By Heather Michon, Editor
Fluvanna supervisors returned from their annual summer break on Wednesday, Aug. 5, and almost immediately stepped into controversy, facing new questions about Tenaska’s Expedition Generation power plant and a debate over the future of data centers in the county.
The main meeting was routine, with members approving preliminary engineering work on a water system for Pleasant Grove, a 2% bonus for qualifying Social Services staff, making appointments and setting a September public hearing on revised rules for bulk water sales, among other matters.
But with citizens questioning recently announced changes to the Expedition Generation plant, the later part of the meeting turned into a discussion about how much the county had known about the project’s design and infrastructure, and what, if anything, they could do about it now.
New design, new questions
Supervisors approved a special use permit (SUP) and zoning amendments for Tenaska in March. In April, the Nebraska-based company started on the state permitting process and has moved forward with the design of the plant. Those changes, it turns out, could have implications for issues like noise, water usage, and transmission infrastructure.
The biggest change is shifting from a “wet cooling” design, where water is used to carry off the heat generated by the gas-powered plant, to an air cooling design, where banks of fans are used to remove the heat.
This system could reduce daily water usage from 6-7 million gallons per day down to 1 million gallons of water per day, but could also increase the noise generated by the plant, and potentially increase the facility’s footprint to accommodate banks of fans.
County Administrator Eric Dahl and County Attorney Dan Whitten did not know why the plant design was being changed, but noted that nothing in the SUP required Tenaska to use wet cooling.
In matters like noise levels and the plant’s total footprint, the permit does give the county some leverage, although supervisors questioned whether those safeguards are sufficient for a cooling system whose final design was not known when the permit was approved.
There are also new questions about how much power Tenaska will be generating and how that power will get into the grid.
For example, Tenaska has long said the plant could produce 1,540 MW when running at full capacity. Now, it looks like it may be more like 1,640 MW. Staff said the higher figure may reflect short-term peak output rather than a change in the plant’s permitted nominal summer capacity, which remains capped at 1,540 MW under the SUP. But they were not sure of the details.
Another question is how the plant will be connected to nearby transmission lines, and if that higher capacity will require changes to the closest Dominion substation.
The SUP recognized that Expedition Generation would eventually need to be connected to the grid, but did not specifically envision what would likely be a 1.8-mile-long, 500-kilovolt line, nor was there any discussion of a new or expanded substation to carry the power.
By the end of the discussion, the supervisors directed staff to gather information from Tenaksa and bring it back to the board for further discussion and debate.
Data centers
The board also pressed staff for information on why a property near Bremo Bluff is being offered as a potential data center site.
The 843-acre parcel is being offered by Sugar Oak Realty, which describes it as open to “scalable development” with easy access to 230- and 115-kilovolt transmission lines.
The property has been on the Sugar Oak site and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) website for several months.
Economic Development Director Jennifer Schmack stressed that the county had no control over how VEDP or private realty companies market a property. While Schmack’s name does appear on the VEDP listing, “I’m just on the system’s website as the local economic developer.”
Dahl said the organization should have contacted the county about the listing, but his office didn’t find out about it until after it had gone live.
The land remains zoned agricultural, and any data center would require both rezoning and a special use permit, including public hearings before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Chris Fairchild suggested going further by considering whether data centers should be removed entirely as an allowable use under county zoning. Chair Tony O’Brien pushed back, arguing that the existing special use permit process gives supervisors the ability to judge proposals individually and that an outright prohibition could be unnecessarily restrictive.
Fairchild asked that a resolution addressing the issue, along with a temporary pause on new applications while it is considered, be placed on the board’s Aug. 19 agenda.
