Tag: Dominion
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Make This Check To: Southwest Virginia
Here is what I had to say in today’s The Roanoke Times about Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed pumped storage facility in Tazewell County, addressed to the people so excited about the revenue it will generate. This posting is for the people here in the other part of Virginia who pay the bills for the utility.…
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Dominion’s IRP Approved, With High Costs Detailed
The State Corporation Commission today approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s Integrated Resource Plan, laying out possible investment combinations to keep the power flowing in its territory over the next fifteen years. It also laid out the costs, in excess of $18 billion of investments plus interest plus profit margin to be paid by future customers. The…
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Dominion Seeks To Add Carbon Tax In Fuel Factor
Dominion Energy Virginia is taking advantage of its annual, and usually boring, fuel cost review to move the cost of any future carbon tax or emissions allowances out of its fixed base rates and into its variable fuel charge. If the State Corporation Commission agrees it could either lower or raise your bill someday but…
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Bacon Bits: Dominion Energy Updates
Holy mackerel, is this for real? After years of controversy, Dominion Energy finally built its $400 million electric transmission line across a historic stretch of the James River, ensuring a secure supply of electricity to the Virginia Peninsula. Now a legal challenge puts the project in jeopardy — after the transmission line has been built!…
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Fix the General Assembly, Then Tackle Energy Bill
It has been over a month since a coalition of unnatural allies announced a proposal to revise Virginia’s electricity regulation system – again – but the idea dropped from view fairly quickly. One of the main and most visible proponents, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, has now taken on a very different role in…
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More (But Not All) Cost Projections Filed About Ratepayer Bill Transformation Act
With some of its closest legislative allies facing primary challenges next week, much of what Dominion Energy Virginia filed Friday in response to questions about the consumer cost of its future plans is redacted. The story in Tuesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch (here) could only cover that portion of the data not kept secret. Three of the…
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Rider E Case Shows Many Flaws With This Process
Dominion Energy Virginia’s pending application for a new charge on electric bills for coal ash remediation is both a fairly routine request and an illustration of what is deeply wrong with Virginia’s electricity regulation. When the major investor-owned utilities negotiated a return to regulation in 2007, the ability to create and collect these stand-alone add-on…
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SCC Again Denies Escape from Dominion Monopoly
The State Corporation Commission has denied another request from a major Virginia retailer for permission to escape from Dominion Energy Virginia’s monopoly electricity service. The score for such petitions is now one approval, two denials, and the message is clear to all the other petitioners: Go fight it out at the General Assembly. The petition…
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Update: Aggregation Petition Moves to Full SCC
The debate over retail aggregation and choice for electricity underway at the State Corporation Commission is moving to another decision point, with a hearing examiner’s ruling May 21 on one of the many petitions.
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Dominion Responds to Calls for Deregulation
Dominion Energy has responded to calls for electric deregulation in the form of an op-ed by William Murray, senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications. His argument: We tried deregulation once, it didn’t work, and the arrangement we have now works just fine. Electric deregulation was “in fashion” in the 1990s,” he wrote in…
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Cuccinelli to North Carolina on Electricity Regulation – Avoid Virginia’s Mistakes
The Cooch is back. Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli penned an op-ed for the Wilmington, North Carolina based Star News opposing Duke Energy’s proposed changes to electrical regulation. The title of the opinion piece is, “N.C. should block this Duke Energy power grab”. Cuccinelli’s biggest issue with the pending regulation is extending the period…
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Dominion Energy Joins Consortium Demanding Climate Change Legislation
I am not making this up. Yesterday, Dominion Energy joined a newly launched coalition of more than a dozen major corporations and environmental groups – CEO Climate Dialog. This organization will urge Congress to pass climate change legislation. Example members of the group include BP – an oil and gas company, Citibank, Dow Chemical, DuPont,…
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Three 2016 Dominion Solar Plants Missed Targets
Some of Dominion Energy Virginia’s recent solar installations, despite using technology designed to track the moving sun, have turned in disappointing energy results, fueling skepticism at the State Corporation Commission toward the utility’s claims for future solar energy success.
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SCC Demanding Data in Future EE, DSM Cases
Two recent State Corporation Commission rulings on utility-sponsored energy efficiency and demand management programs produced contrary results for the applicants but a consistent theme of SCC skepticism in the absence of hard data and a demand for more data going forward. The SCC last week approved all eleven new or continued programs proposed by Dominion…
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Left-Right Coalition Urges Electric Deregulation
In the mid-1980s William W. Berry, president of Dominion Energy predecessor Vepco, championed the cause of deregulating electricity markets. He proposed breaking the electricity industry into separate components: generation, transmission, and retail distribution. Only retail electric lines, he suggested, were a “natural” monopoly. Berry’s vision, which was never fully executed in Virginia, bore strong similarities…