Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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Is There a Doctor in the House?
Part 1: Medical Directors by James C. Sherlock The active presence of the medical director in a nursing home is vital to maintaining the quality of care. By overseeing medical practices, implementing care policies, ensuring compliance with professional standards, and, if required, butting heads with facility administrators and owners, the medical director plays a crucial…
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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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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…
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A 10% Tax on Your Fantasy Football, Baseball?
by Steve Haner, Forget raising the income or sales tax, it appears the 2026 Virginia General Assembly may try to balance the state budget by imposing a new 10% tax on all the sports fantasy game players in the Commonwealth. Just when you think you know all the nooks and crannies of state government, another…
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2026 Battery Bill is Still in Flux but Will Be Great!
by Steve Haner Advocates for adding massive amounts of battery storage to Virginia’s electric grid held a news conference Wednesday to claim again their upcoming bill will lower energy costs, not raise them, but added that the legislation they will push is still being drafted. The 2026 General Assembly session starts in a week, and…
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Dominion Describes Efforts to Limit Turbine Radar Interference
By Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s team building its offshore wind facility spent years working with the U.S. Navy and the air defense agency NORAD on ways to mitigate the problems that would be caused by the 836-foot-tall turbines, reaching several agreements, the utility has told a federal court. The company – meaning ultimately the…
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The Losers in Wind Project Fight are the Ratepayers
By Derrick Max President Trump’s decision to suspend Dominion Energy’s massive Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project is sure to stir up another gale of political fights across the Commonwealth. While some will hail it as a triumph for fiscal and national security; others will see it as an assault on clean energy. Both sides are worthy of debate before such projects are ever approved but are now…
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PJM Capacity Prices Tick Even Higher Into 2028
by Steve Haner The regional electric grid operator that serves Virginia held another of its periodic auctions to secure sufficient supply for the future last week and the price went up again, slightly higher than in last summer’s auction. Even worse news, PJM Interconnection fell short of securing its target amount needed to guarantee reliability. PJM…
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FLASH: Trump Administration Stops CVOW Construction Work
by Steve Haner I was wondering why Dominion Energy had not issued its quarterly report on the progress of its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, or why when down there earlier this month, watching with binoculars from a high hotel room, I could see no sign of any activity on the construction site. Now we…
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$62 Billion For Grid Batteries is Not a Path to Affordability
By Steve Haner The 2026 General Assembly is likely to amend the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) to greatly expand the construction of utility-scale batteries for our electric grid. Based on the current prices for Virginia battery installations, this may saddle ratepayers with $54 billion in new capital expenses over 20 years. The Commission on…
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The SCC Decides: Dominion’s Rates and Profits Go Up, New Rules on Data Centers
by Steve Haner, The massive data centers behind a growing energy crunch in Virginia will begin to pay substantially more for electricity in Dominion Energy’s territory, but not until 2027. The State Corporation Commission’s (SCC) approval of a new rate structure for the largest users will probably only intensify debates about what is their “fair…