Dominion make a huge wind energy play.

Wind energy is making a huge play in the US. The US Department of Energy has awarded Dominion a two-year, $500,000 grant to investigate ways to reduce the cost of building offshore wind power by at least 25%. The project is all about technical innovation: lowering costs, and shortening the timeline for building and deploying offshore wind energy systems, the grant is one of 41 projects across 20 US states-which will costs about $43million over the five years. Dominion will use an integrated system approach for optimizing the design of a massive 600MW offshore wind power project, test sites will be located and conducted at a variety of reference points on the Virginia outer Continental Shelf, and also other sites on the US Atlantic seaboard which stretch from Massachusetts through to South Carolina, which ahs average depths of 10m-60m. Virginia Wind Projectsdom.com The study is about finding out what exactly it takes to build a high-voltage underwater transmission line, starting from Virginia Beach to the potential commercial offshore wind lease sites in the vast Atlantic seaboard. Dominion plans to complete the offshore wind study this year, and planning to evaluate options to better support multiple offshore wind power projects off the coast of Virginia state. Dominion is partnering with some of the best in the industry, America’s Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute in Arlington, Va and Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and also to transmission specialist Alstrom Power. Dominion is also teaming up with Moffat&Nichol, a maritime engineering company; specialize in structural design and ocean engineering.