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September 18, 2026 - West Virginians have had to contend with some of the region’s highest electricity bills amid the state’s nation-highest dependence on coal-fired power.
West Virginia’s average monthly residential electric bill of $154.76 in 2024 was higher than all 12 other states in the PJM Interconnection LLC regional electric grid except Maryland, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data — 8.8% higher than the national average of $142.26.
Mountain State ratepayers have been on the hook for increasingly costly upgrades at the in-state coal-fired plants operated by subsidiaries of American Electric Power and FirstEnergy.
Throughout the country, wear-and-tear-saddled coal plants have struggled to maintain reliability during weather emergencies and peak demand times as coal itself has become more expensive compared with alternative energy sources.
A meeting of West Virginia lawmakers this week shed light on a key administrative power struggle behind state ratepayers’ electric power struggle and indicated the state is poised to keep relying on coal for decades to come — as American Electric Power Service Corp. and FirstEnergy fight a key market reform recommended by consumer advocates.
AEP affiliate, FirstEnergy fight 'public interest' PJM focus
PJM manages the electricity transmission system for West Virginia and its neighbors while operating markets that shape electricity rates for consumers. It’s the electric grid operator for some 67 million people.
PJM prices have weighed more heavily on regional consumer allies since July 2024, when the operator’s capacity market, intended to ensure resource adequacy by creating price signals that indicate where and how much capacity is needed in future years, saw a nearly tenfold spike from the previous auction.
Price spike impacts haven’t been as acute in West Virginia since, unlike in most PJM states, monopoly utilities control the power supply chain with oversight from a public regulator.
But West Virginia electric bills aren’t immune to rising prices in PJM territory, where recent capacity auctions have triggered record price spikes that consumer advocates say is evidence that the grid operator’s policies favor expensive aging, increasingly uneconomic power plants while blocking cheaper clean energy sources from hooking up to the grid and lowering prices.
PJM has a two-tiered governance structure consisting of a Board of Managers with no affiliation with or financial stake in any PJM market participant, and a Members Committee that consists of generation owners, transmission owners, other suppliers, electric distributors and end-use customers.
The Members Committee has included 19 affiliates of American Electric Power, parent company of Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power.
Jon Gordon, director of Advanced Energy United, a national industry association representing advanced energy and transportation options, accused PJM membership of being “heavily skewed toward incumbent utilities [and] resources” during a July 2025 PJM-focused virtual briefing hosted by The Reliable Grid Project, a national network of grid experts and consumer advocates, following a PJM capacity auction triggering a record price spike.
“[F]undamentally, this is the regulated community making the rules for themselves,” Clara Summers, Illinois consumer advocacy group Citizens Utility Board’s Consumer for a Better Grid Campaign manager, said during the briefing. ”And that is problematic when the regulated community is profit-motivated.”
PJM has faced extensive criticism from state leaders and power developers who say that the organization has failed to properly plan for rapidly increasing electricity demand.
Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency which regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity in interstate commerce, has called on PJM to enact reforms to improve its ability to address operational and market needs. The FERC has been collecting public comments on potential PJM reforms, including a proposal for its governing documents to be revised to explicitly state that the responsibility of PJM and its board is to serve the public interest.
American Electric Power Service Corp. in an Aug. 21 FERC filing opposed doing so, arguing that a “generalized ‘public interest’ obligation would run counter to the overriding goal in this proceeding of facilitating nimble and decisive Board action by creating an undefined standard that the Board would have to interpret on the front end and that could create litigation risk on the back end.”
AEP Service Corp. added that “the public interest is already protected” through the Federal Power Act’s mandate that rates be “just” and “reasonable.”
FirstEnergy indicated in its own PJM reform-focused FERC filing that it also opposes amending PJM-governing documents to explicitly state that the responsibility of PJM and its board is to serve the public interest. But the company did not elaborate on that view in its filing.
But consumer advocate groups have gotten behind revising PJM’s governing documents to state that PJM’s governing documents should be changed to include a public-interest service mandate.
“The revision should explicate that PJM’s Board, management, and staff obligations are to the public rather than to PJM members,” opined the PJM Cities and Communities Coalition, which comprises 21 local governments and communities representing roughly 15% of PJM’s population.
Monitoring Analytics LLC, PJM’s independent market monitor, agreed that PJM’s governing documents be revised to explicitly state that the responsibility of PJM and its board is to serve the public interest, saying the goal of PJM staff shouldn’t be to be a “’member-driven organization’ with an assumption that the goals of influential PJM members be accommodated.”
“PJM acts as an unelected and unappointed regional government with extraordinary powers,” Monitoring Analytics commented.
Both AEP Service Corp. and FirstEnergy urged a greater role for states in PJM governance in their filings. FirstEnergy backed giving states “a defined right to bring issues directly to the Board” and adding that participation at formal meetings with the board would give states greater access and “improve accountability and responsiveness.”
W.Va. energy head: "We can get out" of PJM reform group
A greater role for West Virginia in PJM governance likely would mean a louder voice in the PJM mix on behalf of coal-fired power, as evidenced by a West Virginia Joint Energy and Public Works Committee meeting Tuesday during the state’s latest interim legislative session.
The committee heard from Department of Commerce Deputy Secretary and Office of Energy Director Nicholas Preservati, who updated the committee on West Virginia’s place in the PJM Governors Collaborative, a bipartisan forum that governors across PJM’s 13 states launched in September 2025 to act together on issues of grid governance, energy affordability and market reform.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey was not among the 11 Democratic and Republican governors who signed a September 2025 joint statement of intent to work toward developing the group, which noted that signatory states aren’t bound by positions or actions taken by the collaborative.
But Morrisey did sign a January 2026 statement of principles regarding PJM urging the grid operator, in part, to improve its consumption modeling and provide 15-year price certainty for new capacity resources.
“[W]e're currently negotiating a position at the table to have a voice in how PJM is operating and governed in the future,” Preservati told the Joint Energy and Public Works panel.
Preservati assured the pro-coal committee that West Virginia wouldn’t get mixed up in any collaborative-backed efforts that don’t stick to electric reliability and economic dispatch of power, suggesting other states could pursue agendas relating to greenhouse gas emissions or environmental issues “in their own legislatures.”
“At the end of the day, if we’re a part of this collaborative and things turn for some reason, we’re not bound by it,” Preservati said. “We can get out. We’ll be able to get out, go our own way.”
Preservati said state officials were working with utilities to determine not only what upgrades they can make to their coal plants but how to sequence them “so that the plants aren't shut down, upgraded for extending their useful life, brought back online and then shut down two years later to upgrade them because of some new technology.”
Preservati touted Morrisey’s goal for West Virginia to increase its current, roughly 15-gigawatt capacity to 50 gigawatts by 2050, saying its “primary purpose” was to “increase production of our coal and natural gas for purposes of generation.”
The West Virginia Office of Energy head reported that the state Public Energy Authority was looking to bring in for its next meeting on Sept. 30 the president of the company the U.S. Department of Energy selected to award up to $18.5 million to finance a large-scale coal-fired power and carbon capture project.
The Department of Energy in June announced that selection of TerraPurus Inc. in Mount Storm, Grant County, for a planned TerraSpark Energy Campus to deliver 1.6 gigawatts of coal-fired power with carbon-capture technology from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based provider Mantel Capture at a greenfield facility located near the existing Mount Storm energy complex.
One of the partners that has led TerraSpark, Make Great America Again organizing veteran Alex Phillips, supported the President Donald Trump-abetted insurrection that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol that left a 35-year-old woman fatally shot, a Capitol police officer dead by suicide shortly afterward, dozens of officers injured, lawmakers hiding from rioters and the Capitol itself vandalized.
Delegate Rick Hillenbrand, R-Hampshire, asked Preservati if he could share any public information regarding TerraSpark’s efforts.
“I'm not. and part of that reason is we've been working to get together with them and have meetings with them, and we're trying to get up to speed with them on that,” Preservati replied.
FirstEnergy, APCo tout millions in coal plant spending
FirstEnergy government affairs senior advisor Abby Reale reported to the committee that her company was developing a plan to review what changes are required to safely extend operations at its Harrison and Fort Martin coal-fired plants in Harrison and Monongalia counties, respectively, beyond 2040.
Reale indicated FirstEnergy had spent over $500 million in the past five years on coal plant component replacements and upgrades that would allow the plants to stay capable of operating at a 69% capacity factor – a measure of how often a plant runs at full capacity.
Coal-fired plant capacity factors in West Virginia and throughout the country already have dropped significantly amid the industry’s long-term decline, reflecting what energy experts say has been an uneconomic outlook for coal power.
Energy experts and ratepayer advocates have said a 69% capacity factor target set by the PSC for West Virginia’s coal-fired plants in recent years has encouraged uneconomic use of the plants that cost utility customers.
Reale recalled FirstEnergy securing $4.3 million in support from the U.S. Department of Energy for an $8.6 million project to replace a failing Fort Martin coal crusher jeopardizing the company’s ability to offload coal from the river.
Appalachian Power government affairs director Sammy Gray told the committee the company had secured $34.5 million in grants through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Coal Recommissioning and Modernization initiative. Gray said the funding would support four projects for the company’s John E. Amos and Mountaineer coal-fired plants, in Putnam and Mason counties, respectively, adding up to $97.7 million in total costs.
“Those are projects that we were likely to do anyway, but we’ll spread it out a little further over time,” Gray said, “because we are committed to keeping our plants open till 2040 and beyond.” |
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