Dominion Energy Archives - Saving Seafood

VIRGINIA: Dominion ‘on track’ with $9.8 bln Virginia offshore wind farm

February 9, 2023 — Dominion Energy Inc (D.N) executives said on Wednesday that the electric utility’s $9.8 billion offshore Virginia wind farm is on track and on budget, having recently entered a critical phase of the environmental review process.

The roughly month-long crucial public comment period on the environmental impact study of the 2.6 gigawatt project will end in February, Dominion Chief Executive Officer Robert Blue said on the Richmond, Virginia-based company’s quarterly earnings call.

“As it relates to the project’s execution, it’s very much on track and on budget,” Blue said, adding that Dominion is working with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other overseers of U.S. offshore wind development.

Read the full article at Reuters

VIRGINIA: State regulators approve Dominion Energy plans for offshore wind farm – with customers set to pay

December 19, 2022 — Dominion Energy’s planned wind farm got crucial approval from Virginia regulators this week.

The company filed its application with the State Corporation Commission last year. It’s been a long process since then, with legal back-and-forths between environmental groups, state officials and others.

The SCC’s new order approves an agreement Dominion reached with the Attorney General’s office this fall. It outlines who must pay for the billions of dollars the project is expected to cost.

Read the full article at WHRO

VIRGINIA: Offshore wind project “at a crossroads” Dominion argues

October 3, 2022 — Dominion Energy is arguing that it may “be forced” to pull the plug on its proposed offshore wind project if a performance guarantee remains imposed on it by the State Corporation Commission.

On Aug. 5, the SCC approved a rate adjustment clause, or rider, attached to consumers’ power bills so Dominion can recover costs associated with its proposed offshore wind project. The SCC order also included a performance guarantee to protect consumers from potential extra costs if the wind turbines don’t perform as well as expected.

The $9.8 billion wind farm— planned for 27 miles off Virginia Beach— is the largest energy project ever undertaken in the state and would be the largest wind project in the country.

But Dominion challenged the performance guarantee and the SCC agreed to reconsider it — kicking off a window in which both the utility company and other parties have responded.

“It is the regulator’s job to balance monopoly profit motives by adopting common and reasonable standards that will protect Virginians,” Laura Gonzalez, a policy manager with Clean Virginia said in a statement.

Clean Virginia is one of the environmental groups that responded.

But Dominion objected to the guarantee, asserting it could create uncertainty for its investors and hold the company responsible for things outside of its control — citing extreme weather as example.

Read the full article at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

VIRGINIA: Utility: Guarantee for large offshore wind farm ‘untenable’

August 24, 2022 — A ratepayer protection that state regulators included in a recent order approving Dominion Energy Virginia’s application to build and recover the costs of a massive offshore wind farm will force the utility to scrap the project, Dominion said in a filing this week.

The State Corporation Commission granted approval this month for the 176-turbine, multibillion-dollar project off Virginia Beach. Dominion immediately raised concerns about the commission’s inclusion of a performance guarantee for the wind farm and in a petition Monday asked the regulators to reconsider that element of their order.

As feds eye more wind leases off Virginia, fishing industries fear losses

June 23, 2022 — Today, two wind turbines turn off Virginia’s coast. But by the middle of the next decade, hundreds more may have joined them.

With a major push underway by President Joe Biden’s administration to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels, federal officials are looking to dramatically expand the areas where wind farms can be built in U.S. waters.

Virginia is an epicenter of interest: Of 4 million acres of ocean identified as potential wind energy areas in a new Central Atlantic call area, most lie off the Virginia coast.

For the commonwealth’s fishing industries, already wary of what their business will look like once Dominion Energy’s 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is constructed, the prospect of a much more expansive buildout of wind power throughout the rich fishing grounds off Virginia is sparking fears that the new industry will drive out the old.

“We know that when these lease areas are built out, it is going to be displacing fishermen, who are then going to be working smaller and smaller areas with more and more boats, which is going to lead to localized depletion,” said Tom Dameron, government relations and fisheries science liaison for Surfside Foods, a New Jersey-based commercial clam fishing company that last year landed roughly 10 percent of the East Coast’s entire surf clam harvest in Cape Charles.

Read the full story at the Virginia Mercury

At Dominion wind hearings, continued disputes over ratepayer protections

May 20, 2022 — After two and a half days of testimony in Richmond, consumer protection advocates continue to disagree with Dominion Energy over whether regulators should require further safeguards for ratepayers as the utility seeks approval for its plans to build a massive wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach.

“There is no blank check for this project,” said Joseph Reid, an attorney from McGuireWoods who represented Dominion in the case before the State Corporation Commission, on Tuesday.

But Senior Assistant Attorney General Meade Browder told the SCC that the office’s Division of Consumer Counsel remains concerned that customers face significant risks from the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

“Our position is that approval should come with meaningful protections that mitigate the risk to ratepayers, who are currently set up to bear the financial risk if the CVOW project proves to be more costly to construct and operate than is projected or if the performance of the project does not meet the level projected by the company,” he said.

If built, CVOW will be the largest wind farm in the United States, producing 2.6 gigawatts of power — more than what is generated by the state’s nuclear units and its largest gas plant combined — from 176 turbines sunk into the Atlantic Ocean 27 miles off Virginia Beach.

The project is both a key component of Dominion’s plans to decarbonize its fleet by midcentury in line with the Virginia Clean Economy Act and, with an estimated price tag of $9.65 billion, the most expensive endeavor the utility has undertaken to date. If approved by regulators, the average residential customer, defined as someone who uses 1,000 kilowatts of power every month, would see their monthly bill initially rise by $1.45. SCC staff have estimated that figure could rise to $14.21 by the time the project enters operation in 2027.

Read the full story at the Virginia Mercury

VIRGINIA: Dominion makes its case to SCC for $9.65 billion from customers to build wind farm

May 18, 2022 — Acknowledging the risk of cost overruns but saying it doesn’t anticipate any, Dominion Energy made its case Tuesday to state regulators for approval of $9.65 billion from its Virginia customers to build the country’s largest offshore wind farm.

Dominion representatives touted the project’s job creation and reduction in carbon emissions. They promised in a hearing before the Virginia State Corporation Commission to promptly notify the commission if costs are expected to exceed current estimates.

The attorney general’s office, the advocacy group Clean Virginia and others told commissioners they’re concerned about the potential for even higher costs on such a large construction project and in an economy with supply chain disruption and inflation.

No party in the case, in which the SCC is considering approval of the 176-turbine project and its costs, asked the commission to reject the request. A 2020 state law essentially directs the commission to approve the project if Dominion meets certain parameters, which the company said it had.

Dominion’s $9.65 billion capital cost estimate was down from a previous $9.8 billion estimate, which itself was up from an earlier estimate of $7.8 billion.

Read the full story at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia wind farm job claims questioned by state regulators

April 26, 2022 — As Virginia-based Dominion Energy seeks to build what it calls the country’s largest offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean, the company and its supporters have touted the economic development opportunities expected to accompany the 176-turbine project.

But state regulators, who are currently considering whether to grant approval for the massive project, say the economic picture might not be so rosy.

In testimony filed earlier this month, regulators said that in claiming the wind farm will create jobs and tax growth, the company relied on a “stale” study that didn’t account for the impact of its Virginia electric utility ratepayers bearing the cost of the nearly $10 billion project. The State Corporation Commission’s own analysis found the project was expected to come with an economic cost — including 1,100 lost jobs in the first five rate-years of the project — that might negate any “speculative” benefits.

“Any economic benefits that are likely to arise will do so as a result of new investment in industries in Hampton Roads and Virginia that support offshore wind facility development. The degree to which this new investment occurs is speculative,” according to the commission analysis from Mark Carsley, a utilities manager in the division of public utility regulation.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

Virginia AG: Costs high, benefits uncertain from Dominion wind proposal

March 30, 2022 — The Virginia Attorney General’s Office in a new filing says Dominion Energy’s proposal for a large offshore wind farm is not needed for the utility’s capacity, costs two to three times more than solar energy, and that the company has overstated the project’s economic benefits.

The Friday filing was made at the Virginia State Corporation Commission by the Attorney General’s Division of Consumer Counsel, which represents consumer interests before the commission. The commission is considering Dominion’s plan for a $9.8 billion wind farm with about 180 turbines off the coast of Virginia Beach.

VIRGINIA: Dominion offshore wind farm cost climbs to $9.8B

November 8, 2021 — Dominion Energy Inc.’s offshore wind farm will cost about $2 billion more than expected, the Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility’s chair, president and CEO, Bob Blue, said during a third quarter earnings call Friday.

Instead of the previously estimated $7.8 billion, the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) commercial project will cost approximately $9.8 billion, Blue said, attributing the roughly 25% cost increase to rising commodities expenses and general cost pressures across a number of industries right now amid mounting inflation. Additionally, Blue cited costs associated with the need to build about 17 miles of new transmission lines and other onshore infrastructure associated with the project.

Dominion plans to build the 180 wind-turbine farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, with construction beginning in 2024. When completed in 2026, the wind farm is expected to power 660,000 homes. The wind farm will cost residential customers about $4 per month over the estimated 30-year lifespan of the wind farm, a Dominion spokesperson said.

Read the full story at Virginia Business