The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced today that Dominion Energy Virginia has successfully bid on the second wind energy lease area off Virginia Beach, the plot which is adjacent to, and further out to sea from, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.  If developed, along with the recently acquired North Carolina project, Dominion could one day have 6,000 megawatts of turbines (at peak production) covering more than 500 square miles of ocean.

The lease area adjacent to CVOW covers 176,000 acres (275 square miles) all by itself, and is comparable in size to the original CVOW. The lease area off Kitty Hawk is much smaller, about 40,000 acres. According to BOEM, Dominion bid more than $17 million for this newest acquisition. In its most recent integrated resource plan Dominion indicated it would begin to develop the second phase of CVOW as construction for the first phase wound up, and the Virginia Clean Economy Act envisioned the second phase, as well.

No plan or timeline for the North Carolina location has been announced. It has been hampered by local opposition to bringing the needed power lines ashore through Virginia Beach’s residential Sandbridge neighborhood. Some of the additional turbines will enjoy special consideration in front of the State Corporation Commission because of VCEA unless it is amended. But that law did not declare a full 6 gigawatts of offshore wind to be “in the public interest.”

A third-party energy developer, Equinor Wind US LLC, paid $75 million for a smaller, 101,000 acre lease area that sits further north near the Maryland-Delaware line. According to a report now up on Virginia Mercury, no firm bid against Dominion for the Virginia area lease but there was heavy bidding from several potential developers for the other site. 

— Steve Haner