Author Archives: Steve Haner

by Steve Haner

General Electric (GE) has filed suit seeking major monetary damages from Siemens Energy in a Virginia federal court, alleging “willful and malicious misappropriation of GE trade secrets” as they competed to be suppliers to Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion is not a named defendant, but an employee (reportedly now gone) is accused of sharing GE’s data with Siemens.

A copy of the petition is here, posted by Powermag.com in one of the many trade publication stories about the dispute. Here is one from Reuters and another from Barron’s, which has a paywall. General Electric is represented by the Richmond law firm Spotts Fain, P.C.

All Dominion ratepayers have a stake in assuring that the coming gigantic capital projects we will spend the rest of our lives paying for are built for at prices set by competition, not by insider dealing. On this, stockholder and ratepayer interests should align.

The allegation is that a senior Dominion employee – named in the pleading — provided GE confidential proprietary bid information to Siemens, giving Siemens a major advantage as it competed over a series of requests for natural gas generation proposals, contacts GE did not win. Continue reading →

By Steve Haner

In a matter of weeks, Dominion Energy Virginia is expected to initiate the long-awaited review of its revenues, expenses, and profits in front of the State Corporation Commission, the first since 2015. A series of bills in recent years has set rules for that process which constrain the SCC’s discretion and fix the game in the utility’s favor.

Behind the smoke and mirrors, Dominion’s goals were clearly discernable: Despite growing profits, prevent any reduction in base rates. Keep the base rates unchanged even though more and more operating costs were being moved over to activity-specific rate adjustment clauses. Limit or eliminate the threat of major refunds to customers. Somehow, every bill ended up accomplishing those things for the utility.

Efforts in 2020 to return the regulatory rules to their pre-2007, or even pre-2015 status, and restore some lost SCC flexibility, were mostly unsuccessful. Is it therefore too late to change a rate case about to start? Bills that pass in the 2021 General Assembly go into effect in July, unless they are emergency bills that need super majority votes. There likely is not a super majority ready to dismantle the Rube Goldberg machine built to protect Dominion’s stockholders.

But a simple enactment clause may be able to reach back and change the rules on the rate case. It was attached to a successful bill in 2020 and the SCC recognized the statutory change in the similar rate case for Appalachian Power Company, which also had begun before the July 1 enactment date.  If the General Assembly clearly expresses an ex post facto intent, it can be valid.  Continue reading →