Dominion Virginia Power, a subsidiary of Dominion, has won the lease to develop 112,800 acres of federal land off the coast of Virginia to develop an offshore wind farm which will be capable of generating up to 2,000MW of electricity, enough for 700,000 homes.
Eight companies were approved to launch bids, but only two of these actually participated. The auction lasted six rounds and was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
“Offshore wind has the potential to provide the largest, scalable renewable resource for Virginia if it can be achieved at reasonable cost to customers" said Mary C. Doswell, senior vice president-Alternative Energy Solutions. “We will now proceed with the BOEM timetable for development of the commercial wind energy area while advancing our research proposal and looking for ways to lower the cost of bringing offshore wind generation to customers.”
In order to retain the lease, Dominion has to meet several milestones, the final one of these being the submittal of a Construction and Operations Plan within five years of signing the lease. Once BOEM has received this plan it has an undetermined amount of time to perform an environmental analysis and approve the plan. According to this timetable, Dominion is expecting the first turbine to be installed in about ten years pending approval by state regulators.
Dominion is conducting various other offshore wind research projects, including initial engineering, design and permitting for a demonstration facility consisting of two 6MW turbines intended to find innovative ways of lowering costs for offshore wind. This project is one of seven projects that has won $4 million in Federal matching funds to help support the research. The Department of Energy will select up to three of these projects for follow-on phases entailing final design, permitting and ultimate construction. These final three projects must be in operation by the end of 2017.
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