MORGANTOWN — While the number of net-metering customers remains a minute portion of Mon Power’s customer base, the number of households generating their own power has grown by 50% since 2021.
Mon Power serves about 395,000 customers in 34 West Virginia counties.
Its net-metering annual report filed recently with the Public Service Commission — for the period of June 1, 2023, through May 31, 2024 — shows it has 901 net-metering customers using home solar and 12 using wind power. Those 913 customers make up just over two-tenths of 1% of Mon Power’s customers.
The solar customers had a total generating capacity of 10,635.35 kilowatts (kw). Adding in the 12 wind customers, they had total capacity of 10,669.75 kw.
(A kilowatt is 1,000 watts, and for comparison, a megawatt is 1 million watts and Mon Power’s Fort Martin plant generates 1,098 megawatts.)
The number of Mon Power’s wind net-metering customers has remained steady at 12 over the past three years. But the number of solar net-metering customers has grown significantly.
For June 1, 2022, through May 31, 2023, Mon Power had 751 solar customers, with a generating capacity of 8,320.57 kw.
For June 1, 2021, through May 31, 2022, Mon Power had 597 solar customers with a generating capacity of 6,906.23 kw.
Potomac Edison, Mon Power’s FirstEnergy sister, serves 151,000 customers in the Eastern Panhandle. Its solar net-metering growth hasn’t been as dramatic, but it currently has more solar customers than Mon Power.
For June 1, 2023, through May 31, 2024, Potomac Edison had 1,030 solar net-metering customers with a generating capacity of 11,901.1 kw. The number of wind customers has remained steady at 14. Total generating capacity with the wind customers is 11,932 kw.
For June 1, 2022, through May 31, 2023, Potomac Edison had 891 wind customers with a generating capacity of 9,831.07 kw.
And for June 1, 2021, through May 31, 2022, it had 713 solar customers with a capacity of 7,454.96 kw.
The other two electric utilities in the state are AEP sisters Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power.
Their 2023-24 report hasn’t been posted yet and Appalachian Power did not respond to requests for current numbers.
But their prior two reports are available and Appalachian Power also saw significant growth.
For June 1, 2022, through May 31, 2023, Appalachian Power had 1,227 solar customers with a generating capacity of 11,458.7 kw and six wind customers, bringing total capacity to 11,487.4 kw.
For the same period, Wheeling Power had 88 solar customers with 1,318.2 kw of generating capacity, and two wind customers, for total capacity of 1,330.1 kw.
For the period of June 1, 2021, through May 31, 2022, Appalachian Power had 732 solar customers with a total capacity of 10,074.5 kw, plus seven wind customers.
Wheeling Power had 62 solar customers with 581.7 kw of generating capacity, plus two wind customers.
EMAIL: dbeard@dominionpost.com
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