Introducing...

It sure took GBE a long time to make a statement after the DOE cancelled their taxpayer-backed conditional loan yesterday.  And then what profound wisdom did Grain Belt finally have?

Sure says a lot of nothing even though it took all day to write.  Sorry, Invenergy, but Trump isn't buying your nonsense about Grain Belt Express.  The DOE actually took a look at your project and decided it was never going to pencil out financially.  It's over.

There's a reason Grain Belt opted to apply for a DOE taxpayer backed loan under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) that defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).  Applying for this loan cost Grain Belt a bundle and it required an Environmental Impact Statement, the cost of which has been said to have made other energy executives have meltdowns in the Secretary of Energy's office.  Surely if private financing was available, Grain Belt would have pursued that instead.  Except other commercial financing usually requires some proof of enough revenue to repay the loan.  Grain Belt's only customer is a collection of Missouri municipalities that might want to purchase up to 225 MW of transmission capacity on Grain Belt, less than 5% of its total available capacity.  That isn't going to make the loan payments, especially because Grain Belt gave the municipalities a loss leader price for signing up in order to secure Missouri PSC approval.  And on top of that, the Missouri munis want to purchase wind energy from Kansas and have inked a series of contracts to purchase energy from wind farms over the years.  I'm pretty sure the munis don't need to import coal or gas from Kansas... they've got enough of that right there in Missouri.  The other possibility for Invenergy would be to find itself a sugar daddy Skelly-style.  However, it's not just $200M that Invenergy needs, but $11 BILLION.  Who's got that kind of money to risk it all on Grain Belt Express?  And doesn't GBE's reputation precede it in this circle of influence, where investors lost hundreds of millions on the project already when it was owned by Clean Line?  GBE had a reason for applying for the DOE loan and perhaps that was because it thought DOE was going to loan it money it would never be able to repay.  Isn't that what happened with Solyndra?

My guess is that Invenergy really hasn't decided what it wants to do with Grain Belt yet, so for now it's going to parade it around like Bernie and pretend it's still viable.  It's a project idea whose time has come and gone and it is not adaptable to new energy sources or new purposes.  Grain Belt has been trying to find customers for its project since 2010.  And they have found none, other than a gullible group of municipalities that thought there was a free lunch somewhere.  If Grain Belt Express was needed, or provided any ratepayer savings, or had any useful purpose, then customers would be lined up around the block to purchase capacity.  The fact that they are not speaks for itself.  Speculative merchant projects do not work unless they have buyers up front.

But Grain Belt continues its charade, pretending it's now a transmission line for gas and coal-fired electricity.  Just a day before the DOE cancelled its conditional loan, Grain Belt craftily leaked to Axios that Invenergy was planning to build a gas-fired generation station to provide power to Grain Belt Express and the company is "also in active discussion with a company to bring existing coal-fired generation onto the proposed Grain Belt Express project."  Invenergy wants to change how the line is perceived.

Perception is the least of Grain Belt's problems.  The real problem with GBE is that is was a project designed for a very specific purpose... to export electricity produced by wind turbines in Kansas to east coast cities.  When that purpose is removed, GBE is nothing but an extension cord in the middle of nowhere that isn't plugged into anything.  When the proposed wind turbines are gone, GBE's beginning is in a generation desert in southwest Kansas.  There's nothing there to connect and therefore GBE isn't needed.  Invenergy's ambitions to build a gas plant are not even logical.  Is there enough natural gas available near GBE's AC Collector transmission system in Kansas?  Where are these existing coal plants?  Are they anywhere near the AC Collector system?

Why not build the new gas plant somewhere near load, Invenergy?  There is no load to serve in southwestern Kansas.  Building a gas plant there serves no purpose... except to try to create a "need" for GBE to move those electrons to load...when the actual gas generation plant could be built near load and avoid the cost of transmitting the energy 825 miles.

Or, how about this?  If Invenergy builds new gas plants in southwestern Kansas, how about if new load moves there to use the energy?  Again, transmitting the energy 825 miles is completely unnecessary.  And what load could Kansas build near new generators in the southwestern part of the state?  AI data centers.  Data centers have made Loudoun County, Virginia, the wealthiest county in the nation.  Why wouldn't Kansas want a little of that tax revenue for themselves, instead of continuing with the Grain Belt Express farce that simply ships power out of state so that other states can build AI data centers and realize the tax revenue?  Wake up, Kansas!  There are now better ways to monetize your energy potential than Grain Belt Express!  President Trump is looking for places that would welcome new data centers that bring their own power generation.  Kansas no longer needs Grain Belt Express at all!

But, back to the puzzle of what Invenergy WAS going to build and what it says it WILL build now...

Invenergy has long been planning two enormous new wind farms to generate the energy for Grain Belt Express.

That's a total of 1,800 MW.  Grain Belt was supposed to deliver 2,500 MW of power to Missouri.  And how was Invenergy going to connect its new wind farms to Grain Belt Express?  Using the recently approved GBE AC Collector system shown on the below map.

Lines up perfectly with the Mako and Thresher projects, doesn't it?  Because of the location of the collector system, all energy development for Grain Belt must take place south of Dodge City.  And what's south of Dodge City?

This is a map of the electric grid around Dodge City.  There's nothing but wind south of Dodge City... and lots of open space without grid infrastructure at all.  Where are you going to put your gas plant, Invenergy?  And why isn't there any actual plan for it that you can point to?  What about those coal plants Invenergy is having talks with?  The only ones anywhere nearby are in Dodge City and Holcomb to the west.  Both of these plants are what would be considered TINY plants by West Virginia standards.  How would they even have any need to ship excess capacity anywhere?  These coal plants are nowhere near the AC Collector system.  What's supposed to happen to Mako and Thresher?  Are you cancelling them?  Are you cancelling the AC Collector System?

Grain Belt's claims about remaking the project into one that exports coal and gas-fired electricity are about as realistic as Bernie.  It's just pretend.

Grain Belt Express was only logical when it was supposed to export wind energy from Kansas.  And even then it was too expensive to be financially viable.  Now it's just a hot mess of pretend projects that are propping up a dead transmission line and marching it around to commercial and private financing sources pretending it's still alive.

It's time for Kansas and Missouri to re-think their approvals (Illinois doesn't have to because that approval was reversed).  GBE is no longer the project they approved and everything has changed.  Missouri has already taken the first step to request updated economic studies.  Kansas needs to follow suit in the best interest of its people and state (and not in the best interest of a company from Illinois).  Unwinding the Grain Belt Express is going to be complicated, but it can be done.  It's no longer needed.  Any new plans are just an attempt to prop up an unneeded transmission line... and throw good money after bad.

Play it loud!  It's time to celebrate!  

As coroner, I must aver, I've thoroughly examined her.  And she's not only merely dead. She's really most sincerely dead!!!

Today the U.S. Department of Energy issued a press release that cancels its conditional loan commitment.

Grain Belt Express will no longer be getting a $4.9B taxpayer funded loan for its unmarketable project.

It's amazing what you can see when you take off those green-tinted glasses!

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that Grain Belt Express is done, but now it will have to find commercial financing for its project and not rely on a taxpayer handout.  There's a reason GBE was trying to get the government to finance it... maybe due to its lack of customers?

Without customers, there will be no loan.  Just like you can't get a bank loan without a job, GBE cannot get a bank loan without revenue.  The circus is over.  It's time to pack up and head out of town, Invenergy.

Congratulations, citizens of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois!  After 15 years of entrenched opposition, victory is yours!  Never give up!

Remember the days of yesteryear when one of the highlights of summer was the circus coming to your town?  Well, we're all getting to relive those glory days with this summer's Grain Belt Express Circus Spectacular!

The circus is indeed in town, and it's a three ring biggie!  In the first ring, we have ringmaster Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whipping the GBE pony with an investigation into its business practices.  In the other ring, we have ringmaster Missouri PSC Chair Kayla Hahn, yanking on the highwire on which GBE's acrobats are balanced.  And, in the center ring, we have ringmaster Senator Josh Hawley unloading the GBE clowns out of their tiny car before lighting it on fire with his magical Department of Energy torch.  It's all so much I don't know where to look first!

Let's start at the beginning...

On March 1, 2025, the Grain Belt Express website looked like this.  It was all about clean energy (from Kansas) and powering 3.2 million homes.  But, suddenly the website changed mid-March to remove any reference to clean energy and to, instead, power 50 data centers.  Why the change?  It's sort of like jumping from one galloping horse to another during a circus act.  Many believe that the change was an attempt to morph into something that would be supported under President Donald Trump's unleashing American energy policies.  If GBE could suddenly be something that Trump supports, then perhaps it could survive the Trump clean energy purge.  It may have worked initially, when nobody was really paying attention, however there were a couple of people who saw right through GBE's sheep costume.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sprang into action to out GBE from the Trump henhouse.  He opened an investigation into GBE's business practices and requested a long list of information from the company.  I read an early news article where the company welcomed the investigation, saying it had nothing to hide.  Grain Belt's initial comments on that investigation seem to have gone missing lately, and now GBE has filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General, asking the circuit court of Cole County to quash and set aside the investigation.  All of a sudden, Invenergy has lots to hide.

AG Bailey also sent a letter to the Missouri Public Service Commission asking them to hold GBE accountable for its wrongdoing by requesting new information about some of GBE's incredulous claims made during the PSC case.  Bailey said in his letter that the PSC may revoke GBE's certificate at its discretion if the project is no longer beneficial to Missourians.  He supported this with reference to Missouri code that he says "...support[s] the PSC’s authority to revoke a CCN if the utility fails to comply with the imposed conditions or if the operation or construction is deemed imprudent."  It only makes sense that the PSC could take action if a utility is not complying with a certificate it issued, otherwise why have the certificate in the first place?  Does the PSC really have no authority to ensure that its orders are followed?  More on that in the other ring...

AG Bailey also sent a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to urge rescission of the DOE's conditional loan guarantee issued by the Biden administration in its waning days.

Meanwhile, in another ring, the MO PSC discussed AG Bailey's letter at their open meeting this week.  Despite GBE's spin about the PSC rejecting the request to revoke the certificate outright, that's not exactly what the PSC did.  Watch the video for yourself, beginning at 1:06:00 on the video.  The staff attorney said while the Commission cannot outright revoke the certificate, it can request that the company file further information and monitor the situation as it sees fit.  PSC Chair Kayla Hahn proposed that the PSC request that GBE submit a range of updated studies regarding the project's electric bill savings and wage and jobs claims.  She thinks the companies claims were aggressive, especially when including a carbon price in 2027 (that is never going to happen now).  She thinks the company should have submitted a range of assumptions on the project's economic impacts, wage and jobs information to better explain their assumptions under different modeling scenarios.  My impression is that the PSC simply swallowed GBE's aggressive studies hook, line and sinker and perhaps that wasn't the smartest approach.  Commissioner Kolkmeyer said that MISO and SPP "convinced us" that Missouri is short on generation and transmission.  Huh?  Those entities never testified in the GBE case and I'm sure they never told the PSC that Missouri needed Grain Belt.  Perhaps he's remembering Grain Belt telling the Commission that MISO and SPP were short on generation and transmission, but the Commission never verified that at the source and, again, simply swallowed GBE's claims hook, line and sinker.  Nevertheless, Comm. Kolkmeyer thinks that GBE's numbers were aggressive and the PSC needs to determine whether they are still relevant.  The order of the PSC, therefore, was to issue a notice in the GBE case file that more information must be filed.  Not exactly the GBE win that the press reported, but just another example of an entity swallowing what GBE says without question.  Isn't it time to STOP doing that, Missouri?  

And, in the center ring, Senator Josh Hawley recently tweeted that he met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and President Donald Trump and came away with a promise to put a stop to the Grain Belt Express project.  Senator Hawley followed that up by filing an amendment to the rescissions package that passed last night.  The amendment says:

Seems pretty clear to me.  Grain Belt Express is going to have to get its project financing elsewhere if the rescissions package passed with that amendment still in place.  We may have a little circus sideshow on that later today as the package passed in the wee hours of Friday morning and I can't get a list of what was in it when it passed (thanks, AI, you're still just a conglomeration of useless crap).

If GBE is going to have to get financing elsewhere, it's going to need more customers than the 39 Missouri cities that signed up to use less than 5% of its 5,000MW transmission capacity.  But there is no indication that there are any other customers.  I had this really wacky dream last night... in my dream, Invenergy was looking for a government loan to pay itself back for all the money it had wasted on Grain Belt over the past several years.  Once it was paid back, Invenergy didn't care about Grain Belt anymore and abandoned the project for lack of customers.  I woke up mad as hell that taxpayers ended up funding Grain Belt's colossal waste of money and paying back its lost investment, but luckily it was only a bad dream!

So, folks, enjoy the circus while the show lasts.  It's costing GBE a bundle of money and distracting its attention from any progress.  Have you seen GBE's statements and claims about the current circus?  Calling a U.S Senator and a state Attorney General "unhinged" has to be a new low for a company that has been riding high on the political hog during the Biden administration and has engaged in lawfare when it suited them.  Now they don't like being the star of this circus.

Remember what happened when Clean Line's circus went bust?

And you know what happens when the circus is over?  The tent folds, the acts are packed up, and it chugs slowly out of town under cover of darkness.

Yesterday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley announced a commitment from U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to halt the $4.9B taxpayer-backed loan that Grain Belt Express had applied for back in 2022.  

Without a risky, taxpayer-funded loan to build GBE, can GBE get financing elsewhere?  Maybe not, since GBE doesn't have enough customers to make the project financially viable.  There's a reason GBE applied for a government loan and spent the past 3 years winding its way toward approval paying for an overly expensive Environmental Impact Statement process.

The bell tolls for thee, Grain Belt Express.  It's time to stop throwing good money after bad.  GBE's attempt to make its merchant transmission line into something President Trump needs is not working.  I heard that the President was also at the meeting and so now he knows the truth about Grain Belt Express, too.

But Grain Belt is still selling their own brand of snake oil:

Ding Dong!  

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has opened an investigation into "the misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty surrounding the Grain Belt Express transmission line project."  He has issued a demand for documents and sent a letter to the Missouri Public Service Commission asking that they evaluate GBE's "at best speculative and faulty, or at worst intentionally fraudulent, information in their application, including in their impact analysis."  He also reminds the PSC it has the authority to reevaluate the benefits of the project and request more information.

Looks like GBE's game of Permit Wack-A-Mole is back in full swing!

The Missouri PSC can snatch GBE's permit away and demand that they file a new application if there have been material changes to the project.  What's a material change?  It's anything the PSC wants it to be!

Maybe the PSC ought to take a gander at GBE's website and compare that to the project they thought they approved several years ago.  Gone are the Kansas wind farms and solar panels.  In fact there's no mention of any generation in southwestern Kansas, of any kind.  Therefore, what's going to be "collected" on the GBE AC Collector lines the Kansas Corporation Commission recently approved?  Without wind turbines or solar panels, what's there to collect?  Is Kansas going to build five new large nuclear or gas-fired power plants there?  What good is GBE's extension cord when it no longer plugs into anything?

Yeah, we all know that GBE is simply pulling on another sheep costume and trying to remake itself as an "all of the above" energy source transmission line so as to escape notice of the Trumpian sheep dogs.  And maybe they'd have gotten away with it, too, except Missouri AG Andrew Bailey just hand delivered a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Energy yesterday, asking that the DOE rescind the "conditional" loan approval it was granted by Biden's goons on their way out the door.

Without the wind turbines, Grain Belt Express no longer even pretends to qualify for the loan it applied for, which was only for projects that "reduce greenhouse gases."

It never even qualified in the first place because GBE is just a transmission line.  It can accept electricity from any source and therefore it cannot, by itself reduce any gases.  I told the DOE this in my comments on the draft EIS.

GBE is gas lighting everyone now pretending to be an energy source for data centers.  Since GBE won't be connected to any source of energy, I'm pretty sure they're not interested.  If a data center is looking for cheap energy from Kansas, it can locate... in Kansas!  It doesn't need to pay GBE a bunch of extra money to ship electricity to Missouri so it can locate in Missouri. As much electricity as data centers use they can't afford to pay extra for unnecessary transmission.

GBE is an idea that has long outlived its usefulness.  It's not even logical anymore.  It's just a giant extension cord that doesn't connect with anything on either end.  No generation.  No customers.  Just a bunch of exaggerations and half truths.  Let's hope AG Bailey can finally get to the bottom of it.

Need more inspiration?  Here's what I just filed.

Comments of Keryn Newman
Docket No. AD25-7

“Breaking the internet” is a figurative phrase coined to describe an overwhelming surge in web traffic that impedes the operation of the World Wide Web. In an ironic twist, the internet is now breaking us, or more precisely our grid. The generators, transmission lines and distribution systems that make electricity available to everyone can no longer function in the same way they have for decades because they have been overwhelmed by new service requests from artificial intelligence data centers.

This enormous surge in electricity demand is breaking energy transition goals, bedrock regulatory principles, how we plan the energy system, and PJM’s capacity market, just to name a few. It is also breaking consumers ability to pay for the electricity they need. Soon it could even impede their ability to receive service at all as the amount of electric generation continues to shrink and the amount of electricity required by artificial intelligence skyrockets. We are sacrificing our real, human world for an artificial one that exists inside machines.

Our entire energy system and the way we regulate it needs to be torn down and rebuilt to efficiently and cost effectively serve today’s reality. Of course, that cannot happen. We no longer have the luxury of time. Elected officials and regulators have ignored the clear warning signs that were present for a number of years in favor of indulging in politicized industry fantasy. The fantasy is over. It’s now reality.

At FERC’s Resource Adequacy Technical Conference, Commissioner Christie asked whether states should require load-serving entities to acquire enough generation to cover their load forecasts in advance, requiring that they build or buy sufficient generation to meet load. That ought to be the first condition to be a member of a resource sharing organization such as PJM Interconnection, but it is not. PJM states such as Virginia are raking in the cash and benefits created by new data centers and leaning on other states to supply the power they need to enable those new data centers. As Commissioner Christie pointed out during the technical conference, when everybody leans on everybody else, everybody eventually falls down.

Importing more electricity from a neighboring state to serve increased demand is not smart energy policy. It’s a house of cards that cannot stand. PJM has become a group of “haves” and “have nots.” PJM’s State Import-Export Map shows a real time picture of which states are importing electricity, and which states are exporting it. West Virginia and Pennsylvania are consistent electricity exporters. Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Delaware and New Jersey are consistent energy importers. It is no longer an equitable sharing of resources among states. There are states that have energy, and states that have not. There are states that are givers, and states that are takers. Where’s the value of PJM membership for the states that are consistent exporters and perpetual givers? There is no value when one state is consistently taken advantage of over and over again. West Virginia has been treated as the east coast’s sacrifice zone, exploited by corporations to benefit wealthier states and treated like a dump that becomes the butt of rude jokes. But, perhaps artificial intelligence is also breaking West Virginia’s victimhood. This year West Virginia approved a new law called the Power Generation and Consumption Act, which allows companies seeking to build data centers in the state to create their own, independent energy grids to power them. West Virginia is getting into the data center game, trying to lure the industry here where energy is plentiful and data centers can bring their own generation and be part of the solution, not just the problem. It makes so much more economic and engineering sense to bring the load to the power than to try to bring the power to the load. West Virginia has found a way to accommodate data centers that does not create financial burden on other ratepayers, or land use burdens on private property.

Over the past several years, PJM Interconnection has planned and ordered more than $11B worth of new baseload transmission to import more and more electricity to Northern Virginia’s “data center alley” from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. These new transmission lines do not provide benefit to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. They are nothing more than gigantic extension cords for the purpose of exporting resources to “have not” taker states, mainly Virginia.

The resource adequacy crisis needs an immediate solution. Satisfying new data center demand can be done three different ways. The fastest and cheapest way is to restrict new data centers to locations with onsite or nearby available power. The second would be to build new generation near data center load, but that takes more time to permit and build and the price is steep. The last, most time consuming and expensive option would be to build transmission extension cords from existing generation to new data centers in other localities. Instead of selecting the fastest and cheapest option for the grid, PJM and the Commission have opted to rely on the slowest and most expensive way to power new data centers, building new transmission. This is not a viable solution and will take much too long to implement because new transmission is never a sure thing.

The impacts of Virginia’s skyrocketing data center load will be devastating to West Virginia, which is primarily bearing the brunt of the Commission’s broken regulatory system that no longer assists consumers in obtaining reliable, safe, secure, and economically efficient energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means, and collaborative efforts. West Virginians will pay more than $440M to construct and operate two new transmission extension cords for Virginia's data centers. The MidAtlantic Resiliency Link is a new 160-mile 500kV line that will take a new 200-foot wide right-of-way through private property. Valley Link is a new 261-mile 765kV transmission line that will take an additional 200 ft. wide right-of-way through private property. In Hampshire and Jefferson Counties, West Virginia, these two separate transmission lines will converge to create a transmission superhighway as wide as two football fields laid end to end. Hundreds of homes may be taken and demolished to make way for Virginia’s insatiable appetite for new data centers. There are no benefits for West Virginia, just impacts. Membership in PJM and the Commission’s transmission planning and cost allocation procedures no longer work to provide benefit to West Virginians. We’re being used to benefit other states.

The Commission has been constantly tinkering with interconnection queues, markets and other forms of regulation but has yet to find a solution to the growing problem of resource adequacy. There seems to be little the Commission can do in the face of rapidly increasing load from data centers. All its tools no longer work. What the system needs is more generation near data center load. Because Virginia refuses to build it, other states are being torn apart for new extension cords and consumers are quickly being priced out of being able to afford basic electric service. The system is broken.

Data centers are not just another electricity customer who must be accommodated using existing rules that share burden among all customers. The Commission should take a page from West Virginia’s book and require data centers to bring their own power to wherever they choose to locate, or locate where they may directly connect with generators with excess capacity. Those localities that will not allow data centers to build their own generation cannot continue to lean on the system to support their own economic development. It’s parasitic. Once data centers are separated from the host they have been feeding on and become self-reliant, the resiliency problem solves itself. We simply don’t have any more time to wait while the Commission slow rolls minor fixes here and there and hopes for results.

Stand up for West Virginia!  It's not going to change until you do!

YOU get a substation!  Everyone gets a substation!

Has NextEra promised you a substation?  Has another transmission company that wants to run a transmission line through your county or district offered you a substation?  Does your county actually NEED a new substation, or is it being promised as a speculative draw for new data centers or industry in your county?

Talk is cheap.  Reality is expensive.  Really, really expensive.  A new 500kV substation costs around $50M to build.  Even looping MARL (or another new line) through an existing substation in your county costs about $20M.  Who do you think is going to pay for that?  If there's no actual NEED for a new substation, your county or district is going to pay for that.  All of a sudden, it doesn't sound like such a bargain, does it?  After all, your county doesn't have $50M to invest in speculative infrastructure to attract new businesses, does it?

All those promises about NextEra "dropping a substation" in your county or district are likely not only false promises, they are actually ludicrous to anyone who knows anything about how transmission is planned and built.  Don't parade your lack of knowledge around like a blinking beacon.  It's time to look your gift horse in the mouth.  It's just not happening.

Here's the reality about how transmission lines (and substations connected to them) are planned.  In the case of the MARL 500kV transmission project, the NEED came from increased load requests in the Dominion Power zone in Northern Virginia.  Dominion could not serve all the requests it had received to hook up new data center proposals in its service territory.  Dominion's load forecast is made up of actual requests from customers, not speculative requests from politicians or local county planners.  Only electric companies that serve actual customers can add new service requests that become part of the electric company's load forecast at PJM.  If there is no actual customer or NEED for new service, it doesn't go into the load forecast and it doesn't get to PJM. 

Those new service requests at Dominion got added to Dominion's load forecast that was sent to PJM.  In response, PJM opened a new proposal window to serve that need using the transmission system.  MARL was one of the proposals that is purposed to provide 7,500MW of new electricity imports from coal-fired plants in northern West Virginia.  Dominion and its future data center customers are counting on that new extension cord to build.  Those customer requests were made several years ago and cannot be connected until the transmission line is built.  Customers in Northern Virginia can expect to wait up to seven years to get service (if the project is built on time).

If a new data center wants to locate in Hampshire County, West Virginia, it would first make a new service request to the local electricity provider, Potomac Edison.  Potomac Edison would make a determination if it could serve the new customer using the existing system.  If not, Potomac Edison would add the new request to its load forecast that feeds up to PJM for transmission solutions.  However, that new service request would become part of a new planning window, it would not simply "jump the line" to take service away from customers waiting for service in Northern Virginia.

However, if there is no customer in Hampshire, and no new service request for Potomac Edison to serve, Potomac Edison would not add speculative load to its forecast.  The utilities only build the service we actually need.  They don't overbuild their systems based on speculation or political promises.  That's because new transmission and substations are paid for by ALL Potomac Edison customers, and for lines (and substations) 500kV and above, the costs are actually allocated to all consumers in PJM's 13-state region.  Utilities can only charge ratepayers for infrastructure that is used and useful to them.  It cannot charge ratepayers for speculative projects that don't even have a user.

So, where did NextEra's substation promises come from?  Most likely from lobbyists... those sweet talkers who will promise elected officials anything they want to hear in exchange for getting what the company wants.

MARL was originally planned to begin at the 502 Junction substation in Greene Co., Pennsylvania.  It was an unbroken "fly over" transmission line until it reached Frederick County, Virginia, more than 100 miles to the southeast.  There, MARL would build a new 500kV substation to connect MARL with the existing 500kV transmission line called Bismark-Doubs.  That new substation has been named Woodside.  From Woodside, both the existing Bismark-Doubs and the new 500kV MARL line will continue east another 60 miles or so until they connect with an existing 500kV substation in Loudoun County's "data center alley" called Goose Creek.

However, when transmission lines have really long spans between connecting substations, they can lose voltage.  Transmission system owner FirstEnergy noticed that the long span between 502 Junction and Woodside was going to cause unacceptable voltage drop, so they proposed to PJM that the line not simply bypass its existing Black Oak substation as originally planned, but connect there instead on its way east.  According to PJM, the loop into Black Oak is to provide voltage support to the MARL line.  It is NOT to serve new customers in Allegany County, Maryland, as it may have been sold to them in order to gain their support for MARL.  It will actually be taking power from Black Oak, not delivering it.

But, since the Black Oak connection worked so well to snow Allegany County elected officials that they were "getting something" in exchange for hosting the transmission line, perhaps NextEra simply couldn't resist using the same tactic on other elected officials in other impacted communities?  Next thing you know, everyone gets a substation!  And they're just going to "drop" out of the sky, like magic... free magic!  Do these elected officials think that NextEra is paying for all these free, unneeded substations?  Sorry, NextEra has a hard cost cap on the MARL project.  Any freebies they give away are coming out of NextEra's profits.  Also, an unneeded substation is unlikely to be permitted by state regulators.  PJM would have to testify that such a substation is NEEDED and, as as explained above, there is no NEED.  As well, NextEra doesn't serve any end use customers in West Virginia and never will.  Any new service request would be made to Potomac Edison.

In fact, when I asked PJM's planners about the possibility of a substation being "dropped" in Hampshire County (or any other county on MARL's route) I was told that there's currently no plan to do that.  In fact, PJM said that any new customers in those counties would have to make a request to the local electricity provider (Potomac Edison) before anything was planned.  Now go back where we started and read again about how new transmission and substations are planned to serve new customers.

There are currently NO PLANS for new substations to be "dropped" along MARL's route.  Anyone who believes that had best check their facts.  

A new substation is not any more likely than the promises of millions of dollars of new property tax revenue and jobs, jobs, jobs.  It's just not happening.  Oprah can give away cars, but NextEra cannot give away substations.  Don't look like a fool.

Ever feel like the filling in a tuna sandwich?  The "stuff" inside an Oreo?  Well, that's exactly what you are if you're on the Jefferson County section of PJM's 502 Junction to Goose Creek transmission project.  We're being sandwiched between NextEra's MARL on the western side, and FirstEnergy's Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek project on the eastern side.  We're the one remaining area without any maps or information.  Apparently we're being saved for last because we're the ones FirstEnergy is most worried about.  We're the ones who are supposed to remain compliant and in the dark because FirstEnergy has not given us any notice.  Well, wake up folks, this is your notice!

FirstEnergy has finally emerged from their bat cave to disseminate public information about the eastern half of the project.  As I told you several weeks ago, FirstEnergy is calling the eastern half of MARL the melodious Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek project.  You can continue to call it MARL if you like.  It doesn't matter what you call it, as long as you don't call it late for the financial incentives buffet (haw, haw, haw).

But, FirstEnergy is only willing to share information about the Maryland part of its project, and says it wants to file an application with the Maryland PSC by the end of the year.

Despite PJM's empty promises about "using existing rights of way" for eastern MARL, FirstEnergy is planning to expand existing easements and acquire more property.

Fact sheet?  What fact sheet?  Maybe it's on their website?  What website?  The only information you're going to get is going to be in person at the ONE and ONLY "Open House" FirstEnergy is holding for this project.

A public information session on the project is scheduled for June 11 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Upper Montgomery County Volunteer Fire Department in Beallsville.

This is your only chance to get information.  Be there.

Meanwhile FirstEnergy continues to slink around, approaching landowners with predatory proposals before giving them complete information about the project.

Don't just sit there.  Do something!

For the past 4 years, consumers have had someone looking out for them at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, most recently Chair of the Commission, never forgot who he was working for.  He never forgot that regulation serves to protect the captive consumers of monopoly utilities.

​The American Bar Association defines regulation like this:

It used to be that regulation was a specialized skill practiced by experienced regulators.  But all that seems to have been chucked aside in the past 20 years as politics invades the regulatory realm.  There should never be politics in regulation because politics are not necessarily in the public interest.  However, when you let politicians nominate and/or appoint regulators, you may just end up with more powerful politicians.  And sometimes, you end up with special interests in regulator seats, where they regulate in the interest of corporations or special interest ideology.  

And then there was Commissioner Christie, who always did the right thing, because it was the right thing to do.

One of the more memorable things is his famous PATH rant at the December 2023 Commission meeting.  Begin at minute 13:48 and watch for about 5 minutes until he's finished.

And then there was his recent dissent on Valley Link's request for financial incentives.

And then there was the time he wanted to open up an investigation of PJM's cost allocation for data center transmission lines.

Commissioner Christie has both surprised and delighted this long-time FERC watcher.  I can truthfully say that he is the BEST Commissioner FERC has had in the almost two decades I've been doing this.  I remember how much he terrified me the first time I encountered him in full poker face, sitting on a stage at an SCC public hearing for the PATH transmission project.  But that was a different time and a different me.

So, why this dirge?  

Imagine that after a long career of service you find out you're fired when a reporter calls you for a quote?  He deserved much better than this (finally something I can agree with former FERC gadfly Neil Chatterjee about).

I hope Commissioner Christie deals with this the same unique way he's carried out his term at FERC.  Maybe instead of jumping right into private practice as some white shoe law firm's FERC whisperer, Christie might just retire.  I mean really retire.  Enjoy life.  Do all those things on his bucket list.

If not, I'm sure he'll do good wherever he goes next.

​So, what's next for FERC?  Laura Swett, who currently works for one of those white shoe law firms after a brief stint being an advisor at FERC.  That revolving door is spinning away.

It's kind of like being given a handful of poison berries instead of the M&M's you're used to eating.

Why did someone think it was a good idea to replace an experienced regulator who works in the public interest with a corporate attorney?  Is there anyone left at the Commission who knows that they are working for consumers?