Companies diving into new energy projects in West Virginia shed light on their strategies.
Dominion Energy is examining the potential for nuclear energy, said Emil Avram, vice president of business development.
“We are obviously one of the largest nuclear owner and operators in the country,” Avram said while participating in a roundtable discussion at the annual business summit hosted by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
“I’m excited to say that we are actually exploring, evaluating and developing a site here in the great mountain state of West Virginia for a future nuclear facility. Very exciting opportunity.”
He described new advanced technologies coming onto the market, ranging from 200 to 400 megawatts. The site being examined could include multiple units, he said, adding to a diverse energy production portfolio to maintain reliability and affordability. They are also quick to ramp up from minimum load to full output.
“That is the holy grail for electric utilities to be able to ramp up and down, meet demand when it’s needed the most, complement renewables when the wind or the sun is not shining or blowing and be able to do it reliably and cost-effectively,” Avram said.
The company is deciding between sites in West Virginia and Virginia, he said. He said such facilities would represent a $3 billion to $5 billion investment for each site. He said the company plans to build up to 18 of those units over the next 25 years.
“Why West Virginia? Great business climate, business friendly, has an incredible energy workforce already established, and nuclear facilities are very similar to coal-fire generation,” he said. “And it has the electric transmission infrastructure in place in the region. And, like I said, a great workforce here for the future, so very exciting opportunity for West Virginia.”
Abram was speaking with leaders from other companies engaged in energy projects, storage or manufacturing in West Virginia during the first day of the summit at The Greenbrier Resort.
Matea Jaramillo, chief executive of the Form Energy company that has broken ground on a utility battery factory in Weirton similarly spoke of opportunities brought through technological innovation.
The company’s battery technology operates through a “reversible rusting” process. The battery breathes in oxygen from the air and converts iron metal to rust. When the battery charges, the reverse happens. An electrical current converts the rust back to iron, and the battery breathes out oxygen.
“It means that we can provide a lot of reliability for the system with these very low cost and large scale batteries,” Jaramillo told the crowd.
He said the factory on the site of the old Weirton Steel plant will be complete early next year, with production ramping up late next year.
“We became an engineering company, and we are now becoming a manufacturing company. So it’s this last phase of the transition that that I think is probably the hardest to be perfectly candid,” he said. “It’s the one that requires the most amount of money and the most amount of commitment, frankly, but we are taking this iron air technology and commercializing it for the first time to solve some of these really big challenges on the electric system.”
CONSOL Innovations makes products from carbon foam, starting with coal as a carbon ore rather than for use as a fuel. The four main areas are building products, batteries, aerospace and military applications, said Rudy Olson, director of CONSOL Innovations.
“The intention is to make carbon products that are diverse, that are sustainable, have long-range growth to where we’re capitalizing on these technologies, keeping them here in West Virginia and vertically integrating into them,” Olson said.
Omnis Global Technologies is building a $40 million manufacturing facility in Bluefield to produce housing materials from a composite that uses fly ash and sand.
“West Virginia was a fantastic location for us because of its natural given raw materials, resources and the abundance of a lot of the waste products here that we were able to take advantage of,” said Jonathan Hodson, president of Omnis.
He added, “We’ve looked at what West Virginia has in a natural-resource rich environment and what can we utilize there to bring to the country, to bring to the people of West Virginia that allow us to build a more sustainable, higher quality building practice that allows you to put together or assemble something with relatively low skilled labor in a very short period of time that can be the highest quality product.”