Ørsted to charter US offshore wind turbine vessel built by Dominion team

A consortium led by Dominion Energy (NYSE:D) is building the first American-made offshore wind turbine installation vessel, which has already been contracted to work on two projects in the Northeast.

Dominion announced today an agreement for Ørsted Offshore North America and Eversource (NYSE:ES) to charter the new vessel, called the Charybdis, for the construction of their joint Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind offshore wind projects that will exceed 1.6 GW of total capacity. The charter's terms will allow the vessel to also support work on Dominion's own 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project off the coast of Virginia Beach, if cleared by the state.

The USD-500-million (EUR 409m) vessel is being built in Brownsville, Texas, at the shipyard of global marine shipbuilder Keppel AmFELS. It is designed to handle both current and next-generation turbine technologies, including sizes above 12 MW, and will be used for the installation of foundations.

Charybdis is expected to be sea ready by late 2023. Once completed, it will be homeported in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

For the Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, the vessel will work from State Pier in New London, Connecticut. Ørsted and Eversource have committed almost USD 100 million to a public-private partnership with the State of Connecticut and Connecticut Port Authority to revitalise the currently underutilised port facility there.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.818)

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