By: | Virginia Mercury
Dominion Energy’s annual rate case in September prompted concerns from data centers about how fast the utility connects their industry to the grid. The State Corporation Commission has now ordered a case specifically so the company can explain their rationale for timing when data centers hook up to transmission lines.
Dominion oversees the high-voltage transmission lines that run through their territory, otherwise known as the DOM Zone, which includes large portions of Virginia. When another utility or co-op needs more power than they can provide through their own distribution lines, they have to apply to Dominion, on behalf of their customers, to hook them up to the transmission grid. This also applies to the high-load customers that Dominion Energy serves.
Dominion has a set of standards for that queue of high-load connection requests from data centers and aggregate campuses that are over 100 megawatts; they address about 10 at a time, with a cap of 300 megawatts per project.
The current list of projects the utility has slated for connection to the grid add up to 25,000 megawatts of power and all have an energized date. The company has additional projects in the pipeline that would add 75,000 MW and do not have a power up date yet.
Dominion representatives told the SCC that these requests stem from unprecedented load growth. They claim their connection process is a safe method to ensure the grid’s reliability is not strained as transmission lines are built.
“The process enables (Dominion) to mitigate risk of network constraints, avoid stranded investment associated with requests that do not materialize, and ensure that system expansion proceeds in a manner consistent with prudent utility planning and the long-term interests of all customers,” Jacqueline R. Vitiello said in written testimony for Dominion in the case.
But major data companies oppose how Dominion is batching the projects and limiting the amount of power per batch they allow.
“As proposed by Dominion, the large load interconnection queue process standards lack transparency and treat high quality, well capitalized projects, the same as speculative projects,” Cody Murphey with the Data Center Coalition said.
Murphey added that the resulting interconnection queue can take up to 15 years to cycle through, which could put off large load customers from doing business in the state, “ resulting in a significant loss in economic benefits to the Commonwealth.”
The data companies testifying in the case, including Google, have raised concerns that Dominion does not have financial guardrails in place to protect against possible duplicate applications. They also said the utility’s transmission infrastructure planning method doesn’t account for projects that don’t materialize, which can falsely inflate load projections.
“Without some vigorous tools to weed out speculative, or duplicative load requests, such consequence free cue squatting unquestionably will distort load forecasts, complicate system planning, and likely drive up costs for all of Dominion’s customers,” Will Cleveland, representing Google in the case, said.
A newly-passed law aims to address the concerns about the methods of forecasting load growth.
House Bill 892, recently approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, directs the SCC to initiate a hearing about how Phase I and Phase II utilities calculate the amount of load growth to make sure they are accurate. The measure also calls for regulators to take steps to mitigate risks that may result in more costs being placed on ratepayers.
The legislation also allows for the SCC to coordinate with the regional grid operator PJM on examining the load forecast methods – as those numbers also play a role in how PJM makes their load forecasts for the entire grid.
In the Dominion rate case, the SCC also asked the company to consider a method to potentially fast track some connection applications. Dominion has not yet offered such a process but indicated it is open to continue evaluating options.