Power Line Objections Move to PJM

Loudoun Now, December 5, 2023

As the PJM Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee assembled Tuesday in Audubon, PA, to review the next round of proposed regional power lines, its members were presented with more than 250 letters of concerns from area resident raising concerns about plans for a 500 kV transmission line that would cross western Loudoun from West Virginia to Leesburg.
The proposal is among the responses to PJM opening a bidding window soliciting solutions to a growing power demand within its 13-state region.
Tuesday’s meeting also was attended by several Loudoun residents virtually and some in person to ask representatives questions about the project and further voice their opposition.
PJM representatives said that they had seen unprecedented data center load growth between 2021 and 2022 in Northern Virginia and Doubs, MD. However, in addition to that, they said that there were other factors contributing to the need, as well.
“There’s a lot of other stuff we’re tackling with this window: the loss of 11,000 megawatts of generation and the addition of solar in its place. That right there is an element of the energy transmission—fossil’s retiring and solar is coming. They’re not one-for-one,” a PJM representative said.
Senior Vice President of Planning at PJM Kenneth Seiler assured listeners that the routes for the transmission lines were not established yet, and if the PJM board approved the project, one of the next steps would be a routing study that would provide residents more opportunities to express concerns and suggest alternative routes.
“We are required to serve the 65 million people throughout our footprint reliably,” he said.
He also said that the routes would be up to the transmission developers to construct. Florida-based NextEra Energy is the developer proposing the line through western Loudoun.
Delegate-elect Geary Higgins (R-30) attended the meeting virtually to express his opposition to having the large power lines cut through western Loudoun.
“I am deeply concerned about the proposed routes for these transmission lines through western Loudoun County. … It does not appear that these lines in any way service western Loudoun County,” he said.
He said that the Waterford Historic District, which appears to lie in the line’s study corridor, held the highest historic designation available in the country.
“This would be similar to running 500 kV power lines through the Gettysburg Battlefield or colonial Williamsburg,” he said.
Piedmont Environmental Council Director of Land Use Julie Bolthouse, who attended the meeting virtually, said that state policies call for a transition from coal facilities to alternatives and that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to PJM.
“I’m a little bit confused as to how that is one of the primary needs of all these new transmission lines and that hasn’t been discussed until now,” she said.
Seiler said the number of deactivations happening was happening at a high rate.
“We’re looking at 40,000 megawatts retiring in the next six years or so,” he said.
Keryn Newman said that if solar facilities were not producing enough power to replace coal-produced energy and the proposed transmission lines were going to bring in coal-produced power from West Virginia that coal-produced power would not last forever. She asked what the solution would be after that.
Seiler said they were not replacing coal fire generation with coal fire generation from somewhere else.
“It’s actually coming from the entire region that includes a mixture of fuel types including wind, solar, batteries, combined cycle gas units, and nuclear power plants as well,” he said.
Several questions from commenters focused on just how much demand the data center industry was putting on the energy supply and what kind of infrastructure improvements would needed if data centers were taken out of the equation.
“There’s still a number of upgrades that are required as a result of generation deactivations across the entire system. Most likely, more than half of these upgrades would be removed without the additional load and transfer of load flows across the system,” Seiler said.
Seiler said PJM was estimating that 7.5 gigawatts more of data center load was expected to materialize before 2028.
“Forecasts are estimates, but the actuals that we’ve been seeing in that particular area have coming in higher than the estimates,” he said.
Some commenters also pointed out that NextEra Energy has not completed a project before in Virginia and said they were concerned about the community engagement process they would include in their efforts.
PJM Planning Senior Manager Sami Abdulsalam said that NextEra was a highly credible company and that it was “well capable and qualified” to undertake a project of this nature.
The cost estimate for the portion of line that would run between the planned Aspen substation near Leesburg through western Loudoun and West Virginia to substation north of Winchester on the Virginia/West Virginia border is $71.72 million.
Senior Engineer at PJM Hamad Ahmed said the projected in-service date for that project is June 1, 2027.
PJM’s Board of Managers will vote on whether or not to approve the proposals at a meeting Dec. 11.