The grid reliability watchdog escalated to a rare Level 3 alert on data centers — its second one this year. An Ohio appeals magistrate just recommended killing the lawsuit blocking two industrial waste wells two miles from Marietta's drinking water. And Virginia's governor keeps saying data centers should pay their fair share without endorsing the bill that would actually do it.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation — the body Congress put in charge of keeping the lights on across the U.S. and Canada — issued a Level 3 alert on Monday after data centers kept disconnecting from the grid in ways utilities couldn't predict. Level 3 alerts are a meaningful step up the ladder: where Level 2 warnings ask utilities to consider action, Level 3 alerts require specific steps in response to an immediate problem and the responses are tracked. They're the strongest tool NERC has short of writing a new mandatory reliability standard. The last Level 3 came a year ago, on solar, wind, and battery resources tripping offline during grid disturbances.
NERC said its Level 2 warning last year produced replies from utilities admitting they didn't have procedures to handle the load swings. Every grid-registered entity has to acknowledge the new alert by May 11 and respond by August 3.
Ben Inskeep, program director at the Citizens Action Coalition, told Utility Dive the underlying problem could “become quite severe — to the point of creating widespread blackouts.” Andrew Webber, who runs Digital Power Optimization and builds data centers, said getting the data-center industry to genuinely engage with grid-reliability work will take years.
The Ohio Valley sits inside PJM Interconnection, which announced separately last week that it's reviewing 800-plus new generation applications — the first new batch of approvals in four years. Whatever rules NERC and the utilities write over the next three months will shape what gets built in eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia.
Source: Robert Walton / Utility Dive.
A Franklin County Court of Appeals magistrate recommended last week that judges dismiss Buckeye Environmental Network's lawsuit against DeepRock Disposal Solutions's two new Class II injection wells in Washington County. The wells would sit roughly two miles from the city of Marietta's municipal water system and source-water protection area. If the appeals court adopts the recommendation — which judges often do — DeepRock can drill in the coming months.
The case turns on which version of Ohio's waste-well rules the state had to apply. DeepRock applied in late 2021, a month before stricter rules took effect. Ohio didn't actually finish reviewing or issue the permits until 2025. The magistrate said DeepRock had a “vested and substantial” interest in the looser pre-2022 rules. Buckeye Environmental Network said the new rules would have required denying the permits.
The contrast with how Ohio treats solar is sharp enough that an attorney involved in the case made it the lead point. A single township trustee's flipped vote was enough for the Ohio Power Siting Board to deny a permit last month for a 94-megawatt solar project. The Ohio Supreme Court is currently considering whether local opposition was sufficient grounds to deny the Kingwood Solar permit. Marietta and several Washington County townships passed resolutions and asked Gov. Mike DeWine for a moratorium in March. The wells move forward anyway.
"Washington County has been forced to accept over 71 million barrels of oil and gas wastewater since 2010,” said Bev Reed, an Appalachian community organizer with Buckeye Environmental Network. “How much waste can one county take before someone looks at this and says 'enough is enough?'"
Source: Reposted from Canary Media via the Ohio Capital Journal.
On April 27, while Gov. Abigail Spanberger was in Roanoke signing twelve bipartisan workforce bills at her hundred-day mark, a group of Botetourt County residents drove over to confront her about Virginia's data-center sales-tax exemption. The exemption is the largest economic-development incentive Virginia operates. It accounted for 79% of all of Virginia's incentive spending in fiscal year 2024 and an estimated $1.6 billion in foregone annual revenue.
Sen. Louise Lucas's Senate budget would end the exemption on January 1, 2027, and redirect the recovered money to transportation, education, and local priorities. The House budget would keep it. The standoff has stalled the entire $212 billion biennial budget.
Spanberger has now said the same three things since March: that data centers should “pay their fair share,” that the legislature should keep talking, and that she has “significant concerns” about retroactively changing existing contracts. She has not endorsed the Senate position. On April 16, she amended SB 253 and HB 1393 — the cost-shift bills by Sen. Lucas and Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling — by stripping out the part that shifts the costs and softening the Corporation Commission language. Bill patrons and Dominion Energy both said the changes weakened the bills. On April 22, the General Assembly rejected most of the amendments and sent the original bills back to her desk.
Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury concluded that “fair share” in this rhetoric “has the shape of a position without its substance. It commits the governor to no dollar figure and no timeline."
Source: Graham Moomaw / Virginia Mercury.
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