​This week, both NextEra and Potomac Edison made filings at the West Virginia Public Service Commission indicating that they intend to file applications for their respective segments of a new 150-mile 500kV electric transmission line.  The line moves coal-fired electricity from a substation in Greene County, Pennsylvania to a substation in Loudoun County’s “data center alley.”  Data center alley is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world.  Regional grid operator PJM Interconnection planned the project, and assigned a different segment to each company to complete.
 
NextEra Energy has responsibility for the 105-mile segment from Pennsylvania to a point in Frederick County, Virginia.  NextEra named their segment MARL.  The new transmission line continues with a 45-mile segment from Frederick County, Virginia to Loudoun County, Virginia that is assigned to FirstEnergy, Potomac Edison’s parent company.  Potomac Edison named their segment Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek, after the substations it connects.
 
Each company is responsible for securing a state utility commission permit in every state which its project crosses.  A Notice of Intent to file an application is required by West Virginia law to be filed at least 30 days before the actual application, and expires after 90 days.
 
The West Virginia Public Service Commission has opened a permitting docket for each company’s application.
 
The Case Number for Potomac Edison’s segment is NOIE Potomac Edison 25C.

The Case Number for NextEra’s segment is NOIE NextEra Energy 25A.
 
The new dockets enable concerned persons to formally file comments and/or petitions about the projects at the PSC.  To do so, visit the PSC’s website and select “Submit a Comment” from the left hand menu.  Then select “Formal Case” from the next screen.  Agree to the disclaimer on the next page, and it will bring up a form to fill out with a space to type your comment.  Be sure to include the Case Number in your filing.
 
If you would rather mail your comments in, send them to:
 
West Virginia Public Service Commission
201 Brooks Street
Charleston, WV  25301
 
Be sure to write the Case Number on your comments.
 
If you previously submitted comments, Resolutions, or letters to the PSC about these projects, you may need to resend them with the correct case number on them in order to have them become part of the official record in the docket.  You may file comments on either, or both, docket(s).  There is no limit on how many comments you can send.  You could send them one every morning over coffee until a decision is made.  It’s up to you.
 
Next Steps: 
 
The companies will file their applications in their respective dockets.  Once the application is filed, the company must notify impacted landowners by certified mail at least 30 days before the deadline to intervene in the case.  The PSC will set a deadline to intervene in the case after the application is filed.  It may be as soon as 30 days after the application is filed, but not sooner than the company sends you a notice via certified mail.
 
Intervening means becoming a legal party to the case, with the right to file testimony and cross-examine the company’s witnesses.  Intervenors may also file briefs, recommending a decision to the PSC, and only intervenors have a right to appeal the PSC’s decision in the case.
 
Persons with an interest in the case, whether as an impacted landowner or electric ratepayer, may intervene and request party status.   Intervenors may hire an attorney, or they may participate pro se, which means representing himself or herself without an attorney.  Intervenors may also join together and hire one attorney to represent an organized group of intervenors, which can make representation less costly.  We will have more information about intervening coming up soon.

The companies assigned to build one of the components of PJM Interconnection's project B3800 have made an absolute mess of the public's understanding of the project.  Congratulations, NextEra and FirstEnergy!  This is all your fault!

PJM doesn't invent and assign cutsie-poo names like MARL or Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek to the projects it approves and orders.  It gives them numbers.  B3800 was assigned to this project when it was approved in December 2023.  Names like MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek are inventions of the companies that PJM assigns to build the projects it orders.  Different names do NOT mean different PJM projects.  They're all B3800.

Here's the only thing you need to know about MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right?  If you study this one, you'll figure it out, despite the stupid stuff NextEra and FirstEnergy are saying right now.  Block all their nonsense out of your mind.  This is one continuous 500kV transmission line.  It's all connected, just like a gigantic extension cord.  Pay attention to the key on this map.  There is a table called  "Transmission System Enhancement" that lists the different color-coded line segments and the companies that PJM assigned to build each segment of this ONE 500kV line. 

Starting at the top of the list is a dark pink/purply segment assigned to AEP.  AEP stands for American Electric Power, who owns a section of existing 500kV line between the Kammer substation and the 502 Junction substation.  AEP's part of this project was to study its existing line to assure it could pump more power from Kammer.  Kammer is the name of the substation at AEP's Mitchell Power Generation station in Marshall County, WV.  AEP is not building a new line here (at least not in this project).

Next the table lists yellow for Dom.  That stands for Dominion.  Dominion is the Virginia-based utility that will be building the last 3 miles of this 500kV circuit from Edwards Ferry to Goose Creek in Loudoun County, Virginia.  It's really impossible to see the yellow part of this map because it's tiny compared to the rest of the line's mileage.  Just know it's there, at the eastern end of the line.

Then we have red for Exelon.  Exelon owns a short segment of existing line and easement in Montgomery County, Maryland that would be reconfigured to change a corridor containing one 500kV line and two 230kV lines into a corridor that contains three 500kV lines and two 230kV lines.  One of those new 500kV lines in Maryland is part of B3800, the continuous 500kV line from 502 Junction to Goose Creek. You can barely see the red if you look hard.

And now we're getting to the real meat here... blue and peach.  The blue part of the line is owned by FirstEnergy (FE) subsidiary Potomac Edison.  The FE part of the line begins at a point in Frederick County, Virginia where the NextEra part ends and runs east through Jefferson County, WV, Loudoun County, VA, and Frederick and Montgomery Counties, MD to a point at Edwards Ferry where Dominion picks up the construction of the 500kV circuit.  The blue part of the line is approximately 45 miles long.  The blue part of the line plans to tear down an existing 138kV circuit on 65 ft. tall towers and replace it with double circuit 500/138kV lines on a new tower 185 ft. tall.  FirstEnergy named this part Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek.

And last, but certainly not least, the peachy colored part of the line that is assigned to NextEra.  This 105-mile long segment begins at 502 Junction substation and ends at a point in Frederick County, Virginia were FirstEnergy's segment of the project begins.  We're literally talking about two adjacent transmission towers carrying one continuous 500kV circuit, except one tower is owned by NextEra, and the other is owned by FirstEnergy.  These are not two separate projects physically.  The separation only exists in legal documents and the balance sheets of competitors NextEra and FirstEnergy.  NextEra named its peach MARL.

To put the parts of the map in order from west to east:  dark pink (AEP), peach (NextEra), blue (FirstEnergy), red (Exelon), more blue (FirstEnergy), and then yellow (Dominion), which connects to a substation that serves Loudoun County's data centers.

PJM approved and ordered ONE 500kV circuit between 502 Junction and Goose Creek and then assigned the project to 3 different companies to build.  Each company has made up its own name for its segment.  NextEra calls its 105-mile portion of the project MARL.  FirstEnergy calls its 45-mile portion of the project Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek.  Dominion has not come up with a name for its 3 mile section in Virginia because it has not presented the project to the public yet.

This confusion about who owns what and what the project is called and what connects to what can be flung directly on the door step of NextEra and FirstEnergy.

NextEra has been playing pretend games that its 105-mile segment of PJM's 500kV circuit is a separate project not connected to anything else.  NextEra says it begins in PA and ends in Frederick County, Virginia.  The media has added the narrative that MARL connects with "a data center in Frederick County, Virginia" which is just false.  There are no significant data centers in Frederick County.  All the data centers are in Loudoun County.  Loudoun and Frederick are not even contiguous counties.  Jefferson County, WV sits between them.  We need some basic geography here!

NextEra may have created this false narrative in the press because it thought that it could escape any bad data center juju being attached to its project.  Didn't work.  We all know MARL is a data center extension cord.  All that narrative did was confuse the heck out of people when Jefferson County popped into the picture on Monday when FirstEnergy filed a Notice of Intent at the PSC.

FirstEnergy, for its part, contributed to this confusion by refusing to name its project, or to do any public relations about it until just recently (and still its attempts can be called anemic at best).  The citizens of Jefferson County have been fighting FirstEnergy's part of PJM's 500kV circuit for 2 years now.  Because FirstEnergy refused to acknowledge the project, we named it for them, and we called it MARL, adopting NextEra's name for this 150-mile long 500kV circuit.

So, when FirstEnergy's Potomac Edison filed its Notice of Intent at the PSC, it said the project was "also referred to as MARL".  That is absolutely 100% true.

And the media circus began.  The stories pumped out don't even make sense, and the confusion becomes deeper and deeper.  Take a deep breath... just look at the map!

I'm guessing that NextEra got its corporate panties in a wad yesterday because FirstEnergy had used their MARL name in their Notice of Intent at the PSC. FirstEnergy tried to issue a retraction yesterday.  This confused things even more.

And, using my best mom voice, here's some advice that NextEra and FirstEnergy should take to heart.

GET OVER YOURSELF, KIDS!

Stop your bickering and squabbling and not wanting to be associated with each other.  It's going to come back and bite you in the butt at the PSC.

The PSC will have two separate applications for two different segments of the same transmission line.  Are the companies going to keep pretending they have nothing to do with each other before the PSC?  That's going to be a little uncomfortable for PJM's witness, won't it?  You'll never get away with it.  And it would serve you right if the PSC denied one of these segments because they didn't know the other was connected to it.

​FIX THIS MESS!

PJM Interconnection, our regional grid operator and planner, is always planning something.  PJM regularly presents problem statements to transmission developers and solicits proposed solutions as part of a competitive transmission process.  Each RFP for transmission solutions is called a "window".  PJM presents its problem statement, and willing developers submit proposed solutions.  PJM's competitive transmission windows are what brought us the MARL, Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek, and Valley Link projects.

Once the open "window" closes, developers submissions are posted on PJM's website with a lot of "competitive" information redacted so that only a skeleton of the proposal is available to the public.  These bare bones proposals are turned into maps and tables that PJM's Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee (TEAC) discusses at its monthly meetings with the goal of selecting one of more of the proposals to address the problem PJM described.  The discussion and selection usually takes place over the course of several months, and once PJM's TEAC has selected a project or projects, it must read them into the record twice at committee meetings before submitting them to PJM's Board of Managers for approval.  If PJM's Board of Managers approves the new projects, they are added to PJM's Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP) and assigned to their transmission developer sponsors.  PJM signs what's called a Designated Entity Agreement (DEA) with the developer and the developer begins routing and engineering studies and eventual public information sessions that they call "Open House" meetings.  This is the exact process that MARL, GDGC and Valley Link have followed.

PJM opened a new competitive window in June of this year to solve a number of problems with the transmission system.  The main problem, as always, is that Northern Virginia demand is skyrocketing due to new data center proposals.  You can look at the factors PJM was considering by reviewing PJM's TEAC meeting slides from last month.  PJM said that some of the lines bringing power from the west would be overloaded in 2032.  Here's one of their maps.

I will share that PJM's meetings and information are high on the techno-speak level and may appear confusing to most people.

PJM's 2025 Window 1 closed on August 18.  PJM received many new transmission proposals.  Not all proposals submitted will ultimately be selected.  However, we have a first look at what has been proposed so that we can follow PJM's evaluation of these proposals and selection of the projects it wants to move forward.  Here's the full list of proposed projects (expand the 2025 RTEP Window 1 link).  They are simply referred to by number, and each number has a brief description of the project, with much of the specific information redacted to protect competitive information.  The name of the proposer is always redacted, however there's much we can garner out of the information that is not redacted that gives us clues about who may have proposed them.

One of the proposed projects is numbered 896.  This proposal, which may have been made by FirstEnergy or NextEra, calls for turning MARL into a double circuit 500kV transmission line, and adding a second 500kV line to the first segment of GDGC across Frederick County, Virginia.

The proposed MARL double circuit begins at FirstEnergy's Fort Martin power station in Morgantown, WV.

The project calls for a new 138kV line from Ft. Martin to a new substation in Mon County that would be called Sandy Creek.  The proposed Sandy Creek substation will intersect with MARL and feed power directly from Ft. Martin to the new 500kV circuit proposed to be added to the MARL project.  The Sandy Creek substation is described:

The new 500kV circuit will be added to MARL's proposed towers so that MARL would consist of TWO 500kV transmission lines, possibly hanging from the same new tower.  The proposer says this doesn't make any difference because MARL has not been constructed yet so they can change the towers and the circuits.

This includes the entire portion of MARL from a point in Mon County to the place in Frederick County, Virginia where the MARL project ends and the Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek project begins.  It would impact Mon, Preston, Garrett, Allegany, Mineral and Hampshire Counties.  The proposer says it will use "existing right-of-way" but that right-of-way doesn't actually exist yet and will only exist if MARL is approved and built.  It only exists on paper right now because NextEra has not actually obtained any right-of-way for the MARL project in those counties yet.  Talk about counting your chickens before they hatch, right?

Once this new double circuit 500kV line gets to the demarcation point between MARL and GDGC in Frederick County, Virginia, it proposes to run on a new 200 foot right of way for 17 miles across Frederick County until it reaches the proposed Woodside substation owned by NextEra.

They can't simply continue the double circuit on the same new towers when they get to Frederick County because that is the point where the Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek line is already planned to be constructed as a double circuit with the existing 138kV line.  The second 500kV circuit would need a whole new right-of-way parallel to the existing configuration.  And don't forget that Valley Link is coming along behind it and creating its own new 200 ft. right-of-way.  Frederick County is looking at not only the new 185 ft. tower for the first 500kV circuit, but the addition of two new lines on parallel rights-of-way that would add 400 feet to the existing 250 foot wide corridor.  Total if this is selected and completed:  650 feet wide right-of-way with three 500 kV lines, one 138kV line, and one 765kV line.  That's a whole lot of power and a whole lot of expansion for Frederick County!

Meanwhile, back in Mon County, Fort Martin's substation must expand for this plan.

The new line from Fort Martin to the new Sandy Creek substation will be constructed for approximately 1-mile and parallels the Hazelton to Lake Lynn 138 kV in Mon County on a proposed new 100 ft. right-of-way.  A second new 138kV line from a nearby substation will also parallel Hazelton to Lake Lynn for an additional 2 miles of new 100 ft. right-of-way.  That's three miles of new right of way in Mon County, and a new substation.

Seems like double jeopardy for impacted landowners, doesn't it?  As if it's not bad enough that MARL is proposed for your property, now the transmission companies want to double your pain with a second 500kV circuit and miles of new right-of-way, and a new substation, in Mon County and Frederick County.

For what?  To get power to data centers in Northern Virginia.

It really emphasizes the fact that these new transmission lines are NOT for West Virginia, and they are NOT needed to attract new data centers in the West Virginia counties they cross.  They are for Northern Virginia data centers, they are not for us!

PJM's TEAC meetings are open to all "stakeholders".  We are all stakeholders in this and anyone may attend the TEAC meetings where these projects are discussed to ask questions or make comments.  PJM TEAC meetings are held once a month, during the work day, and may be attended via Webex or over the telephone.  If you want to attend, you can sign up on PJM's website.  You must have a PJM account and pre-register for the meetings.  If that's not your cup of tea, you can simply get updates from citizens who regularly attend these meetings and save your written comments for PJM's Board of Managers if this proposal is ultimately selected by PJM's TEAC.

Remember, this is only a proposal right now and there is no guarantee it will be selected.  However, MARL and Valley Link were once only just proposals like this, so consider this a heads up on what PJM may be cooking up to invade your community in the future.

Transmission extension cords from West Virginia will never be enough for Virginia's insatiable appetite for electricity and it is expected that PJM's planners will keep adding more and more unless West Virginia stands up and says NO.  

West Virginia's talk news has been all over the subject of the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link, or MARL, for the past couple of weeks.  Despite their heroic efforts, they've barely scratched the surface of the truth about MARL.  It's much more complicated than can be explained on a brief radio show, obviously, and probably more than can be covered in a brief facebook post.  Isn't it time for everyone to dig a little deeper?  I promise it won't be too complicated.  I've learned to distill understandable facts from of the energy industry's big jug o' technospeak over the past 17 years.  This won't hurt a bit!

I'm going to concentrate on a recent MetroNews Talkline radio interview of NextEra's Kaitlyn McCormick.  Listening to it was pretty rough because Kaitlyn kept fading in and out and it was hard to understand much of what she said.  Was she talking on a cell phone while driving through West Virginia's beautiful mountains?  Or was she just waving her phone around while trying to talk on speaker?  Take your pick.  I'm going to use the equally bad transcript to try to decipher exactly what she said.

Let's begin with the fact that MARL is only one part of a larger project approved by PJM Interconnection.  Even Kaitlyn admits that, although the radio hosts insist on treating it like an individual project.  This is a map of the project PJM approved:

MARL is the light peachy-colored line here that begins at the 502 Junction substation in Greene County, PA and ends just over the state border at Gore, VA.  The blue line is a continuation of the new 500kV line to be built by rival company FirstEnergy.  They are calling their project "Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek" after the substations it will connect.  FirstEnergy's portion of the project begins where NextEra's ends and heads east to continue the electricity extension cord to its ultimate destination, a substation in Loudoun County's "data center alley" called Goose Creek.  Neither one of these projects can stand alone.  PJM needs BOTH of them to be built to deliver this power to a whole bunch of new data centers planned in Loudoun County.  MARL is not delivering power to a data center in Frederick County, Virginia.  It is simply plugging into FirstEnergy's portion of the project in Gore.  If one of these two line segments isn't built, the other one won't be built either.  It's all or nothing because PJM needs both segments to deliver the power from 502 Junction to Goose Creek.

And let's talk about 502 Junction for a moment, shall we?  502 Junction is an existing substation located in Greene County, PA.  Think of 502 Junction as the Grand Central Station of electricity.  It collects electricity generated by plants in the area and re-directs it to new destinations.  Just because 502 Junction is located in Pennsylvania doesn't mean that all the electricity that passes through there is generated in Pennsylvania though.  In fact, most of the electricity passing through 502 Junction is generated in West Virginia!  Here's a map of PJM's transmission system showing 502 Junction and the lines that connect there. 

This map shows what generators connect to 502 Junction to deliver their electricity for re-direction elsewhere.  To the west is AEP's Mitchell plant.  Connecting from the south is FirstEnergy's Harrison plant.  In Morgantown, lines connect both the Longview and Ft. Martin power generators to 502 Junction.  On its way to the southeast, this project will connect with lines feeding out of Dominion's Mt. Storm power station in Grant County, WV.  That's over 7,000MW of hot, juicy, 100% West Virginia coal-fired electricity, and Virginia's green virtue signaling data center companies are hungry, hungry, hungry for it!

And they're hungry because Virginia has closed down many of its fossil fuel generators that can run when called in favor of intermittent solar and wind projects.  Virginia has closed more generation than they have brought online, creating a power deficit.  In addition, Northern Virginia is practically exploding with new data centers proposed by some of the wealthiest companies on the planet (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta).  Virginia has no way to power all the stuff it's building.  Virginia just keeps demanding that PJM import more and more power to Virginia, and PJM has only one place to get it... West Virginia!

And this leads us back to WHY PJM Interconnection ordered this project.  PJM did NOT select the two end points for this project.  PJM only selected one, Goose Creek, where the data center load is located.  PJM was open to any transmission extension cords bringing up to 7,500MW of new electric supply from anywhere, as long as it connected to Goose Creek.  It was NextEra who decided that there was an opportunity to suck up to 7,500MW of coal-fired electricity out of West Virginia.  Here's a PJM slide that verifies this need, as well as what the need is for.

PJM needed new transmission to address reliability problems that would develop on its system if it connected 7,500MW of new data center load in Northern Virginia.  If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  While PJM's job is to keep the lights on by making sure power flows throughout the region when needed, PJM's only tool to get the job done is transmission.  PJM cannot order new generation to be built, and Virginia is taking advantage of that.  Virginia considers itself a "clean" state and passed a "Clean Economy Act" that relies on importing more and more coal-fired power from West Virginia.  It's okay for Virginia to pollute our state, but not their own.  West Virginia is just their dirty little energy colony.  It's time to stand up and say enough is enough!

MARL is located in West Virginia simply because West Virginia is in the way of the extension cord from 502 Junction to Loudoun's data center alley.  There's no way to get West Virginia generated electricity to those Virginia data centers without destroying West Virginia along the way.  NextEra doesn't care about that.  They're going to make billions!  Virginia doesn't care about that.  They're also going to make billions in new tax revenue if they can build new data centers powered by West Virginia coal imported via gigantic transmission extension cords.

Kaitlyn made much of MARL connecting to an existing substation at the Mineral/Allegeny border.  That substation is called Black Oak.  It's been there for decades.  MARL needs to connect there for what PJM calls "voltage support."  When transmission lines are long and don't connect anywhere along their path (such as a line from 502 Junction to Goose Creek) they can get unstable and need injection of reactive power along the way to maintain the correct voltage.  MARL is connecting with Black Oak to suck power out of that substation in order to stabilize its voltage, not to deliver power to either county.  PJM has stated that there will be no new substations planned along MARL's route.  MARL isn't for West Virginia, or any community along the way.  MARL's entire capacity is already called for by data centers in Loudoun County, VA.  There is no way for West Virginia to benefit from additional substations.  That's not how new demand is planned.  

In order to plan to build new load in any location, there has to be an actual customer who requests electric service.  No utility (or PJM) plans to build power lines or generators with the hope that doing so would attract new load.  All utility infrastructure must be used and useful to the consumers who pay for it.  So, a real data center must request electric service in your county.  Then the utility that serves your county must evaluate whether they can serve the load with the existing system.  If so, the new load is connected.  If not, then the utility sends a load request up to PJM, who includes that in their next transmission planning load forecast.  This is exactly how MARL was planned.  It wasn't planned for us, it was planned for data centers in Virginia.

Kaitlyn's blathering about congestion and reliability in West Virginia avoids the real issue... connecting more data center load in Virginia is what destabilizes the system because Virginia is not also connecting more electric generation to match its load request.  There are only congestion and reliability issues in West Virginia if those data centers in Virginia are connected.  If West Virginia doesn't approve MARL, then those data centers will have to wait longer to be connected, or will simply go elsewhere that has available power.  PJM will not connect new data centers that will cause blackouts on the system.  PJM's first job is to maintain the reliability of the existing system.

Kaitlyn tries to pull a fast one on these radio hosts and listeners.  She says that everyone's goal is to minimize overall impacts.  This presumes that everyone agrees that MARL must be built.  West Virginians do NOT agree it needs to be built, or that MARL is a fait accompli.  West Virginians believe that this project is not logical or helpful to West Virginia and that it can be stopped!

Kaitlyn prattles on about paralleling existing transmission lines as a least impactful solution.  That's only if you don't live near those existing lines.  Where's the equity in property impacts between those properties already doing their part to host unwanted public infrastructure and the rest of us who don't have to do anything to help?  Paralleling existing transmission lines is actually MORE impactful because it cannot deviate around homes or other land uses like a line sited on unburdened land.  Paralleling is only "better" in the minds of transmission executives and PJM planners who think landowners who live next to existing easements will be a push over.  How about now?  How about one of the biggest waves of transmission opposition in PJM history?  Is paralleling still such a great idea?  It's not.  It's an idea that needs to die.

MARL will cost West Virginians hundreds of millions of dollars.  Kaitlyn really needs to find out how those rates are set.  This is the second time she's told a lie about the state utility commissions setting rates for MARL.  Even after she was invited to her own company's annual formula rate update meeting! Maybe she's just playing dumb so she can lie with a straight face?  Transmission rates are set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  State utility commissions have no jurisdiction to set those rates and must pass them through to their state consumers unscathed.  Kaitlyn needs to stop making me think she's dumb as a box of rocks and perhaps get some training about transmission cost allocation and rates.

The only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is to keep digging!

For years, West Virginia has been the target of big green lawsuits, and the butt of arrogantly rude jokes.  Our state has mined coal, burned coal, and exported the electricity produced for more than 100 years.  West Virginia is one of only two consistent electric power exporters in our PJM Interconnection grid region.  States to our east, however, have adopted their own "clean energy" legislation that causes fossil fuel electric generation within their borders to close, such as the Virginia Clean Economy Act.  However, these "clean" states have no qualms about importing increasing amounts of dirty coal-fired electricity from West Virginia though.  Virginia's plan to supply its "clean" economy with electricity relies on increased imports of electricity from West Virginia.

Virginia's economy has created "data center alley," the largest concentration of data centers in the world.  The whole world!  And Virginia has been powering them with our dirty coal-fired power from West Virginia.  This is what has made Loudoun County, Virginia, the wealthiest county in the nation.  The whole nation!

And there Virginia sits, sneering at West Virginia and making jokes about how we're at the bottom of many state achievement lists and maligning us as a bunch of hillbillies who actually LIKE being trodden by Virginia's polished boots on our neck.  If there's something the "civilized" in Northern Virginia want that comes with impacts, they look right away to West Virginia as their sacrifice zone.

Today's West Virginia is DONE with that!

Now Virginia wants to build out a network of AI data centers, the largest in the world.  But Virginia also doesn't want to have the infrastructure necessary to power those data centers in their own back yard.  Virginians would yell and scream about the protection of their environment, while demanding that the infrastructure they don't want be moved to West Virginia.

Instead of building the infrastructure to power the data centers Virginia wants near the load they are creating, Virginia is playing a coy game with regional grid operator PJM Interconnection.  They simply encourage new AI data centers to make load requests to Virginia public utility Dominion Energy.  Dominion sends these impossible load forecasts up to PJM Interconnection, and PJM uses the only tool at its disposal to meet the load request of a public utility... transmission!  PJM does not and cannot order the construction of new generation.  It can only plan and order transmission, and that's exactly what it's done... planned and ordered new transmission extension cords from West Virginia's coal-fired power plants to serve the new AI data centers in Virginia.  West Virginia's public utilities, owned by corporations based in Ohio, are thrilled with this arrangement because they not only make money selling more electricity produced in West Virginia, they also rake in billions of dollars building new transmission extension cords.

This has to STOP!

AI data centers can be built practically anywhere that there is power and water available.  They don't need to be located within Northern Virginia's data center alley.  AI data centers could actually be built in West Virginia, in communities that want them and their tax revenue.  That's exactly what West Virginia's elected officials were thinking this year when they passed The Power Generation and Consumption Act (aka HB 2014).  However, it seems that data companies are hardly beating a path to our door.  Instead, there was a big announcement recently where Pennsylvania became the home to many new data centers in the planning stage. 

Apparently it takes *more* than just allowing data centers to build their own generation.  And it's all about who pays!  West Virginia's Power Generation and Consumption Act makes the data center pay to build its own power.  Other states simply push the service requests up to PJM interconnection, who orders new transmission that electric consumers pay for.  West Virginia is also a vertically integrated state where utilities own generation, transmission and distribution.  Generation built by our utilities is paid for by West Virginians.  When data centers get built in other states, West Virginians end up footing the bill to power them!  Frankly, that is OUTRAGEOUS!

After all these years, West Virginia finally has something other states want.  West Virginia needs to quit giving it away and being satisfied with the crumbs left from the other state feasts.

Take back your power, West Virginia!  Don't allow new transmission extension cords that drain our power to be built in West Virginia!  West Virginia has the final say whether new transmission extension cords are built in West Virginia.  If West Virginia keeps allowing other states to siphon off our power, there's nothing here to attract data centers.  They'll locate in surrounding states and suck all our power out of West Virginia.

Say NO to new transmission extension cords providing OUR power to surrounding parasitic states!  If we keep feeding new data centers in Virginia, they never have any reason to build here instead.   Keep our power here, providing economic development to our own state.

Take back your power, West Virginia! Say NO to new transmission extension cords across our beautiful state!