Comment by infecto
2 hours ago
The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online in the event of needing that peak capacity. It’s poorly designed and why they have had such significant spikes there.
That might be so, but is also simplifying things a little too much and pointing to the issue.
"It's a poorly designed grid". PJM might serve 65M+ users, but 2GW isn't easily able to be shipped across their grid. Dominion is proposing a 180mi 525kV HVDC line (ironically enough, from southern VA to northern VA) that can handle up to 3GW. But that's a $5 billion project. That number goes up. A PJM project proposal to ship power from NJ to VA is in the order of $12B.
So yeah, the grid can handle it, but now you're foisting twenty billion dollars of costs on to your users for the benefits of 37 customers. That's a ... pretty raw ... deal for the rest of them.
(And yes, PJM already has a grid that can supply some of those needs, and the reality isn't proposing that they run a new HVDC line just for these projects, but the capacity has to come from somewhere).