PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia is reducing its carbon footprint one solar panel at a time. Now generating roughly 7 GW of solar power, it ranks No. 8 nationally among California and Texas, according to SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper.
“In the Commonwealth, we the solar and storage industry, have invested several billion dollars in Virginia already,” says Ross Hopper. “So I will say kind of with your data center growth and with the growth of the population and with electricity rising, the job growth, the economic investment and the sort of electricity security will continue to grow.”
With federal energy policies from Washington D.C. seemingly in favor of a pro-fossil fuel economy, Virginia’s overall clean energy growth could take a hit.
“At a time when we need every source of electricity to compete with our adversaries and to stay at the forefront of the AI boom, to sort of put some off to the side is not a good American energy dominance policy,” she says. “The policy that is so critical to the demand is called the investment tax credit.”
The SEIA President and CEO says grid reliability is paramount at this time, citing this as the most significant surge in electricity demand since WWII.
“Grid reliability, what does that even mean,” says Ross Hopper. “It means that your power stays on. In the case of an outage, you have your own system. So as the power goes out, the grid goes down, you as a homeowner, you as a business have resiliency.”
So how does solar energy truly benefit Virginia’s residential communities?
“In terms of the community, having those distributed assets, my home and then you and the neighbor across the street really puts less pressure on the grid and benefits all of us, both in terms of the ability to deliver electrons with the price,” she says. “It helps keep the price down, which is so critical right now.”
At present, Virginia can power approximately 760,000 homes. The total capacity is projected to double to 13.4 GW in 2029.