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Dominion’s Yorktown oil unit gets brief reprieve, Surry plant life to be extended

Dominion Virginia Yorktown Power Station, Yorktown, VA
Joe Fudge / Daily Press
Dominion Virginia Yorktown Power Station, Yorktown, VA
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The oil-burning unit at Dominion Virginia Power’s Yorktown power plant won a brief reprieve from the energy giant’s plans to close it — but the utility is now definitely looking to keep its Surry nuclear plant running through the middle of the century.

Dominion’s latest 15-year plan puts the date for closing the Yorktown 3 oil unit at 2022, two years later than it had proposed when it first floated the idea last year.

And the plan, filed last week with the State Corporation Commission, discloses that Dominion is starting on the multi-year process of seeking a 20-year extension of its license to operate the Surry plant.

“Our last plan didn’t count on extending the life of Surry … we’re feeling good that we can assume that now,” said Bob Thomas, Dominion’s director of energy market analysis,

Thomas’ job in drafting the plan, which is updated every year, is to look ahead for the next quarter century and come up with a plan that details what different mixes of power plants, purchases of power, and energy conservation will cost.

Since that cost is ultimately what determines electric bills, state regulators, big business users, consumer advocates and environmentalists keep a sharp eye on what the plan says and what assumptions Dominion makes in writing the 300-plus page document.

“The big theme this year is that we’re dealing with even more uncertainty,” Thomas said.

That uncertainty is over what regulations will come into force during the next 15 years to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, which is linked to climate change.

Carbon target questions

And although Dominion is pretty certain it can show the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Surry is fit to operate into the 2050s, it is far from sure which of six possible federal Clean Power Plan approaches to cutting carbon dioxide environmental regulators will opt for. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily halted the Clean Power Plan, to let a legal challenge proceed, the rules utilities will operate under going forward are even tougher to discern, Thomas said.

But whatever happens with the Clean Power Plan, Dominion expects to come under some sort of order to cut carbon emissions before long, he said.

That’s why it detailed four alternatives to a low-cost 15-year plan state law requires it to make, but that assumes it will face no limits on carbon dioxide emissions, Thomas said.

All of those four options assume the Yorktown 3 oil unit will close in 2022, although the company has not made a final decision to close the unit.

All four options assume Dominion will be paying for the engineering work it needs to ensure Surry keeps operating beyond 2033, which is when its current license expires.

Surry has been pumping out enough power day in and day out to supply about 420,000 homes since 1973.

All of the company’s alternatives in the new 15-year plan say the two coal-burning units at Yorktown will close next spring, when the special permission from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to let the units violate federal air pollution standards expire.

The company has said shutting down those coal units — which are base load generators that run most of the time — puts the Peninsula at risk of rolling blackouts if it can’t complete a new high-voltage connection across the James River between Surry and James City counties.

So far, it is still awaiting word from the Army Corps of Engineers on whether it can build that line.

The issue at Yorktown, for both the coal units and the oil-burning generator, is a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting the amount of mercury and toxic gases that power plants can emit. The three Yorktown units currently employ 70 people.

The EPA’s permission to let the coal units continue violating that standard expires in April 2017.

And that same standard means Dominion can’t run the oil unit — one of the biggest in its system, capable of generating enough power to supply more than 200,000 homes, with air conditioners running full blast — more than 8 percent of the time.

Last year, Dominion reported that the cost of installing new pollution control systems for the 42-year-old oil unit was too high, especially since it is trying to reduce use of fossil fuels to cut emissions of carbon dioxide linked to climate change.

The plant will get an extra two years because of expected delays in target dates for cutting carbon, Thomas said.

He said he does not expect the two extra years will have a big impact on the Peninsula’s power supply problems when the coal units close.

Solar power plans

All of the variations of Dominion’s latest 15-year plan call for developing three large-scale solar power plants by 2020 — enough to power about 40,000 homes, according to the formula used by the Solar Energy Industries Association.

They also count a big new gas-fired plant in Greensville County, large enough to power 400,000 homes, starting to generate in 2019.

All of the variations expect energy conservation measures to make a dent in consumption equivalent to about what 62,000 residential customers now use over the course of a year. Dominion expects to hit that savings by 2031.

Where the four alternatives differ is in how much reliance Dominion places on building more solar-powered, wind-power and gas-fired plants, as well as whether the company opts for an option that generates no additional carbon emissions — an option Dominion says is the costliest.

To get there, Dominion says it needs more than 15 times as much solar generating capacity as it already plans to install, as well as a third nuclear unit at North Anna, a $19 billion project. To erect that many solar power panels requires using about 56,000 acres of land, Thomas said.

Glen Besa, the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter director, says including a third North Anna nuclear unit in the zero emissions growth scenario overstates the cost of cutting carbon emissions and isn’t necessary to reach that goal.

He said that he was glad to see Dominion’s proposals generally cut back on the number of gas fired plants it wanted to build.

But, he added, the carbon emission targets Dominion hopes to hit with all of its alternatives are probably only a first step, and plans that rely on gas plants risk leaving the company — and its customers — stuck paying for plants that tighter regulations could keep offline in the decades to come.

Ress can be reached by phone at 757-247-4535.