A steady breeze

Dominion Energy’s long-anticipated $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is steadily taking shape as gigantic monopile foundations are installed in the ocean floor 27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast.

This past spring, four years after two test turbines began generating power, Dominion installed the first monopile foundation for the 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm’s remaining 174 turbines. As of August, the 50th monopile was installed, and by the time work stops in November for the year, the Fortune 500 utility expects about half of the 272-foot, 1,500-ton cylinders to be installed.

“The project is on time and on budget,” says John Larson, Dominion’s director of public policy and economic development. “As a regulated utility, Dominion Energy went out early on and got contracts in place for all the different components. That’s one of the values of having a regulated utility develop offshore wind projects. It brings a lot of surety to our customers and makes sure we make the best decisions going forward.”

The past six months have been busy for Dominion, both in terms of building CVOW to meet the 2026 completion deadline, and in making financial deals that likely mean future investment in wind energy.

In February, Dominion reached an agreement with investment firm Stonepeak to sell it a 50% noncontrolling stake in CVOW for nearly $3 billion, a deal that will improve Dominion’s estimated 2024 consolidated FFO-to-debt by approximately 1%, reduce its overall financing needs during the wind farm’s construction and lower risks. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, pending approval from state and federal regulatory agencies.

Then in July, a Dominion subsidiary agreed to purchase the Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million. The 40,000-acre lease will be renamed CVOW-South and will be capable of 800 megawatts of offshore wind generation in the 2030s, enough to serve 200,000 customers. After receiving regulatory approval, the transaction is expected to be completed late this year.

And in August, Dominion won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction. That area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of electricity, in addition to other wind energy generated at CVOW. 

In addition, LS Greenlink USA, a subsidiary of South Korean firm LS Cable & System, will create 330 full-time jobs when it builds a $681 million manufacturing plant in Chesapeake for undersea cables used in the offshore wind industry, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in July. Construction on the 750,000-square-foot facility is set to begin in 2025, with operations commencing in early 2028.

The Orion, a heavy lift vessel owned by Belgium-based dredging and offshore energy services company DEME Group, transports the monopiles from a staging area at Portsmouth Marine Terminal to the CVOW lease area. In late 2025, Dominion’s ship Charybdis, the first U.S.-based wind turbine installation vessel, will arrive to begin transporting towers and blades to the wind farm. Turbine components are being manufactured in Europe and will be staged at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal.

Three offshore 190-foot-by-190-foot substations also will be installed at different locations within the lease area. Sixty turbines will feed into each substation.

Larson says 800 Virginians have been working on the project, including about 650 Hampton Roads-based workers. CVOW is forecast to have up to 900 jobs per year during construction and up to 1,100 jobs annually once operations start. About 1,600 people will be employed during the project’s peak period in 2025.

The Hampton Roads Workforce Council has also partnered with Dominion from CVOW’s inception to help fill jobs and ensure offshore wind employment opportunities are promoted regionally and statewide.

“For us, it’s really about the trades,” says Steve Cook, the council’s chief innovation officer. “We’ve established a system in Hampton Roads to make sure there’s a supply of workers for all facets of the maritime industry.”