RICHMOND — The State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved the construction of a new 580-megawatt electric generation facility in Buckingham County by Dominion Virginia Power.

The Bear Garden Generating Station will burn natural gas, although it will have the capacity to burn oil as a back-up fuel source. It will be built on a site across the James River from Dominion’s Bremo Power Station. The company purchased the development rights for the Bear Garden project from Tenaska Virginia Partners II, L.P. in March 2008.

Dominion also received permission to build a 230-kilovolt transmission interconnection line that will extend 1.4 miles from the generating station to the existing Bremo switching substation in Fluvanna County.

In its final order, the Commission said that there is a need for new generating capacity in the Dominion Zone of PJM Interconnection region to meet growing energy demand and system conditions that continue to change over time. “New generation within the zone provides a greater certainty that additional capacity will be available within the Dominion Zone as needed than can reliably be provided through existing resources within or outside of the zone,” the SCC wrote.

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Case Number PUE-2008-00014

Editor’s Note: SCC Commissioner James C. Dimitri did not participate in this case.