Staff for the West Virginia Public Service Commission recommended denial of an application to build the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link project, a high-voltage electrical line often shortened to MARL.
The denial recommendation was a conclusion in prepared direct testimony by technical analyst Daniel Egnatoff and filed last week by Public Service Commission staff.
“The applicant has not proven that it engaged in the necessary level of diligence regarding a project of this scale,” Egnatoff testified.
“It erroneously stated that AEP customers would see no rate impact from the Project. It failed to notify an impacted landowner, then failed to notify the Commission that this had occurred. It was then required to make material modifications to the proposed route due to oversights in the routing process.”
Evidentiary hearings for the project are scheduled to begin on Oct. 26. After that, the three commissioners on the regulatory panel could agree to deny the project or could give it a go-ahead.
The Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link is a proposed 107.5-mile, 500-kilovolt high-voltage power line planned to run from Dunkard Township, Pa., through parts of West Virginia including Monongalia, Preston, Mineral and Hampshire counties and down to Gore, Va.
The project is being considered after PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, identified reliability issues resulting from a loss of power generation sources, support for new power sources and additional electricity demand in the region.
The proposal has generated controversy. So far, the West Virginia Public Service Commission has received 8,213 letters opposing the project with 153 letters of support.
The 58-page assessment by Egnatoff of the PSC staff included several areas of critique.
Egnatoff concluded the proposal is based on flawed and outdated needs analysis. For example, he said the project’s reliability justification assumed the Brandon Shores power plant in Maryland would retire in 2025.
However, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved settlements and orders allowing the plant to remain operational through 2029–2031, with Egnatoff concluding that makes the underlying grid analysis fatally outdated.
Moreover, the project’s driving need of data center growth in Virginia relies on load forecasts submitted by utilities that PJM accepted uncritically without validation, Egnatoff concluded. But similar forecasts in other states were drastically reduced once utilities required data centers to pay a larger share of interconnection costs.
He also cited a lack of material benefit to West Virginia.
He concluded that claims about grid reliability and capacity improvements are generally true of any power line built anywhere. But he said no evidence was provided to show that West Virginia’s power grid is currently capacity-constrained or that local generation facilities are unable to dispatch power because of transmission bottlenecks.
In response to the question “Do you believe that the MARL Project carries material, useful benefits for West Virginia?” Egnatoff replied, “No.”
“The most likely outcome of the MARL Project not being built is the energizing of fewer data centers in Virginia,” he wrote.
His testimony for PSC staff also cited severe effects on landowners and communities along the transmission line route.
“In a particularly striking case,” he testified, “the MARL Project passes approximately 150 feet north of a home, then turns and passes approximately 90 feet east of the same home, surrounding it on two sides.”
And he described a lack of due diligence and procedural failures on the part of the developer.
“For the above reasons, | recommend that the Commission deny the application in full,” Egnatoff testified.
The citizens group West Virginians Against Transmission distributed a statement highlighting the denial recommendation by the PSC staff.
“This is a major development in the MARL case,” said Tony Campbell, president of West Virginians Against Transmission Injustice.
“PSC staff has independently examined the evidence and reached the same fundamental conclusion West Virginians have been raising for months: the justification for this project does not withstand scrutiny.”
Earlier this month at the annual West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Business Summit, representatives of NextEra Energy presented the proposed Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link as a vital investment in the state’s economic and energy future.
“After decades of relatively flat electricity demand, America has entered a new era of rapid load growth,” said Kaitlin McCormick, senior director on the project execution team. “That’s driven by increased electrification of homes and businesses, domestic manufacturing, and large industrial facilities.”
Completion of the transmission line would be a positive economic sign for the state, McCormick told people who attended the business summit.
“Across the country, states are competing for manufacturing facilities and industrial expansion, and now West Virginia has many of the things these companies are looking for,” McCormick said.