(VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.) — Dominion Energy’s wind farm off the Virginia Beach coast sent its first power to the regional electric grid on Monday, VPM News reported.
The $11 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project (CVOW) stretches from about 27 to 44 miles off the oceanfront and will be the nation’s largest commercial offshore wind farm.
The first fully completed turbine began spinning this week, generating just under 15 megawatts of power, enough to cover about 3,675 homes. The energy moves through undersea cables that connect with onshore transmission infrastructure at State Military Reservation in Virginia Beach.
“This marks another major milestone for the project, adding much-needed electricity to help serve the fastest-growing power demand in the country,” spokesman Jeremy Slayton said. The project will continue adding power to the grid as more turbines are installed over the next year, he said.
Dominion is more than 70 percent done constructing the project and plans to finish by early next year, with 176 turbines producing up to 2.6 gigawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power about 660,000 homes.
The milestone comes months after President Donald Trump tried to block the project from moving forward. Shortly before Christmas, the U.S. Interior Department issued a stop-work order for CVOW and four other offshore wind farms along the East Coast, citing unspecified national security concerns.
Dominion sued the government, and in January, a federal judge in Norfolk ruled the company could resume construction while the lawsuit proceeds. The monthlong pause on construction cost Dominion almost $230 million from equipment storage, contractual penalties, an idle workforce and delays in using time-sensitive vessels.
