About 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, workers are building America’s largest offshore wind farm at a breakneck pace. The project will begin feeding electricity into the grid by March – the most definitive start date provided by its developer.
“First power generation will occur in the first quarter of next year,” Dominion Energy spokesperson Jeremy Slayton told Canary Media. “And we’re still on schedule to finish by the end of 2026.”
During an earnings call in August, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue provided a vague window of “early 2026” when asked when the 2.6-gigawatt Virginia Coastal Offshore Wind, or CVOW, project would begin producing renewable energy for the energy-hungry state.
By the end of September, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations — “a big, important milestone,” according to Slayton. This achievement consisted of sinking 98 foundations into the soft seabed during the five months during which such work is authorized. Good weather allowed work to move forward quickly, as did the unusually calm hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speed is the key to building wind projects under a president who has called wind turbines “ugly” and “terrible for tourism” — and has gone on to try to dismantle the industry.
If CVOW had not completed foundation installation by the end of the month, construction of the turbine would have been delayed until next spring. Federal permits limit pile driving to May through 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 has already issued stop-work orders to two offshore wind farms under construction.
Dominion Energy
But Slayton said President Donald Trump’s threat of interference doesn’t concern him. CVOW is, after all, one of only two ongoing offshore wind projects that has not been directly attacked by the president.
“Our project has had bipartisan support from the beginning,” he said, noting support from some of the state’s top Republicans, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans.
Kiggans, who represents the politically moderate Virginia Beach area, raised concerns about Trump’s escalating war on wind power in the House last month, when Congress returned from recess. She called CVOW “important to Virginia,” and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, later told reporters that he took Kiggans’ message directly to Trump.
“I understand the priority of Virginians and we want to do the right thing for them, so we’ll see,” Johnson told Politico’s E&E News, in a comment that breaks from an anti-offshore wind narrative that has taken root among many of his House Republican colleagues.
The project is crucial to helping the state meet a deluge of new electricity demand as Virginia is at the center of the national boom in data center construction. CVOW will provide a huge amount of carbon-free energy to the state and Dominion, its largest utility, helping them keep pace with growing demand without having to burn dirtier fossil fuels.
Kiggans also linked CVOW’s success to the needs of Virginia’s military installations.
While Trump defends fossil fuels, the world focuses on renewable energies
“I always talk about this project in light of the national security benefit and that benefit to Naval Air Station Oceana,” Kiggans said last month in an interview with WAVY, a Virginia news channel, noting that a partnership with Dominion “gives Naval Air Station Oceana a $500 million power grid upgrade.”
Dominion has already spent $6 billion on the monumental 12-year CVOW construction effort. Nearly $1 billion of that investment was injected into the local economy, creating 802 full- and part-time jobs in the Hampton Roads area, according to GT Hollett, director of offshore wind at Dominion Energy.
The benefits of CVOW are also felt nationally.
“The project has already created 2,000 direct and indirect jobs in the United States and generated $2 billion in economic activity, strengthening the nation’s manufacturing supply chains and our regional economy,” said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition.
Dominion will now turn its attention to the final phase of construction: the installation of the turbine. The work is made possible by Charybdis – the first US-built, Jones Act-compliant wind turbine installation vessel – which arrived at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal in Virginia last month.
“When Charybdis is loaded, it will have all the components needed to install four turbines on each trip,” said Slayton, who noted that the pace of construction is well-timed given Virginia’s data center boom. The state is facing “record growth and energy demand…maybe you’ve heard it.”
