By David Beard
dbeard@dominionpost.com
RIVESVILLE – Mon Power and Potomac Edison have their second utility-scale solar site online in this small coal town north of Fairmont.
The 27-acre site sits on two rolling parcels straddling Morgan Ridge Road, a stones throw from the decommissioned Rivesville power plant. The FirstEnergy sisters provided a press tour Thursday afternoon.
The west side is larger, with more solar panels and was undergoing some finishing touches. We toured the east side, where the two inverted skids send the power from both sides through a three-panel, man-height switch gear box out to the local grid.
The companies’ first site fired up in January, at Fort Martin adjacent to their coal-fired plant. That one has 49,032 solar panels across 80 acres generating 18.89 megawatts of power.
This one has 13,680 panels across the 27 acres, generating up to 5.5 MW. During the tour, it was putting out 5.2 MW.
Kayla Pauvlinch, FirstEnergy solar project manager, and Doug Hartman, director of energy services, guided the tour and explained the operation.
Solar panels generate DC electricity and the inverters convert it to AC; the transformers then step up the voltage to grid level. The site generate 23.5 kilovolts, which means the power stays in the local distribution grid, Hartman said. It doesn’t go out to the regional PJM transmission grid – that threshold is 100 KV.
The power staying local means the companies’ West Virginia customers can subscribe to solar credits under SB 583, passed in 2020, which allows the state’s two electric utilities (Mon Power and AEP) to build or buy and then own and operate solar plants — four 50 megawatt plants totaling 200 MW per utility — in order to draw national companies to West Virginia that want a significant solar element in their energy portfolio.
Other than the size, the major difference between this site and Fort Martin is the manner of construction.
At Fort Martin, the solar arrays are anchored into the ground. Here, the arrays are anchored into huge tubs of concrete – weighing 3,000 to 3,200 pounds apiece. Even the fencing sits on heavy concrete slabs.
That’s because this site is built on a brownfield site – what was the power plant’s fly ash (coal combustion wast product) landfill – Pauvlinch and Hartman said. It’s now capped and reclaimed, but because it’s capped and reclaimed, they can’t dig down into the ground. Everything has to sit on the surface. The heavy anchors prevent weather disruptions.
The work required deliveries by some 200-300 concrete trucks, Pauvlinch said.
Grass will grow up between and under the solar arrays. The east side will have to be mowed. But the west side and Fort Martin will be kept under control by grazing sheep, they said. About 200 will be brought to Fort Martin, considerably fewer for the Rivesville west side.
Hartman said he’s pleased that SB 583 enables building on brownfield sites – it’s a good use of land, instead of building on valuable and beautiful greenfields. “This was one of our target sites right off the bat. … We were able to leverage this property to put something productive on top of it.”
As at Fort Martin, they said, the panels and racks were domestically produced – the panels were made in Toledo, Ohio.
At the edge of the east side site is a small weather station. It measures wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, precipitation and solar radiance.
They can plug that data into a model, Pauvlinch said, and compare what it happening at the site compared to what should be. “That’ll tell you if you’ve got a problem.”
Nearby lay-down yards, now holding various pieces of equipment, will be vacated and have the potential for addition somewhere in the future of battery storage for 24/7 production.
The solar sites have a mix of residential and industrial subscribers, they said, and some federal subscribers.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory developed a first-of-its-kind power purchase agreement to supply 100% of its power usage from Fort Martin for its Morgantown site. It will buy 29,000 megawatt hours annually from the site.
“It’s nice to have the federal customers just so actively participating and having conversations with us on the energy they’d like to have into the future,” Hartman said. The federal goal is to be 100% carbon free by 2030.
Fort Martin and Rivesville are the first two of five planned solar sites total 50 MW; and this is the first phase of 200 MW worth of projects the companies will develop.
They gave a progress report on the remaining three sites: a 26-acre reclaimed ash disposal site in Marlowe, Berkeley County, with 5.8 MW capacity; a 51-acre site in Wylie Ridge, adjacent to a Mon Power substation in Weirton, Hancock County, 8.4 MW; and a 44-acre reclaimed strip mine property near Davis in Tucker County, 11.5 MW.
Marlowe is fully subscribed, Pauvlinch said. They’ve completed earth moving, tree clearing and road installation. They will be moving into mechanical/structural/electrical construction phase this week. They expect it to be open by the middle of next year.
A fourth site is also fully subscribed, Hartman said, and the fifth is still soliciting subscriptions. They will wait until that one is full and submit a request for construction approval for both to the Public Service Commission at the same time.
Hartman explained that 1 megawatt hour (Mwh) equals 1 solar credit. When all five sites are online, they will create more than 87,000 Mwh – meaning more than 87,000 renewable solar energy credits (SRECs). An SREC costs 4 cents per Kwh in addition to regular rates.
