Dominion Virginia Power says it can easily bring up to 1,500 megawatts of electricity ashore at Virginia Beach if a wind farm is built in the Atlantic Ocean.
That much renewable energy would be comparable to the electric generation from a large power plant, such as the utility's Surry nuclear power station.
Dominion Virginia Power presented a report Tuesday on the feasibility of connecting multiple offshore wind facilities to the electric power grid.
It did so during the first meeting of the newly created Virginia Offshore Wind Development Authority. The eight-member state panel was created to promote the development of offshore winds.
However, "an actual wind farm is still a ways off," said Stephen A. Walz, director of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. "We're at the beginning of this process."
Because wind does not blow steadily, Dominion Virginia Power's engineers assumed an offshore wind farm would have a production of 33 percent of its installed capacity, and a 4,500-megawatt installation should be able to produce 1,500 megawatts reliably.
"Our transmission system today is robust enough to handle a 4,500-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Virginia," utility spokesman Jim Norvelle said yesterday.
Dominion Virginia Power's Landstown substation in Virginia Beach "would be a natural location to interconnect proposed offshore wind facilities" with the larger grid, the report on offshore wind integration said.
If the wind turbines' actual generation approached 2,700 megawatts, transmission infrastructure at Virginia Beach probably would have to be upgraded or limit the electrical output, the report said.
"The developers of these wind farms will have to decide if they want to spend $30 million to $70 million to potentially minimize the amount of time that the output of the wind farms is restricted," the report said.
"That's the question: Who develops it and how do we bring it ashore?" authority member Mary C. Doswell, Dominion Resources Inc.'s senior vice president for alternative energy solutions, said in an interview Tuesday.
"We would be interested in being a developer," Doswell said, noting that the utility has experience with wind farms in West Virginia and Indiana.
But, she said, "we need to bring the cost down, and, to get it started, we may need subsidies."
A 4,500-megawatt offshore wind farm could have nearly 1,000 wind turbines.
Dominion Virginia Power, the state's largest electric company, has about 2.3 million customers.
The wind authority held its inaugural meeting at Henrico County's Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.
pbacque@timesdispatch.com
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