All 176 monopiles are in the seabed. Two Siemens Gamesa 14 MW turbines are spinning. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, on track to become the largest U.S. offshore wind farm at 2.6 GW, is past 70% complete. But Dominion has quietly signaled to investors that the back half of the turbine erection campaign is running slower than the modeled schedule.
The slowdown isn’t a crisis. It’s the predictable squeeze that almost every offshore wind project hits when monopiles are done and the focus shifts to the choreography of pulling 14 MW turbines off load-out vessels, motoring them 27 miles out to the Wind Energy Area, and stacking the three-piece tower, nacelle, and 108-meter blades into place. The pile-driving phase is industrial repetition. The turbine phase is weather, vessel scheduling, and the patience to wait for a six-hour wave-height window that doesn’t always arrive when the schedule says it should.
The Charybdis Variable on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project
Dominion’s secret weapon, and now its bottleneck, is the Charybdis: the first Jones Act-compliant wind turbine installation vessel built in the U.S. Without Charybdis, U.S. offshore wind projects rely on European feeder-vessel workarounds because Jones Act rules prohibit foreign-flagged vessels from carrying cargo between U.S. ports. Charybdis went into service in 2025 after a contentious build at Seatrium AmFELS in Brownsville and is now the only vessel on the East Coast capable of lifting a 14 MW turbine in a single jacked-up sequence.
Two turbines installed against an offshore season that started in May means the project needs an aggressive pace through September weather windows to finish on the modeled 2026 commissioning date. Dominion has not formally pushed the commercial operations date, but its 2026 integrated resource plan filing with the Virginia State Corporation Commission softened the language from “in service by year-end” to “substantial completion by year-end with phased commercial operation extending into early 2027.” That’s a quiet schedule slip wrapped in regulatory language.
What the Project Has Already Proven
The CVOW numbers are the kind that change how offshore wind gets underwritten in the U.S. Dominion broke ground on the onshore substation in 2022, started monopile installation in May 2024, and has now installed all foundations and the first turbines inside a 36-month window. That’s a faster build than Vineyard Wind 1, which took longer to install fewer foundations under a similar Jones Act constraint.
The cost picture is messier. The project’s all-in capex has climbed from the original $9.8 billion approval to roughly $10.7 billion in Dominion’s most recent disclosures, with the Charybdis charter, tariff exposure on Siemens-built components, and weather-related vessel demobilizations accounting for most of the inflation. Virginia ratepayers will absorb about 80% of the variance under the cost-recovery framework approved by the SCC, but the legislature is already drafting cap language for the next major utility-owned offshore project.
For the wider U.S. offshore market, CVOW is the proof-of-concept that mattered most. Equinor’s Empire Wind 1 is restarting after a winter pause. Avangrid’s New England Wind is moving into procurement. Eversource and Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind has resumed monopile installation after its summer 2025 court relief. Each of those projects watches CVOW’s numbers closely. If Dominion lands within 10% of budget and inside 2027 for full commercial operation, the next round of utility filings gets easier. If not, the political ceiling on offshore wind in the U.S. drops back to where it was in 2024. The reporting came via Power Engineering.