MORGANTOWN – Mon Power has just completed installing the solar panels for its 90-acre solar-power facility at Fort Martin and is moving ahead on the wiring.
The Dominion Post took a tour of the site this week, while panels were still being installed, and learned some facts and figures about the project.
The array of 50,000 panels rolls across the hills next to Mon Power’s Fort Martin Power Station. The coal-fired plant sits down below, along the Monongahela River, and isn’t readily visible from most of the site. But it sits just across the street from the Longview Power coal-fired plant and several people have contacted The Dominion Post about it, mistakenly believing it’s Longview’s.
This is one of five solar facilities Mon Power has planned, and the largest in terms of area and power generation, at 18.9 megawatts. Two others have Public Service Commission approval but are not yet underway: a 27-acre retired ash disposal site in Rivesville, Marion County, to generate 5.5 MW; and a 26-acre reclaimed ash disposal site in Marlowe, Berkeley County with 5.8 MW capacity.
Mon Power will return to the PSC for approval on the final two sites: a 51-acre site in Wylie Ridge, adjacent to a Mon Power substation in Hancock County, 8.4 MW; and a 44-acre reclaimed strip mine property near Davis in Tucker County, 11.5 MW.
The five sites will generate a combined 50 MW, set in motion 2020 state legislation that authorizes electric utilities to own and operate up to 200 megawatts of solar renewable generation facilities to help meet the state’s electricity needs.
Mon Power spokeswoman Hannah Catlett told us that 1 MW of solar energy powers a national average of 173 homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Pre-construction on the Fort Martin site began in August. We told Mon Power at the time that the steel supports being driven into the ground at the time made it resemble the world’s largest drive-in movie theater, with thousands of speaker posts rolling across the hills.
Mon Power expects it to be online – feeding power into the PJM grid – by the end of the year.
A frequent complaint about solar power is that the majority of the materials to build plants come from China. Mon Power said that for this site, the solar panels, racking systems and supporting electrical equipment was all sourced in the U.S. (the panels are made in Ohio) and the companies are using local building and trade labor.
There are more than 100 local union workers mostly from the Morgantown and Parkersburg areas, completing this site, Catlett said: 62 carpenters, 21 electricians, two iron workers, nine equipment operators and nine laborers.
They will complete more than 125,000 labor union work hours in total on all five sites, Catlett said; 63,000 labor union work hours at Fort Martin alone. “That makes an impact on the community when there are those jobs here.”
Ponds appear here and there across the site. Catlett explained that these are sediment basins required for the NPDES construction permit. They will be filled in when the site has 90% grass growth.
As part of Mon Power’s environmental justice initiative, they are also planting pollinator gardens across the site where space allows.
The field of panels is arrayed in six blocks, and each block has its own inverter/transformer skid with three or five Ninja inverter units.
Solar panels generate DC electricity and the inverters convert it to AC; the transformers then step up the voltage to grid level.
Mon Power and its FirstEnergy sister Potomac Edison are still taking subscribers for their SREC solar renewable energy credits program. SRECs are certificates that represent the environmental attributes of solar power and prove solar energy was generated on the purchasers’ behalf. For every megawatt hour of solar energy generated, one SREC is produced. When fully operational, the five projects are expected to create more than 87,000 SRECs per year.
To learn more about subscribing to the solar program, go to West Virginia Solar Program at firstenergycorp.com.
“Mon Power and Potomac Edison are committed to the environment and enhancing reliability for customers by bolstering and diversifying the region’s energy mix,” Catlett said. “Renewable energy is a large economic driver in attracting new industry to West Virginia, so it is important to have this voluntary option available to customers.”
The PSC approved this week a ratepayer surcharge by Mon Power and Potomac Edison to help pay for construction of the three green-lighted solar projects. The approved rate is 14 cents per month and will take effect for services beginning Jan. 1, 2024.
Mon Power told The Dominion Post in July, “It is our hope that the surcharge revenue requirement continues to decrease so that future solar customers will pay 100% of those costs and that no other customer will be required to pay any of those costs for existing and new projects.”
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
