Solar arrays on the roof of Huguenot High School in Richmond. (Secure Futures Solar)
A group of Virginia solar developers are again asking regulators to tell Dominion Energy to suspend rules that the developers say are holding up mid-size projects for governments, schools and nonprofits throughout the state.
On Aug. 16, the Distributed Solar Alliance filed its latest petition seeking injunctive relief with the State Corporation Commission, which regulates Virginia’s utilities.
As a result of newer requirements under the highly technical rules, some projects could be facing up to 3.5 years of delay before coming online, with project costs possibly ballooning by $450,000 or more, as opportunities to apply for federal tax credits go away, the DSA argued in its petition.
“It’s having a profound negative impact for Virginia, not only in terms of job losses, lost investments to the state, and the health impacts of not pursuing the aspirations of the Virginia Clean Economy Act,” said Tony Smith, chair of the Distributed Solar Alliance and founder of Secure Solar Futures.
But Dominion, in its response to the latest petition, said the rules have already been “litigated and fully addressed” when the SCC granted temporary authority to impose them in November, and remain in compliance with state regulations.
The utility reiterated that the SCC has regulatory authority over Dominion, but it’s the company’s ultimate responsibility to ensure “safe and reliable operation of its system.”
“The Commission should be highly skeptical of a request for injunctive relief which would second-guess and overrule the Company’s judgment in doing so,” wrote Joseph Reid, a McGuire Woods attorney representing the utility.
Repeated requests
The solar developers had previously won a case last August that forced Dominion to stop enforcing the rules for projects able to produce up to 3 megawatts of electricity.
Utility regulators suspend Dominion’s rules for connecting solar projects to grid
But in November, the SCC granted Dominion the authority to temporarily reinstate the rules for a narrower set of projects, those that range from 250 kw to 1 mw, as a stakeholder group worked to make final decisions on what the interconnection rules should be. That work is ongoing.
The solar developers also introduced a bill this past legislative session to shift some of the cost of the rules’ requirements onto the utility. But Dominion pointed out that would’ve passed the costs onto customers who weren’t necessarily benefiting from the projects, since the utility is allowed to recover expenses from ratepayers. The bill failed.
The newer rules
The initial rules called for a dedicated transmission line, known as a dark trip transfer (DTT) cable, which connects the solar project to the grid so that the connection for that source can be turned off in the event of a failure and the broader system isn’t overloaded when excess power is returned to the utility.
The rules also required a relay panel to efficiently shut off the power in those events, which the solar companies say are more costly than traditional, more affordable inverters that they say are sufficient.
The narrowed, temporary rules allowed for a less costly cellular fiber cable to be used as the DTT line, but now require that Verizon or AT&T sign on to using the cable, the solar developers state in their petition.
The temporary rules also have begun to ask for shunt trip breakers and a recloser, technological upgrades for grid protection.
With those new requirements, the solar companies contend the utility is imposing a pilot program outside of the authority granted through the temporary rules, for projects that are less than half the 2.08 megawatt average size of ones Dominion interconnected prior to the creation of the December 2022 rules.
Some projects have not been granted permission to operate within the 30 to 60-day deadlines required by regulation. One developer, Madison Energy, has had 32 projects experience an average of 246 days and counting of delays since their application was submitted, the DSA stated. The utility also hasn’t been issuing waivers explaining why the deadline’s been missed, according to the petition.
Cliona Robb, a DSA attorney, wrote that Dominion has been “imposing greater equipment requirements and costs than approved by the ruling.”
That imposition has been reframed, “as a pilot project to continuously change the ground rules for interconnection at Dominion’s sole discretion, all without Commission authority,” Robb wrote.
Dominion response
Dominion argued the temporary rules “fit squarely within applicable law and regulations and are necessary for the Company to fulfill its duty to provide safe and reliable electric service to the public.”
The majority of projects prior to the creation of the December 2022 rules were smaller than 250 kilowatts, the utility stated, and projects that could produce between 500 kw and 1 megawatt did require some upgrades then, including the shunt trip breaker.
But the changes stemming from the Virginia Clean Economy Act — a 2020 law that seeks to decarbonize the grid by mid-century, which expanded the size of projects eligible to sell electricity back to the grid — have led to an increase in the number of projects requesting interconnection that “necessitated a change to the review process,” the utility stated.
With the increased need for the technological upgrades, Dominion said, the delays come from working with third-party vendors to attain actual cost estimates for protective enclosures, sometimes two for certain substation upgrades, beyond what was tested in its Dominion Energy Relay Laboratory.
Verizon or AT&T need to use the DTT to keep the cable active in the event electricity is cut off from it, Dominion stated, and some project applications also are missing information necessary before they can be considered complete.
“The Company acknowledges that the process of addressing and resolving these technical issues and cost concerns have taken time and resulted in some delays,” Reid wrote in Dominion’s response, but the delays aren’t reason enough to grant the group’s requests because doing so “would compromise the Company’s grid and the safety of its customers and employees.”
Broader delay?
The latest injunction request comes as the stakeholder group working on final rules for the SCC prepares to receive evidentiary information from Dominion by Nov. 15. That will be followed by a full hearing on the evidence and insight from experts to testify on the effectiveness of the requirements.
The workgroup has already proposed a change to the current “last man in” concept that forces the last project to interconnect to a smaller circuit of the grid to pay for the technology because that project could potentially overload the system. Instead, a clustered approach, to review multiple projects together, is being considered.
But an order on the evidentiary hearing may not come until August of 2025, the DSA contended, depending on how the process proceeds after Dominion submits its evidence later this year. Because projects typically take a year to develop, some proposals may not come online until August 2026, the group said.
Also in that timespan, another case on new rules for net-metering is set to take place, which could further change the rules for projects, Smith said.
“In this line of work, things change very dynamically because of supply chain and other issues,” Smith said. The delays mean that a project that makes sense economically this year may not add up next year, Smith added. “It’s causing menacing chaos.”
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