By Steve Haner,

Two years ago, Dominion Energy Virginia predicted that by 2035 a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity would pay $174 per month. That represented a 50% increase over the first 15 years of compliance with the Virginia Clean Economy Act. The current bill, just five years into the age of VCEA, is already just below $160.

It its revised integrated resource plan, filed with the State Corporation Commission last week and discussed in another Bacon’s Rebellion post today, the company is now predicting the 2035 price for that residential customer using exactly 1,000 kWh will be $255.79, which is instead a 120% increase over the cost at the time VCEA passed.

There is that $140 per month or almost $1,700 per year figure for the increased power bill cost that is popping up in some House of Delegates campaigns. That prediction initially came from a 2022 report issued by the Center for the American Experiment. And Dominion’s internal estimates are not the only ones published in the IRP. It has a second set of figures, higher, which use a method for estimation recommended by the SCC staff. 

Below is the chart that Dominion included in its 2023 IRP document that predicted the cost increases for the capital plan it preferred at that time.

Below is the similar chart in the document filed at the SCC last week, also describing the bill impact of the company’s preferred (natural gas heavy) capital spending plan. There are similar substantial changes in the predicted commercial and industrial rates for Dominion’s customers. 

Then there is the plan Dominion filed that calls for the elimination of all its hydrocarbon plants by 2045, to be replaced by that massive increase in nuclear energy described in the previous post. That could take the 2035 base price for 1,000 residential kWh to $289, a $173 increase or 150% cost growth in 15 years.

The further out one looks the less reliable is the projection, but Dominion did include 2045 costs figures. It said that by 2045 its model predicted a price of $376 for that 1,000 kWh under the nuclear scenario. Using the method directed by the SCC, the figure of $575 pops out. Let that sink in, $575 for a typical monthly electric bill just 20 years away.