We almost ran out of power this week. Meanwhile, Congress is trying to make it harder to get new power onto the grid.

We got through the week without any blackouts.

That shouldn’t be news, but it is. 

Three times this week PJM Interconnection, which runs the 13-state (plus District of Columbia) electric grid that Virginia is part of, issued a “Maximum Generation Alert,” in which it instructed utilities to crank out as much power as possible. That was the fourth such alert this year, twice as many as last year.

The prompt this week was a brutal heat wave, but those triple-digit temperatures came on top of electric demand that was rising anyway, due primarily to the growth of energy-guzzling data centers. 

Here’s how close we came to maxing out: On Tuesday afternoon, the grid was using 97.1% of the power available. Even then, the power demand was reduced by “Pre-Emergency Load Management Action,” meaning some big electric users were paid to not use electricity.

We Americans don’t like being told we must do without something. The prospect of not having enough electricity seems a problem for some less fortunate country, yet here we are having to ration electricity. Get used to it. I could say what happened this week is just the tip of the iceberg, but that would definitely be the wrong cliché. The problem is we’re increasing demand for power faster than we’re increasing the generation of that power. There are enough politics here to be difficult for both sides: a warming planet for some, an increased reliance on renewables for others, the explosive growth of data centers for all. 

I wrote about some of those earlier this week in a column about how even some Democrats are now saying Virginia needs to revise the Clean Economy Act, the landmark energy bill in 2020 that mandated the state’s two biggest utilities (Dominion and Appalachian) adopt a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. It was authored during a period that saw electricity demand rising slowly; the sudden growth of data centers has changed things. We don’t live in that world anymore.

Asked about the PJM generation alerts during an appearance in Fincastle on Thursday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said this is evidence of why the Clean Economy Act needs to be “dismantled” because it’s holding back some forms of energy. “We’re growing Virginia and growing power demands,” he said. “We must contruct more generatiing capacity, that is all of the above —everything, all-American, all of the above. That’s finishing the wind project, finishing our solar project, that’s building gas, using clean coal and nuclear.”

Democrats don’t see things that way at all, but neither do many Republicans in Washington. However, there isn’t a two-way argument over energy, it’s more of a three-way argument — Democrats want renewables, some Republicans want “all of the above” but now some Republicans in Washington are ditching “all of the above” for their version of just “some of the above,” which doesn’t really include renewables but is heavy on carbon-based energy and nuclear, both of which take longer to develop. That has created an odd situation where the policies being pursued by some Republicans in Washington would actually reduce power generation in the short term, at a time when power demand is rising.

Let’s walk through all this.

Everything we’re doing as a society demands more power

It’s easy to blame data centers for our power problems, but data centers aren’t alien entities that have landed among us. We are the ones who are using all that data — every time we send an email, doomscroll on social media or stream something from Netflix. President Donald Trump wants to increase the use of artificial intelligence and wants to increase manufacturing; both of those are power-intensive. Before we blame Trump, though, let’s remember that if Kamala Harris had won, she’d have done the same thing. She would have certainly done things differently, but the market forces driving our power demands would still be there, no matter who’s in the White House. There are lots of things we can do to reduce power demands — construct energy-efficient buildings, for one thing — but I have yet to hear a politician say we should ration our Netflix consumption or limit the number of cat videos we post on Facebook. 

Data centers aren’t really the ones creating the power demands; we are. 

Congress is about to reduce our ability to generate more power

We need more power, and we need it quickly. Nobody seems to disagree on that basic point, even though they disagree on which kind of power we should be generating. However, Congress appears on the verge of reducing our ability to generate more power in the short term. That’s not the intent of Republicans pushing the One Big Beautiful Bill; they simply want to retire tax credits for renewables as soon as possible, a combination of philosophical distaste for such incentives, a belief that renewables aren’t a reliable power source and a desire to reconfigure federal spending (which Democrats portray as finding ways to afford lower taxes for the rich). 

Whatever your views on taxes and federal spending, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that doing away with those tax credits would slow power generation at a time when we need to increase it — and therefore, under the law of supply and demand, make power even more expensive. That’s because most of the new power coming onto the grid these days is almost entirely from renewables. If we eliminate or reduce those renewables, we could replace them with the types of energy Republicans prefer — coal, gas, nuclear — but those typically take longer to develop than renewables. Hence, a temporary shortfall between demand and supply, with more potential blackouts and higher electric rates.

Let’s walk through the numbers. The figures for 2024 show that 90% of the new power added to the grid nationally came from renewables — 82% solar, 8% wind. That’s up from 77% of new power in 2023 being renewable, according to the Clean Market Annual Power Report. Whether rightly or wrongly (I’m trying hard here to avoid value judgments and just stick to the numbers), we have built a system where the vast majority of new power being developed is coming from renewables — mostly solar, some wind (and battery storage to store that power for later use). Now, a new administration and a new Congress want to undo all that. Trump has already issued executive orders to shut down much of the offshore wind development that’s been planned. Solar developers warn that the One Big Beautiful Bill will virtually shut down solar development. If so, that’s a lot of projected power that’s going to have to be replaced. Let’s look at those details.

Here in Virginia, Appalachian Power says it has no new energy projects in the works — although it’s exploring a small nuclear reactor in Campbell County. Dominion Energy is adding from 0.5 to 1 gigawatts of solar power in Virginia every year. It’s building a wind facility off the coast of Virginia Beach that is projected to start revving out 2.6 gigawatts by the end of 2026. It’s hoping to add 1 gigawatt of natural gas at a plant in Chesterfield County in 2029 and increase the output of existing natural gas plants by 0.5 gigawatts over “the next few years.” It’s also looking at small nuclear reactors at its existing North Anna nuclear station in Louisa County and at the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, but those are a long way off. (Dominion, by the way, is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.)

There are some other energy projects that don’t seem to fit into these calculations. For instance, Apex Clean Energy of Charlottesville is building the state’s first onshore wind farm on a mountain north of Eagle Rock in Botetourt County; that’s a 79.3-megawatt project whose energy will go to run Google’s data centers in Virginia. (This, by the way, is said to be completely separate from the data center campus that Google is now planning to build in Botetourt’s industrial park at Greenfield.)

There are several observations to be made here:

1. Notice that most of this new power in Virginia is renewable, just as it is nationally. You may like that, you may not like that, but it’s still a fact we need to deal with. 
2. Some of that new power wouldn’t be affected by the Big Beautiful Bill, but some of it would be. The current version calls for those clean energy tax credits to end after 2026. If solar advocates are right that the industry withers without those tax credits, then that’s 0.5 to 1 gigawatts of new solar power we won’t be adding to the grid every year in Virginia. 
3. Virginia’s data centers consumed 4,100 megawatts last year, according to a study by the General Assembly’s research arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. That report also warned that the energy consumption of data centers could triple by 2040 if it’s not restrained. If that’s right, that means we need 12,200 megawatts for data centers — or, another 8,200 megawatts of power. A more recent report put Virginia’s data center megawatt consumption at 4,900 megawatts, so that’s a 19.5% increase since just last year.
4. On Tuesday, when we came closest to running out of power, the grid still had an excess capacity of 4,664 megawatts we could have used. That means if Virginia’s data center load doubles — far less than the warning about tripling — then we don’t have enough power. If data centers triple, then we really don’t have enough power on the grid for everybody. Also, keep in mind that Virginia’s not the only state with data centers, just the one with the most. We also have more on the way: Also on Tuesday, the hottest day of the year so far, Botetourt County announced that Google had bought 312 acres in its industrial park for a data center complex.
5. There are 1,000 megawatts in a gigawatt, so you can see why Dominion’s offshore wind project is a big deal — that’s 2,600 megawatts more to add to the grid. Had that wind farm been in full operation on Tuesday, the grid presumably would have had 7,264 megawatts of capacity leftover. But that still doesn’t get us to the 8,200 additional megawatts we might need. And, again, that’s just our data centers; that’s not counting anybody else’s or all the other things we’re trying to plug in. If 0.5 to 1 new gigawatts of solar every year — or 500 to 1,000 megawatts, if you prefer — go away, we’re likely to miss that. Congress is about to reduce part of our power generation in the short term, while the power that could replace it can only be built long-term.

Let’s take a look:

It’s not easy to replace renewables quickly

If all energy sources were equally available, we could have a different discussion about the relative merits of solar vs. wind vs. gas vs. coal vs. nuclear vs. anything else technology can come up with. They’re not, though. Notice that I’m not talking about carbon emissions or cost or reliability; I’m just looking at how quickly we can get each one into place. 

Solar can be added relatively quickly. Let’s take some random examples: The 100-megawatt Sadler solar project in Greensville County took about a year to complete. The 1.5-megawatt Merck solar project in Rockingham County took about a year to complete. The 120-megawatt Maplewood solar project in Pittsylvania County took about three years. 

No other form of power can go from bare ground to power generation in such a short period of time.

Let’s say you think natural gas is the way to go — and many do. S&P Global reports that the wait time for key parts for gas turbines is “upwards of five to seven years.” That’s not even talking about building the plant; that’s just getting the parts. The demand for gas has created those backlogs, which are getting longer. Dominion proposed its Chesterfield gas project in 2024 and has an estimated 2029 completion date — so five years, which puts it on the shorter end of things. The website Power Engineering reported this year that “If you’re building a project that involves a gas turbine, the largest manufacturers say you should be talking to your OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] as long as seven or eight years out.” Place and order today and wait until 2032 or 2033. You might prefer gas as an energy source, but if you need energy quickly, think of how much solar you could get into operation while you’re still waiting on that gas turbine order. If a new pipeline is required, just remember that the Mountain Valley Pipeline took 10 years and required a literal act of Congress to complete.

Every other form of energy takes even longer. 

The Rocky Forge wind farm in Botetourt was first proposed in 2015; construction didn’t start until this year, and the developer hopes to be up and spinning power by the end of next year. That’s an 11-year timeline. Most of that was spent on permitting and finding a buyer for the power, so the actual construction time is only two years. Rocky Forge is on the long side, but maybe not that much. The Beech Ridge wind farm across the line in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, took at least five years from start to finish. The Amazon Wind Farm US East, near Elizabeth City, North Carolina, took 11 years. 

All that is onshore wind; Dominion’s offshore wind project will have taken 14 years in development by the time it goes into service.

The most recent nuclear plant to open in the United States took 18 years. The industry hopes that small reactors can be built and placed into service on a quicker, cheaper timeline, but we really don’t know yet since no one has ever done that.

As for coal, no one has built a coal plant in the United States since 2013. None are under construction now. There might be some old ones that could be reopened, but many are like the old coal plant at Glen Lyn in Giles County — decommissioned. 

Here’s what all that means: If we decided today that we didn’t want any more solar power and started right away on building other forms of energy, it would take at least five years, and probably longer, to get even the quickest ones (gas) into operation. In the meantime, we wouldn’t be adding any new generation because we just shut down solar. You can see how close we just came to maxing out our power supply. Are we going to stop adding new power demands to the grid while we build out all those other forms of power? Can we guarantee it won’t be even hotter next summer or the summer after that — and require more power to cool things down? The answer to both questions is the same: Of course not.

If we shut down solar and hope we can get these other power sources online, we would enter a five-year period (or longer) in which blackouts are more likely than they are now. That does not seem to be making America greater. Republicans in Virginia contend the Clean Economy Act is limiting our ability to develop energy sources; it’s certainly limiting our ability to develop some energy sources. However, those who want to develop nonrenewable sources of energy, such as gas and nuclear, might find that developing more solar energy in the short term is the only way to bridge that narrowing gap between demand and supply, whether they like that or not.

Put another way, if you support the Clean Economy Act, then that means more solar and wind, especially solar because wind is harder to build in Virginia. However, if you oppose the Clean Economy Act, then you still need to support solar in the interim because, otherwise, we’ll face a period where there’s no new energy being added to the grid while we wait for natural gas plants or nuclear plants to get built. That’s not good news for those in rural Virginia who have become increasingly resistant to large-scale solar projects, and it’s not good news for those who think solar energy is some kind of “voodoo energy” anyway (a phrase I heard at a recent energy conference), but this is the math — math that Congress doesn’t seem to be acknowledging.

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