![\"Gov.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/span_storm.png\")
Gov. Abigail Spanberger in a video about the storm. Screenshot.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Republicans got a chance to make the case that renewable energy isn\u2019t reliable enough to get us through a winter storm.<\/p>\n
Last Saturday, as the storm was about to hit, the grid operator for Virginia and 12 other states plus the District of Columbia warned <\/a>the U.S. Department of Energy that it expected to hit a record demand for winter-time power. In response, the Energy Department issued an order that allowed power plants on the PJM grid to waive normal environmental rules and \u201coperate up to their maximum generation output levels\u201d through Jan. 31.<\/p>\n Early the next morning, Mark Christie, the former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and now director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy at the College of William & Mary, checked the website<\/a> that shows what energy is on the electric grid at that moment and posted this on social media:<\/p>\n \u201cAt 5 am today, in the midst of the winter storm, the generation mix in PJM was GAS: 40%, NUKE 28%, COAL 23%, WIND 4.5%, SOLAR 0. So dispatchables: 91%. The claim that VA or any PJM state can run a modern grid without dispatchable gen is reckless. Facts are stubborn things.\u201d<\/p>\n That afternoon, as the storm continued, PJM notified at least some utilities that they might need to \u201creduce electric load to maintain system integrity.\u201d One of those utilities was the Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative, which then sent out an advisory that \u201cthere is the possibility that SVEC will be required to shut off power\u201d for certain areas in Frederick County, Page County, Shenandoah and Winchester.<\/p>\n That \u201clarge-scale shutoff\u201d never happened (neither did the record demand) but the mere threat was enough to prompt one of the Shenandoah Valley\u2019s state legislators \u2014 state Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham County \u2014 to take to the Senate floor on Monday to warn<\/a> that Virginia had a power crisis. Namely, \u201cwe just don\u2019t have enough generation power in Virginia and it\u2019s self-inflicted by the Virginia Clean Economy Act\u201d \u2014 the 2020 legislation that mandates the state\u2019s two largest utilities transition to a carbon-free power grid by 2050.<\/p>\n This is not a new concern. Democrats and Republicans have been jostling since at least 2020 over whether a carbon-free grid is desirable, or even possible, and what type of energy we ought to be developing. Christie, who served on the State Corporation Commission, the Virginia panel that regulates utilities, before he joined FERC, has long insisted that wind and solar can\u2019t replace natural gas and coal because they\u2019re not \u201cdispatchable\u201d \u2014 meaning something you can summon up whenever you need it.<\/p>\n \u201cMy point is energy policy has to be based on facts,\u201d he said during a telephone interview. \u201cWe have to go on the facts and the facts are the physics. The physics doesn\u2019t care about your legislation. We can\u2019t do it without the generation mix you see on the dashboard now.\u201d<\/p>\n Christie\u2019s numbers above came just before dawn, when the night is coldest and demand is often highest \u2014 and obviously there\u2019s no solar energy available then. However, I\u2019m writing these words on a sunny day and the PJM dashboard put the energy mix shortly after noon at natural gas 40.7%, nuclear 25.2%, coal 22.8%, solar 7%, oil 1.5%, wind 1% and everything else lower. <\/p>\n At their height, though, the two main renewables added up to just 8% of the power on the grid. On another day, I found they rose as high as 10.8%. That does seem to raise a question: Can we realistically expect to build enough solar farms and wind farms to replace the 60%-plus part of the grid that\u2019s powered by fossil fuels? And what do we do at night \u2014 especially cold winter nights \u2014 when solar panels aren\u2019t producing any power at all?<\/p>\n That\u2019s the question that animates most debates over energy, although there\u2019s nothing like a polar vortex to sharpen the point.<\/p>\n The general answer tends to come in two parts \u2014 more nuclear power (although not everyone on the pro-renewable side of the ledger agrees with this) and more battery storage, which is our subject today.<\/p>\n Battery storage is exactly what it sounds like \u2014 big honkin\u2019 batteries that can store energy for use later. Battery storage is already here and in use across Virginia \u2014 Danville and Martinsville are among the places that have such facilities. Power prices fluctuate throughout the day; the batteries take in power when it\u2019s cheap and then inject it back into the grid when power is more expensive. That can be any type of power, renewable or otherwise. As they relate to solar, they\u2019d store up solar power by day and then use it at night.<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s the catch: Those batteries don\u2019t last very long. (Anyone who\u2019s ever reached for their flashlight during a power outage and discovered the batteries have gone bad know this already, just at the D battery level.) The general standard is they can hold two to four hours\u2019 worth of power. \u201cWe\u2019re in a 5-day polar vortex,\u201d Christie said Wednesday. \u201cHow is a 2-4 hour battery going to keep lights and heat pumps on?\u201d<\/p>\n He sees battery storage as a useful complement to other forms of energy, but not a substitute. \u201cWe are not ready from a technological standpoint,\u201d Christie said, to rely on battery storage. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the technology to run a 13-state grid and keep people from freezing in the dark\u201d without relying on dispatchable fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Energy debates are more complicated than they might seem. Sen. Danica Roem, D-Prince William County, told fellow senators that our energy needs wouldn\u2019t be as high if it weren\u2019t for energy-guzzling data centers. They accounted for about 26% of Virginia\u2019s electricity in 2024, according to the Apollo Academy economy site<\/a>, although their share of the overall PJM grid may still be in single digits.<\/a> Nonetheless, they\u2019re here, and are using power, so how do we keep the lights on while we transition the grid?<\/p>\n The Democratic leaders in the General Assembly most involved with pushing renewable energy agree that we won\u2019t retire natural gas anytime soon. \u201cWe are clearly going to need natural gas for a while,\u201d said state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, via text message. \u201cBut the question is what is the right mixture of supply. And gas is more expensive and timely to produce. We should do what we can to get other sources online and at a cheaper cost to ratepayers.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County and chair of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (which is the awful acronym CEUR, pronounced \u201csewer\u201d), was more succinct about battery storage: \u201cIt would help.\u201d<\/p>\n The question of just how much is unclear because, with the transition from fossil fuels to other forms of energy, we\u2019re venturing into uncharted territory. My purpose today is not to rehash the usual debates over which form of energy is best or most reliable or cheapest, but to look at what\u2019s possible. Technology is evolving every day; the smartphone in your pocket has more computing power than what the Apollo 11 astronauts used to fly to the moon and back. Just because battery storage now lasts 2-4 hours doesn\u2019t mean it will forever be stuck at that range. So what\u2019s possible?\u00a0<\/p>\n The Vermont-based Clean Energy Group says t<\/a>he duration of utility-scale batteries has doubled over the past eight years. \u201cIf these trends continue, new energy storage additions should reach an average duration of 8 hours sometime around 2035,\u201d it says. That seems a long way away, but it\u2019s also still 15 years before the Virginia Clean Economy Act deadlines.<\/p>\n Research is underway around the world to extend those times. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $505 million for research into long-duration batteries, defined as 10 hours or more \u2014 which, in theory, would be long enough to get us through long winter nights and then recharge the next day. As with many things these days, the country investing the money in long-duration storage research (and deployment) is not the United States, it\u2019s China.<\/p>\n China currently has almost three times as much battery storage deployed as the United States, according to Visual Capitalist<\/a> \u2014 215.5 gigawatt hours to our 82.1. We should not mistake China for a \u201cgreen\u201d economy, though. Its single biggest energy source remains coal. China is simply investing in everything, energy-wise. Still, China is leading the United States in a technology that we will need if we\u2019re intent on retiring fossil fuels (something that not everyone is, of course).<\/p>\n There are many things we don\u2019t know yet. We don\u2019t know how quickly battery storage technology will evolve and we don\u2019t know how long can those batteries can be made to last. A harder thing to gauge is public acceptance: How much will people trust a technology that must be recharged every day? We don\u2019t seem to mind having to fill up our cars with gas but will people feel uneasy if their utilities must essentially do the same? That trust may be harder to achieve than any technological breakthrough; technology changes but human nature doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Finally, battery storage presents some of the same challenges that other energy projects do: Will people want one nearby? Just this week, the town of Clarksville in Mecklenburg County voted down a proposed battery storage site. One reason China has a lot more battery storage is that people there don\u2019t get a chance to vote on what they want.<\/p>\n On Thursday afternoon, when temperatures remained below freezing and the forecast called for another storm, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that\u2019s charged by the federal government with promoting the reliability of the grid, issued a warning of its own: \u201cThe continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increasesrisks of supply shortfalls during winter months,\u201d the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in a 181-page report.<\/a> The group classified the PJM grid, of which Virginia is part, as being at \u201chigh risk\u201d of having energy demand exceed supply from 2026-30: \u201cCurrent projections for resource additions do not keep pace with escalating demand forecasts and expected generator retirements.\u201d That\u2019s technical language for black-outs and brown-outs.<\/p>\n Both sides on Virginia\u2019s energy debate agree we need more power, they just disagree over what kind. And some believe we keep to slow down, or even pause, data center development until energy production can catch up. The challenge for those on the green side is assuring people that renewables really can get us through a winter storm.<\/p>\n If you want more on the weather, sign up for Kevin Myatt\u2019s weather newsletter. If you want more on politics, sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. Sign up for those and more here:<\/p>\n \n\tRelated stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The winter storm last weekend left Virginia covered in ice, snow and political talking points. Virginia\u2019s new Democratic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141,122045],"class_list":["post-265558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-type-8-dwayne-co"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mark-Christie.jpg\")
Mark Christie. Courtesy of FERC.<\/p>\n![\"Part](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/svec.png\")
Part of the advisory from the Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/pjm_th.png\")
The energy mix on the PJM grid Thursday afternoon. Screenshot.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Danville-VA-BESS-1_Lightshift-Energy-1024x683.jpg\")
The battery energy storage system on Monument Street in Danville. Courtesy of Lightshift Energy.<\/p>\n