MORGANTOWN – NextEra Energy Transmission MidAtlantic has applied with the state Public Service Commission for a certificate of public convenience and necessity for its MidAtlantic Resiliency Link Project (MARL).
The Proposed Route would span 107.5 miles starting in Greene County, Pa., and ending at a handoff point – a new 500 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to be constructed by FirstEnergy – in Frederick County, Va, A proposed Woodside Substation is also in Frederick County, Va, but about 11 miles to the east of the eastern terminus of the proposed route handoff point.
About 58.9 miles would cross West Virginia. “The MARL Project was selected by PJM Interconnection to address significant and widespread reliability criteria violations on the Bulk Electric System that serves the PJM Region, including West Virginia, due to load growth and anticipated resource retirements in the PJM Region.”
The proposed route will have a right-of-way corridor of 2,669 acres. NextEra says it will require 452 structures, with an average span length of 1,258 feet. “It will parallel existing transmission lines for 56.4 miles (52.5 percent of the proposed route), and strive to limit impacts on sensitive areas and communities to the extent possible.”
Matt Pawlowski, NextEra’s vice president for development, told the PSC that the estimated cost for the entire route – in 2031 dollars – is about $1.1672 billion. The West Virginia portions of the proposed route are estimated to cost $482,706,000 – including siting, engineering, procurement, construction, financing, administrative, development, and legal costs.
“The MARL Project is a critical 500 kV backbone project needed to maintain the reliability of the PJM grid,” he said.
After running 10.7 miles through Greene and Fayette counties in Pennsylvania, the proposed route enters Monongalia County and runs for 5.9 miles,, with 23.1% of it paralleling existing transmission line.
It enters Mon County north of Maidsville and west of Old Taylortown Road near MP 2.7, then heads in an easterly direction for 3.1 miles through undeveloped private land as a greenfield section of the line before heading north back into Greene County, to avoid Fort Martin Power Plant and its associated infrastructure.
The proposed route returns into Greene and Fayette then turns south back into Mon and Preston counties. In Mon, it heads south across undeveloped private property over Ryan Hollow. At milepost 15, it crosses the existing Hazelton to Lake Lynn 138 kV transmission line to parallel it on the south side for 2.8 miles. It then deviates from the existing line to avoid residential homes before crossing into Preston County near milepost 16.6.
The route spans 15.8 miles across Preston, with 71.6% paralleling existing lines. It runs through Coopers Rock State Forest, leaving the forest at milepost 18 and crossing over Patterson Run and Laural Run streams before paralleling the Hazelton to Lake Lynn transmission line.
The proposed route continues through Preston County, heading southeast and east. It exits West Virginia at milepost 32.4 and enters Maryland.
At milepost 67.9, it reenters West Virginia, passing through Mineral and Hampshire counties for 37.1 miles before entering Frederick County at milepost 105.
NextEra esitmates the right-of-way acreage in Mon County at 143.5, and for Preston, 392.6.
Answer questions from the PSC about the necessity of the project, Pawlowski cited other testimony about the need to enhance grid reliability – without it voltage collapse and blackout could occur. “The voltage collapse and blackout will ultimately impact the Eastern PJM region including West Virginia.”
PJM operates the power grid for 13 states – including West Virginia – and Washington, D.C. MARL and Potomac Edison’s Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek Improvement Project are part of a project series – also called a baseline reliability project – that PJM labels B3800. The PJM Board of Managers approved the project series on Dec. 11, 2023, “to expand the regional transmission system to accommodate electricity demand growth, generator retirements and future capacity needs in the area PJM serves.”
PJM said in its announcement that day in 2023, “The grid enhancements approved Dec. 11 are required to maintain reliability as PJM prepares for significant impacts to the grid from up to 7,500 MW [megawatts] of new data centers to be sited in Virginia and Maryland, combined with widespread effects from the deactivation of more than 11,000 MW of generation. The estimated cost of the combined upgrades is approximately $5 billion.”
PJM said it is required to plan transmission to reliably serve the electricity needs of 65 million customers. Projects in B3800 were solicited through the 2022 Regional Transmission Expansion Planning (RTEP) Window 3, which was administered Feb. 24 to May 31, 2023.
B3800, PJM said, resulted from a competitive process that considered 72 submissions from 10 entities. It combines components of proposals submitted by Dominion (Virginia), FirstEnergy, Exelon (Maryland), PPL Electric Utilities (Pennsylvania), NextEra, Transource (a partnership between American Electric Power and Evergy) and PSEG (New Jersey). The transmission projects were also chosen to be scalable as needed to meet additional electricity generation and/or demand in the future.
