By David Wojick, CFACT | July 23rd, 2025
The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) mandates that Dominion Energy, the state’s big electric utility, rapidly shift its power generation to wind and solar.
Dominion’s latest Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) provides dramatic evidence that this shift does not work, making blackouts inevitable. Making it work would be fantastically expensive, with the average customer paying over $40,000 for batteries by 2030.
First let’s look at how it does not work. There is a nifty little graphic showing this on page 62 of the IRP which is here. https://cdn-dominionenergy-prd-001.azureedge.net/-/media/content/about/our-company/irp/pdfs/2024-irp-w_o-appendices.pdf?rev=5b28b014e4814135bb2fcec470dcc92b
The graphic summarizes Dominion’s VCEA compliance plan. It is a vertical bar showing the installed mix of generating capacity in 2030. The vertical scale is megawatts (MW) and the height of the bar is the projected maximum summer power demand for that year which is about 33,000 MW.
The bar is divided into different colored segments for each generator type such as solar, wind, gas, nuclear, etc. The height of each segment is the amount of installed capacity at that time in MW.
Dominion actually flags solar pointing out that it makes up 23% of the available capacity. They also point out that solar, wind and batteries together make up 34% of capacity. Note that the battery segment is very small and batteries are not generators. The bar also includes a little bit of imported power making installed capacity less than peak demand.
The problem is obvious. Peak summer demand typically occurs after 4 pm when there is no solar generation. Moreover it is often caused by a stagnant high pressure system called a Bermuda high with very low winds so there is no wind power either. Plus these highs are regional in scale so the neighbors may have nothing to sell.
If there is no solar, no wind and no imports then we are over 34% short of the power needed to keep the lights on. Clearly there will be a blackout. No solar alone will do it for that matter. Nor are these inconvenient short term rolling blackouts. Being 20 to 30% short is a prescription for catastrophe.
This is where batteries come in. It is often claimed that batteries can make renewables reliable so let’s now see what that would take in this VCEA case.
Here is a very simple back of the envelope analysis to just give the scale of the batteries required to prevent blackouts.
Peak need is about 33,000 MW in 2030. Dispatchable capacity is around 20,000 MW leaving 13,000 MW. Solar is about 10,000 MW but for simplicity let us generously assume it too is 13,000 as though non-performing wind and import capacities were not there. For one day this leaves 16 hours with no solar and demand at 13,000 that must come from the batteries.
This is a need of 208,000 MWh of batteries. The battery capacity in the graphic is around 10,000 MWh or basically nothing. Note we are assuming 100% battery charge and discharge when reality is more like 60-80%.
At the typical $500,000 or so per MWh the battery facility capital cost is an incredible $104 billion. That is $104,000,000,000. Given Dominion’s 2.6 million customers this averages a nice round $40,000 per customer for batteries. Dominion ignores this simple fact.
But it gets much worse because there is no spare generating capacity to charge the batteries. Given a typical multi-day near peak heatwave several hundred billion dollars worth of batteries would be required to prevent a massive sustained blackout. This is likely physically impossible but it is certainly economically ruinous.
Thus we have the VCEA dilemma. Rapidly switching to solar and wind as proposed in the Dominion IRP for 2030 either leads to catastrophic blackouts or economic ruin. The “clean economy” is no economy.
The obvious solution is to repeal the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
Dr. David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues.
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