Category Archives: Energy

Christie Using FERC Pulpit for Dire Prophecy

Posted on May 19, 2023 by | 54 comments

FERC Commissioner Mark Christie

by Steve Haner

Virginian Mark Christie is using his position on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as a national pulpit to preach a message of energy reliability doom, and he is being heard.

It helps that he is not alone in spreading the alarm. It also helps that he is basing his warning on actual instances of energy shortages, from Texas’s deadly experience two years ago to the problems in the eastern United States just before Christmas 2022, which merely came close to catastrophe. Continue reading →

54 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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CVOW on Schedule and Budget, Utility Reports

Posted on May 11, 2023 by | 16 comments

Dominion’s proposed offshore wind project.

by Steve Haner

Dominion Energy Virginia’s first wave of offshore wind remains on schedule, and within the announced capital cost of $9.8 billion; and the cost per unit of the energy from the turbines will be lower than initially projected, the utility reported last week.

Details? Well, many of those are secrets. Much of the brief report the utility filed with State Corporation Commission remains redacted, with large blocks covered by black ink. The redacted data involves reports from an affiliate corporation, Blue Ocean Energy Marine LLC. There apparently is also another document “filed under seal under separate cover.”

Finally, Dominion refers to an Excel file that includes all the data on the new levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculations which was posted to a shared eRoom. The password is available only to the SCC and case parties who signed non-disclosure agreements, reports the SCC’s communications director in response to a query about access for Bacon’s Rebellion.

Among the interesting items which are on the record: Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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Hearing Held, No Vote Taken on Beach Wind Cables

Posted on May 10, 2023 by | 28 comments

Joe Bourne of Protect Sandbridge Beach opens the May 4 hearing on the Kitty Hawk North request to bring major power lines ashore in Virginia Beach.

by Steve Haner

One four-hour public hearing was not enough. Virginia Beach City Council wants another such debate before it votes on a wind company’s request to bring power cables ashore at Sandbridge Beach.

Last week’s hearing on Kitty Hawk North’s application for an easement to bury cables apparently was not covered by any Hampton Roads news media. Almost half of the time (watch it here) was used by the company’s speakers, both before and after the public spoke. Parent firm Avangrid Renewables LLC personnel were at the podium for so long because of questions from council members. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Land use & Development, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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Combining RACs in Base Rates May Be “Bill Relief”

Posted on May 8, 2023 by | 5 comments

by Steve Haner

Simpler is usually better.  Monthly electric bills for many Virginians are about to get less complex, and in the short run also lower.  Will that lower cost be long term?  It is too soon to tell.

On July 1 Dominion Virginia Power will stop collecting separate monthly payments on its bills for three of its newer power plants, all now covered by their own stand-alone rate adjustment clauses or RACs.  This change flows from the major regulatory revision the General Assembly recently adopted and does not need State Corporation Commission approval.  Dominion instead notified the SCC of this change.

This is a different filing than the one about collecting its unpredicted fuel costs, and while they were announced together on May 1, really needed its own analysis. Continue reading →

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Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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Nuclear Power “Essential” – Gates and Granholm

Posted on May 5, 2023 by | 44 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Bill Gates and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm demonstrated and published a joint position on nuclear energy nearly two years ago:

“Nuclear power is the only carbon-free energy source we have that can deliver power day and night throughout any season, almost anywhere on earth. And it’s been proven to work at a large scale,” said Bill Gates, founder and chairman of TerraPower and noted philanthropist, during his remarks at this year’s Nuclear Energy Assembly (NEA).

In a clean energy system, wind and solar will play important roles as renewable resources, but they will need support from reliable, carbon-free electricity. Nuclear energy, which accounts for over half of our carbon-free energy, is poised to be a critical part of decarbonization efforts.

“It’s hard to imagine a future where we can decarbonize our power grid affordably without using more nuclear power,” Gates said.

Then:

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm emphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to investing in nuclear energy when she spoke at NEA.

“Between DOE’s historic budget request and the massive investments in the American Jobs Plan, this administration is going to be able to launch more nuclear energy projects across the country,” said Granholm.

“It’s going to be able to bring the benefits of clean sources of electricity and the high-quality jobs they’ll create to more communities. It will move mountains in our pursuit of President Biden’s bold climate and clean energy jobs agenda.”

“These next few years offer a can’t-miss opportunity to harness nuclear’s full potential,” said Granholm.

Policymakers recognize the need to expand and innovate, as it becomes clear that we need more nuclear power to fight climate change. And in turn, new nuclear sites and projects expand opportunities for steady, high-paying jobs for skilled workers.

Governor Youngkin agrees wholeheartedly.

Continue reading →

44 Comments

Posted in Energy

Good Questions About Nuclear Power Answered

Posted on May 4, 2023 by | 23 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Surrey Power Station Unit 1. Courtesy Dominion Energy

A reader asked two excellent questions:

The issues with nuclear power have been:

1. The waste generated remains radioactive and dangerous for a very long time.
2. In the case of failure, a huge risk is exposed as was the case in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima.

Do these new, small reactors bypass either of those risks?

The short answers are:

  • The new large reactors for sale now are safer than those in the field.
  • New small reactors offer to greatly improve both the safety and efficiency of even the latest versions of the large reactors with a vastly smaller footprint. That includes Westinghouse’s new small reactor announced today that uses technology already approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It expects deployment in 2027.
  • The designs of the small modular reactors (SMRs) in development under dual Department of Energy (DOE) and corporate sponsorship incorporate more revolutionary safety design features than any the designs already approved by the NRC for operational use. You will read below that the DOE has identified three revolutionary commercial vendor-backed SMR designs that it expects to be ready for NRC operating approval by 2030.
  • Some of the new SMRs actually consume nuclear waste from other sources.

Now for the longer version. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Energy

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Westinghouse Joins the Small Nuclear Reactor Market

Posted on May 4, 2023 by | 5 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Westinghouse, whose flagship AP1000 nuclear reactor is the American entry into the international market for large nuclear power plants, today announced a new reactor, called the AP300, which it claims will be available in 2027.

It will generate about a third of the power of the AP1000 reactor.

It is targeted at about $1 billion per delivered plant, well below the $6 billion plus for an AP1000 plant.

All of the technologies are already licensed by the NRC.

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Posted in Energy, Uncategorized

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Clean Virginia’s Views on Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors

Posted on May 3, 2023 by | 48 comments

By James C. Sherlock

VOYGR™ SMR plants powered by NuScale Power Module™, the first and only small modular reactor (SMR) to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

I wrote in an earlier article that I had reached out to Clean Virginia on its policy on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and had not received a response.

Laura Gonzalez Guerrero, Clean Virginia’s energy policy lead, has been kind enough to contact me with that answer.  She was out of the office on April 25th when I inquired.

Ms. Guerrero’s response today:

“Clean Virginia recognizes SMRs as a nascent technology that has neither been fully tested nor proven to be cost-competitive.

Thus, it is our view that this technology warrants further study by the state.

Specifically, we hope state agencies lead a process with stakeholder input to understand and research SMRs and other technologies like hydrogen to determine their viability and the pathways to deploy these technologies in the safest and most cost-effective way possible.”

I fully expect that Clean Virginia, understanding that the Commonwealth has no equivalent state government expertise in next generation nuclear power, will also consider the decisions of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I sincerely thank Ms. Guerrero for her response.

48 Comments

Posted in Energy

Generation IV and V Technology Offer to Make Opposition to Nuclear Power a Historical Artifact

Posted on May 3, 2023 by | 24 comments

Courtesy Terrestrial Energy Inc.

by James C. Sherlock

We write here often about electric power in Virginia, but usually related to public utilities. We focus on Dominion and Appalachian Power.

There is another big market: industrial power plants independent of utilities and the grid (and thus not requiring State Corporation Commission approval).

Those are not reflected in the plans of the utilities except inasmuch as they lower demand.

Users include the steel and cement industries, oil and gas, pulp and paper, mining, and chemical industries. And military bases.

The United States Navy is the world’s most advanced operational user of nuclear power and thus has both a culture and a corporate structure to support nuclear energy.

Each of the military services needs to maintain the independence of its major bases from utilities to control costs, to ensure reliability by independence from the grid and thus to support uninterrupted operations.

But even the Navy does not currently use nuclear power to provide co-generation of the steam and electricity needs of its shore infrastructure.

Among the technical reasons industrial power plants are conventionally powered:

  1. low-heat commercial nuclear reactors are not capable of efficient co-generation; and
  2. high-heat newer technology reactors shorten the life span of the graphite in the cores.

Molten Salt Reactors (MSR), a Generation IV nuclear technology system, were pioneered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory starting in 1968.

An advanced co-generation MSR targeted for commercial deployment in 2030 just achieved a major milestone in Canada.

It offers clean co-generation. Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Economic development, Energy

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Enjoy the Blackouts — They’re Coming!

Posted on May 3, 2023 by | 23 comments

by James A. Bacon

The graph above shows the key trend driving the major revisions in Dominion’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan, which Steve Haner describes in the previous post. The projections of peak summer electricity demand, based on PJM Interconnection forecasts, has been consistently revised upward, taking a dramatic jump higher in the 2023 iteration. The massive shift largely reflects changes in methodology but it also incorporates data showing that demand is increasing more rapidly than previously projected.

The demand projections underpinning the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which showed electricity demand decreasing somewhat, are a fantasy. It is impossible to reach zero net-carbon in the Dominion service territory by 2045 without putting Virginia’s electric grid at risk of catastrophic failure. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Energy

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Dominion’s New Plan Abandons Carbon Free Goal

Posted on May 3, 2023 by | 18 comments

Rendering of a GE combined-cycle natural gas-burning plant.  Despite demands from some for carbon free electricity, Dominion wants to add more gas generation in Virginia.

by Steve Haner

Dominion Energy Virginia has long been warning, albeit somewhat quietly, that the dream of running Virginia’s economy on nothing but solar, wind and battery power was not based on reality.  With the filing of its most recent integrated resource plan (IRP) on May 1, proposing how to meet customer needs out 25 years, it has made those warnings concrete.

The alternative plan that the company points to as preferred includes adding natural gas generation as early as 2028, an idea not even hinted at in the previous plan just a year ago. It wants to add 2,900 megawatts of new gas plants in all.  That proposal will prove anathema to the climate alarmism movement that imposed the Virginia Clean Economy Act just three years ago, demanding carbon-emissions-free electricity by 2045. Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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More Nuclear Power in Virginia?

Posted on May 2, 2023 by | 120 comments

VOYGR™ SMR plants powered by NuScale Power Module™, the only small modular reactor (SMR) to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  Courtesy NuScale.

by James C. Sherlock

Where is Virginia going with nuclear power, the non-carbon energy source that works 24/7/365 to maintain grid stability for all those sources that do not?

Where we are. Virginia has four nuclear reactors producing electric power — two at Surry station in Surrey County (produces 14% of Virginia’s electricity) and two at North Anna in Louisa County (17% of Virginia’s electricity).

Surry has two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors that went on-line in 1972 and 1973 respectively. Surry’s licenses from the NRC have been renewed to 2052 and 2053 respectively. North Anna has two similar Westinghouse reactors which went on-line in 1978 and 1980, respectively. Dominion expects those licenses to be extended until 2058 and 2060.

In 2017, Dominion was issued a permit by the NRC to build a third, much more powerful and newer technology reactor at North Anna. The permit is good until 2037. It is not in Dominion’s current plans.

Under the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), Virginia is legally required to retire all baseload generation, except for incumbent nuclear power plants, in favor of renewable generation by 2050.

In 2022, Governor Youngkin released an all-of-the-above energy plan which announced that Virginia would build a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) in southwest Virginia.

The goal is to have the SMR in operation by 2032.

For an explanation of SMR, see Dominion’s short essay starting on page 9 of its Integrated Resource Plan. Dominion has included SMRs as an available resource in all of its plan options beginning in 2032.

That initiative is welcome, but is fuzzy with regard to actual deployment plans, which are not yet formulated.

And fuzzy with regards to compliance with the VCEA, at least to me. If they are not compliant, then the law should be changed to accommodate them. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy

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Residents Ask VA Beach to Reject Wind Easement

Posted on April 27, 2023 by | 10 comments

Source: John Locke Foundation. Click to expand.

By Steve Haner

Opposition to offshore wind is stirring in Virginia Beach, but the focus is on a North Carolina proposal that would bring its power ashore at Sandbridge Beach, not the Dominion Energy Virginia project which is closer to the state’s largest city.

Private energy developer Avangrid Renewables LLC still needs a key easement from Virginia Beach City Council to proceed with its plans.  That vote was delayed earlier this year and the company was asked to increase its local outreach and engagement.  A public meeting which is part of that effort will take place Thursday, May 4 at Municipal Center Building 1. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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One Case, Five Virginia Energy Reg Failures

Posted on April 20, 2023 by | 7 comments

Dominion solar farm. Photo credit: Dominion.

by Steve Haner

How badly broken is Virginia’s energy regulatory system?  One recent State Corporation Commission decision on Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed next wave of solar projects illustrates several of the problems.  The projects are unimportant, routine.  What matters are the policy failures revealed.

Only the rich can look at the future and yawn. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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Note to Hybrid and EV Owners and Those in Collisions with Them – Don’t Try to Extinguish a Battery Fire

Posted on April 20, 2023 by | 104 comments

by James C. Sherlock

CNBC reported today as breaking news a concern about hybrid and electric vehicle fires that professional firefighters have known about for some time.

Vehicles with lithium-ion batteries can be especially dangerous when they catch fire.

CNBC offers a video showing smoke billowing from three electric pickups parked tightly together.

Moments later, flames shoot several feet above the vehicles, which were unoccupied.

Fires involving EV batteries can burn hotter and longer and require new techniques to extinguish, posing a growing challenge to first responders.

Hybrid electrics, which have both a high voltage battery and an internal combustion engine, have a 3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires according to a study, far higher than either internal combustion or electric alone.

Spontaneous combustion of an EV battery is unlikely, but collisions are a concern. Continue reading →

104 Comments

Posted in Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Public safety & health

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