Voters worried about rising electricity prices and the onslaught of power-hungry data centers helped Democrats earn a governing trifecta in Virginia last year.
Now, as state lawmakers prepare for a breakneck, 60-day legislative session that begins this Wednesday, clean energy is emerging as a key strategy for dealing with those challenges.
“Oftentimes, I go into a legislative session sort of just guessing what people are going to care about,” said Kendl Kobbervig, advocacy and communications director for the nonprofit Clean Virginia. Not this year, she said. “No. 1 is affordability, and second is data center reform.”
The concerns come as Virginia, the world’s data center capital, is at a crossroads on its quest for 100% clean energy. The commitment began in earnest in 2020, when the state enacted a measure requiring its two investor-owned utilities — Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Co. — to convert to carbon-free electricity by midcentury. The law also prevents new construction of fossil fuel–burning plants, with some exceptions.
These demand pressures are one reason Virginians face rising energy bills.
Republicans and even some Democrats have said the way to cost-effectively meet ballooning power needs is to back away from the clean energy transition and the 2020 law, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. But multiple Democratic lawmakers are pushing bills this year that do just the opposite in an effort to save consumers money and increase electricity generation.
“The name of the game this session is affordability,” Democrat Del. Phil Hernandez of Norfolk said at a news conference last week.
Lowering costs by expediting clean power
One proposal to lower costs, offered by Hernandez and Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg of Henrico, is dubbed the Facilitating Access to Surplus Transmission, or FAST, Act.
The bill is made possible by a new rule at PJM Interconnection, the multistate entity that manages Virginia’s grid: Facing lengthy backlogs for new grid hookups, PJM said last year it could connect some sources on an expedited basis so long as they didn’t trigger meaningful upgrades to the transmission grid.
“There are miles and miles of our current transmission infrastructure that are not being used at nearly their full capacity,” said Jim Purekal, a director at Advanced Energy United who heads the organization’s legislative work in Virginia. “A traditional peaker plant only operates at various points around the year. The rest of the time, it’s essentially dormant.”
The FAST Act, Hernandez said, “will lay out a process to help get these new energy projects up and running.”
The PJM surplus interconnection rule is a permission structure, not a mandate. And utilities may be tempted to use the regulation to build expensive new fossil fuel plants. The bill would set up a study of how much headroom is on the grid and create a procedure to allow only the most cost-effective resources to utilize it.
“Let’s make sure that if you’re going to be using this capacity,” Purekal said, “you’re using the most affordable assets on the commercial market today: solar, onshore wind, and battery storage.”
Advanced Energy United expects 2 to 3 gigawatts of such resources could be colocated with existing power plants of all types within four years. That’s about two times faster than it has taken a project to get through PJM’s queue in recent years.
“We believe this could be one of the fastest, lowest-cost ways to add power to the grid,” Hernandez said.
A complementary effort, to be introduced by Sen. Lamont Bagby of Richmond and Del. Rip Sullivan of Fairfax, would increase grid battery targets in the 2020 law and help ensure energy storage projects are cost-effective for ratepayers.
With Hernandez, the lawmakers promoted it at last week’s press event behind a podium sign that read, “Energy Storage Keeps Electricity Affordable.” One reason that’s true, Sullivan noted at the conference, is that batteries can charge when electricity prices are low and supply is abundant — as on a mild, sunny afternoon — and discharge when demand is high and hourly prices go up. “We can store energy when it’s cheap,” he said, adding that “this is the best energy storage bill in the country.”
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