State of WV has authorized 50 MW of Solar Energy per Utility

As part of our ongoing effort to support reliable electricity and economic development in West Virginia, FirstEnergy is in the process of developing a first phase of solar energy facilities that will generate approximately 50 megawatts of power. The program is designed to encourage economic development in West Virginia and help us meet the growing demand for renewable energy by our residential, commercial and industrial customers.

The energy generated from our solar facilities will be available for purchase via Solar Renewable Energy Credits by Mon Power customers or Potomac Edison customers located in West Virginia.

If you would like to sign up to learn more about FirstEnergy’s solar program and subscribe, please fill out the fields below and submit your information.

SOLAR ENERGY FORM: https://www.firstenergycorp.com/mon_power/wv-solar-program.html

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SEE ALSO ~ Delegate Evan Hansen, Regarding the Legislative Energy Committee Meeting, June 15, 2022

Yesterday’s Energy Committee meeting focused on solar was…interesting. The good news is that West Virginia’s utilities are moving forward with their first large solar projects and report strong interest in solar electricity from their customers, including industrial customers that demand large amounts of renewable energy. This was the argument we made when passing SB 583 in 2020.

But several legislators tried to focus the hearing on the benefits of burning more coal — when 1/3 of the U.S. population (including much of West Virginia) was under heat warnings and advisories for triple-digit-high temperatures and more than 33 large fires were burning across five states and more than 1 million acres.

Thankfully, individuals and businesses want to be part of the solution to climate change, and state policy is slowly moving in that direction despite objections from legislators committed to the status quo.

Cost & efficiency of energy storage systems are under study

From an Article by Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker, April 18, 2022

The German word Dunkelflaute means “dark doldrums.” It chills the hearts of renewable-energy engineers, who use it to refer to the lulls when solar panels and wind turbines are thwarted by clouds, night, or still air. On a bright, cloudless day, a solar farm can generate prodigious amounts of electricity; when it’s gusty, wind turbines whoosh neighborhoods to life. But at night solar cells do little, and in calm air turbines sit useless. These renewable energy sources stop renewing until the weather, or the planet, turns.

The dark doldrums make it difficult for an electrical grid to rely totally on renewable energy. Power companies need to plan not just for individual storms or windless nights but for Dunkelflaute that stretch for days or longer. Last year, Europe experienced a weeks-long “wind drought,” and in 2006 Hawaii endured six weeks of consecutive rainy days. On a smaller scale, factories, data centers, and remote communities that want to go all-renewable need to fill the gaps. Germany is decommissioning its nuclear power plants and working hard to embrace renewables, but, because of the problem of “intermittency” in its renewable power supply, it remains dependent on fossil fuels—including imported Russian gas.

The obvious solution is batteries. The most widespread variety is called lithium-ion, or Li-ion, after the chemical process that makes it work. Such batteries power everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles; they are relatively inexpensive to make and getting cheaper. But typical models exhaust their stored energy after only three or four hours of maximum output, and—as every iPhone owner knows—their capacity dwindles, little by little, with each recharge. It is expensive to collect enough batteries to cover longer discharges. And batteries can catch fire—sites in South Korea have ignited dozens of times in the past few years.

Venkat Srinivasan, a scientist who directs the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (access), at the Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, told me that one of the biggest problems with Li-ion batteries is their supply chain. The batteries depend on lithium and cobalt. In 2020, some seventy per cent of the world’s cobalt came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Unless we have diversity, we’re going to be in trouble,” Srinivasan said. Any disruption to the supply chain can strongly affect prices and availability. Moreover, a lot of water and energy are required for mining the metals, which can cause environmental damage, and some cobalt-mining operations involve child labor. Experts doubt that Li-ion prices will drop more than thirty per cent below their current levels without significant technological advancements—a drop that is still too small, according to the Department of Energy. We need to expand our capacity; by one estimate, we’ll require at least a hundred times more storage by 2040 if we want to shift largely to renewables and avoid climate catastrophe. We may somehow find clean and reliable ways to mine, distribute, and recycle the ingredients for Li-ion batteries. And yet that seems unlikely. Although we usually think about renewable energy in terms of its sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels, that’s only half the picture. Ideally, we’d pair renewable energy with renewable storage.

We already have one kind of renewable energy storage: more than ninety per cent of the world’s energy-storage capacity is in reservoirs, as part of a remarkable but unsung technology called pumped-storage hydropower. Among other things, “pumped hydro” is used to smooth out spikes in electricity demand. Motors pump water uphill from a river or a reservoir to a higher reservoir; when the water is released downhill, it spins a turbine, generating power again. A pumped-hydro installation is like a giant, permanent battery, charged when water is pumped uphill and depleted as it flows down.

The facilities can be awe-inspiring: the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, in Virginia, consists of two sprawling lakes, about a quarter of a mile apart in elevation, among tree-covered slopes; at times of high demand, thirteen million gallons of water can flow every minute through the system, which supplies power to hundreds of thousands of homes. Some countries are expanding their use of pumped hydro, but the construction of new facilities in the United States peaked decades ago. The right geography is hard to find, permits are difficult to obtain, and construction is slow and expensive. The hunt is on for new approaches to energy storage.

Quidnet, a Houston-based startup, is one of many companies exploring the possibilities. Last month, I sat in an F-150 King Ranch pickup with Scott Wright, its vice-president of operations, and Jason Craig, its C.O.O., as we drove to one of its test sites, on a farm west of San Antonio. Fields and billboards whizzed by as Craig explained, from the back seat, that Quidnet had patented a new kind of pumped hydro. Instead of pumping water uphill, the company’s system sends it underground through a pipe reaching at least a thousand feet down. Later, the system lets the Earth squeeze the water back up under pressure, using it to drive generators. Wright and Craig are veterans of the oil and gas industry, and Quidnet’s technology is like a green riff on fracking. In that technique, fluid is injected underground, where it builds up pressure that fractures rocks, releasing natural gas. Quidnet uses some of the same equipment and expertise, but with a different goal: the water is meant to be sandwiched between layers of rock, forming underground reservoirs that can be released on demand.

As we drove, I asked about the blackouts Texas experienced in February of 2021, when a winter storm shut down gas plants for several days and left millions without power. More than two hundred people died. The crisis had many causes, including the fact that Texas is the only state whose power grid isn’t connected to grids in other states. “We were pulling buckets of water out of the neighbor’s pool to get toilets to flush,” Wright said. “It definitely screams for some way to store power to lessen the burden on the grid in times like that.”

The artificial underground reservoirs created by companies like Quidnet are known to engineers as “lenses,” because of their shape. (“I say whoopee cushion and people don’t like it,” Craig said.) Initially, Quidnet encountered skepticism about its ability to form lenses of the right size and shape. By the time I visited, however, it had successfully completed multiple pumping cycles in Texas, Ohio, and Alberta. The company has received thirty-eight million dollars in private and government funding, including contributions from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, established by Bill Gates.

Quidnet has benefitted from an energy-storage gold rush. In 2018, the Department of Energy awarded thirty million dollars in funding to ten groups, including Quidnet, through a program called Duration Addition to electricitY Storage, or days. Before leaving office, President Donald Trump signed into law the Energy Act of 2020, which included the bipartisan Better Energy Storage Technology (best) Act, authorizing a billion dollars to be spent over five years on the “research, development, and demonstration” of new energy-storage technology. Many states are now setting storage-capacity targets, and in 2018 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Order 841, which integrates stored energy into the wholesale electricity market. “There’s been a recognition that this is a technology whose time has come,” Jason Burwen, of the American Clean Power Association, told me. But a vast distance separates an engineer’s whiteboard from reality. Many renewable-storage technologies receiving funding will turn out to be too impractical, expensive, or inefficient for widespread adoption.

As we approached the farm, Craig mused on the raw physicality of many companies’ approaches. The basic principles are ones you might recall from high-school physics. If you put effort into lifting an object, it stores potential energy; if you then let that object fall, its potential energy becomes kinetic energy, which is capable of powering a generator and creating electricity. The same holds for many physical actions. In addition to lifting weights, energy-storage companies are compressing air or water, or making objects spin, or heating them up. If you use clean energy to do the initial work and find a green way to store and release it, you’ve created an ecologically responsible battery alternative.

“I’m kind of surprised and encouraged that the solutions to the long-duration-energy-storage problem could be the caveman stuff,” Craig said. Batteries depend on “pretty sophisticated electrochemistry that quickly gets outside of what I understand. And yet the solutions may be picking up heavy stuff with cranes, picking up the earth with a hydraulic jack. I think there’s some fellas in Nevada that are putting rocks in a train and rolling it uphill, then they come back down. Like, Fred Flintstone would be comfortable with most of this stuff. It could be the way.”

We pulled into the farm’s long drive. A kettle of vultures circled overhead. “You know what that means?” Craig asked. I already had one in mind. Was I about to see part of the future of green energy, or a curious and short-lived experiment in rural Texas?

Today’s Li-ion batteries are low-density by comparison, and renewable-storage systems also struggle to achieve density, convenience, and scale. The basic technology behind compressed-air energy storage goes back decades, and can involve pumping air into underground caverns, natural or artificial, then letting it out again. The first underground compressed-air facility was completed in 1978, in Germany; such systems can store and release vast amounts of energy. But, like pumped hydro, compressed-air facilities require the right geography and are expensive to build. They are also inefficient—typically, only half the energy put into pressurizing the gas can be retrieved.

Engineers are trying to improve density and efficiency. A Toronto-based company called Hydrostor has received more than three hundred million dollars in funding and is developing projects in California, Australia, and other places, to be brought online in the next five years. It stores compressed air in tanks, and holds on to the heat released during the air-compression process, which it then reapplies to the air during expansion, supercharging its ability to drive a turbine and generate electricity. A British company, Highview Power, is taking a more extreme tack, cooling air to more than three hundred degrees below zero, at which point it becomes a liquid. Liquid air is dense, and when Highview warms it, it gasifies rapidly, spinning turbine blades. Colin Roy, Highview’s executive chairman, told me that, when the company opens its tanks, air “explodes out with violent force.” It has built a prototype liquid-air system and is developing commercial plants in England and Spain.

Quidnet, too, is producing a refinement of pressure-based technology. At the company’s test site, we were greeted by Jacob and Sadie Schweers, the farm’s owners. About a year earlier, Quidnet had dispatched a drilling rig—a seventy-foot mast attached to a truck—to their property. Now a blue wellhead stood about ten feet tall, near a pump house the size of a shipping container, several yellow tanks, and a bunch of hoses. Water could be pumped from the tanks into the well, where it would be stored under pressure; then it could be released back to the tanks. Last month, Quidnet announced a pilot program to provide stored-energy technology to a utility in San Antonio.

We stepped inside the pump house to admire the pistons, the flywheel, and something called a pulsation dampener. A yellow five-hundred-horsepower diesel engine sat quietly in the back, ready to run the pump. “I love big machines and loud things and the smell of oil,” Wright said. In a commercial version of the system, an electric motor, ideally powered by clean energy, would pump the water, and act as a generator when the water returned.

As we walked back outside, into the hot sun, Wright gestured toward ten separate PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. They indicated the subterranean presence of tiltmeters, instruments for assessing the size and character of the lens by tracking the displacement of the rock; they can even sense the tidal tugging of the moon. We stood and chatted, and Craig said that the tanks would eventually be replaced by an attractive pond. Sadie Schweers told us that she likes to picture the whole farm running on solar panels and a Quidnet well.

Driving back in Wright’s truck, I thought about how things might look if Quidnet’s wells make headway. Today’s pumped-hydro plants form picturesque lakes on the Earth’s surface, but approaches like Quidnet’s would create reservoirs of pressurized energy beneath it. The company envisions terrain dotted with wellheads about half a mile apart, and a pond for every four. Wind turbines might rise skyward. The Earth itself would be a kind of giant battery.

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READER BEWARE ~ The descriptions above may be misleading as to the minimal environmental impacts of in-ground storage facilities. It is known that substantial disruptions to the Earth occur with hydro pumped storage projects. The Bath County project in Virginia is an extreme disturbance in the mountains, some say unsightly. Further, the proposed projects at Canaan Valley in Tucker County, WV, have been extremely unpopular in a highly scenic area, extending back to the 1960’s or earlier. DGN

The 42 inch MVP is excessive in diameter and length

From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, Jun 1, 2021

The Mountain Valley Pipeline faces a consequential summer. So do the streams and wetlands that the pipeline’s developers are seeking permission to cross.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will decide by July 2 whether to grant or deny additional time to West Virginia and Virginia environmental regulators to consider water permit requests from the joint venture that owns the pipeline, according to Corps Huntington District spokesman Brian Maka.

Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the joint venture that owns the pipeline, still has applications pending with West Virginia and Virginia state environmental regulators for about 300 water crossings while it seeks approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to tunnel under 120 additional waterbodies.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection asked last month for an additional 90 days beyond the 120 days the Corps of Engineers gave the agency to review Mountain Valley Pipeline’s water permit request. In March, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality requested an additional year to review the pipeline permit application. Both departments previously said that they hadn’t heard back from the Corps.

The pipeline already has had adverse impacts on West Virginia’s waters. State environmental regulators proposed a consent order earlier this year requiring Mountain Valley to pay a $303,000 fine for violating permits by failing to control erosion and sediment-laden water.

“Based on what I’ve seen thus far, I don’t know how they can permit this activity knowing that there are going to be additional impacts to water resources because of MVP’s track record,” West Virginia Rivers Coalition staff scientist Autumn Crowe said.

Asked about the Rivers Coalition’s arguments, Natalie Cox, spokeswoman for Equitrans Midstream, the Canonsburg, Pennsylvania-based lead developer of the project, argued that the claims placed specific policy agendas above that of environmental protection. “Mountain Valley welcomes the opportunity to work with all stakeholders to address environmental protection concerns and ensure that best practices are implemented,” Cox said. Cox noted that Mountain Valley is seeking individual water permits after legal challenges from environmental groups prompted it to abandon a blanket water permit issued by the Corps.

The Rivers Coalition and other project opponents have said the pipeline’s greenhouse gas emissions make it a bad idea, especially given the International Energy Agency’s call last month for no new investments in fossil fuels.

The West Virginia DEP will hold a virtual public hearing June 22 on whether it should approve a water permit for the project. The pipeline has sought and received water permit approval from West Virginia before. “The WVDEP will consider whether the components of the activity, resulting in a discharge to waters and contemplated by the federal [Corps] permit and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license, will comply with the state’s water quality requirements and what conditions may be necessary to ensure that compliance,” acting department spokesman Terry Fletcher said in an email.

This article has been edited for length. See full story HERE

Guernsey Power Station construction site on 10/15/20. Young’s home and racetrack on left across railroad tracks.

From an Article by Julie Grant, Allegheny Front, December 11, 2020

Kevin and Marlene Young built their house in the country, so they had space for horses. “I was raised around horses, and that’s my love,” Marlene said. With names like Buckeye Blast and Creekside Pete, their horses aren’t just pets. They built a half mile track to train them as racehorses. “If you see my track, the polls out there are placed 1/8 mile apart, and that’s how you clock a horse to tell how fast you’re going,” Kevin said. Their horses have won tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.

Surrounded mostly by farmland here in Guernsey County, Ohio, 65 miles west of the Pennsylvania border, they have space to grow grass for hay. The Youngs also built their home into something of a tourist business. When a scenic railroad started running on the train tracks along their property, it would stop here. They opened an antique shop, and even hosted weddings in the outdoor setting.

Big trucks drive past the house throughout the day. The farm field next door has become an industrial construction site. The air is often filled with dust — there’s a thick layer of it on their new truck. Some nights, bright construction lights shine through their windows. “I mean, come on man, that’s unbelievable,” Marlene said.

In the summer of 2019, Caithness Energy started building one of the largest natural gas power plants of its kind in the nation. Thanks to fracking, cheap natural gas is replacing coal to generate electricity. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this site is one of 30 natural gas-fired generators planned in Ohio and Pennsylvania. EIA expects 231 new utility-scale natural gas generators to be built in the U.S. by 2024.

There’s already a pipeline that will run natural gas from the region to this site. Once constructed, the Guernsey Power Station will generate 1,875 megawatts, enough power the company says for 1.5 million homes.

But the Youngs don’t want to live next door to it. Like others who live nearby, they say the construction has caused cracks in their walls. “My dishes shake. My bedroom is on the second floor, and it’s like you put a quarter in one of them beds,” Marlene said. “That’s how it vibrates.”

The land was known to flood, so the company is moving dirt in some spots to raise it 20 feet. But Kevin said when it rains, water now runs off, flooding his property. “This way, I’m taking all the water,” he said. “It’s like a lake.”

In November, Ohio EPA issued two notices of violation to Gemma Power Systems, the company building the plant for Caithness, for problems with erosion and sediment running off the property. But much damage has already been done.

One of their horses got startled by the construction equipment just over the fence, and injured itself. “And she was laid up for a month, and we had to dress this leg every day,” Kevin explained. The Youngs have stopped training their horses, sometimes even putting them on respirators. Marlene falls apart when she talks about her best horse, Creekside Pete.

“I had to sell him to get him out of here,” she sobbed. “I put big boards up so he wouldn’t come out of his stall because of the stuff going on. I sold him so he wouldn’t hurt himself.” Creekside Pete has gone on to win $68,000.

Caithness has bought out three families in this neighborhood for the plant. At this point, the Youngs want a buy out too, but so far they say the company hasn’t approached them.

Even a Buyout Can Be Difficult

One of the homeowners who received a buyout is April Ball. Until recently, she lived down the street from the Youngs. Ball grew up there, and inherited the house on an acre of land after her parents died. She thinks about the green fields and trees around it, and of walking barefoot to fish in the creek.

“It’s just sad. I think about it every day. It never goes away,” Ball said, sitting on the back porch of her new house in the town of Cambridge. “I think about it when I wake up, when I’m at work, after work, in the evening.”

When the gas plant was under consideration, Ball, a housekeeper at a nursing home, wasn’t able to get to a community meeting. She had no idea how much it would impact her life.

The construction company fenced around her house, and put up big trailers along the property line. Once the construction began, her ceiling cracked and water in her toilet started coming up black. “You can’t live like that,” she said.

An attorney for Caithness offered her fair market value for her house. She didn’t have money for her own lawyer, so even though it wasn’t enough to buy another home in the country, she took the deal. “Part of me wanted to leave, but then a part of me just wanted to stay. This is my home,” Ball said. “And how dare these people come here and do this?”

A Billboard for the Region’s Economic Development

But many people in the area see the new natural gas plant as a hope for the region’s future. When Caithness came here in 2016, Norm Blanchard, economic development director for the region, was thrilled by the idea of a $1.6 billion plant. “For us, it was almost like a carnival coming to town,” he said.

The company is spending $25 million to prepare the site, according to Blanchard, and has promised $42 million dollars to the local school system over 32 years.

It promised local workers would help fill a thousand construction jobs. But labor unions claim local people have not been hired, something Caithness denied in an email statement to The Allegheny Front.

Once it’s completed in 2022, the plant is expected to employ 30 high tech workers. Blanchard wishes it was more, but he’s not complaining. As he stood along the I-77 highway, looking at the huge construction site, he said the eight cranes are like a billboard for economic development here.

“Something like this, to be able to locate it here, puts you on the map,” Blanchard said. “We’re hoping that others will ride the coattail. They’ll say, ‘that kind of development is coming to Guernsey County, there’s other things that we can do.’ ”

Few Protections Exist for People in the Path of Development

Like many areas near power plants, the poverty rate here is high. In Byesville, where this plant is being built, the poverty is more than twice the national average.

According to environmental attorney Dave Altman, many communities jump at the money and jobs offered by deep-pocketed energy companies. “Local governments, somewhat understandably, at times will blindly accept promises and really operate in denial of the collateral damage to the people who are left behind,” Altman said.

Kevin and Marlene Young said they haven’t gotten help from local officials. They shouldn’t expect the state government in Ohio to protect them either, according to Altman.

“There are definitely laws, that’s for sure, and the law should be protecting people,” he said. “But I’m not kidding you, the agencies that you think are protecting you in Ohio often see their primary client or customer as the regulated entity.”

US EPA Removing Pollution Protections for Ohioans

On December 20, the Trump administration will eliminate a 1974 rule approved as part of Ohio’s federal air quality plan, officially called the State Implementation Plan or SIP. The rule allows people to take polluters to court to stop environmental nuisances like dust and odors that endanger health and property.

“They would have been able for 40 years to take that evidence [of a nuisance] into court, and now they won’t be able to do that directly anymore,” Altman lamented. “I think that it’s one of the great travesties that people don’t even know happened to them.”

Without the nuisance provision in the SIP, Altman said that people will only be able to sue polluters for damages, something he said is difficult. “They need to recover large damages to give lawyers an incentive to take the case. People want to live their lives, not wait until they have large damage cases.”

In an email statement, Ohio EPA spokesperson Heidi Griesmer said Ohio did not request removal of this rule, but does not oppose it being withdrawn by US EPA. “Many other states across the nation, including all Great Lakes states, had their nuisance rules withdrawn from their SIPs, or never had them in their SIPs in the first place,” she said. “Ohio EPA retains full authority to ensure compliance with the rule and can initiate enforcement action when necessary.”

But that hasn’t proven helpful to people experiencing pollution problems, according to Altman. “Every citizen I know who has used the provision to reduce or stop the pollution tried to get the O[hio] EPA to enforce the rule for years and got nowhere,” he responded.

No Adverse Health Effects Expected

The Guernsey Power Station received air permits from Ohio EPA, and has limits for pollutants like volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter. “[C]omputer modeling was completed before permit issuance, and no adverse health or welfare effects are expected,” Griesmer said.

But the Youngs don’t want to wait to find out. Marlene recently started having serious health issues. Kevin wants to protect them both. “I’d just assume get us a little trailer or something, and clear out of this whole state, and not have to deal with any of this,” he said. They’ve recently retained a lawyer.

Michelle Rotellini, Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce, promotes solar project

From an Article by Jessica Farrish, Beckley Register Herald, September 1, 2020

Raleigh County Commission, on a 2-1 vote, welcomed the county’s first solar farm, a decision that was backed by Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce.

Raleigh Commission President David Tolliver and Commissioner Ron Hedrick voted in favor of a resolution to permit Raleigh Solar, a company formed in West Virginia in 2018 by Dakota Renewable Energy of Denver, to pay the county based on the amount of electricity the farm generated, with Commissioner Linda Epling voting against it.

The original agreement had offered only $1.4 million to the county, but Tolliver, Raleigh Sheriff Scott Van Meter and Raleigh Assessor Linda Sumner had rejected that offer. The approved version on Tuesday was an increase of $600,000, with Van Meter saying he would have liked to have seen the county receive more in the agreement.

Raleigh Solar is responsible, under the agreement, for treating the soil and for putting up a bond to disassemble all the panels, once the 15 years are past.

During the Tuesday meeting, Tolliver reported that there had been a change to the amount of money that the county would receive over a 20-year period. The county is now set to receive $2 million under the plan.

The Raleigh Commission agreed to accept the Dakota offer of just over $2 million for 20 years, or about $600,000 more than the original offer, said Tolliver.

Raleigh Solar signed an agreement to purchase about 600 acres on Grandview Road where it plans to place 1,000 solar panels, if favorable tax incentives are granted, according to Tolliver. A portion of the land is leased.

The agreement that Commission approved on Tuesday has no bearing on the location of the farm. The Raleigh Board of Zoning and Appeals must approve the location, Tolliver said.

Under county code, the agreement had to be approved by the Raleigh Assessor and Raleigh Sheriff, who is the treasurer of the county. Raleigh Assessor Sumner and Sheriff Van Meter both approved the resolution during the Tuesday meeting.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people over this, and I struggled a little, but I’m going to vote yes,” said Van Meter. “Because $2 million extra dollars for 20 years, I can’t leave on the table. “I’d like to have got more for the county, for sure, but I’ll vote yes.”

Raleigh Solar must now present the resolution to the Raleigh Board of Education for approval. Raleigh County Schools receives 78 percent of the funds. Raleigh Schools Superintendent David Price does not vote on the agreement, as was previously reported.

Commissioner Epling’s husband, Beckley businessman Doug Epling, had opposed the plan to allow a solar energy farm to come into the county without paying taxes. Doug Epling, who has interests in coal, had said that while he is in favor of diversifying energy resources in the county and is not “against” solar energy, he disagreed with the tax breaks that are being extended to solar energy, which could potentially cut local coal jobs.

Historically, West Virginia is a coal mining state. State lawmakers recently passed legislation that makes the state friendlier to solar farms but has not yet made explicit laws to allow purchase power agreements (PPA) in the state. A PPA would allow a solar energy company to erect panels on private property, at little or no cost to the property owner. Power generated would be available to the property owner, at a rate that would reduce the owner’s monthly power bill, and any additional generated power would be sold by the company.

Days prior to the Commission vote, Raleigh Chamber had issued a statement in support of diversification of the economy and the solar farm, with Chamber CEO Michelle Rotellini and Beaver Coal Co. General Manager Joe Bevel both voicing support of solar farm plans.

Rotellini pointed out that a diverse economy is a factor that helps attract Fortune 500 companies to a region.

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See also: Raleigh Chamber supports solar farm, Beckley Register Herald, August 29, 2020

“In conclusion, the BRCCC supports an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy options to ensure the future economic growth of Beckley-Raleigh County and all of Southern West Virginia.”

According to information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal-fired power plants accounted for 92 percent of West Virginia’s electricity net generation in 2018. Renewable energy resources — primarily hydroelectric power and wind energy — contributed 5.3 percent and natural gas provided 2.1 percent.

The West Virginia Legislature in March passed a solar energy bill, a step toward diversifying the state’s energy portfolio. The law created a program that encourages the development of solar energy in the state.

According to statements by attorney Roger Hunter, who represented Raleigh Solar during an Aug. 18 public meeting, the estimated total construction cost for the solar farm is more than $90 million.

The Earth is in for severe impacts by 2030, and worse by 2050

From an Announcement by FirstEnergy Corp., Akron, Ohio, November 9, 2020

AKRON, Ohio, Nov. 9, 2020 — Aligned with its mission to help build a brighter and more sustainable future for the communities it serves, FirstEnergy Corp. today announced a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The company also set an interim goal for a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases within the company’s direct operational control by 2030, based on 2019 levels.

“We believe climate change is among the most important issues of our time,” said President and Acting Chief Executive Officer Steven E. Strah. “We will help address this challenge by building a more climate-resilient energy system and supporting the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Our ambitious new carbon goal and comprehensive climate strategy are fully aligned with our regulated business strategy and support our commitments to our customers, communities and investors, as well as environmental stewardship.”

FirstEnergy’s comprehensive Climate Position and Strategy Statement outlines the company’s aggressive, business-wide plans to mitigate risks from climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable its customers and communities to thrive in a carbon-neutral economy. Actions to achieve these goals include:

>>> Hardening its transmission and distribution systems to reduce the physical risks of climate change
>>> Replacing conventional utility trucks with electric and hybrid vehicles and responsibly replacing other aging equipment that emits greenhouse gasses
>>> Reducing emissions at its small regulated generation fleet, while preparing for the transition away from coal-fired power in West Virginia by 2050
>>> Supporting renewable and distributed energy resources, including seeking approval in 2021 to construct a solar generation source of at least 50 megawatts in West Virginia
>>> Utilizing advanced technology to enable customers to manage their energy use
>>> Integrating carbon pricing into financial forecasting
>>> Empowering employees to identify opportunities that drive environmental responsibility
>>> Oversight, accountability and risk mitigation for the climate policy will be provided by an executive steering committee in partnership with the Board and company leadership.

In 2015, FirstEnergy announced plans to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2005 levels by 2045. To date, the company has reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 80% by implementing new technologies and retiring or transferring generation assets. The new goals represent a significant expansion of this target and reflect FirstEnergy’s transformation to a fully regulated utility.

FirstEnergy is dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company’s transmission subsidiaries operate more than 24,500 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Follow FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com

Two proposed gas-fired power plants are the Chickahominy (1600 MW) & C4GT (1060 MW)

From the Staff Reports, Virginia Mercury, June 26, 2020

The Virginia State Corporation Commission regulates Virginia electric utilities. In an order Friday, this State Corporation Commission imposed conditions that must be met before a contentious natural gas expansion project can proceed.

The Virginia Natural Gas company has been seeking approval to expand its pipeline and compressor station infrastructure in Northern and Central Virginia, primarily to supply a natural gas-fired power plant proposed by C4GT, though that project remains stalled amid “market uncertainties,” the developers say, in the regional PJM power grid’s capacity market.

“Put simply, if C4GT is built, we find that the project is needed. If C4GT is not built, the project is not needed,” the commissioners wrote in the order.

The SCC, which regulates utilities, says it won’t issue an approval for the Virginia Natural Gas (VNG) project until the power plant it will serve provides proof that it has a “firm financing commitment” for construction. The commission will also require Virginia Natural Gas to recover costs for the expansion over “the same time period for which it has contracts with C4GT and other large customers to receive the payments necessary to pay for the project.” And C4GT must “reconfirm all contractual obligations to VNG necessary to pay its share of the header project.”

C4GT is planned to be a “merchant generator,” which means it will sell electricity on the mid-Atlantic states (PJM) market.

“As a merchant plant, C4GT may operate for some years but, if it becomes unprofitable, may shut down, as many other merchant generators nationally have shut down when they became unprofitable. So it is imperative that VNG’s other customers not be left ‘holding the bag’ for the costs of the project should C4GT cease operating before those costs have been fully recovered,” the commission said.

The commission also required Virginia Natural Gas to agree to a “strict cap” on any costs it plans to shift to residential or business customers, comply with all environmental requirements imposed by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and file additional information on environmental justice concerns with the project.

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See also: With new energy regime only months away, regulators grapple with gas expansion proposal – Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, May 19, 2020

Three years after private backers secured state regulators’ approval to build a major new natural gas plant in Charles City County, the fate of the facility has become a key factor in a controversial proposal by Virginia Natural Gas to expand its pipeline infrastructure throughout Northern and Central Virginia.

“The big issue here is risk, and how are we going to allocate the risk and who’s going to be holding the bag if this plant doesn’t get built,” said Judge Mark Christie during a Wednesday hearing conducted via Skype.

The facility, known as C4GT, has been in the works since 2016, when private developers first applied to the State Corporation Commission for a certificate of public convenience and necessity. A combined-cycle natural gas plant, the facility is expected to produce some 1,060 megawatts of power — about two-thirds the size of Dominion Energy’s most recent natural gas plant, the Greensville Power Station, which is capable of powering some 400,000 homes.

Yet despite securing regulators’ thumbs-up in 2017, the project stalled. Last March, the backers asked for a two-year extension of their certificate, citing declining interest from investors in light of changes in the regional PJM power grid’s capacity market.

Since then, Virginia’s energy landscape has also changed significantly.

The passage this spring of the Virginia Clean Economy Act and a law that will join the state to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon cap-and-trade market, have committed Virginia to transitioning off fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. Mandatory renewable portfolio standards for electric utilities and ambitious targets for solar and wind development are all designed to phase out the use of coal and natural gas by 2045.

“This legislation casts serious doubt on the financial viability of the C4GT plant and the likelihood it will ever be built,” said Greg Buppert, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center representing environmental and consumer protection groups Appalachian Voices and Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, at the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing.

But Virginia Natural Gas, in arguing that regulators should approve its pipeline expansion proposal, dismissed those concerns, seeking instead to focus the proceedings on what it described as a “simple need solution” to its obligation as a utility to serve any customer in its territory that requests service.

“This application is not the place to debate public policy and legislation,” said VNG attorney Lisa Crabtree. “We’re not here to speculate on what will happen in 2045 and beyond.”

The Header Improvement Project regulators have been charged with considering what was first outlined by Virginia Natural Gas this December, when it filed an application with the State Corporation Commission for approval to construct.

The proposal would add about 24 new miles of pipeline to VNG’s system: the 6.2 mile Transco Interconnect Pipeline running between VNG infrastructure in Quantico and the Transco pipeline in Catlett in Fauquier County, the 3.3 mile Quantico Parallel Pipe in Fauquier running alongside an existing company pipeline, and the 14.6 mile Mechanicsville Parallel Pipe running alongside another existing VNG line in Hanover, New Kent and Charles City counties.

Two new compressor stations would also be built: the Transco Interconnect station in Prince William and the Gidley station in Chesapeake, while a third station at Ladysmith in Caroline County would be expanded.

And while three parts of the project are directly tied to C4GT’s operation, three others — the Transco Interconnect Pipeline, Transco Interconnect Compressor Station and Quantico Parallel Pipe — would be required for any expansion of Virginia Natural Gas’ capacity, testified the company’s director of gas supply, Kenneth Yagelski.

Currently, VNG’s system is supplied from the north by an interconnection with the Dominion Energy Transmission pipeline at Quantico that is responsible for providing capacity to about half of VNG’s customers.

An expansion plan submitted by Virginia Natural Gas to the State Corporation Commission to meet the needs of the planned C4GT natural gas plant and increase system capacity. But the Dominion pipeline has no more capacity, said Yagelski, and VNG has concerns about its continued reliability.

“It’s never resulted in an outage to our customers, but we’ve come very close in the past,” he told the State Corporation Commission, and an extended outage “we believe is a possibility.”

That means that for any expansion of VNG’s service, the utility must look for other sources of supply, said Yagelski.

“We’ve often looked at a new connection to Transco at this location for reliability purposes, but it would be very expensive for VNG to justify on its own the 6.2 miles of pipe and the compressor station,” he told regulators. “This is an opportunity for VNG to essentially take advantage of the larger HIP project to get that reliability increase when some of those costs are shared with the other HIP participants.”

Both costs and impacts are being considered for energy supply

Essay by Chris Meyer and John Semmelhack, Virginia Mercury, May 21, 2020

In Virginia, the time to adopt policies to promote electricity over natural gas has come. Widespread electrification of space heating, water heating and cooking has the potential to significantly reduce CO2 emissions and improve public health.

As our electric grid’s renewable energy has grown, the climate argument favoring natural gas has evaporated. Years ago, natural gas was branded a “clean” fuel from a pollution perspective, and when compared to coal, it does have some environmental benefits.

However, recent scientific research has found that the climate impact of natural gas is much worse than originally thought. In addition, the increase of wind and solar on the grid means that comparing natural gas to electricity no longer means simply comparing gas with coal.

For example, using the most recent CO2 emissions data for electricity in Virginia, heating a home with a minimum-efficiency electric heat pump would yield at least a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the most efficient gas furnace money can buy. More advanced electric heat pumps can yield CO2 pollution reductions close to 50 percent on today’s grid, and as our electricity gets still cleaner between now and 2050, the CO2 pollution reductions from electrification will get better and better.

There are health benefits to burning less gas as well, particularly inside the home. For many households, the worst pollution impacts from natural gas are felt every day around the kitchen stove. Cooking with gas releases carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen oxides and fine particles into the home, and is a major reason why indoor air pollution is often 2 to 5 times higher than outdoor air pollution.

A new review of recent research from the past two decades concludes that “indoor pollution from gas stoves can reach levels that would be illegal outdoors.” Another important impact includes well-documented risks to respiratory health from gas stove pollution, particularly in children. Electric cooking is a cleaner cooking option, according to the study. Foodies shouldn’t fret, though. Electric induction cooktops are gaining popularity among many top chefs and home cooks, specifically for their cooking performance, including quick response time and fine heat control.

Statewide climate policy in the Commonwealth has made great strides in recent years, but policy promoting electrification would accelerate these positive changes. Both the 2018 Grid Transformation Act (GTA) and the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) changed regulations in the power sector, with one of their main goals being to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change.

The state’s electricity grid is now set to become less polluting by using fewer fossil fuels, culminating in a zero-carbon state grid by 2050. One strategy included in the legislative packages mandates that the investor-owned utilities (i.e. Dominion and Appalachian Power) implement energy-efficiency programs for their customers.

Energy-efficiency programs are typically focused on reducing electricity consumption and are very cost-efficient from a mitigation perspective, while also being popular with customers whose houses become more comfortable. The programs implemented so far, however, don’t allow any incentives for electrification, which would increase electricity demand (while reducing greenhouse gas emissions) by adding electric-powered HVAC equipment and appliances.

Electrification should become a priority for energy-efficiency programs in Virginia in 2021. Policy-wise, only minor language adjustments and broader interpretations of existing guidance are required. In 2021, there will be at least one new low-income energy-efficiency program launched, as mandated by HB2789, that should include equipment replacement.

That program (which will hopefully be approved by the SCC and implemented by Dominion) should be interpreted to allow electrification. Additionally, with $50 million per year of revenue anticipated from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) earmarked for low-income energy-efficiency work, some of these funds should be used to encourage switching to electric appliances. Finally, a legislative fix to the definition of an “Energy-Efficiency Program” might be required in the 2021 General Assembly. With changes, programs administered by the investor-owned utilities could allow and encourage electrification.

The actions we take to mitigate climate change in the next 10 years will have lasting impacts. Electrification can help us achieve our climate goals while promoting public health and comfort. We ask Virginia to be a leader in electrification and make this opportunity a reality.

>>> Chris Meyer is executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program, a nonprofit with offices in Charlottesville and Fairfax. John Semmelhack is the owner of Think Little Home Energy LLC, a building-science consultancy based in Charlottesville.

West Virginia coal has been significantly depleted, alternatives are available

Opinion Editorial by C. Blaine Cecil, Charleston Gazette Mail, April 15, 2017

Over the past couple of years, I have followed claims about the restoration of the coal industry in the Appalachian region. As a native West Virginian and someone who still has a strong allegiance to the state, I feel compelled to offer a different perspective on the future of coal.

I am a retired geologist who has invested most of my professional career to the study of coal geology in Appalachia. These studies included, but were not limited to, geologic controls on the origin of coal and coal-bearing strata; geological and chemical characteristics of coal that effect coal cleaning; and mineral and chemical characteristics of coal and coal-bearing strata that effect mine drainage water quality. These, and other studies, were always related to coal resources (the amount of coal in the ground) and coal reserves (the amount of mineable coal).

As a result of those studies, it became evident many years ago that the amount of coal resources and reserves are finite; reserves will not last forever.

As far back as the mid-1970s, a coal company executive who was responsible for coal exploration in Southern West Virginia told me that mineable coal was getting “dirtier and deeper (and thinner)” meaning that the best coal reserves had already been mined. Since that time, newer mining technologies (such as mountaintop surface mining) have continued to deplete coal reserves. As a result of reserve depletion, it is highly unlikely that coal mining (and jobs) can be restored in a significant and sustainable manner; recovery of remaining reserves will be increasingly difficult and expensive, thereby resulting in a steady and rapid decline in coal production and associated jobs.

Much of the remaining coal resources occur in beds that are thin, discontinuous, often deeply buried and uneconomical to mine, and that will never be included in reserve calculations. If these resources are ever to be recovered, it will most likely be through underground (in situ) gasification rather than conventional mining methods.

Unless some unknown factors intervene, coal production and mining jobs in Appalachia are unlikely to recover because of the following:

>>Reserve depletion. Coal reserves are nearly depleted; increases in coal production will only accelerate reserve depletion and hasten the end of a significant coal mining industry in Appalachia. This is particularly true of southern West Virginia.

>> Electricity demand. The demand for electricity from coal-fired power plants has slowed because many major industrial consumers (e.g., steel, aluminum, and chemical manufacturing) have closed most of their plants in the United States, giving rise to the “rust belt.” The demise of these industries can also be attributed, by in large, to resource/reserve depletion of raw materials.

>> Natural gas replacement. Coal is being replaced by natural gas in the generation of electricity because recently discovered natural gas is now abundant, relatively inexpensive to produce, cleaner to burn and has higher heat content than coal (on a BTU/pound basis). Natural gas-fired power plants are also cheaper to build and operate than coal-fired power plants.

>> Energy transportation. Natural gas is easier, cheaper, and more energy efficient to transport (via pipelines) to power plants located near points of consumption (e.g., large metropolitan areas) relative to transportation of electricity over power lines from mine-mouth power plants to major markets. In addition, gas is cheaper and more energy efficient for home heating than electricity. Simply put, natural gas is currently a cheaper source of energy than coal.

In summary, economic recovery and sustainability in coal-producing regions in Appalachia must refocus economic development on commercially viable activities other than coal production. The nearly total collapse of the coal industry in Great Britain and Germany in the latter part of the 20th century is a stark reminder that coal reserves become depleted.

Readers who wish to further explore the future of coal mining in Appalachia may consult resource and reserve data that are available online from both federal and state agencies.

>>> C. Blaine Cecil, of Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, originally from Moundsville, was an adjunct professor of geology at WVU, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution and a research geologist emeritus for the U.S. Geologic Survey.

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See also: Longview Power Files Prepackaged Chapter 11 To Facilitate Ownership Change, City Biz, Wash., DC, April 14, 2020

Longview Power LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under a prepackaged reorganization plan as a result of substantially lessened demand for electricity due to long term power-pricing pressure caused by cheap natural gas, an unseasonably warm winter, and the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic impact, which collectively have severely depressed power prices. The Company will continue to operate in the ordinary course as it quickly restructures its balance sheet.

Solar farms are growing electric power across Virginia

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, November 23, 2019

The first industrial-scale solar farm to produce electricity for Appalachian Power Co. has been approved by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Construction of the Depot Solar Center in Campbell County is expected to begin in the spring and be completed by the end of the year, according to Ryan Gilchrist of Coronal Energy, a private company that will operate the facility.

The rows of solar panels on a 150-acre site near Rustburg will provide 15 megawatts of electricity to Appalachian, which is shifting its power generation from coal-burning power plants to more renewable energy.

“Virginia is adopting solar technology at record rates, and we are building an economy that is cleaner and greener as a result,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement last month that announced the VA DEQ approval of four other solar farms.

Although about 1,000 of Appalachian’s 500,000-plus Virginia customers have solar panels at their homes or businesses, a power-purchase agreement with Coronal marks the utility’s first venture into industrial-scale solar power.

Appalachian Power is considering bids from other energy companies for more large-scale projects that will add another 200 megawatts of solar to its power portfolio, spokesman John Shepelwich said.

The utility currently gets about 60% of its electricity from coal. Another 19% comes from natural gas, 11% from hydroelectric and 7% from wind turbines.

After the Campbell County Board of Supervisors granted a special use permit last year, the Depot Solar Center went to VA DEQ for consideration of its environmental impacts.

In a Nov. 5 letter to the company, VA DEQ approved the permit with several conditions, including tree-cutting requirements to protect bats, monitoring for invasive species and landscape protection measures.

In recent years, VA DEQ has approved 39 permits for solar farms in Virginia. Thirteen of them have been built so far and are producing a total of about 400 megawatts, enough to power nearly 100,000 homes.

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See also: Virginia could soon have more than 2,500 MW of solar. We just need customers | Power for the People VA by Ivy Main, September 12, 2017