CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Mon Power’s subsidiary First Energy is working to complete an 18-mile long power line between Salem and Clarksburg that will provide additional infrastructure to support growth in the use of energy.
“We believe there is going to be about 400 megawatts of new growth and load growth, and that is equivalent to about 200,000 or more residential homes,” First Energy Spokesperson Todd Meyers said on Thursday’s edition of the MetroNews-affiliated “The Mike Queen Show” on the AJR News Network. “So you have to have the infrastructure in place.”
Meyers said this will improve service reliability for 13,000 customers in the areas of Harrison and Doddridge County while also supporting the electrical demands of the Marcellus Shale industry.
“State of the art fracking water treatment plant that’s planned for that area soon,” Meyers said. “Between the different wells there and the compressor stations and the mid-stream gas processing, there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be out there.”
The new 138-kilovolt (kV) line project is expected to be energized and in service by mid-summer, with about $43 million of the $92 million project to be spent in 2016.
“The transmission sub-station on the other end of this new line that we completed a couple of years ago, that also has benefits to about 6,000 customers for the same reason,” he said.
Meyers said the line will not be in a heavily populated area, but that it will feed growing demand.
“That’s not a very populated area in some of those more rural, remote spots,” he said. “The electrical infrastructure we have there simply wasn’t adequate for this type of demand.”
The project will mostly serve customers along the U.S. Route 50 corridor.