By Peter Cary Contributing Writer: Prince William Times, Jan 15, 2025
Some hoped the Possum Point power plant, located on scenic bluffs above the Potomac River, might shutter over the next several years as Virginia weaned itself from fossil fuels, as charged by law. But now, that’s not happening, due in large part to data centers’ enormous electricity demands. Instead of closing, Dominion Energy recently released plans to crank more power out of the 75-year-old facility. The plan to modernize gas and steam turbines at Possum Point was shared with the Prince William Board of County Supervisors last month. It was part of a briefing on how Dominion plans to cope with a projected 500% hike in data center power demand by 2039.
That news was met with dismay from some who live near the plant and hoped the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 would be the death knell for Possum Point. The law calls for the state to switch to renewable power generation by 2045. “I’m very disappointed,” said Hilda Barg, a former county supervisor for the Woodbridge District who lives about a mile north of the plant. She said she could recall that, when the plant burned coal, “literally, it rained black.” Barg said the public at the time hoped the plant would close or that, at least, it would stop burning coal. That it did in 2003.
Since then, the plant has burned oil and natural gas. In 2020, the passage of the Clean Economy Act, coupled with concerns over chemical leachate from coal ash stored on the site, brought discussion over what would happen if the plant shut down. Barg said that, at one point, “we were given hopes of how they were going to have trails and a park there.”
Dean Naujoks, the Potomac Riverkeeper who battled Dominion for years over coal ash contamination of local waters, briefly served on a county task force that discussed Possum Point’s closing. “There were different aspects of the task force, but one of them was, what is this thing going to look like once they retire Possum Point? And what are they going to do with it?” he said. However, Naujoks said he never saw anything from Dominion Energy that indicated the plant would eventually close. Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said none exist. “We have no plans” to retire the current generators, he said.
The Possum Point Power Station was built in 1948 on a point of land where Quantico Creek enters the west bank of the Potomac River near Dumfries. It’s called “possum point” because the area looks like an opossum’s head on the map. Over the years, the plant has operated six generation units. The two that burned coal were closed in 2003. Two others were converted from coal to gas but then were closed in 2019. A fifth unit that burned low-sulfur oil was shuttered in 2021.
That left only one generating section, known as “unit 6,” which burns natural gas. It has two combustion turbines that generate electricity. They also produce hot exhaust that powers a steam turbine. The setup is called a “combined cycle generator” and is more efficient and lower in emissions than gas turbines alone. Dominion is upgrading the whole setup. It’s adding 20 megawatts of power output to the gas turbines, which will add 14 more megawatts to the output of the steam turbine. The steam turbine is also being improved to produce another 10 megawatts. All told, the upgrades will add 44 megawatts to unit 6’s existing 573 megawatts. Considering the need for more power driven by data centers, the bump is modest; 44 megawatts is about enough to power one data center. Separately, Possum Point also has six small combustion turbines that run on diesel fuel and generate an additional 90 megawatts.
Dominion officials told county supervisors the upgrades were part of improvements being made to several plants to generate more power. The utility’s 2024 Integrated Resource Plan, released in December, prescribed building 70% more gas turbine capacity in the next 15 years to cope with an “unprecedented” power demand from data centers.
Environmentalists are not happy about the expanded reliance on fossil fuels. “I see why they are doing it, but it doesn’t seem to be consistent with law or policy,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
Dominion is also still working on the safe disposal of 4.5 million tons of coal ash at Possum Point, which accumulated over the decades it burned coal. The ash was stored in ponds and partially buried onsite, as regulations allowed at the time. In 2022, Dominion applied for permits to build a 43-acre modern landfill at Possum Point to permanently contain the ash, which is allowed under state and federal law. Those applications are moving slowly, and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality says it expects the public participation part of the process to begin this year.
Comment: This is a local story that caught my eye. When commuting to DIA by train, I would pass the Possum Point Power Plant soon after I left the Quantico VRE station. The name in big white letters struck me as it seemed as uniquely southern. Back then it was still a coal powered station. The coal piles and nasty-assed coal ash ponds so close to the Potomac River struck me as an accident waiting to happen. Before I retired the plant converted to oil and gas. The coal piles disappeared, but the coal ash ponds remained. They’re still there contaminating the ground water.
Given the data centers sprouting up in Stafford, I’m not at all surprised the Possum Point Plant is still generating electricity and is looking at expanding its generating capacity. If we’re going to have data centers, we also need power plants, lots of them. There’s talk of installing a modular reactor at the Lake Anna Nuclear Power Plant. There is a big offshore wind project down near Norfolk under construction. It is continuing in spite of Trump’s hatred for wind power. This isn’t just a Virginia problem. I think the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant is going to be fired up to support nearby data centers. I hope that Stargate Project includes cranking up some power plants, gas or nuclear. Coal is just economically inefficient… and it’s not clean nor beautiful.
There was a similar coal fired power plant on the bank of the Potomac just north of Old Town Alexandria that closed in 2012 after a sustained campaign by the city. The plant is still there on very expensive riverfront property. Pollution mitigation efforts continue to this day. The City of Alexandria has plans to demolish the plant and redevelop the site as an integral part of Old Town Alexandria.
https://thezebra.org/2023/05/19/potomac-river-generating-station
TTG
Yes, data centers are huge consumers of electricity.
But at least they largely perform a socially useful function.
But not entirely, because
a considerable part of
those data centers demand for electricity
comes from cryptocurrency mining.
The Energy Cost of Cryptocurrency
https://www.energystar.gov/products/data_center_equipment/cryptocurrency
The financial cost of producing all that electricity is somehow borne by those who use cryptocurrency.
The environmental cost of producing all that electricity is borne by all of us.
Crypto has been moving from “proof of work” to “proof of stake” for updating the block chain to get away from the mining issue.
But, but, but uploads “into the cloud” were supposed to be about saving the planet, weren’t they? And who was the evil marketing genius that first used the word “cloud” for those power-gobbling repositories of information? And whose information? Are they using it to build dossiers on the buying habits of you and I and our children and grandchildren? Or something even more sinister? Big Brother come to life, IMHO they are worse than Big Plastic and Big Pharma. Or do I need to shed my aluminum foil hat?