Virginia: The Old Dominion

The article doesn't do a great job of explaining why. It almost seems intentional imo.

"Fiber optic cables are used to provide necessary communications to substations and other vital equipment, helping to modernize grid operations and improve outage response. This real-time visibility and control are essential for integrating renewable energy sources into the grid, as they allow for better management and coordination of these resources."

"important for ensuring that the generated solar power can be efficiently and safely integrated into the broader electrical grid, complying with industry standards and maintaining system stability" from the dominion energy website. So take that for what you will.

It sounds like they use fiber for controlling grid ops and they don't think that what Hawaii and New York are doing has been robustly tested.

And in the case of Hawaii, I don't know that I'd use them as a benchmark for something like this. Their grid(s) aren't connected to each other (each island is separate) so they are much smaller. They probably don't even have the same level of grid mgmt needs that Virginia does.

That said, $150-250k for laying fiber seems high but that's not really my area of expertise. Maybe that's reasonable.