About 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, workers are building America's largest offshore wind farm at breakneck speed. The project will begin supplying electricity to the grid by March, the closest start date given by its developer.
“First power delivery will occur in the first quarter of next year,” Dominion Energy spokesman Jeremy Slayton told Canary Media. “And we are still on schedule to be completed by the end of 2026.”
In an earnings call in August, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue gave a vague idea of ”early 2026″ when asked when the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, or CVOW, project would begin generating renewable energy for the energy-hungry state.
As of late September, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations—a “big, important milestone,” according to Slayton. This achievement included driving 98 foundations into the soft seabed during the five-month period when such work is permitted. Good weather contributed to the rapid progress of the work, as did the Atlantic Ocean. unusually quiet hurricane season.
Speed is critical in building wind projects under the watch of the president, who called for turbines “ugly” And “terrible for tourism”—and who made attempts to dismantle the industry.
If CVOW had not completed installation of the foundation by the end of this month, construction of the turbine would have been delayed until next spring. The federal permit limits pile driving to May through October to protect migrating North Atlantic right whales. Such a delay would make CVOW more vulnerable to the wrath of the Trump administration, which has already stop work orders issued two offshore wind farms under construction.
Dominion Energy
But Slayton said the threat of President Donald Trump's intervention doesn't bother him. After all, CVOW is one of two offshore wind projects underway that has not been directly criticized by the President.
“Our project has had bipartisan support from the very beginning,” he said, pointing to support from some of the state's leading Republicansincluding Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans.
Kiggans, who represents a politically moderate Virginia Beach district, expressed concern about Trump's stance. escalation of the war on wind to the House of Representatives last month when Congress returned from recess. She called CVOW “important for Virginia,” and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, later told reporters that he had conveyed Kiggans' message directly to Trump.
“I understand the priority of Virginians and we want to do right by them, so we'll see,” Johnson told Politico E&E Newsin comments that are part of the anti-offshore wind narrative that has taken root among many of his Republican colleagues in the House.
This project is critical to helping the state meet the enormous demand for electricity as Virginia at the center of a national boom in the construction of data centers. CVOW will provide the state and Dominion, its largest utility, with massive amounts of carbon-free energy, helping them keep up with growing demand without having to burn more polluting fossil fuels.
Kiggans also linked CVOW's success to the needs of Virginia's military installations.
“I always talk about this project in light of the national security benefits and the benefits to Naval Air Station Oceana,” Kiggans said in a report last month. interview with WAVYVirginia News Channel, noting that the partnership with Dominion “is giving Naval Air Station Oceana a $500 million electrical grid upgrade.”
Dominion has already spent $6 billion on the massive CVOW effort, which has been 12 years in the making. According to G.T. Hollett, Dominion Energy's director of offshore wind, nearly $1 billion of that investment went into the local economy, creating 802 full- and part-time jobs in the Hampton Roads area.
The benefits of CVOW are being felt across the country.
“The project has already created 2,000 direct and indirect jobs in America and generated $2 billion in economic activity, strengthening the nation's manufacturing supply chains and our regional economy,” said Katherine Collins, president of the Southeast Wind Coalition.
Dominion will now move on to the final stage of construction: installing the turbine. The work was made possible by the Charybdis, the first US-built wind turbine installation vessel to comply with the Jones Act, which arrived at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal in Virginia last month.
“When Charybdis is loaded, she will have all the components to install four turbines per voyage,” Slayton said, noting that the pace of construction is timely given Virginia’s capabilities. data center boom. The state is facing “record increases in energy demand…you may have heard.”
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