VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — More than 25 miles off the shores of Virginia Beach is the site where Dominion Energy hopes to be the source of clean energy.
“It has been decades in the making,” said Chris Nunn, the director of Engineering and Onshore Construction for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.
In the distance, two wind turbines are already in motion. Meanwhile, several others are being planted across the seabed. The installations began last month.
“We’re in the process of installing monopiles,” Nunn said.
Monopiles are part of the foundation of the wind turbines. They are thick metal tubes sticking out of the ocean. At least 10 of them are already in place with the help of a vessel called Orion.
“It has a lifting capacity of 4,000 tons,” he said. “Its current operation is to do the monopile installation.”
Orion transfers six monopiles from the Portsmouth Marine Terminal to the project site. The goal is to install at least one monopile per day.
This effort comes with multiple safety measures for both the crew and marine life.
“A double big bubble curtain around the bottle of the monopile when it’s being installed,” Nunn said. "The first portion of that installation is a vibratory hammer that installs the monopile into the seabed about 30 meters deep."
It also consists of crews watching the water.
“Basically three dedicated vessels that have protected species observers on them,” said Mitchell Jabs, the environmental permitting manager for the project. "One is the piling vessel and then two transiting around the pile at a three-kilometer radius."
They’ll alert the team to halt construction when they see certain mammal species out on the water. Most importantly, the team is only installing these monopiles during a specific time of the year hoping to avoid mammals like the North Atlantic right whale traveling through the area.
“We are avoiding all piling activities during the winter months only piling during the summer when we know they have moved out of the area,” Jabs said.
The goal is to install at least 90 foundations by the end of the year.