by A Siegel
Offshore wind is a complex and enormous capital construction domain. Among other requirements, specific ships — jack ships that extends legs to the sea floor and jacks up above the sea for a stable construction platform — are required for the actual putting together of the massive wind turbines at sea. To date, there is no U.S. flagged jack ship that can support construction. The limited projects to date, such as Dominion’s two-turbine project that begin operations earlier this year, have used leased European ships. Due to U.S. law, specifically the Jones Act, using non-U.S.-constructed and crewed ships greatly complicates and constrains U.S. offshore wind construction. Dominion, with its accelerating path toward a massive 2.6-gigawatt wind farm off the Virginia coast, announced today that it is investing $600 million to address this bottleneck.