Dominion Energy is planning to build an approximately 70-mile, 500-kilovolt power line through part of the Fredericksburg area, and the public has a chance to comment on it at a meeting this week.
The transmission line, called the Kraken Loop, would go through Louisa, Spotsylvania, Caroline, Stafford and Fauquier counties. It would connect the existing North Anna Substation to the proposed Kraken Substation in Caroline and ultimately tie into the proposed Yeat Substation in Fauquier.
As part of determining potential routes for the line, Dominion says it will conduct surveys to identify environmental, cultural and historic resources, as well as any threatened and endangered species.
According to Dominion, public input will help refine potential routes before they are reviewed by the State Corporation Commission, which has the final say on the project.
The power company held a community meeting on the work last week in Stafford, and another meeting will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday at Madison Elementary School (9075 Chance Place, Ruther Glen, VA 22546).
Dominion also will hold a second round of community meetings in the first quarter of next year.
The project, slated to be filed with the SCC in the second quarter of 2026, may see the line routed along existing Dominion right-of-way corridors. A main discussion point about energy in the Fredericksburg region lately concerns the amount of power that data centers use — and whether that will make electricity bills rise.
But the Kraken Loop is not just for data centers, facilities that house computer systems used for data storage and processing, Dominion spokesman Craig Carper wrote in an email to the Free Press.
“While data centers are one factor, they’re not the only driver,” Carper wrote. “We’re seeing increased demand from a range of sources — including the growth of electric vehicles, greater reliance on air conditioning as temperatures rise and the retirement of older power plants in the region.”
Overall, he wrote, Dominion expects the amount of electricity customers use to roughly double by 2038.
“To reliably meet that demand and maintain a resilient grid, we need to build additional transmission lines and generation resources across Virginia,” Carper wrote.
Even if data centers aren’t the sole factor in the need for more transmission lines in this area, Protect Stafford, a data center watchdog group, wants to ensure that residents know about the Kraken project.
Protect Stafford President Erin Sanzero said last week that the organization isn’t so much interested in taking a stance on the work as much as it just wants people to be aware of it so they can decide what they think for themselves.
The idea is not to try to stop the Kraken project, said Sanzero, but to get the best-case version of it.
“And, so I think for our sake, we want people to be aware because if there’s anything that Dominion could, would or might do differently to make … to honor residents’ requests, that’s going to have to happen through public feedback,” she said. “And if the residents aren’t aware, then they’re going to get what they get, and we want, as always, an aware and engaged and educated public who can advocate for their concerns.”
Once infrastructure like the Kraken Loop is in place, though, Sanzero said, it could open the door to more data center applications on land that wasn’t necessarily desirable without the ready access to power.
“And there’s big parcels out in western Hartwood,” she said.
