Dominion wants Hampton Roads to anchor offshore wind energy installation
The keel is in place for the new U.S.-flagged ship that Dominion Energy expects will anchor the offshore wind energy business in Hampton Roads.
The $500 million, 472-foot ship — to be named Charybdis, after the mythical Greek sea monster that generated whirlpools — will be one of the largest of its type and should be in place in 2023, in time to begin installing the first of the 180 turbines Dominion plans to operate 27 miles off of Virginia Beach.
“It will be based out of Hampton Roads with a U.S. crew and has the potential to attract related businesses to the area, and make Hampton Roads the supply chain hub for offshore wind, creating jobs and revenue for the region,” said Dominion president and CEO Bob Blue.
That’s because Dominion expects its 2,600-megawatt project — capable of powering up to 660,000 homes — will be the first of thousands more megawatts of wind farms off the east coast by 2027. That would mean years of work for the ship, which with its crew of 119, will be based in Hampton Roads even after Dominion’s offshore Virginia wind project is completed.
Beyond that date, the U.S. Department of Energy expects to see tens of thousands more megawatts of offshore wind and a Hampton Roads based installation ship would help bring 14,000 wind industry related jobs in the state, said Sen. Mark Warner.
“This new vessel will help propel the offshore wind supply chain, drive economic development in Hampton Roads, and grow the offshore wind workforce in our commonwealth,” Gov. Ralph Northam said.
The two turbines Dominion installed earlier this year are 600 feet high — and the turbines it plans to install are even bigger. Towers and equipment that large
are hard to move overland, so port city facilities make sense for the firms — so far mainly European — that are in the business of making them.
The ship is designed for the work. It will plant itself with jacks on the ocean floor when it installs a turbine, and will have a crane capable of lifting 2,200 tons to move the towers, blades and generating equipment into place.
It will be the only U.S.flagged ship designed to install wind turbines — which matters because a century-old law says only American vessels can carry goods between points in the United States, including offshore sites in U.S. waters.
That’s why the first two turbines Dominion installed for its pilot project this year were staged in Halifax, Canada, with a vessel carrying them directly from there to the spots where they were installed, without touching Hampton Roads.
Keppel AmFELS is build
ing the ship at its Brownsville, Texas, shipyard.
Dominion is financing the ship through leases from a syndicate of international banks. Those lease payments would not flow through to the monthly bills Dominion Energy Virginia, the energy giant’s Virginia electric monopoly, charges its customers because they are obligations of the parent firm.
The Virginia utility would have to hire the new ship for its project, with the cost subject to review by the State Corporation Commission. That means that only the cost of hiring the ship for the Virginia offshore project, not the full cost of building the ship, could become part of a Virginia rate-payer’s bill.