Dominion Puts Alexandria Project on Hold; Reevaluating Power Needs

Dominion Power is putting plans on hold for new power lines in Alexandria while load projections are reconfigured, according to company spokesman Charles Penn.

“We are delaying the actual filing of our SCC (State Corporation Commission) application 60 days,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve received indications from PJM that system-wide load projections are trending less than originally expected.” PJM is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity.

Also read: Dominion Open House on Proposed Underground Power Lines

“We expect those load projections to become more clear to us when they are made available sometime in December,” Penn said. “We want to wait until we receive that data. This does not in any way eliminate the need for the project. But we’ve decided to delay our filing.”

Dominion is studying nine different routes for the power lines, eight underground and one under water.

“We are fully engaged with the City’s Work Group and City staff,” said Penn. “They are painstakingly evaluating each and every potential route.”

Here’s more about the delay, from a Dominion news release:

In an attempt to keep the community updated, we want to make stakeholders aware of a change in our planned State Corporation Commission (SCC) filing date.

As is customary when developing a local reliability project, our planning engineers continue to run updated scenarios based on current and forecasted energy demands and power generation assumptions.

There are early indications that projected load growth may be marginally lower than originally projected, potentially representing a slight delay, but not elimination, of the pressing need for the project. A new load forecast will be available in December. Dominion has decided to wait for this new load forecast in order to file updated study results with the SCC. These forecasting changes are a normal part of the transmission planning process.

In the interim, this additional time will have the added benefit of providing the City of Alexandria, Arlington County, other stakeholders and the greater community with the opportunity to provide further input to Dominion’s application to the SCC.

We encourage interested stakeholders continue to monitor the dedicated webpage for this project, www.dom.com, keyword: Glebe, for updated information.