Category: Energy
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Assembly, Dominion Seek to Bill Data Centers for Rising Energy Costs
by Steve Haner Virginia’s major data centers could pay more for electricity and other customers less under a surprise legislative substitute that appeared in email inboxes Sunday and was rapidly approved Monday by a major Virginia Senate committee. The proposal is politically attractive, already being touted a major consumer rate cut, but the detailed accounting…
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Dominion Opposes Battery Mandate on Fire Safety Concerns
by Steve Haner Today a Senate committee is scheduled to take up the bill directing Virginia’s two investor-owned utilities to propose huge battery installations which will cover square miles of ground, cost ratepayers billions of dollars and which will produce zero energy to power our homes and businesses. The bill has Governor Abigail Spanberger’s endorsement. So far, legislators have been in a “see, hear and…
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Say Socialized Cost, Not That Other S Word
by Steve Haner A House of Delegates committee has approved expanding a state-managed program to subsidize electric bills for some lower-income Virginians, hoping to reach more people and offer them more assistance. It also approved a new plan to grant lower-income homes lower water rates. The utility companies involved will not absorb the cost of…
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Fern Versus Abigail, Storm Crushes Governor’s Energy Promises
by Steve Haner Governor Abigail Spanberger’s major campaign pledges to lower electricity bills have already been crushed by the harsh reality of last week’s Winter Storm Fern. Virginians everywhere are about to see their highest energy bills ever, and the energy sources Spanberger wants us to adopt were all but useless during the crisis. …
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Dominion Wind Price Jumps to $11.5B, Trump Blamed
Dominion Energy Virginia now expects its offshore wind facility, which has returned to full construction activity off the coast of Virginia Beach, will cost $11.5 billion. That is up about $365 million from the last report. It really wasn’t that long ago that Bacon’s Rebellion was aghast that the price had reached $8 billion. Oh,…
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How Much Power Do We Really Produce? None of Your Business!
A General Assembly subcommittee Tuesday derailed a simple energy transparency bill calling for an annual report on how well utility generation units perform. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” sneered an environmental lobbyist just before the vote to table House Bill 766. It is solar “juice” that isn’t worth the squeeze, and the bill would have…
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SCC Staff Offers Grim Predictions on Virginia Clean Energy Law
by Steve Haner Dominion Energy is likely to miss its Virginia Clean Economy Act targets, and in a decade, the financial penalties of that law will begin to pile up on the company’s ratepayers, a State Corporation Commission (SCC) staff assessment has concluded. “…despite building 17.5 gigawatts (“GW”) of solar and 3.4 GW of wind,…
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No, Fools, We Really Need the Gas
Today demonstrates once again that thermal generation sources – natural gas, nuclear, coal and oil – provide the electricity that keeps us alive when the cold gets to deadly levels (no, it isn’t the heat we need to worry most about). At 11 a.m., according to a PJM Interconnection tracking website, about 90 percent of…
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Keep RGGI Tax Off Customers? Good Luck With That
by Steve Haner Virginia Democrats are so eager to reinstate a carbon tax on Virginia’s electricity producers that there are now three pathways active to accomplish the goal: a bill, a budget amendment and a motion filed with the Virginia Court of Appeals. There is also discussion in the most recent Inside Climate News report…
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“Free” Heat Pumps the Rest of Us Will Pay For
by Steve Haner A free heat pump for thousands of Virginians who are now using oil or propane to heat their homes, paid for by Virginia’s general population of electricity ratepayers. That is the goal of legislation that passed its first hurdle in a House of Delegate subcommittee Tuesday on a bipartisan vote. House Bill 2 is the…
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Alternate Estimates of Battery Bill Cost Still Tens of Billions of Dollars
by Steve Haner A federal renewable energy laboratory’s public website on the cost of building utility battery storage indicates the cost now being paid by Virginia’s two major utilities is well above the average. Predicting future costs is always iffy, but the National Laboratory of the Rockies website does that, too. In earlier posts, Bacon’s…
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One Commission to Rule Energy and In the Darkness Bind Us
by Steve Haner A legislative commission created in 2008 to oversee one narrow function of two electric utilities is about to expand its scope of oversight of all forms of energy in Virginia, including nuclear, coal, and natural gas. It will be the legislative counterpart – and counterweight – to the politically independent State Corporation…
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Youngkin’s Term Made Virginia Stronger, More Prosperous
by Derrick A. Max Governor Glenn Youngkin’s final State of the Commonwealth address last night offered more than a farewell. It served as an empirical rebuttal to the claim that conservative, pro-growth governance, like those supported by the Thomas Jefferson Institute, cannot deliver tangible results. By every meaningful metric — jobs, investment, education outcomes, revenue…
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Batteries in VA Equal to PJM Demand? That’s Truly Nuts.
by Steve Haner Proposed legislation to require Virginia’s two main electric utilities to load up on battery storage in the next 20 years has now been introduced, and the target battery amounts for Dominion Energy Virginia grew even larger than in the version of the bill previewed by a study commission in December. It is…
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RECs are Costly Pretend Renewable Power the VCEA Makes Us Buy
by Steve Haner A key, but poorly understood, provision of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) is a requirement that Virginia’s two largest electric utilities must either generate or purchase a growing number of renewable energy certificates (RECs). Eventually their RECs must equal 100% of their non-nuclear generation. What are RECs and why do they…