After winning the lease for 112,800 acres of federal land off the coast of Virginia to develop an offshore wind turbine farm last month, Dominion Virginia Power has received final approval for the project, writes the Associated Press.
The bid was submitted to the U.S. Justice Department for a review, to which they had no objections, said Dominion spokesman on Tuesday.
The wind-farm development on the full leased area holds the capacity of generating 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 700,000 homes.
BOEM has several milestones that Dominion must meet to keep the lease, the final milestone being the submittal of a Construction and Operations Plan within five years of signing the lease. Once BOEM has the plan, it has an undetermined amount of time to perform an environmental analysis and approve the plan. Dominion expects the first turbine to be installed in about 10 years pending project approval by state regulators.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND staff, October 9, 2013; Image: doi