Dominion Energy got a one-two punch Friday from state regulators: A report said the monopoly utility is holding as much as $133 million it would be required to return to customers but for the 2015 rate freeze law. Another ruling severely curtails a pricey plan to recoup from customers the cost of putting more power lines underground. The line burial decision could raise the ire of state lawmakers who have supported Dominion’s plan.
In 2015, the Virginia State Corporation Commission rejected as too expensive Dominion’s $2 billion plan to bury about 4,000 miles of outage-prone tap lines, which would have cost ratepayers about $6 billion over the life of the project. Last year, the commission approved a scaled-down pilot, allowing the utility to recover $122.5 million from ratepayers to bury about 412 miles of lines.
In the meantime, the General Assembly passed and Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed a law instructing the commission, which regulates utilities, to cast a more favorable eye on undergrounding projects, directing that it should presume they are in the public interest and that the associated costs are “reasonably and prudently incurred, “ though that presumption is “rebuttable.”
