VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM officials said last week that “Data Center Alley” in Northern Virginia will require further transmission upgrades in addition to the previously identified $230 million in baseline and supplemental transmission upgrades to support a 4-GW increase in load.
The RTO said it has assigned incumbent Dominion Energy to construct the “immediate need” reinforcements. Dominion is already in the process of constructing 11 “supplemental” transmission upgrades estimated at $197 million and two “baseline” transmission upgrades totaling more than $32 million to address the “unprecedented load growth” caused by the continued growth of power-hungry data centers near Dulles Airport.
PJM’s Sami Abdulsalam gave the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee a presentation on the issue July 12, showing that Dominion’s load is growing by 3% per year for 2022-2027, all of it from data centers.
Since 2018, Dominion has submitted to PJM 44 supplemental projects to serve more than 2 GW of increased load through the summer of 2025. All told, the RTO expects 4 GW of additional load in the area between 2021 and 2027.
Data center additions listed in the 2022 load forecasts provided by Dominion and Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC) were “noticeably higher” than in their 2021 forecasts, PJM said.
The updated load forecast for the 2027 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan showed that the area would face reliability violations even with the 13 projects in service, with four flowgate violations leading to load drop of more than 300 MW.
“Because the area is constrained on all 230-kV inlet transmission segments to serve the size of load, and data center load has a flat profile throughout the day, power flow control or non-wires solutions are not applicable to solve the identified transmission needs,” PJM said.
As a result, PJM declared an immediate need to address reliability violations expected through 2025 and assigned construction responsibility to Dominion, saying a shortened competitive window would result in “delays of about six months.”
The immediate-need reinforcements will address violations in the area through 2025. PJM plans to solicit competitive proposals for further reinforcements that may be required beyond 2025. Once a proposed transmission solution is identified, PJM and Dominion will present it to the August 2022 TEAC meeting for first read.
