Northern Virginia Power Line Critical to Electric Reliability in Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. – Dominion Virginia Power has long supported energy
conservation efforts, but no realistic energy efficiency program or readily
available technologies will prevent the need for construction of a new 500-kilovolt
electric transmission
line for Northern Virginia by 2011.
“The prospect of rolling blackouts in Northern Virginia
as early as the summer of 2011 is very real,” said Paul D. Koonce, chief
executive officer of Dominion Energy. “We took potential best-in-class
conservation efforts and other alternatives into account in considering all
of the possible solutions to a looming problem and the only answer is to build
a line. Pursuing any other action would be just wishful thinking that puts
us on a collision course with potential blackouts.”
Koonce noted that just this week the PJM Interconnection
cited Dominion as having the fastest growing demand for electricity at peak
times among any of the PJM regions across 13 states. PJM likened the increase
in demand on the Dominion system to adding approximately 1 million new houses
over the next five years.
Reviews of all current reliability studies, including the
North American Electric Reliability Council’s Long-Term Reliability Assessment,
PJM’s Regional Transmission Expansion Plan and the U.S. Energy Department’s
National Electric Transmission Congestion Study, confirm a clear need for a
transmission line. The final decision about the need for the line and route
will be made by the Virginia State Corporation Commission.
Electrical demand in Northern Virginia has grown by about
40 percent over the last decade and is projected to grow by another 8 percent
by 2011. Along with increased demand from residential construction, proposed
projects in Northern Virginia include the BRAC 2005 plan to add 22,000 employees
at Fort Belvoir, the $3.4 billion expansion of the Washington-Dulles International
Airport, the $4 billion extension of Metrorail and a number of energy-intensive
computer data centers. All these projects and the related additional development
they will create will generate large amounts of new demand for electricity.
Last year, Forbes.com ranked Virginia as the No.
1 state in the country in which to do business because of “its strong
economic growth, low business costs and excellent quality of life.” Further,
they state that “Business costs in Virginia are very low, particularly
tax and energy costs, which are the seventh and ninth lowest in the
country.”
“We are proud to play a significant role in this jobs
success story and that ranking with our reliable, low-cost supply of electricity
for our state’s high-tech industries, small businesses and homes,” said
Koonce.
Dominion offers a variety of energy- and money-saving resources
to encourage its customers to conserve. This includes time-based rate programs
that have customers shifting their heavier uses of electricity to off-peak
hours in exchange for savings. A number of industrial customers and other large
electricity users help reduce loads by up to 314 megawatts during times of
peak demand, enough to serve about 80,000 homes.
Dominion Virginia Power is a subsidiary of Dominion, one
of the nation's largest producers of energy, with an energy portfolio of about
28,000 megawatts of generation, about 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of
proved natural gas reserves and 7,800 miles of natural gas transmission pipeline. Dominion
also operates one of the nation's largest underground natural gas storage systems
with more than 950 billion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves retail
energy customers in 11 states. For more information about Dominion, visit
the company's Web site at www.dom.com.
