A Dominion Energy representative shares renderings of the Daves Store substation and power lines project with Republican Gainesville Supervisor Tom Gordy (middle) at Gainesville High School Tuesday night.
A Dominion Energy representative shares renderings of the Daves Store substation and power lines project with Republican Gainesville Supervisor Tom Gordy (middle) at Gainesville High School Tuesday night. Paralleling Switchgear
Local activists and officials are joining hands to oppose Dominion Energy’s efforts to build a new substation and transmission lines near Gainesville to fuel data centers.
Dominion is preparing to submit the proposal, dubbed the Daves Store Substation, to the Virginia State Corporation Commission for approval in the first quarter of this year. There are four routes currently being studied as options for this project, according to the power company.
Originally considered by the company was a plan for a segment of the powerlines to be trailed underground, but the idea was nixed after determining it would be too complex to achieve. Opponents of the project concerned about the impact lengthy stretches of power lines could have on their neighborhood viewsheds are pushing for the utility to reconsider the plan.
They’re also opposed to ratepayers having to share the cost of increasing electrical infrastructure with data center companies.
“It’s like you build a house and then somebody else pays for all your power,” said Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County. “I mean, like, that’s just B.S.”
“The monopoly utility that we all pay for is becoming a private utility for the data center industry, and that has got to stop,” she added.
While the Prince William Board of County Supervisors has little input on the proposal, officials who represent the area are paying close attention to the impact data center development is having on western Prince William.
“It demonstrates that with the exponential growth of data centers in Prince William County, we’re going to be having a lot of these conversations about transmission lines, substations. And, granted, the preference is for all this to go underground in order to maintain viewsheds to have the least amount of impact,” Republican Brentsville Supervisor Tom Gordy said.
“This is a State Corporation Commission deal, so this is really up to the citizens to make sure they’re advocating for what’s best for our community,” he said.
Republican Gainesville Supervisor Bob Weir said he doesn’t believe this project will be enough to account for energy needed by incoming data centers, and that the need for additional power lines and substations could become an inevitability. He’s monitoring efforts at the state level to pass legislation that would require segments of power lines to be built underground to minimize viewshed impacts.
Of the proposed routes, a new double-circuit 230 kV transmission line will be built approximately two miles long from the proposed Daves Store substation just west of Interstate 66 and U.S. Route 29 (Lee Highway) to the NOVEC-owned Atlantic substation near Wellington and Rollins Ford roads.
Two additional substations will be built west and adjacent to the proposed Daves Store substation and existing Heathcote substation. A short segment of transmission line will connect the two substations to the Daves Store substation.
According to Dominion representatives, the State Corporation Commission will determine how much ratepayers will contribute toward the cost of the new 1.7 miles of electrical infrastructure.
If the commission grants the proposal a green light, Dominion hopes to begin construction on the eastern end of the project in the first half of 2025, then work west toward where Daves Store will be built throughout next year. The goal is to have the new substation built and energized by mid-2026, according to Project Manager Adam Maguire.
Dominion Energy held a community meeting on Tuesday at Gainesville High School to discuss its proposal. They hoped to gain feedback from residents of which route is preferred. Company representatives said residents continue to voice concerns about impacts the power lines could have on viewsheds, which Dominion attempted to show through renderings of the project displayed on easels.
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Uneducated Idiot is now an expert on farming, conservation, crop rotation, soil fertility, environment and faux climate change. Uneducated Idiot wouldn't last 3 minutes on a working farm anywhere in rural America. Uneducated Idiot is a total democrat fraud.
You can find that information in books. Try reading one sometime.
A big thumbs down to Rappahannock Media for keeping residents of counties affected / to be affected by the construction of data centers ignorant of the costs and consequences.
It took thousands of volunteer man and woman hours to force Dominion Energy to settle on the hybrid route.
The Coalition did succed in convincing the SCC Legal Staff that these bulk load customers are the drivers of this massive power infrastructure need, and but for their load demand, none of us would bear the brunt of not only the towers themselves but the cost.
Each data center building, approximately 150,000 sq ft requires anywhere from 65 to 85 megawatts. One megawatt of solar requires 40 acres of solar power for a 24 hour period of electricity production. So do the math, how many acres of land is consumed for just ONE data center building.
The reality is that our energy demand is tripling in the next 10 years, and that is due to the power needs of the data center industry. Now calculate AI and the prediction is they will need 4 to 8 times the energy.
It is important to get educated on the impacts of this industry. We know the digital world is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, the question is will it tear that fabric in two.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/top-data-center-markets/
Re: "That is why most of us support paving over underutilized farmland with solar panels and wind turbines. Making rural America productive again rather than a perpetual welfare pit of Medicaid, SS disability, and paying family farms not to farm."
Once you democrats make traditional food producing agriculture moot in America where will food come from? Cher's armpits?
Food production is global. And we already produce way more than we will ever need.
But the global economy is beyond you. You don’t have a part in it.
Are elevated levels of lead in children's juice drinks also part of the "Global" food economy? Go ahead, take a drink!
Thannks for telling everyone you have no idea that you can grow crops under solar panels.
Stuff it Green Acres demturd. Grow your hemp in your backyard next to a future data center. You can't replicate the agrarian roar of America under solar panels demturd.
The lack of groundwater is going to silence that roar. We need truly traditional agricultural practices that we are calling "regenerative" then farmers will have more options than just selling for solar farms or wind turbines. Change is coming to our agricultural industry--some are starting to dry farm already because of the groundwater crisis. I don't want just solar farms and wind turbines either--this seems like a potential answer to me.
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/regenerative-agriculture
People are figuring out how to do large-scale versions, but America's agricultural roar will probably lessen at least for a while. Better to fight for more and better farming options than to try to stop the transition altogether cause it's needed for a lot of the farmers too. And with all they are up against, chances are as things get hotter and drier, more and more are going to sell their land for other purposes.
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/regenerative-agriculture
Anyone can search on: "data centers power consumed", "data centers heat generated", "data centers photovoltaic power" and so on.
The new 235 kilovolt power line would transmit a lot of electric power, many megawatts: 230,000 volts at 1,000 amps current = 230 megawatts
A Google search reveals that large data centers use 20-100 Megawatts. Your lines can supply 2-3 of them. Is there that much spare capacity in the pagepand line? No.
They are planning 6 is it? Large data centers. That's at least 2 additional high power transmission lines. That's going to look great... And we'll be paying for them.
Can we please have information and data about data centers published somewhere? Like how much power does a typical data center consume, how much heat does a typical data center generate, does any data center have renewals energy (photovoltaic panels) on-site, how much power would on-site renewable energy produce?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/top-data-center-markets/
This is an article about power substations and the Dominion electric company. This is a piece on utilities, not data centers.
Google says 20-100 megawatts for a large data center.
Don't forget, the State Corporation Commission will likely allow Dominion to raise your electrical bill to pay for all the new power lines. We can't possibly allow the data centers to pay the whole bill, they will say, because of all of the benefits from the beautiful new transmission lines, And we will all be saving money on our taxes because the data centers will bring in so much revenue, so we can afford to pay more for electricity.
Also, remember that Dominion is the same company that has had several multi-day outages in PWC over the last decade that they were woefully unprepaired to handle. It's a horribly managed company. They are unlikely to keep the power on for all these data centers. Plus, think of all the additional coal that will need to be burned to power the data centers. But, PWC schools will make up for it because they will have one school (out of several dozen) that is self-sufficient in its energy use. You all know how concerned they are about "climate change"! Hypocrites maybe?
We are very concerned about climate change.
That is why most of us support paving over underutilized farmland with solar panels and wind turbines. Making rural America productive again rather than a perpetual welfare pit of Medicaid, SS disability, and paying family farms not to farm.
Of course green energy is a 30 year project, so yes we will rely on natural gas (not coal) until that time.
And data centers will prevent an average property tax increase of $10K per house by 2040.
Thanks to data centers, property taxes will remain a stable 2-3% increase per year.
Perpetual welfare pit, sounds like every major city. Wind and solar are intermittent. Blackouts would be regular. They require too much land, disrupt ecosystems, kill birds, aren't produced sustainably. They have a very limited lifespan and quickly turn into a tremendous pile of toxic waste which doesn't get recycled. Terrible idea and once again proving your "education" doesn't equal intelligence.
Yet investors are lining up for green energy.
And gas companies are making moves to transition out of fossil fuels in the coming decades.
Investors? or DC Swamp inside traders? Energy developers are walking away and scrapping green energy plans. Must be Bidenomics at work.
https://fortune.com/2023/11/01/orsted-world-largest-wind-energy-developer-scraps-2-large-offshore-projects-new-jersey-list-us-cancellations/
https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/environment/2023/06/05/southcoast-wind-wants-to-rebid-contracts-due-to-inflation-supply-chain-problems-offshore-wind/ 70288983007/
I don't think you read the articles you linked
Your ignorance on so many issues never ceases to amaze me.
You say green energy is a 30 year project. Don't you know that we only have 8 years to save the planet? We have been told that every year for the last 25 years.
You don't know who is on Medicaid. California has over 13 million enrollees on Medicaid, or just over 1/3 of their whole population. DC also has slightly over 1/3 of its residents on Medicaid. Meanwhile, in agricultural states, Iowa has 24% on Medicaid and North Dakota has 16% on Medicaid.
In Virginia about 20% are on Medicaid and in Maryland it is 24%.
And you know nothing about farmers being paid not to farm. Many years ago that was true. Today, some farmers voluntarily are paid not to farm on environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands and highly erodible lands. It's a contract to protect the environment. Is that what you are upset about?
Dominion has literally zero control over development and the demand it generates. If a developer purchases land and gets approval to build a data center there, Dominion is required by law to supply it with electrical power.
Dominion also doesn't have the ability to force a developer to pay for all the associated costs in supplying their land with power. Those decisions reside with the SCC. Since the transmission lines/substations are technically going on the same grid that everyone feeds from, it's impossible to quantify how much a developer's "fair share" is, and Dominion needs to make up the difference somehow, which is usually increasing costs for all ratepayers.
Now, if you want to point fingers at Dominion, it can be over how it decides to route its lines. They absolutely want to do it the cheapest way possible, and that usually means ruining view-sheds. Haymarket area residents lobbied the SCC pretty effectively and also litigated this when AWS built their data center off 55 years ago. They got Dominion to bury a portion of the line, which definitely saved a number of neighborhoods along I-66 and Rt. 55 from seeing the hideous things run past their house.
Not quite sure the statement "Dominion has literally zero control over development and the demand it generates" when Dominion donated $270K in just 2023 alone, to parties like Luke Torian, who then donates some of that money to the PW BOCS members who support uncontrolled data center growth. That type of money is a lot of control. https://www.vpap.org/candidates/161769/top_donors/?start_year=2023&end_year=2023
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