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.
Day after day, if you checked the energy reports from regional grid operator PJM Interconnection, it was clear that coal, nuclear, natural gas and oil were providing 90 percent or more of electricity during the crushing cold spell. There were only a few hours when the existing wind and solar assets approached 10 percent of our supply, and never during the bitter cold nights.
That is not the whole story. The energy demand in Virginia includes a growing number of large data centers, many with backup generators installed behind their utility meters. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of their diesel generators have been running all week at the request of federal energy managers to protect PJM’s grid. Those gas- or diesel-powered electrons are not counted by PJM on that website.
The backup generators at those power-draining server facilities are a particular target of Democrats in the 2026 General Assembly and the anti-hydrocarbon activists and donors who are dictating their policy. The generators are often a focus when people in a locality try to prevent new plants. Inconveniently for them, a post-storm analysis from PJM may demonstrate they saved the day.
