About 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, workers have been building America’s largest offshore wind farm at a rapid pace. The project will begin feeding power to the grid by March, the most specific start date given by the developer to date.
“First power will start in the first quarter of next year,” Dominion Energy spokesman Jeremy Slayton told Canary Media. “We are still on target for completion by late 2026.”
On an earnings call in August, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue offered a vague window of “early 2026” when asked when a 2.6-gigawatt Virginia coastal offshore wind project, or CVOW, would begin generating renewable energy for the energy-starved state.
As of the end of September, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations — a “major and important milestone,” according to Slayton. This achievement included hammering 98 foundations into the soft seabed during the five-month period when such work is permitted. Good weather helped the work proceed quickly, as did the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane season is unusually quiet.
Speed is key when building wind energy projects under the watchful eye of the president who called in the turbines “”ugly“And “”Terrible for tourism“- who pursued attempts to dismantle the industry.
If CVOW had not finished installing the foundation by the end of this month, turbine construction could have been delayed until next spring. A federal permit restricts pile driving from May to October to protect migrating North Atlantic right whales. Such a delay would have made CVOW more vulnerable to the wrath of the Trump administration, which it did Stop work orders were issued To two offshore wind farms under construction.
Dominion Energy
But Slayton said the threat of intervention by President Donald Trump does not concern him. CVOW is, after all, one of only two offshore wind projects in the pipeline that have not been directly attacked by the president.
He said, noting that “our project received bipartisan support from the beginning.” With the support of some prominent Republicans in the stateincluding Governor Glenn Youngkin and US Representative Gene Keegans.
Keegans, who represents the politically moderate Virginia Beach district, expressed concerns about Trump Escalating the war on wind To the House floor last month, when Congress returned from recess. She called CVOW “important to Virginia,” and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, later told reporters that he had relayed Keegans’ message directly to Trump.
“I understand the priority is for Virginians and we want to do right by them, so we’ll see,” Johnson said. He told E&E News at Politicoin a comment that departed from an anti-offshore wind narrative that had taken hold among many of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives.
The project is crucial to helping the state meet the flood of new demand for electricity, as is the case in Virginia At the heart of national prosperity In building data centers. The CVOW system will provide a massive amount of carbon-free energy to the state and Dominion, its largest utility — helping both keep up with growing demand without having to burn more polluting fossil fuels.
Kiganns also tied CVOW’s success to the needs of military installations in Virginia.
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“I always talk about this project in light of its national security benefit and benefit to Naval Air Station Oceana,” Keegans said last month in a statement. Interview with WAVYa Virginia news station, noting that the partnership with Dominion “gives Naval Air Station Oceana a $500 million power grid upgrade.”
Dominion has already spent $6 billion on the massive effort to build the CVOW system, which has been 12 years in the making. Nearly $1 billion of that investment has flowed into the local economy, creating 802 full- and part-time jobs in the state’s Hampton Roads region, according to JT Howlett, director of offshore wind at Dominion Energy.
The benefits of CVOW are being felt nationally as well.
“The project has already created 2,000 direct and indirect American jobs and generated $2 billion in economic activity, strengthening the nation’s industrial supply chains and our regional economy,” said Catherine Collins, President of the Southeast Wind Alliance.
Dominion will now move to the final phase of construction: installing the turbines. The work was made possible by the Charybdis — the first U.S.-built, Jones Act-compliant wind turbine installation vessel — which arrived at Portsmouth Marine Station in Virginia last month.
“When Charybdis is loaded, it will have all the components needed to install four turbines per flight,” said Slayton, who noted that the pace of construction was well timed given Virginia. Data center boom. The state faces “record growth and energy demand…as you may have heard.”