This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Dominion Energy recently filed requests with State Corporation Commission regulators to charge typical residential customers an additional $2.89 each month to cover the expenses associated with its offshore wind farm and early development of small modular nuclear reactors.
Dominion also submitted a supplement to its long-term planning document, which was ordered by state regulators who sought more information on the impact of data centers.
Long-term outlook
First, the Integrated Resource Plan: The IRP is a nonbinding snapshot of Dominion’s next 15 years. It includes a breakdown of how energy demand in the company’s service area will grow during that time, as well as several pathways to meet that demand.
Depending on the methodology used, the IRP said typical monthly residential customer bills could increase anywhere from $90 to $150 in the next 15 years. During that time, Dominion’s overall system demand will likely double — mostly due to the addition of data centers across the commonwealth.
The typical residential bill used by Dominion is for 1,000 kilowatt hours: Today, that’s an estimated $142.77.
Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, said most of the new grid infrastructure planned in Virginia will benefit data centers.
“These are the richest corporations [in] the world, concentrating their global operations in our state, and we need them to help pay for the costs and the other impacts,” Miller said, discussing the responsibility for funding new transmission and generation costs.
The PEC president did say that data centers have a lower per-kilowatt hour cost than residential customers in Dominion territory.
The IRP supplement was ordered by SCC regulators, who required Dominion to forecast energy demand scenarios with no data center growth and to identify which new transmission projects are driven by data center demand.
The company’s filing said having scenarios where there’s no data center growth is unrealistic, arguing that Dominion is responsible for meeting customer demand in its service area.
“Ignoring forecasted growth of one type of end-use customer (i.e., data centers) is not a realistic assumption for planning purposes,” the report states.
Dominion also said its existing contracts with data centers validate both the projected load growth and the need for the utility to meet that demand.
According to the filing, peak energy demand is expected to rise by about 9,257 megawatts in the next 15 years; without data centers, peak usage would increase by about 1,255 megawatts during that same period.
Dominion said it will rely on an “all of the above” strategy to cover the demand increase. With that strategy, the company will have a roughly 80-20 ratio of new zero-carbon and natural gas generation until 2039.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon emissions have to be cut as quickly as possible to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Environmentalists have said Dominion’s plans, which don’t call for retiring existing natural gas plants, will keep Virginia from reducing those emissions as much as is needed.
Miller said the SCC’s request shows it’s grappling with the bill increases that customers will see under Dominion’s current rate structure.
The state agency is holding a conference in December to discuss the effects of large-scale electricity users in the commonwealth, and whether certain generation and transmission costs should be directly assigned to them.
Zero-carbon portfolio
Dominion also recently made two filings related to its zero-carbon generation portfolio.
The company is asking state regulators for the first time to charge customers for SMR development — 29 cents a month for a typical residential customer.
SMRs are nuclear reactors that run smaller than traditional designs — making them cheaper and more flexible.
“Some advanced SMR technologies are designed to offer significant flexibility and may be ramped up and down quickly to meet customers’ needs, which is particularly useful for integrating variable renewable resources,” the rider filing states.
According to Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby, that bill rider would cover technology and site evaluations for a potential SMR at the North Anna Power Station, one of the state’s two operating nuclear facilities.
Another filing calls for regulators to approve an increase of $2.60 to the company’s offshore wind rider for a typical residential customer. The company currently charges $8.63. The rider is expected to max out at $14.22 in 2027, according to a 2022 report.
Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton told VPM News the project is on schedule to be completed by late 2026.
“This winter we will start the installation of transition pieces on top of the already installed monopiles,” he wrote in a statement. “We will also continue with laying the export cables that will deliver the energy to shore. Additionally, we will continue the construction of the onshore electric transmission infrastructure.”
The SCC has to review and approve the proposals, which are planned to take effect on Sept. 1, 2025.
Copyright 2024 VPM
