Residents of Loudoun Valley Estates attend the Loudoun County School Board meeting to ask them to be a participant in an SCC hearing about proposed transmission lines in their neighborhood. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)
As the demand to pump power to energy-thirsty data centers concentrated in Northern Virginia swells, a debate about where to put towering high-powered transmission lines in populated areas has put one Loudoun County community on the defensive.
Dominion Energy is working to bring a reliability loop of power to the so-called Data Center Alley in Ashburn. Two routes that will connect substations to over 100 data centers in the area are already approved and in the process of being built. To complete the last portion of the loop, the utility, state regulators, local leaders and community members must determine which route is most palatable for the more developed areas of town.
A group of neighbors in Loudoun Valley Estates in Ashburn have banded together to try and prevent the 165 foot, 500kv high-voltage transmission lines from being built in their backyards as part of one of the routes proposed by Dominion. One homeowner said she was blindsided by the new route being added to the proposal this year, which moved the transmission line from the Rock Ridge High School grounds up the nearby hill, cutting her backyard in half…