Virginia’s State Corporation Commission may have bought Dominion’s logic for building a high-voltage transmission line across the northern Virginia piedmont, through Maryland and Pennsylvania, but regulators in Pennsylvania have not. Regulatory judges have recommended that the Public Utilities Commission in the Keystone State deny the application of Dominion and Allegheny Power to build the interstate line, report the Northern Virginia Daily and Winchester Star.
Dominion contends that the power line is needed to avoid power blackouts in Northern Virginia that could begin as early as 2011. Foes, including the Piedmont Environmental Council, have argued (a) that Northern Virginia’s energy needs can be met through demand management, and (b) that the true purpose of the transmission line is to wheel cheap electricity from the Midwest to markets in the Northeastern U.S.
According to Garren Shipley’s account in the NVDaily, the Pennsylvania judges agreed with the latter point.
The utility firms “settled on a global transmission solution because … the true impetus for the [line] is to transport cheaper coal-fired generation from western [grid areas] to eastern [grid areas] and to encourage the siting of new generation in western [grid areas],” they wrote.
“We question the modeling that was done to support the alleged need for the [Frederick to Loudoun] segment,” they added.
Of course, Pennsvylania doesn’t have the same skin in the game that Virginia does. It doesn’t harm Pennsylvania if Northern Virginia suffers electricity blackouts.
A decision by the Pensylvania utility commission to adopt the judges’ recommendations would deal a significant blow to the transmission line, which needs approval from all three states, but would not end the controversy. Dominion and Allegheny could take their case to the Department of Energy, which has the power to override state decisions in “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors,” a designation that includes the area that transmission line would run through.
