More than 70 people joined us on April 29 for a Community Meeting on Transmission Lines and Data Centers at Liberty High School. We were encouraged to see so many folks from the community invested in learning more about these important emerging issues.
At the meeting, we briefed residents on numerous data centers proposed in Fauquier and Culpeper, and on Dominion’s latest plans to serve the Amazon data center in Warrenton. We also provided details on the proposed upgrade of the Morrisville to Wishing Star 500-kilovolt line approved by PJM at the end of last year that runs through southern Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun.
However, since our community meeting, Dominion has announced it will no longer be submitting its proposal for that Morrisville line upgrade to the State Corporation Commission (SCC) this summer. The presentation from their April 30 virtual public meeting has been uploaded to the project website. The utility has also canceled all May and June meetings planned to inform the community about the line upgrade, citing the need for additional evaluation of electrical and construction alternatives. It is unclear what these announcements mean, but the brief presentation by Dominion was focused on the explosive data center growth that has continued in the region.
Below are a few resources from our April 29 event, including a link to the presentation. We encourage you to share these resources with friends, family and neighbors.
- Video – The Hidden Costs of the Cloud: Data Centers in Virginia
- Presentation slides
- Link to PEC’s interactive online map of transmission line proposals
- Maps – Fauquier generation and transmission, PJM proposals (Fauquier), PJM proposal (region)
- Handout on the impacts of data center growth and what you can do
- Photo album of the event
- PEC’s webpage about data centers
- Citizens for Fauquier County’s website
- Protect Fauquier’s website
- Protect Catlett’s website
PEC and our partners in the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition will be planning more public meetings over the year to engage community members and decision-makers in Fauquier and throughout the region. We’ve signed you up for email updates from us so you can stay in the loop, but if you have any questions, please feel encouraged to contact me or any of the representatives from Citizens for Fauquier County, Protect Fauquier and Protect Catlett.