After two decades following Virginia’s General Assembly, I understand why people say the legislative process is like sausage-making, both being things it’s better not to watch. And while you can count on the sausage factories to feed every little morsel into the grinder, the legislature often leaves the healthiest ingredients rotting on the capitol’s marble floors.
But not always! Sometimes Richmond’s sausage factory comes out with products truly worth savoring. So, after my recent assessments of the sorry state of solar and data center legislation, I want to take a moment to celebrate a few of the good bills that are making their way through the House and Senate, often with bipartisan support.
Since I’m an environment and energy advocate, these bills all relate to those topics at least loosely. With any luck, all of these should soon be on their way to the governor’s desk.
Let’s start with legislation reforming the way Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power do their resource planning. No, don’t stop reading! This is really more interesting than it sounds! Let me give you an example.
One of the reasons customers of APCo are complaining about sky-high power bills is that the public utility commission over in West Virginia approved expensive upgrades to APCO’s coal plants while insisting that the utility run those plants at least 69% of the time, even though both actions increase costs that customers have to pay. Because those coal plants serve Virginia customers as well, that means higher bills here too. But you won’t find out from APCo’s filings how much of its electricity even comes from coal. The integrated resource plans (IRPs) the utility filed with the SCC never revealed that information. Two years ago, APCo even got the Virginia General Assembly to excuse it from having to file the plans altogether.
Dominion Energy’s IRPs have caused their share of frustration, too, to the point where an SCC hearing examiner recommended rejection of the company’s 2023 plan, and the commission ordered a supplement to the 2024 plan even before it was filed.
The Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, a legislative body that is also more interesting than it sounds, set out this year to raise the bar for what has to go into an IRP. The result is HB2413 from Del. Candi Munyon-King, D-Dumfries, and SB1021 from Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax. The legislation doesn’t just restore the IRP requirement for APCo and demand greater transparency from both utilities, it also makes it possible for other stakeholders to review and question the assumptions that go into the utilities’ planning.
The result is that regulators and legislators will finally have the information they need to ensure the utilities are acting in the public interest and not just their own. With data centers already pushing up energy costs, the need for this reform is urgent. As of this writing, both bills have passed their respective chambers, the House version with strong bipartisan support.
Another pair of bills that are faring well deal with energy storage. As battery prices drop and innovations multiply, storage has become one of the brightest of the new energy technologies. Batteries are now the method of choice for filling in gaps in solar and wind production and allowing utilities to meet peaks in demand more precisely, cleanly and at less expense than burning fossil fuel in short spurts.
And whether it’s batteries or other kinds of storage (gravity-based, hydrogen, or thermal), the technology is also critical to the buildout of new nuclear plants, should that occur. Small modular reactors will have to run close to 100% of the time to make their capital cost tolerable, so utilities need the ability to store surplus electricity at night, when demand is low.
SB1394 from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, and HB2537 from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, increase the amount of short-duration energy storage Dominion and APCo must develop and add new amounts for long-duration storage, defined as 10 hours or more. The requirement is technology-neutral, and the timelines are generous. There are also provisions for working groups to develop financial incentives, model ordinances, fire prevention strategies and demonstration projects. SB1394 passed the Senate unanimously. HB2537 passed the House 54-44.
Read the full article: https://virginiamercury.com/2025/02/18/we-interrupt-this-legislative-session-for-some-good-news/
