Dominion Confirms First US Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Will Be Completed Later than Planned

The first US-built and Jones Act-compliant offshore wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV), Charybdis, will be completed in late 2024 or early 2025, Dominion Energy said in its financial report for the third quarter of 2023, confirming the information that surfaced after the company’s second quarter report in August.

Construction of the first US WTIV started in 2020 and Charybdis was initially expected to enter service this year.

While the vessel will be launched later than planned, Dominion Energy, the owner of the vessel and the developer of the 2.6 GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, says Charybdis’s postponed completion date is still supportive of the CVOW project schedule, including any third-party charter agreements in 2025.

Charybdis is under construction in Brownsville, Texas, with Seatrium, a company created by Sembcorp Marine and Keppel Offshore & Marine, building the vessel.

The vessel’s 2,200-tonne Huisman Leg Encircling Crane (LEC) arrived in Texas at the beginning of this year and in August, the installation of the vessel’s first leg was completed.

The next milestone is engine start-up, which is expected this month or in December, according to Dominion Energy.

In August, the company reported that the total project costs on the vessel climbed to USD 625 million (approximately EUR 584 million) and reported the same figure in its third quarter results on 3 November.

Dominion says these past increases are attributable to higher financing costs that increased due to interest rates and construction duration, and higher ancillary costs such as crew training and capital spares.

Besides its own 2.6 GW CVOW offshore wind farm in Virginia, Dominion Energy’s vessel is scheduled to work on other US offshore wind projects too.

In 2021, the WTIV secured its first job as Ørsted and Eversource entered into an agreement with Dominion Energy to charter Charybdis for the construction of their Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind offshore wind farms in the US Northeast.

Earlier this month, Ørsted said the two offshore wind projects will be built within a longer timeline due to supply chain bottlenecks, including vessel availability.