Sarens Projects in the USA is excited to support our client, Virginia International Terminals (VIT), with operations at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT), the hub for offshore wind projects including the momentous Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) farm.

There are currently only twelve wind turbine generators off the Eastern U.S. coast, and CVOW promises to be the largest project of its kind in the United States. Our presence on this important project reflects Sarens’ long-term commitment to the future of offshore wind projects in the U.S. and across the globe.

The pivotal 2.640 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, developed by Dominion Energy, is located some 26-40 miles (43-67 kilometres) off the coast of Virginia. It will consist of 176 wind turbine generators (WTGs) connected to three offshore substations, each capable of transferring 880 MW. These substations will then convert the generated power from 66kV to 235kV before transferring it onshore.

From now through 2025, Sarens will receive and load out a total of 176 monopiles, 176 transition pieces, and jackets and topsides for the three offshore substations.

Sarens’ on-site involvement in the project commenced on October 19, 2023, with the arrival of the vessel SunShine after the Sarens team in Rostock, Germany, had successfully loaded it with the first eight monopiles.

Over the course of the next three days, the Sarens VIT team smoothly and successfully unloaded the monopiles, swapped out the shipping saddles, moved the piles to storage, and returned the shipping saddles to the vessel. Construction at the site will be finished in time to receive the transition pieces in early 2024.

Sarens would like to thank the following people for successfully planning and safely executing this project:

Engineering: The HQ team, led by Matthias Sarens, with Bram Rosseels and Arno Pinseel.
Logistics: The HQ logistics team and Julie Van Agtmael, Geert Puttemans, Leen Vermeulen and Marc De Greef for being so responsive in procuring, assembling, and shipping vital materials.
Sarens Safety Team: Shay Ali and Neil Ahitan for providing valuable support.
Sarens Experience: Tom Betts for providing great source documents that allowed the Sarens VIT to not have to produce procedures from scratch.
Sarens USA Shipping and Procurement team for the myriad of last-minute procurements, contracting, and shipping work.
Onsite execution team: Thank you to site manager Andy Hefft and the team, including Tom De Bondt, Tom Thijs, Payton Matt, and Jorge Vidal on SPMT operations; Jeff Carmines and Tracy Dammann, crane operators and more; Fuji West, Donald Pipkins, Jeff Richard, and Travis Robinson, our iron workers and riggers.

We now have 168 more monopiles to go! Sarens looks forward to continuing this project and safely and successfully executing it to plan, thanks to our brilliant team.