Dominion Energy expects to start installing monopiles for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project between May 6 and 8, CEO Robert Blue told analysts May 2 on the company’s first-quarter earnings call. 

Construction is moving forward despite a lawsuit seeking to stop the project, alleging its federal approvals violate the Administrative Procedures Act and the Endangered Species Act, Blue said. (See Opponents Sue to Halt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.) 

Proponents of the project have asked the U.S. District Court for D.C. to stop the project, but the suit is still pending, with Dominion set to file a response May 6 and its opponents their answer to that May 9.  

Blue said the complaint was without merit and that he expects the court to deny the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. He said similar litigation against offshore wind has been rejected by an appeals court. 

“Let me just reiterate, the project is proceeding on time and on budget consistent with the timelines and estimates previously provided,” Blue said. 

CVOW got its eleventh and final required permit and Dominion has received 36 monopiles from its supplier, a fifth of the total. It expects more monopile deliveries in the coming weeks and will be installing them over two seasons — this year and next, Blue said. 

Offshore construction contractor Deme recently completed a project off Scotland that uses the same Siemens Gamesa wind turbine that CVOW will use, and the lessons learned there will benefit Dominion’s wind farm, Blue said. 

Dominion expects the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for CVOW to be $73/MWh, which is down modestly from its last forecast due to higher renewable energy credit (REC) prices. That means the CVOW is expected to produce more benefits for customers, Blue said. 

“We remain well below the legislative prudency cap on this metric, and I would point out well below the PPA prices being considered in other parts of the country,” he added. 

Return to Capacity Auctions

Dominion has so far invested $3.5 billion in CVOW and remains on track to bring that up to $6 billion by the end of the year, with 93% of project costs fixed, Blue said. 

The other big issue in Dominion’s territory is data center growth in Loudoun County, Va., outside of D.C., and home to Data Center Alley, the largest group of data centers in the world. 

“In aggregate, we’ve connected 94 data centers with over 4 GW of capacity over the last approximately five years,” Blue said. “We expect to connect an additional 15 data centers in 2024. Northern Virginia leads the world in data center markets.” 

Both the number and the size of data centers seeking service in the area has grown in recent years. Dominion used to get requests to serve data centers requiring about 30 MW, but now individual buildings can use 60 to 90 MW, while the utility has gotten some requests for big campuses with multiple buildings drawing 300 MW to several gigawatts, Blue said. That growth in data center demand is reflected in PJM’s capacity market. 

“Last month, PJM released its capacity auction planning parameters,” Blue said. “The results aligned with our analysis of low growth and the need for requisite dispatchable supply resources included in our 2023 IRP. This independent modeling also validates the need to expediently progress the recurring local and PJM regional transmission planning and expansion process, and our decision to expedite numerous projects over the last two years.” 

Dominion has accelerated plans for new 500-kV transmission lines and other infrastructure in Northern Virginia and was awarded over 150 projects totaling $2.5 billion from PJM’s regional plan released in December, he added. (See PJM Board Approves $5 Billion Transmission Expansion.) 

The recent capacity market reforms and those latest assumptions mean Dominion will be participating in the main PJM Reliability Pricing Model auction once again, instead of using the Fixed Resource Requirement alternative as it had in recent years. It must decide which to pick later in May, with the auction set for July 17. 

“It makes sense for us to return to the capacity auction starting with the 2025/26 auction — [it] returns us [to] the way we did business for many years,” Blue said. “It doesn’t change guidance, doesn’t change the way we operate our system, or the way we think about the world.”