The next few days will highlight arguments over how far the public is willing to go in saving a 150-employee West Virginia power plant.
Dozens of members of the public have weighed in on the fate of the Pleasants Power Station near Belmont, which is set to be closed June 1 unless an alternative comes through.
A public hearing is set for Thursday afternoon and an evidentiary hearing will start Friday morning at the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
The question is not just whether to save the coal-fired power plant but whether ratepayers should be billed even more while the issue plays out.
The plant could be taken over by Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison, which asked for a surcharge on ratepayers to keep it operational until they fully assess whether the deal makes sense economically.
The proposal is for at least a$3 million monthly surcharge over 12 months, a total of $36 million, to assure the plant remains operational. That amount could be more if there are additional costs identified.
After the companies made their initial proposal, they submitted an updated filing that indicated they had identified additional expenses and details to negotiate.
“During this time, the companies have been made aware of potential additional costs and significant risks that the companies did not anticipate in the March 31 filing,” wrote attorneys for Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison.
A multi-million dollar decision up against a tight deadline is unfair to ratepayers, said Karan May, Sierra Club senior campaign representative in West Virginia.
“It is not fair to ratepayers to ask nearly half the state’s electric customers to pay more on their bills to acquire a power plant that they don’t need and may not even be used — or to ask them to pay to keep it waiting in the wings,” May said.
“And certainly there’s not enough time for this to be judiciously considered. Rate cases and certificate of need cases, all manner of cases at the PSC tend to take up to six months and sometimes have gone on longer. Now we’re less than a month since the first filing by the company. No, it’s not enough time at all.”
PIeasants is a 1300 megawatt two-unit coal power plant located on the Ohio River near Belmont, Pleasants County. About 150 people work at the plant, which began operations in 1979.
Its corporate owner, Energy Harbor, has been bought by another company, Vistra Vision, which wants its nuclear plants but not its coal plants like Pleasants. Right now, the Pleasants property is being shifted to Energy Transition and Environmental Management for possible shutdown and demolition.
The West Virginia Coal Association submitted a statement in support of doing whatever is required to keep the power plant open. The association cited the employment of coal operations supplying the power plant as well as demands on regional power capacity.
“The requested surcharge is the last opportunity for any branch of our government to ensure the continued operation of Pleasants. If this opportunity passes there will be nothing standing between its operational shutdown on May 31, will put 387 West Virginia jobs at risk of termination, and would fly in the face of the directives of our legislature,” wrote representatives of the coal association.
The West Virginia Energy Users Group, representing some of West Virginia’s largest industrial power users, said in its own submitted statement that the expense shouldn’t be put on ratepayers.
That group said the proposal amounts to a tax on ratepayers “to shield the Companies and FirstEnergy Corp. shareholders from these prospective costs while the Companies secure, at no risk, further time to assess a possible acquisition of Pleasants.”
The energy users organization said additional costs the power companies might eventually identify are not estimated at all, resulting in lack of clarity.
“If the Companies believe they need to preserve the option of Pleasants then they should bear that cost, not improperly shift the risk of deciding whether to acquire Pleasants to ratepayers,” wrote representatives of the West Virginia Energy Users Group.
“To the extent keeping Pleasants open is more properly considered a political objective of the State of West Virginia, then all taxpayers in West Virginia should share in the costs to keep Pleasants open.”
The Public Service Commission’s Consumer Advocate Division concluded that ratepayers would see no benefit from the plant, which isn’t expected to actually produce power during the assessment period.
“Since the companies’ interim proposal provides little if any tangible benefit to West Virginia residential ratepayers, the Consumer Advocate Division cannot support the company’s ‘interim solution’ offered by the companies, and we would oppose the requested surcharge,” wrote Robert Williams, director of the consumer advocate division.