The year 2011 will be upon us shortly. That’s when Dominion Virginia Power says Northern Virginia could begin experiencing summer brownouts and blackouts during periods of peak electricity demand. KEMA, a power system engineering firm hired by Dominion, projects that 17 “overload violations” could occur that year. The number could increase to 67 by 2016.
It is Dominion’s job to issue such warnings. Federal law requires Dominion to maintain transmission reliability for its service area. And it doesn’t take much imagination to forecast the hysteria — and anti-Dominion recriminations that would fly — if the citizens of Northern Virginia were to experience more than two or three such overloads.
No doubt about it, folks, Northern Virginia is facing a serious problem, and Dominion is doing the right thing by running up the warning flag. But is Dominion’s proposed solution — building a high-power transmission line across northern Virginia’s piedmont — the only one? It is certainly the solution that Dominion prefers, for it dovetails nicely with the power company’s strategy for increasing shareholder value by building more power plants in isolated spots, connecting them to population centers with transmission lines, and generating a low-risk but favorable return on investment under “partial” reregulation. But is it the only alternative?
Dominion says it is, and cites an extensive study by KEMA in support. In addition to scrutinizing alternative transmission-line routes in mind-numbing detail, the study covers the following options:
Demand Side Management (DSM). Demand-side management — conservation — would be of limited value, KEMA says, because it cannot be targeted to the specific weak links in the transmission chain — the Mt. Storm/Doubs circuit in particular — where the overloads will occur. To alleviate the projected 226 megawatt overload at Mount Storm would require reducing Northern Virginia-wide demand by 2,850 megawatts, or about 40 percent — more than anyone thinks is realistically possible.
Distributed generation. The idea of installing small, dispersed power generators throughout Northern Virginia won’t work either, KEMA says, because they, too, cannot be targeted to the optimal locations. Each 1,000 megawatts of effective capacity would require 1,100 megawatts of distributed generators. More than 31,000 new units would be required by 2011, and 77,000 by 2016.
Larger power plant. Building a large power plant inside Northern Virginia is impractical also, says KEMA. The facility would have to generate 3,000 megawatts, making it one of the largest power plants in the country, and it would have to come on line by 2011, which alows insufficient lead time to license and build. Alternatively, three to five smaller plants might do the trick, but they would require upgrades to transmission lines in Northern Virginia.
Here’s what KEMA did not study: A combination of alternative strategies. Conservation + distributed generation + one or two smaller power plants in the Northern Virginia region.
The fact that conservation strategies alone cannot solve the problem is no reason not to pursue them as a partial solution. The same applies to the fostering of numerous, small-scale power sources across Northern Virginia, and also to the idea of adding one or more small power plants in the region.
And here’s what’s not clear: The maps and tables in the KEMA study include the notation “Possum Point off”, but there is no explanatory text. Possum Point is a four-unit power plant overlooking Quantico that burns natural gas and oil. Do Dominion’s projections of electric supply and demand assume that these units will be phased out, as the two oldest units have been already? If so, what are the reasons? Can a case be made for running them for several years more as a bridge to a longer-term solution? Again, I don’t know the answers. I’m just asking questions.
(Update: Jim Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, reports, “We have no plans to shut down the Possum Point Power Station units. Units 1 and 2 are retired, Units 3 and 4 were converted from coal to natural gas a few years ago, Unit 5 uses oil as its fuel and Unit 6 is the newest unit, a natural gas, combined-cycle unit. Total output of the site is about 1,630 megawatts, or enough electricity to power 407,500 houses at peak demand.”)
Of course, the longer Dominion pursues the transmission-line option to the exclusion of other options, the closer it gets to a fait accompli. At some point, enough time will have gone by that there are no other options. To preclude that possibility, the State Corporation Commission should be prodded to pursue multiple tracks.