A close up of a transmission line in Augusta County. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)
This is part four of a five-part series about Virginia’s transition to electric vehicles that examines the government’s role in the process, the private industry’s status, the development of charging infrastructure in the state, EVs’ impact on the electric grid, and how the commonwealth’s workforce may be influenced by the growing industry.
As the growing number of electric vehicles is expected to cause the demand on Virginia’s electric grid to surge, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Company are actively preparing for the changes.
Meanwhile, conservation groups are monitoring the impact on the environment and Virginians, ensuring that the transition is as sustainable as possible and of less concern than data centers that are prompting continued fossil fuel use as a dispatchable power source.
The transition to electric vehicles is intended to remove tailpipe greenhouse gasses that make up one third of the emissions in the state and nationwide, contributing to climate change-fueled increasing storm intensities and frequencies.
Virginia is also navigating the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a 2020 law that seeks to transition Dominion and Appalachian Power to zero-carbon generation sources by 2050 to reduce emissions from the power sector.
Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility with 2.6 million customers serving large swaths of Northern Virginia, the Richmond region and Hampton Roads, is pursuing a suite of zero-carbon generation sources like solar, offshore wind and nuclear in order to meet its projected demand on the grid, or “load growth,” which includes more electric vehicles.
But the utility is also proposing a carbon-emitting natural gas plant, largely needed for data center growth.
“We have to think about meeting load 24/7, so you’re going to see a mix of both renewable and dispatchable resources to meet that growth,” said Nathan Frost, general manager of new business and customer solutions at Dominion. “I feel, again, very confident that we can meet the load associated with EVs.”
Trip Pollard, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, cautioned that some “concerns are definitely legitimate” when it comes to whether clean cars contribute to skyrocketing energy needs.
“But a lot of the rhetoric has been very overblown, especially by the fossil fuel industry and politicians who derive a lot of donations from the fossil fuel industry,” Pollard added. “There’s far, far greater impact from things like data centers, which are still provided taxpayer subsidies.”
How does the grid work?
Though people don’t see them when they plug a toaster into a power outlet or flip on a power switch, utility companies are always managing the power grid, an interconnected network, to provide electricity to customers.
Across the country, the power grid has come under strain to meet all the electricity demands to power data centers that support entertainment devices, kitchen appliances and even electric and low-emission vehicles.
The grid’s work begins with electricity being created by a generation source, such as a solar panel or natural gas plant. Then, power is sent through transmission lines that are carried by the tall steel towers seen along highways and through countrysides.
Those transmission lines connect to substations, where higher voltage electricity is converted to lower power so it can be delivered across distribution lines, the wooden poles along roadways. Distribution lines then connect to transformers to send electricity to homes, businesses, electric vehicle chargers and more. The whole system is evolving to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for power.
An Appalachian Power Company substation. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)
“We have the grid transformation plan that’s been underway going back to 2019,” Frost said. “That is again another comprehensive approach to making sure that we’ve got an electric distribution grid that can meet the needs of tomorrow.”
Theresa Hamilton Hall, spokeswoman for Appalachian Power, a utility company that provides services in Southwest Virginia, said the company is also working to address customers’ new needs, including “enabling EV charging at home, while they shop, or are on a road trip.”
“Appalachian Power typically extends a secondary service from the company’s primary system by setting an appropriately sized transformer and service conductors (wire) that will handle the maximum demand of the charging station(s),” Hall said.
Can the grid support the increase?
Appalachian Power and Dominion are confident the power grid will be able to support the increase in demand for electricity. However, there is still uncertainty about when that increase will begin, and exactly how much EVs will contribute to it.
There were 91,000 all-electric cars registered in Virginia as of June 30, but Dominion has projected an adoption of over 220,000 passenger electric vehicles by 2027, and the peak need from electric vehicles by 2038 is 1,600 megawatts.
“This is what we do all day, every day,” Frost said. “Whether it’s connecting a home or business or an EV charger, we take all of it very seriously.”
Hall, with Appalachian Power, said the utility is anticipating modest growth related to electric vehicle adoption across the company’s three-state service territory, growth that is accounted for in Appalachian Power’s load forecasting models.
“Using information gleaned from the amount of electric load carried on the company’s circuits and stations, and other internal data, this model allows the company to identify areas of future load growth on the system that may require improvements to the distribution system infrastructure,” Hall said.
SELC hired consultants to do an analysis and concluded that the Clean Car Standards are only projected to increase the demand about 4% by 2040.
A Rappahannock Electric Cooperative substation with distribution lines next to it. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)
For the smaller municipal electric grids in Virginia, including the Harrisonburg Electric Commission, and Electric Cooperatives that serve rural areas, it’s the transmission and distribution lines that need thoughtful planning, some utilities say.
“I look at my [utility] peers and, we’re all in this and scratching our heads, trying to say, how do we do this in a more efficient way to be able to address the growth that we’re seeing?” said Peter Muhoro, chief strategy, technology & innovation officer at Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, serving the Central Piedmont region. One solution the company is exploring is pairing a battery with a charger so higher voltage power can be stored and distributed more easily on site, he said.
Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, which supplies the power to the cooperatives, relies on a planning tool developed by University of California at Davis to stay aware of EV adoption for forecasting.
“ODEC and (the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives) have a collaborative working group with VDOT, Virginia Energy and Virginia Clean Cities, which meets quarterly so the state agencies are aware of what cooperatives are doing in preparation for EV adoption in their services territories,” said Kirby Jordan, a spokesperson for ODEC.
Brian O’Dell, general manager at Harrisonburg Electric Commission, added that when the chargers are built close to each other, strain on specific points in the grid need attention.
“I don’t know that we’re heavily into forecasting, because that seems to be a little bit of a moving target, but it does require us to keep tabs on our distribution system, making sure things are balanced and not overloaded,” O’Dell said.
Impact on Virginians
As the electricity demand increases, questions around the cost for ratepayers are driving public concerns.
Gee said SELC petitioned the Virginia State Corporation Commission to have the utilities do more comprehensive planning.
Plans for electrification of vehicles were filed in May 2023, but updates are now due February 2025, after environmental groups asked for a better public picture of what the utilities are expecting in terms of medium- and long-term energy demand, and the plans the utilities have to mitigate some of that demand with part of the investments that will be required and paid for by ratepayers.
“It takes deliberate work, I think, from policymakers, as EV adoption increases to make sure that stays the case,” Gee said. “It doesn’t just happen, but it’s something that we can do, and we need to do.”
Transmission lines going through the countryside in Augusta County. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)
With the 2025 session beginning in January, representatives from the Electrification Coalition, a nonprofit organization advocating for electric vehicles, said they would like to see legislative support for utilities to be able to pre-plan for medium- and heavy-duty growth and rural EV deployment expanded across the commonwealth.
“As this becomes the norm, and people want the choice for how they propel their vehicle and fuel it every day, we don’t want people in the rural regions of the state to be left behind,” said Jordan Neerhoff, senior policy analyst with the Electrification Coalition.
A bill from Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, in the 2024 session would have provided funding to offset some of the non-utility costs for installing chargers in rural areas. It ultimately failed in the House.
“That is going to be a problem in our rural areas,” said Cheri Conca, transportation and smart growth program manager for the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Ratepayer opportunities
Utility providers are offering ratepayers and electric vehicle owners incentives to install chargers at home.
As part of several programs available to EV drivers, Dominion offers $40 a year to residents who participate in a demand response program to reduce charging at peak system load and encourage charging during off-peak hours.
“We also have time of use rates, which are time varying rates that incentivize customers to charge off peak or overnight to the extent they want to,” Frost said.
The former coal-fired Dominion Chesterfield Power Station at Coxendale Road. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)
Appalachian Power’s Virginia residential customers similarly can apply for a $100 rebate towards the purchase of an Energy Star rated Level-2 EV charger, and also use a similar time of use schedule.
“Customers who charge off-peak save money, and programs like this help us keep the grid working for everyone,” Hall said. “As demand grows and we make improvements to the electric grid, we are also using those opportunities to make the grid more reliable.”
Gee said SELC has pushed both Dominion and Appalachian Power to adopt electricity rates to encourage people to charge their cars at night, when there is more renewable energy available or when there is less overall demand for power. He said the idea aims to balance the energy use and ensure that the grid benefits from a more steady and efficient use of electricity.
“A lot of places now, like California, are seeing that it makes a lot of sense for fleets to charge in the middle of the day,” Gee said. “That’s why it’s really important to do this planning at the state level.”
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