Perriello opposes Valley Link, open to more nuclear at North Anna, silent on Joshua Falls; McGuire mum except for letter on Valley Link. The 5th Congressional District faces a unique set of energy issues, which prompted questions to both candidates for the House seat. Democratic nominee Tom Perriello has accused incumbent Republican Rep. John McGuire of "parroting of talking points from the corporations on Valley Link transmission line." He also expressed openness to the addition of a small modular nuclear reactor proposed at Dominion Energy's North Anna power plant in Louisa County but did not directly answer when asked if he supported Appalachian Power's proposal for a similar nuclear reactor at its Joshua Falls electric substation in Campbell County. Perriello added that he understands the concerns people have about nuclear technology and said it is up to corporations to rebuild trust that has been broken between the companies and 5th District residents regarding energy issues. McGuire's campaign did not respond to a request for an interview from Cardinal News regarding the proposed transmission line or energy production. Perriello talked at length about energy, a key issue in the 5th District, during a media availability last week. The district's wide swath of land that stretches from the North Carolina border to north of Charlottesville has seen a variety of energy projects and proposals in recent years. Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power are exploring what could be among the nation's first small modular nuclear reactors, in Louisa and Campbell counties, respectively. Dominion has also proposed a 3-gigawatt natural gas power plant in Cumberland County. And utility-scale solar has been a hot topic, particularly in Southside Virginia where communities have variously embraced or resisted it. [Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.] Virginia's 5th Congressional District is considered solidly Republican by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. McGuire won the district with a 15-point margin in 2024. Regardless, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the district to their list of races that they consider "in-play" for the 2026 midterm elections. Perriello said he was open to the addition of a small modular nuclear reactor proposed at Dominion Energy's North Anna power plant in Louisa County. "I also understand people's concerns about nuclear technology, so I think this is a place where we need to have the currency of trust and that's the currency that's been broken," Perriello said. "The onus here is on these corporations to come in and build trust in communities." The Valley Link transmission line is proposed to run through eight counties, six of which are located in the 5th Congressional District. "It hasn't been clear at all that John McGuire is opposed to the Valley Link transmission Line. He spent months parroting their talking points, he refused to meet with community leaders and he basically sent one letter trying to blame the Democratic Party for the problem," Perriello asserted. McGuire's office sent a letter to Gov. Abigail Spanberger at the beginning of July asking her administration to stop the project, citing concerns his office has heard from constituents regarding private property rights, and impacts on farmland and the environment. It is unclear what else, if anything, the incumbent has done to oppose the energy transmission project. Perriello said that if he were in Congress, he would be calling for hearings "every day" and "hauling the CEOs in front of folks," and would be investigating and supporting litigation against the project. "We're not just taking a position on opposing the Valley Link transmission line, we are actively fighting the transmission line in the same way that I was actively fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline," he said. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project was canceled in 2020. The Mountain Valley Pipeline began service in 2024. Dominion Energy was a lead partner in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and is part of the Valley Link joint venture. NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company seeking to merge with Dominion, is a partner in the Mountain Valley Pipeline joint venture, which is building a natural gas pipeline extension called Southgate, set to run 31 miles from Pittsylvania County into North Carolina. "When it comes to something like this, we need people that actually understand the corruption and problems caused by [the Dominion] monopoly," Perriello said. What is the Valley Link transmission line and why does Perriello oppose it? Critics of the $1 billion transmission line have said it would harm private property, their communities' rural character, the environment and the health of people living and working near it. At 765 kilovolts, it would be in the highest voltage category of transmission lines in the United States. Valley Link has said that the "extra-high-voltage" line, announced in February, is necessary to meet increasing power demand driven by data centers, electric vehicles and other growth factors, and to make the electric grid more reliable. "We absolutely have to test these claims, both about how much power is needed and about whether this is the right way to do it," Perriello said. He added that there are "tons of options" for the energy companies to explore aside from the transmission line to transport or produce enough power to satisfy energy consumption demands in Northern Virginia. Among those options are increasing energy efficiency among large consumers like data centers, distributed power production, or decentralized, smaller scale energy-producing infrastructure located closer to consumers, Perriello said. "There are lots of ways to do it. We just need leaders with the guts to force that question," he said. The Valley Link transmission line would use steel lattice towers 150 to 175 feet tall, with approximately four to five per mile. Those towers would require 200-foot-wide rights of way, much of which would be in "greenfield" land - outside of land already earmarked for utility use. The project's opponents have said that those rights of way - whether acquired voluntarily by easement or forcibly by eminent domain - would bisect farms, upend homebuilding plans and negatively impact businesses. Perriello counts himself among critics of the project. "Valley Link is just a threat in and of itself. I think it is actually undermining our ability to do infrastructure the right way because it's reinforcing people's legitimate concerns that these corporations don't care about them," Perriello said. "Our starting point on Valley Link Transmission is that this is exactly the wrong way to do it." He pointed out that the project's proposal does not require or allow the provision of the counties that the transmission line would run through. "That means there's no local democracy or accountability," he said. Counties that have the transmission line running through them have no say over whether the line is built or not. They can pass a local resolution opposing it but that would be a largely symbolic maneuver. It is possible for Campbell and Culpeper counties to have a more than symbolic say in the project because they are the proposed sites for the electric substations to be built at the endpoints of the line. The Culpeper County Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution expressing opposition to the project, but Campbell County has not. The project is named "Joshua Falls to Yeat" for the electric substations that would serve as its endpoints in Campbell and Culpeper counties, respectively. An interactive map is available on the project website. Could the governor intervene with the SCC in the project? Valley Link has not yet finalized the project's route. It has put forth multiple potential route corridors, with several variations along them, across Appomattox, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa and Orange counties. Once in Culpeper, the line would connect to 500-kilovolt Dominion Energy lines to serve Northern and Central Virginia. Valley Link is a partnership between Dominion, FirstEnergy Transmission LLC and Transource Energy LLC, which itself is a partnership between American Electric Power and the electric utility Evergy. Virginia's State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body that will be tasked with evaluating Valley Link's proposal and then approving it, rejecting it or mandating that it use a different route. The SCC's review process would likely include opportunities for public comment and a public hearing. Spanberger could intervene with the SCC over the proposed transmission line project, though she does not have the legal authority to halt the project per McGuire's request. The legal step of "intervening" means that Spanberger could formally request to be a party to the case before the SCC in her capacity as governor, similar to the steps she has taken regarding the Dominion and NextEra merger currently before the SCC. Valley Link engineers will create a final route for the Joshua Falls to Yeat line and submit it for consideration to the SCC, likely this fall. The state regulatory body will have the final say on whether or not the project moves forward. It could take state regulators about a year to deliberate on the project. The company anticipates a 2029 completion date, barring delays. The capital cost of the project would be spread among transmission operators in the service territory of PJM Interconnection, the wholesale transmission operator for Virginia, 12 other states and Washington, D.C. Those operators, which include Dominion and Appalachian Power, would determine how to incorporate the costs into their customers' bills.

Dominion Energy reaffirmed its 2026 operating earnings guidance of $3.45 to $3.69 per share after reporting second-quarter earnings of $0.79 per share, beating the consensus estimate by 8.20%. Revenues of $4.48 billion exceeded expectations by 10.30%. The company pushed back the completion date for its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project by six months to year-end 2027. Project costs increased approximately 2% to $11.65 billion, adding $288 million for the extended timeline. The facility is 81% complete with 31 turbines installed. Dominion reported over 53 gigawatts of data centre capacity in contracting stages, including 12 gigawatts under service agreements. The company has filed air permits for nearly five gigawatts of combined-cycle capacity.

Virginia Orders Data Centers to Pay Their Own Power grid costs. Posted by Candyce Astroth on Thursday, August 6, 2026 at 3:46:29 PM Comment Virginia Forces Data Centers to Pay for Their Own Power Grids - What It Means for Northern Virginia Homeowners: In a July 31 ruling, the Virginia State Corporation Commission issued a landmark order directing Dominion Energy to develop a new transmission cost tariff that assigns the cost of high-voltage transmission lines and substations to the data centers and large-load users that require them - rather than spreading those costs across all residential and commercial ratepayers. Dominion must return to the SCC this fall with a proposed tariff. At stake: approximately $1.5 billion in Dominion transmission costs that had been headed toward residential electric bills, which Dominion estimated would add $0.94 per month to the average 1,000 kWh residential customer. Governor Spanberger called the ruling projected to save Virginians "hundreds of millions of dollars." The exact savings and timing remain subject to the fall tariff proceeding - this is a critically important first step, not a completed cost shift. Virginia's SCC just ruled that Data Centers Pay for Their Own Power infrastructure - Here's the honest read. I'm Candyce with Perfect Choice Real Estate. The Virginia State Corporation Commission's July 31 ruling is one of the most consequential regulatory decisions affecting Northern Virginia homeowners' utility bills in recent years. It is also one that requires careful reading - because what the SCC ordered is not an immediate shift of costs, but a direction to Dominion Energy to develop the tariff mechanism that will eventually accomplish that shift. Here is the precise picture. What the SCC ruled and why it matters. Per Virginia Mercury's August 5 report, the SCC's July 31 order directs Dominion to develop a new policy to directly assign the cost of transmission infrastructure to data centers and other large-load users that connect to those facilities - with the explicit goal of finding an "acceptable and symmetrical approach" to cost assignment. The governing principle, which the Spanberger administration pushed for throughout the July 14-15 hearings, is a "but for" standard: any network upgrade or substation that would not have been triggered but for the presence of a specific large-load customer should be assigned directly to that customer. In a July 31 ruling governing utility rates, the SCC concluded that new large-load data centers are the cause of massive transmission line costs. Up to this point, the costs associated with transmission development solely to serve data centers have not been borne by the data centers, but have been applied across all customers' electricity bills - including residents, farms and small businesses. The $1.5 billion at stake. Dominion's Rider T-1 - the line-item charge on Virginia electric bills that recovers spending on high-voltage transmission lines - covers approximately $1.5 billion in transmission costs. Dominion originally estimated spreading those costs would add $2.90/month to the average 1,000 kWh residential customer, then revised that figure down to $0.94/month after incorporating the new GS-5 high-load rate class that takes effect next year. Under the SCC's "but for" standard, transmission costs caused specifically by data center connections would be assigned directly to those data centers rather than spread through Rider T-1 to residential customers. Critical caveat - this is not yet final: The SCC ordered Dominion to develop a tariff and return to the commission this fall with proposed language. The commission then reviews the tariff and issues a final order. It is not clear when the SCC will rule on the new transmission tariff for data centers and what the exact savings for residential customers will be. The July 31 order establishes the principle and the direction; the fall tariff proceeding determines the specific mechanism and its effect on bills. Do not expect your Dominion bill to change immediately. The broader Policy Context. This ruling sits within an accelerating statewide policy shift around data center infrastructure costs. On the same day - August 5-6 - State Senator Glen Sturtevant asked Governor Spanberger for a statewide moratorium on new data center approvals (which Senate President Pro Tem Louise Lucas called worth serious consideration). Loudoun County's Board voted 6-1 on July 22 to direct staff to prepare moratorium options. Alexandria's City Council asked Fairfax County Planning Commission to deny the Plaza 500 substation. The SCC's transmission cost ruling is the most consequential of these developments for actual homeowner finances - and it's the one with the clearest legal teeth. What this means for Northern Virginia homeowners: If the SCC's fall tariff proceeding implements the "but for" cost-causation standard effectively, Northern Virginia homeowners will be protected from subsidizing the specific transmission line costs caused by data center expansion. Virginia hosts the largest concentration of data centers in the world - Dominion has reported 203 transmission projects in its grid connection pipeline - making the potential residential subsidy significant without this protection. The ruling's impact on your specific bill depends on the fall tariff's specifics, but the directional policy outcome is clearly in residential ratepayers' favor. Questions about Data Center Infrastructure near your home? The Plaza 500 substation, the Nokesville-Bristow transmission line, the SCC ruling - data center policy is reshaping Northern Virginia's residential landscape. Let's talk about your specific situation. 703.853.7458 | | [email protected] Frequently asked questions. Will my Dominion Energy bill go down because of this ruling? Not immediately. The SCC ordered Dominion to develop a new tariff and return to the commission this fall with proposed language. The commission will then review and finalize the tariff before any rate changes take effect. The timing and exact magnitude of bill impact for residential customers will be determined in the fall tariff proceeding. The July 31 ruling establishes the cost-causation principle; it does not finalize residential rates. What is Rider T-1 and why does it matter? Rider T-1 is the line-item charge on Dominion Energy customers' electric bills that recovers the cost of building and maintaining high-voltage transmission lines and substations across the service territory. Under the current structure, T-1 costs are spread broadly across rate classes - meaning all residential customers pay a share of transmission upgrades triggered by new data centers and other large-load users. The SCC's ruling aims to change that by assigning specific transmission costs to the specific large customers that caused them. Does this affect the Plaza 500 data center substation in Lincolnia? Potentially - but through a different mechanism. The Plaza 500 substation situation involves a Fairfax County Planning Commission 2232 public facilities review (September 24 hearing) and a Virginia State Corporation Commission utility approval (already granted in August 2025). The SCC's July 31 transmission tariff ruling addresses how Dominion recovers transmission costs from large customers going forward - it does not retroactively affect the Plaza 500 substation's county approval process. Bren Mar and Lincolnia residents' best remaining avenue of influence is the September 24 Planning Commission hearing. Sources you Can trust. Virginia Mercury - "SCC Orders Dominion to Develop Tariff to Assign More Transmission Costs to Data Centers" (Primary - July 31 order, "but for" standard, White testimony, fall tariff timeline, August 5, 2026) https://virginiamercury.com/2026/08/05/scc-orders-dominion-to-develop-tariff-to-assign-more-transmission-costs-to-data-centers/ WTOP - "SCC Orders Dominion to Develop Tariff to Assign More Transmission Costs to Data Centers" (Governor Spanberger quote, 203 Dominion transmission projects, August 5-6, 2026) https://wtop.com/virginia/2026/08/scc-orders-dominion-to-develop-tariff-to-assign-more-transmission-costs-to-data-centers/ pcrehomes.com - "Plaza 500 Data Center Advances - What September 24 Hearing Can Change" (NoVA Data Center Infrastructure Context) https://www.pcrehomes.com/blog/plaza-500-data-center-lincolnia-substation-september-hearing-2026/ pcrehomes.com - "Could Virginia's Data Center Boom Be Hitting the Brakes? Loudoun Moratorium - September 15 Vote" (Data Center Policy Context) https://www.pcrehomes.com/blog/loudoun-data-center-moratorium-fairfax-prince-william-impact-2026/