Battery Storage Bills Make a Return After Previous Vetoes

The Virginia Clean Economy Act pushes the commonwealth towards a complete renewable energy portfolio in a few short decades. One challenge the law’s opponents often cite is that solar energy is not as easily dispatchable as gas power.

Dominion’s Scott Solar pilot battery project in Powhatan. (Courtesy of Dominion)

With energy storage technology becoming more mainstream, VCEA proponents are aiming to ramp up the state’s investment in them and proposing bills to that effect to be debated in the 2026 legislative session, starting next week.

Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax, one of the original sponsors of the VCEA, announced Wednesday he’s bringing back his bill to revise the law to increase the amount of battery storage Virginia’s major utility companies will need to invest in by certain benchmark years laid out in the law. A dual bill will be filed in the Senate by Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond.

“In order to meet the challenges our commonwealth faces, we must do more. More than last year’s bill required. Virginia should be leading, not trailing,” said Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax.

Under the current law, Dominion Energy is required to petition the State Corporation Commission for 2,700 MW of battery storage by 2036, and Appalachian Power Company is required to petition for 400 MW. Sullivan said that the bill he is bringing this year will “significantly” increase that amount. At the time of the press conference on the bill on Wednesday, the final numbers had not been published.

The goal of the increase is to bring down costs through generating power during the cheaper times of day and dispatching the stored power when it is most needed. The bill will also have requirements for amounts of short-range storage and long-range storage batteries, which are usually separated by above and below six to eight hours of storage.

The cost to build the batteries, like any energy infrastructure, will be added to customer bills through riders. Sullivan stressed that the cost of these batteries is much less than the cost to build fossil fuel plants or even small nuclear reactors. He also pointed out that the batteries could be placed on the grid much faster than the alternatives.

“The numbers are clear,” Sullivan said. “… the levelized cost of storage is way below any other form of generation of power. So we will have to spend money on better storage? Yes. It will save us from spending more money on other forms of generation.”

The bill also directs the SCC to evaluate the projects to ensure the most cost-effective methods as well as adjust safety measures to align with national standards.

Conservatives have bristled at the idea of mandating additional storage as the technology is still fairly new and expensive, while Democrats emphasized that costs have been reduced in recent years.

Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, said he supports more gas power plants as they are able to produce more megawatts than an average solar and storage project.

“I am for all of the above,” Kilgore said, echoing outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s energy generation plan for the state. “But we have to be realistic about the fact that in the commonwealth, there is not enough solar capacity to meet our needs over the next two to five years, and that is what we need to be more concerned about.”

Dominion recently petitioned the SCC for its largest investment in solar and battery storage projects to date, with 11 projects totaling over $2.9 billion. Appalachian Power has had some challenges with storage facilities after it canceled one project in an outage-prone area due to hurricane damage.

Another bill that is being filed by Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, directs the SCC to take stock of where existing transmission lines are not being fully utilized at power plants, such as gas peaker plants that don’t run at full capacity most of the year. Locations that are identified to have additional energy capacity space would allow for solar and battery storage to be placed at the power plants to put more renewable power on the grid.

“We can use the assets that we have, like the transmission system, much more efficiently. So we take advantage of what we’ve already spent as a society, and we use it better (through) batteries,” said John Zahurancik with Fluence, an Arlington-based battery storage company.

Each of the bills will be debated during the regular legislative session that begins on Jan. 14.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Sullivan’s bill would increase energy storage in the state, including but not limited to battery storage.

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