Markell calls power line cost plan ‘patently unfair’
Gov. Jack Markell has urged the region’s power grid managers to reconsider plans for assigning the cost of a major new power line, warning that electric bills in Delaware could jump unfairly.
The 230-kilovolt line would allow the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear plant, owned by New Jersey-based Public Service Electric and Gas, to operate at full power with greater stability and fewer complications.
Benefits would mainly go to PJM’s regional electric energy coordinating system, which extends across parts of 13 states and utilities that serve 61 million people.
Markell in a letter to Howard Schneider, chairman of PJM’s board of managers, said it’s unfair Delaware consumers would have to cover more than $100 million of costs “in exchange for a very small portion of the value it would create.”
