Construction to Soon Begin on Biggest US Offshore Wind Farm

April 15, 2024, by Adrijana Buljan

Read the latest news on CVOW here: 2.6 GW US Project Receives Final Federal Permit, Monopile Installation to Start in May

The DP3 installation vessel Orion, owned and operated by the Belgian offshore construction specialist DEME, has sailed out of Invergordon in Scotland and is now en route to the United States, where it will be installing monopile foundations at the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project site.

On 15 April, DEME announced that Orion had completed the monopile installation at the Scottish offshore wind farm Moray West and “started its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean back to the United States, heading to its next project in Virginia”. The vessel has already been deployed in the US offshore wind market, having worked on the installation of the offshore substation and monopiles on the Vineyard Wind 1 wind farm off Massachusetts.

According to AIS data available online, Orion left the Port of Invergordon on the morning of 15 April and is expected to call the Port of Halifax on 24 April. From there, the heavy lift installation vessel is scheduled to arrive at the Port of Norfolk, Virginia, in late April, and start preparing for the installation of 176 monopiles at Dominion Energy’s project site located some 43 kilometres (27 miles) off the coast of Virginia.

DEME secured the work on the 2.6 GW US project in 2021 when Dominion Energy selected the DEME-Prysmian consortium as the Balance of Plant (BoP) contractor in charge of the transportation and installation of the foundations and the substations, and the EPCI services for the inter-array and export cables for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, set to become the largest commercial offshore wind farm in the US.

During the CVOW monopile installation, Orion will be using the same equipment the vessel was fitted with for the work on the 882 MW Scottish offshore wind farm.

“The combined technology of the Vibro Hammer and Impact Hammer will also be used on the CVOW project, in combination with state-of-the-art noise mitigation technologies to protect marine mammals,” said Jan Klaassen, Business Unit Director Americas at DEME Offshore.

The monopiles for the 2.6 GW CVOW offshore wind farm are being produced by EEW SPC, which sent off the first batch from its factory in Rostock, Germany, to the Port of Virginia’s Portsmouth Marine Terminal in September 2023. The 176 transition pieces (TPs) will be delivered by Bladt Industries from Denmark.

The US Department of Interior (DOI) approved the construction and operations plan (COP) for Dominion Energy’s 2.6 GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project in October 2023.

CVOW will comprise 176 Siemens Gamesa 14 MW wind turbines and three offshore substations.

Once fully constructed in 2026, the 2.6 GW offshore wind farm will be able to generate enough electricity to power up to 660,000 households.