Valley Link’s 765 kV Northern Line Is PATH Reborn — Aimed at Loudoun Data Centers, Critics Say

RICHMOND / LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — A roughly 260-mile, 765-kilovolt transmission line from West Virginia into Maryland — the northern spine of PJM’s Valley Link portfolio — is being pitched as new reliability steel. Loudoun resident Theresa Ghiorzi told the PJM Board of Managers, FERC, and Virginia’s State Corporation Commission it is something older: a reboot of the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH, that died in 2012, now aimed at uncontrolled data center load that Democratic majorities in Loudoun spent years voting into existence.

In a February 14, 2025 letter opposing Project 262 in PJM’s 2024 Window 1 slate — Proposal #708, a 765 kV line about 261 miles long — Ghiorzi urged Chairman Mark Takahashi and then-President and CEO Manu Asthana to reject the project. She argued FERC Order 1000 requires competitive bidding, but Project 262 arrived as a joint proposal from three incumbent transmission owners — FirstEnergy, Transource (an AEP affiliate), and Dominion — that collaborated rather than competed. American Electric Power, parent of Transource and of Appalachian Power, has pursued an east-coast 765 kV “superhighway” since the late 1960s; PATH was part of that Project Mountaineer lineage. Proposal #708, she wrote, is essentially the same PATH corridor defeated by historic opposition more than a decade ago.

The generation story matches the corridor story. Ghiorzi identifies Appalachian Power’s John Amos plant in Putnam County, West Virginia — commissioned in September 1971, already past a typical coal-plant lifespan — as the power source for the northern line. A West Virginia Public Broadcasting report she cites said Amos lost about $49 million between March 2023 and February 2024. The demand end, in her filings, is Loudoun County’s data center boom. New in-state generation, she argues, would be the least-cost answer; Dominion is Virginia’s dominant generation builder. Instead, incumbents propose moving power from an aging, money-losing coal plant across three states into Data Center Alley.

Across Virginia, the majority of votes placing data centers into zoning maps and by-right pathways have come primarily from Democrats. Loudoun’s Democratic-dominated Board of Supervisors kept approving and grandfathering campuses — including the March 18, 2025 9–0 vote to let older industrial rezones add data center as a by-right use — even as residents begged them to slow down. That local policy created the load Valley Link now claims as regional reliability need.

Cost and schedule arguments fill the same letter. Ghiorzi says the bid underprices the line by 30 to 40 percent by relying on guyed-wire V-lattice towers that are roughly 61 percent the cost of self-supporting structures and are unlikely to clear agricultural or residential permitting. Switching structure types would blow up the estimate; an inflation-adjusted PATH comparison, she writes, lands near $2.4 billion. The bid lacked cost caps and inflation protections — a “blank check” at ratepayer expense, topped with incentive rates. Constructability materials called a December 2029 in-service date “aggressive.” She notes PJM already slipped a related 500 kV MARL alternate reroute from 2029 to 2032, and that the last West Virginia–Virginia 765 kV build — Wyoming–Jackson Ferry, about 90 miles — took roughly 15 years from early permitting to 2006 energization. Expecting three owners with no 765 kV construction experience to finish 261 miles by 2029, she wrote, is delusional; completion before 2040 is more realistic.

The Organization of PJM States, Inc., later told FERC that Valley Link’s March 14, 2025 formula-rate and incentive filing covers a roughly $3 billion portfolio of two 765 kV lines and four new substations from PJM’s 2024 RTEP Window 1. OPSI — with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission among supporting members — urged careful review of whether customers actually benefit from the incentive stack. Ghiorzi’s own FERC protest in docket ER25-1633 frames the northern line as PATH all over again: same John Amos start, same general routing toward Maryland, more land-invasive structures, and the risk that ratepayers again eat abandoned-plant costs the way PATH left a roughly $250 million tab after no state ever approved the line.

Valley Link is not a local wiring job for Lovettsville or Ashburn alone. It is the interstate answer to a data center inventory Democratic supervisors grew on purpose — and a second bite at a 765 kV apple ratepayers already paid to kill once.

Email the Board of Supervisors at:
Phyllis J. Randall (Chair, At-Large) – Phyllis.Randall@loudoun.gov,
Michael R. Turner (Vice Chair, Ashburn District) – Mike.Turner@loudoun.gov,
Juli E. Briskman (Algonkian District) – Juli.Briskman@loudoun.gov,
Sylvia R. Glass (Broad Run District) – Sylvia.Glass@loudoun.gov,
Caleb Kershner (Catoctin District) – caleb.kershner@loudoun.gov,
Matthew F. Letourneau (Dulles District) – Matt.Letourneau@loudoun.gov,
Kristen C. Umstattd (Leesburg District) – Kristen.Umstattd@loudoun.gov,
Laura A. TeKrony (Little River District) – Laura.TeKrony@loudoun.gov,
Koran Saines (Sterling District) – Koran.Saines@loudoun.gov

Email the Loudoun County School Board:
April Chandler, april.chandler@lcps.org,
Anne Donohue, anne.donohue@lcps.org,
Deana Griffiths, deana.griffiths@lcps.org,
Ross Svenson, ross.stevenson@lcps.org,
Kari LaBell, kari.labell@lcps.org,
Jon Pepper, jonathon.pepper@lcps.org,
Lauren Shernoff, lauren.shernoff@lcps.org,
Sumera Rashid, sumera.rashid@lcps.org,
Amy Riccardi, amy.riccardi@lcps.org,