026.

Offshore work for the wind farm began in 2024, and the company says it has now approached 50 percent mark with milestones in the installation. After completing the installation of the 78 Monopole Foundations and four Offshore Station Funds during the first season ended in November 2024, Dominion emphasizes that the first 16 transitional pieces are now in place. The finished project has 176 wind turbines. The company continues to scene materials in Portsmouth Marine Terminal with the next phase of monopoly installations to be started in the spring.

The first three of the 4,300 tonnes of offshore stations arrived at the end of January in Virginia. Among the next steps, Dominion reports that the wind turbine tower and leaf manufacture are now underway, and Nacelle Fabrication is scheduled to begin later this quarter.

Stations arrived as materials are staged on land in Virginia (Port of Virginia)

While the project is making good progress in the installation, Dominion also revealed costs rising approx. Nine percent from the budget in November 2021, presented to the Virginia State Corporation Commission. They noticed that the increase caused by higher upgrade costs in the countryside awarded by lattice operator PJM has driven the total budget to $ 10.7 billion up from the original $ 9.8 billion estimate.

The company emphasized that costs are controlled with robust cost sharing mechanisms and an unused emergency preparedness of $ 222 million. Dominion Energy last year sold a 50 percent share in the project to Investors Stonepeak, which will cover half the costs up to $ 11.3 billion. Above is a cost sharing mechanism. While the cost is up, they also said that it is only for the grid part with other project costs, including offshore that has been in line with the original budget. The company reports that the project costs the average customer 43 cents per year. Month during the project.

As part of the project, Dominion Energy builds the first US wind turbine installation vessel at Seatrium’s shipyard in Texas. Named Charybisthey report that the ship is now 96 percent complete. It has begun sea trials. Its first project will be the installations for the Coast Virginia Offshore Vind.

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 to the first phase of the installation using DEME’s large installation container Orion.

Dominion’s long -term plan calls for expanding its offshore wind energy presence. By 2024, Dominion acquired an adjacent property from Avangrid, which is said to be an additional 800 MW of power. In August 2024, Dominion also won a lease from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a place 35 miles from the Chesapeake Bay. The company has said the leasing area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of offshore wind energy production according to Boem’s preliminary estimates. These additional projects require planning and eventually allow what would probably be delayed during the Trump administration’s energy policy.