Today, a Senate committee is scheduled to take up the bill directing Virginia’s two investor-owned utilities to propose huge battery installations that will cover square miles of ground, cost ratepayers billions of dollars, and produce zero energy to power our homes and businesses. The bill has Governor Abigail Spanberger’s endorsement.

So far, legislators have been in a “see, hear and speak no evil” posture on the issue, almost disinterested in the proposal’s overall cost, impact on ratepayer bills, or any challenges to the safety or energy benefits.

If the Senate discussion mirrors the brief presentation (there was no debate) on the House version of the bill last week, which was approved by a subcommittee with a new substitute, it will shed no real light. 

During the House subcommittee discussion Thursday, a lobbyist for Dominion Energy Virginia made it clear the company does not support the substitute as it stands and cited safety concerns. They want to use tougher rules than now in the bill, but the language explicitly prevents that.  She stood at the podium waving the red flag of fire safety and not one legislator asked her why Dominion is nervous.

There was no discussion of the cost or ratepayer bill impact of these plans. No fiscal impact analysis accompanies the companion bills. The regulatory State Corporation Commission sometimes reports on whether it can comply with laws using its existing staff but didn’t even do that on this bill.  The SCC only discusses ratepayer impact if asked. 

And there were no questions about how batteries on this scale – perhaps 140 gigawatt hours or more under the substitute – will operate within the complex grid. The claim that they would allow Virginia to operate without having to build as much future additional generation was made and not challenged. It should have induced laughter.

Just as the past two weeks have blown the cover off the myth that Virginia can weather a crisis with mostly solar and wind power, which tend to disappear at inconvenient times, the long cold spell should challenge the assertion that adding all these batteries fixes that. Cold weather saps their productivity to a major extent, just like car batteries.  And, even if all the batteries envisioned are built, they might discharge once and help for one or two days. Then what?

During the rest of the storm, there was never enough excess power on the grid to recharge them once they were drained. If we are to rely on them in a future crisis, just as much new generation is still needed. Another simple fact that the legislators are not being told is it takes more power to charge these devices than they will later discharge. A federal agency indicates they lose about 15 percent on each “round trip.” 

The purpose of this bill is to make battery manufacturers rich, just as the solar industry is getting rich off other pending bills.  Some level of battery installations makes perfect sense, especially when paired with large solar facilities.  The industry groups will not be satisfied with the amount of batteries that the State Corporation Commission or the regional PJM Interconnection would approve if the test applied is “what is reasonable and prudent.”

The words “reasonable”, “prudent” and “necessary” are missing from these long bills. Those are the tests the SCC applies to utility build applications when the General Assembly has not changed the rules. This bill changes the rules by limiting the SCC’s power to say no, giving it some discretion over the targets but allowing outright refusal only if the technology is proven not feasible or not available. 

Given the huge construction demands of this bill, larger even than when first seen back in December, the “not available” provision may come into play. Five years from now, the technology may have changed so much the bill is moot anyway. But pass it they will.

The bill is confusing to follow (no accident) because it refers to “megawatts” of battery storage in most places when the value of the batteries should be measured in “megawatt hours.” The utility sized installations now range from 2-hour duration to 10-hour duration batteries. 

The substitute version still calls for certain amounts of short and long-duration facilities, with any battery of under 10-hours capacity counting as short and 10-hour or more capacity counting as long. But if durations of 24 hours or more are possible, the lobbyists who wrote the bill demand half the long duration batteries work for 24 or more hours.  

Both Dominion and Appalachian have already made applications to the SCC for small battery installations, and based on the costs in those applications, the capital expense envisioned by this bill could exceed $62 billion.  It is fair to assume that the cost of the technology may drop over time, but it is hardly guaranteed and that hasn’t been true of the ever-increasing costs of the offshore wind industry.  The components for these huge batteries are expensive.

Another potential source for a rough cost estimate on this bill is a federal website with data compiled by the National Laboratory of the Rockies, pre-Trump Administration known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The user can adjust some of the parameters on the display, but the bottom line remains this is very expensive equipment. 

The customers of Dominion would see it first. The bill directs the larger utility to propose at least 4,000 megawatts of battery storage within a few years. Under the fog of confusion in the language, that could be from 8,000 to 40,000 megawatt hours. By 2040, that must grow to 16,000 megawatts (32,000 to 160,000 megawatt hours).  The long duration target could exceed another 68,000 megawatt hours. Dominion is also directed to build a set of long-duration batteries in the next few years to demonstrate that technology. 

Appalachian Power is given targets that do not need to be met until the 2040s, 780 megawatts of short duration, and 520 megawatts of long duration. So that could be from about 6,000 megawatt hours to more than 12,000 megawatt hours. A Bacon’s Rebellion post took a stab at applying the NREL price estimates, and the cost was still astronomical.

In a world where legislators wanted to know what they were voting on, a group like the SCC would explain all this with charts and spreadsheets beyond this author’s skills. Once this bill reaches Governor Spanberger, perhaps she will demand some real accounting and cost estimates. Hope springs eternal.

Steve Haner is a Senior Fellow for Environment and Energy Policy. Steve Haner can be reached at Steve@thomasjeffersoninst.org.