Onshore work begins for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project - News 3 WTKR Norfolk
Onshore work begins for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Work is now underway to lay down the path, energy will travel, that's being produced from Dominion's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.
During a Virginia Beach City Council briefing on Tuesday, Dominion gave city leaders an update on how long the onshore construction for the project will take.
The entire project is expected to be completed in 2026.
The more than 170 wind turbines will produce 2.6 gigawatts of energy to power more than 660,000 homes but the path to those homes is nothing short.
"The onshore bit we go about 4.4 miles underground from the beach to Naval Air Station Oceana and then just under 14 miles from Oceana to Fentress [substation] in the city of Chesapeake," Carrie Rose Pace, with Dominion, said.
For the next two years, work will be done to create a more than 17-mile-long path of lines to bring that energy to a substation in Chesapeake.
Work has already started at the State Military Reservation, where the energy produced from the turbines will meet the shore, just south of Croatan Beach.
"Underground is already underway out near the beach, overhead work has not been stated yet," Rose Pace said. "For that construction, that's looking like early next year."
The overhead work will begin in Chesapeake near Centerville Tpke and work its way back to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.
Dominion said the first signs of construction will be trees coming down along that path.
"You'll see some activity between February and mid-April and we'll make sure we'll clean up and take that debris field out through June," Rose Pace, said.
Some of the first neighborhoods that will see the construction of new transition lines are Indian River Farms and Indian River Woods around July.
Other neighborhoods include those behind Landstown Rd. and the Princess Anne Sports Complex.
"We are working in people's backyards in some cases and that work is going to disrupt A person's normal use of their backyard if it's within the right of way," Rose Pace said. "We just acknowledge that and we want to minimize impacts as much as we can and be good neighbors."
Dominion has created an interactive map to update residents on the project and to see if construction may happen near your home.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.