West virginia

Courtesy of Stop PATH WV:

In December 2023, PJM Interconnection approved a new 500kV transmission line from a cluster of coal-fired power plants in northern West Virginia to Virginia's data center alley.  That line is assigned to Florida-based NextEra Transmission (Greene County PA, Mon, Preston, Mineral and Hampshire Counties WV, Garrett and Allegheny Counties, MD portions) and Ohio-based FirstEnergy (Frederick, Clarke, and Loudoun Counties, VA, Frederick County, MD, and Jefferson County, WV portions).  

In January 2025, PJM recommended a second new transmission line from a different generation station in south-central West Virginia.  PJM's latest proposal is a 765kV transmission line (the largest AC transmission line in the country) from the John Amos coal-fired power station in Putnam County, WV to Virginia's data center alley.

This new 765kV line is proposed by a joint partnership between FirstEnergy, American Electric Power and Dominion Energy.  It is proposed to cross 14 counties in West Virginia (Putnam, Kanawha, Roane, Calhoun, Braxton, Lewis, Upshur, Barbour, Tucker, Preston, Grant, Hardy, Hampshire and Jefferson) 3 counties in Virginia (Clarke, Frederick and Loudoun) and end in Frederick County, Maryland at a new substation north of Point of Rocks. ​

Both of these new transmission lines are proposed to parallel and expand the current transmission line corridor that stretches from west to east across Jefferson County and looks like this.  The existing 500kV line is on the left, and the existing 138kV line is on the right.

Locally here in Jefferson County, the first 500kV line project is proposed to tear down the existing 138kV transmission line and replace it with a combined 500kV line with 138kV underbuild (double circuit) on an expanded right-of-way.  The existing 500kV line is going to remain unchanged.  The second 765kV transmission line is proposed to cut a new corridor at least 200 ft. wide next to the new double 500kV configuration.

PJM is planning to open another window this summer for additional transmission lines to serve Virginia's data centers.  How many data center extension cords through Jefferson County are enough?