MORGANTOWN – The Dominion Post visited FirstEnergy’s Fort Martin site recently to talk about its proposed new 1,200 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine plant and tour its coal-fired plant.
“We’re moving along very well,” said Chris Beam, FirstEnergy president of West Virginia and Maryland. “I just think it’s a really nice fit for where we are. I think we have good relations with the community. We’ll continue to be a good neighbor because of that. We’re really excited about getting this started.”
Pending Public Service Commission approval, the new plant will be the first major power plant in Monongalia County since 2011, and FirstEnergy’s first plant since 1972.
The Mon Power/Potomac Edison plant has a name now, Beam said: Maidsville Energy Center. The name includes the community where it will be located, and its place among the existing coal-fired and solar facilities. “We thought Energy Center represented more what it really is here now going forward.”
The Fort Martin site sits between the Monongahela River and the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border. If you’ve ever driven the access road leading off Fort Martin Road – or just look at the site on Google Maps – you’ll see the access road wraps around the substation and heads down to the coal-fired plant.
The access road passes two big, blue sheds and a gravel lot abutting the state border. That will be the home of the new plant, following site work and relocation of the access road – as the proposed Energy Center footprint straddles the existing road.
The plant will be considerably smaller than its coal-fired neighbor. “It will look nothing like this plant,” Beam said from a meeting room in the coal-fired plant.
It will not have the tall stacks and cooling towers. The Energy Center’s cooling towers will be a 12-cell rectangle of low-slung mechanical-based units with mechanical fans on stands.
A combined cycle plant uses both gas and steam combustion turbines to generate electricity. In the gas combustion turbine, air is pressurized using a compressor, injected with fuel and ignited to generate high-temperature pressurized gas that expands to drive the turbine and generate electricity. The waste heat from the gas turbine is then used to generate steam to drive a steam combustion turbine for additional electricity generation.
A conceptual drawing shows two side-by-die gas turbines, each connected to a heat recovery steam generator. A separate steam turbine sits in an adjacent section.
What’s ahead
Beam outlined some of what’s ahead, pending PSC OK.
An in-person and virtual public comment hearing is set for July 15. The evidentiary hearing is set to commence on July 16. The PSC, he said, could possibly render a decision sometime in October-November, but statutorily has until February 2027. They have asked for expedited consideration.
They need contract “power island equipment” – the gas turbines, steam turbines, generators, heat recovery steam boilers; that’s in negotiations.
They need to build a new line to bring gas to the facility; those bids have come in for review. And EPC bids – engineer, procure, construct – are due June 12.
They will put out and RFP for gas supply bids in the fall, he said, FirstEnergy aims to have contracts signed by September, again pending PSC approval.
FirstEnergy is estimating 2,000 construction jobs, Beam said. It will be all union trade labor – except for possibly a couple highly specialized contracts – and all from the area. “We believe the labor is actually here to support building it.”
They project the total cost for the plant to be $2.476 billion, beginning this year and running through 2033. It will produce and estimated $500 million in local and state taxes. “This will be a huge generator for taxes,” he said.
Dan Sendro, project manager for the Energy Center, said the plant itself will employ about 25 people.
Beam commented, “This will be careers for generations, no jobs but careers. … We’re pretty proud because we’re building it in a community we’ve been in forever.”
FirstEnergy has applied to PJM Interconnection – the regional grid operator – for an interconnection agreement, Beam said. That will take a couple years. PJM has to evaluate the transmission system to factor in the local existing plants plus the new one, and how to address the “constraints” of more power flowing into the system.
Both of FirstEnergy’s coal-fired plants are aging. The 1,098 megawatt Fort Martin plant was commissioned in 1967. The 1,984 MW Harrison plant in Haywood was commissioned in 1972. In their
Integrated Resource Plan, Mon Power and Potomac Energy say they plan to keep both coal-fired plants open through 2035.
And in a 2025 earnings call, FirstEnergy CEO Brian Tierney commented on how they might meet ongoing demand.
“And I could see us adding between one and four combined cycles of about 1,000 megawatts (each) that could ultimately replace Fort Martin and Harrison or be incremental to them and bring incremental economic development to the state of West Virginia,” he said. “It would just add the flexibility that West Virginia would have in an uncertain environment and allow them to attract things, like data centers, transformer manufacturers and the like, who are desirous to site in West Virginia.”
The coal plant
Fort Martin has two coal-fired units. Unit 1 went online in 1967 and generates 552 MW. It’s housed in a nine story structure. Unit 2 went online in 1968 and generates 546 MW. It’s home stands 14 stories.
Unit 2 has been on a planned outage for maintenance and we toured that facility with Operations Manager Kevin Chisler and Outage Superintendent Sawyer Whitten.
The control room is a vast array of knobs and buttons and meters in long blue cabinets dating back to the plant’s beginnings, along with a number of big screen monitors added in later years. Bryan Eilam, control room foreman, and Alexander Mayle, control room attendant, keep watch over it and know what every knob and dial do.
The two, long, three-stage steam turbines – high, intermediate and low pressure – housed shades of blue like the control room, were quiet during this outage.
From an outlook near the top floor we looked out on the cooling towers, the out-of-service stacks and the smaller emission control towers that have replaced them. Running along the riverfront on the Unit 1 side is a long mountain of coal – 45 days’ worth.
Sets of power lines run from each unit to the substation – which will also accept power from the Maidsville Energy Center when it is projected to go online in 2031.
