Residents Unsure Of Local Benefits From Regional Grid Upgrade

Electricity has never been more important to every aspect of our modern, digitally connected lives. But a proposal for a new transmission line in northeast West Virginia is sparking local concern.

On a recent Monday afternoon, local residents and landowners walked into a room at West Virginia University’s Ericson Alumni Center in Morgantown. Inside, they were greeted by representatives of the electrical utility NextEra Energy Transmission, like Katlin McCormick.

“We here at NextEra Energy transmission are here today hosting an open house to share more information about our Mid Atlantic Resiliency Link project, which is an approximately 105 mile 500 kV transmission line,” she said. “It’s a kilovolt transmission line that would extend from Greene County, Pennsylvania to Frederick County, Virginia.”

McCormick is the senior director of development for NextEra Energy Transmission. She said the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link will help address the regional grid’s reliability needs in the coming years.

“We were awarded this project by PJM, the Mid Atlantic Resiliency Link, to help address challenges that they were forecasting on the electric grid based on changes that they were seeing,” McCormick said “(That) included an additional 11 gigawatts of power plant retirements happening throughout PJM service territory, as well as an additional approximately seven gigawatts of power demand happening in the same region.”

PJM Interconnection is the nation’s largest power grid operator serving 13 states from Michigan to North Carolina, as well as Washington, D.C. 

The Resiliency Link is very much still in the planning process. Much of the information presented to the public at the Morgantown event and seven others around the region, was focused on proposed pathways for the project’s transmission lines. The pathway of those transmission lines is likely to bring them through four West Virginia counties: Monongalia, Preston, Mineral and Hampshire. 

Nate Ricketts is a community organizer for the Mountain Watershed Association, a conservation nonprofit focused on the Youghiogheny River watershed. All of NextEra’s proposed routes will cross the Yough’s watershed. Ricketts said his organization is concerned about deforestation to make way for more transmission lines, but are also looking at the broader implications to the grid. 

“We’ve been seeing data centers pop up throughout the region, specifically in Tucker County is the one that comes right to mind, with on site natural gas power plants,” Ricketts said. “We’re just really concerned about how this is going to prop up extractive industry in the area, specifically coal mining and natural gas development.”

Ricketts and others are concerned that investment in transmission lines will promote the continued use of existing fossil fuel capacity as a power source, instead of promoting investment in renewables like solar, wind and battery storage. 

For their part, NextEra said this project will allow for increased transmission capacity across the region, including from renewable sources.

But Ricketts also points out that the impact of the power line installation – easements on farmland and possibly eminent domain possessions – will fall on rural and poorer communities to benefit others.

“We know that they’re planning to hook it up to existing coal and natural gas power plants in that area to serve data needs in the DC area,” he said.

NextEra said the Resiliency Link will be bidirectional, allowing for regional access to the increased connectivity via a planned connection to the local grid in western Maryland.

But local landowners like Juliet Marlier aren’t convinced.

“It was conceived primarily to service data centers being built in northern Virginia,” she said. “I feel that if they waited a little longer, or put more energy and investment into finding a more efficient method of powering those data centers, that it would in the long run, be more beneficial to everybody.”

As a property owner on Cheat Lake, just outside of Morgantown, Marlier was recently notified her property is in or near a proposed path for the Resiliency Link. She said she already has power lines running over her, and much of the proposed routes would follow those existing rights of way.

“Well, the current power lines are ok,” Marlier said. “We drive under them on the way in, but they’re not, you know, buzzing and shooting sparks, or they’re not that high voltage, and they’re for the benefit of the people who live in this area.”

With a proposed service date of 2031, property owners like Marlier are concerned about the disruption of years of cutting and installation on their land, for a project they’re not convinced will help West Virginians.

Landowners and the public aren’t likely to know what path has been chosen until this fall, when NextEra said they expect to submit their proposals to local regulatory agencies like the West Virginia Public Service Commission.