Renewable Energy Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Sparkz CEO Bullish On Batteries And Building Them Here

Curtis Tate spoke with the company’s CEO, Sanjiv Malhotra, about those batteries and what made West Virginia a good fit.

With millions of dollars in federal support, Sparkz will soon begin building lithium batteries for energy storage and electric vehicles at a shuttered glass factory in Bridgeport.

Curtis Tate spoke with the company’s CEO, Sanjiv Malhotra, about those batteries and what made West Virginia a good fit.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: Describe the chemistry of the lithium batteries you’ll build. What are the advantages over nickel and cobalt?

Malhotra: So the other chemistry within lithium ion batteries is lithium iron phosphate, or in short, it’s called LFP, and that is the chemistry that Sparkz is focused on. It’s very stable, very safe. Much. Safer than (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) and much lower cost than NMC. So this is much lower cost, almost about 40 percent lower in cost, and the life of the battery itself is about three to four times that of the NMC. LFP is about 5,000 cycles, whereas NMC is about 1,500 cycles. So all these advantages, you know, make LFP very attractive. The only challenge LFP has compared to NMC is the energy density, but we are addressing that by being able to provide ultra-fast charging. LFP, that’s our proprietary technology. That means ultra-fast charging means we can charge from zero to 100 percent in 15 to 20 minutes.

This is the catalyst to make the (electric vehicle) market transition from the early adopter market, which was crazy after energy density or after range, because range and energy density are a function of each other. But as you transition to the mass market, it’s not so much about range as it is about cost and charging time. Not everyone has access to chargers. So if you’re going to a public charging station, the faster you charge, then others can charge.

Tate: Why West Virginia?

Malhotra: Affordability of utilities, both power and water, and availability of land and accessibility. West Virginia essentially is accessible by Tennessee, the area where a lot of the electric vehicle manufacturers are located or are locating. Again, the same with Michigan, the same with Ohio. The most important, Curtis, is that the workforce is a very well trained workforce in safety, and safety plays a major role in battery manufacturing, because if the safety is compromised, you’re compromising the output of the battery, and that can be fairly hazardous. West Virginia, or essentially the coal sector, provides a lot of very well trained workforce. And two things, one is safety, the safety discipline, and second is process oriented. And those are the two key things when we look at manufacturing, this is you’re essentially producing a chemical. And this workforce is heavily trained, the workforce in West Virginia to produce chemicals. So that’s why West Virginia.

Tate: Will displaced mine and power plant workers be hired for these positions?

Malhotra: Yes, because you know it, I know it, Curtis, that the coal sector has, over the years, over the last couple of decades, diminished immensely in production, and that has resulted in several hundred, maybe thousands, of mine workers being displaced. So our intent is to bring folks from there. But there are others also, l not too far from where we are, in Morgantown, there is the (Mylan) pharmaceutical plant, which shut down. Shutting down that factory also resulted in (job losses for) very well trained workers, again, workers trained in the safety discipline and process. Our pharmaceutical industry is again a very similar industry to ours. So we will have a pick of the best from the coal community, as well as from Mylan.

Tate: There’s an election coming up. Are you concerned that a change in the White House could curb some of the clean energy investments that have helped you stand up your plant?

Malhotra: What I have heard from basically both the candidates is the same that this shall continue. Batteries are not just needed for electric vehicles. Batteries are needed for energy storage. The growth in the data center market is so significant I can’t even put a number to it, and there’s a huge delta in what our grid can supply for the data center market, especially with the growth in AI. If you look at Northern Virginia, that’s where the data center belt is happening, and data centers are happening in West Virginia as well.

So with utilities like Dominion and few others just racing ahead with basically locking up energy storage or batteries for the next five, 10, 15 years. So there’s a huge demand that we cannot even fathom at this point for energy storage. And if we lose this opportunity to manufacture and manufacture across the value chain, not just the complete battery, but across the value chain, the material for lithium batteries, the cells and the battery pack. We need to have that manufacturing set up in the United States in the next five, six, seven years, because if we miss the train, I think we are going to be losing out on whether it is electric mobility, whether it is renewables, whether it is the need for satisfying the power that data as we grow in digitalization.

Could This Coal Plant Run On Gas? Yes, Executive Testifies

Appalachian Power is at least considering a conversion of two West Virginia power plants from coal to natural gas.

That’s what a company executive told the Virginia State Corporation Commission in recent written testimony. The John Amos and Mountaineer plants in West Virginia supply power to Appalachian Power’s Virginia customers and burn a lot of coal produced in the region.

But the region also produces a large amount of natural gas, which has become the preferred fuel for generating electricity nationwide and in the states surrounding West Virginia.

And new federal regulations for carbon dioxide emissions could encourage the switch.

Robert Jessee, Appalachian Power’s vice president of generating assets, told the Virginia commission in August that gas was a “viable option” to help the plants meet new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emissions requirements, should they survive legal challenges.

“The company is currently exploring the compliance options available under the new EPA regulations,” Jessee said. “Converting the units to natural gas, or refueling them, is currently a viable option. It is my opinion that these plants are potential candidates for refueling, and that there are not any reasons known to me at this time that would preclude this option.”

A Common Conversion

As recently as 2021, the West Virginia Public Service Commission had approved other environmental compliance upgrades that would keep them operating through 2040 as coal plants.

In addition to regulatory changes, the economics of generating electricity have shifted in favor of natural gas and renewables, and away from coal.

Seth Feaster, an energy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, says such conversions are common and not difficult to do.

“These kinds of conversions have been done all over the place,” he said, “and they’re common enough that I think that it’s not a big reach for this plant, or these both of the plants, to actually get that done in a relatively short period of time, once they get approvals.”

No plant in West Virginia has been converted from coal to gas, but it has happened in nearby states, and within the territory of American Electric Power, Appalachian Power’s parent.

That includes the Big Sandy plant in eastern Kentucky and the Clinch River plant in Virginia. The West Virginia PSC approved the Clinch River conversion in 2014.

Charlotte Lane, chairman of the West Virginia PSC, said her three-member commission had not been advised by Appalachian Power that a conversion was under consideration for the Amos and Mountaineer plants.

Lane said the company would need the commission’s approval for a conversion of the plants.

“It is likely that those facilities would require extraordinary engineering and significant cost,” she said in a written statement.

Karen Wissing, an Appalachian Power spokeswoman, said the company “continues to look for the most efficient options to power progress and business growth.”

That may or may not involve converting coal plants to natural gas, she said.

“Before this can even be considered,” she said in an email, “we need further exploration and coordination with regulators to determine if it would be in the best interest of customers and the state.”

Reliability Questions

One sure opponent of any attempt to convert the plants: West Virginia’s coal industry. The state remains the nation’s second-leading coal producer besides Wyoming and its power plants are still a big customer.

The coal industry has deep historical and cultural resonance in the state, and many elected officials are committed to its survival. Gov. Jim Justice amassed his wealth in the coal business and has been one of its biggest defenders.

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said his organization had not been made aware of Appalachian Power’s Virginia testimony.

He said the proposal would have negative economic consequences for the state’s coal producing areas.

“Converting Amos and Mountaineer to gas would effectively kill thousands of mining jobs throughout West Virginia along with hundreds of rail and river transportation and coal handling jobs,” Hamilton said in an email. “The net effect would also be to fuel these two coal facilities with less reliable energy from possible out of state sources and create added retrofit costs to be shouldered by consumers.”

The industry and its allies have made a steady pitch for coal’s reliability: If you always have a supply ready on site, the plants can run when they’re needed.

Gas, on the other hand, is supplied by pipeline and could be vulnerable to disruptions.

Cutting Emissions

Yet thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, West Virginia has an abundant supply. It is the nation’s fourth-leading producer, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“West Virginia is in a pretty enviable position here,” said Rob Jennings, vice president of natural gas markets for the American Petroleum Institute. “And so you’ve got the gas you need right there.”

Helping meet emissions requirements works in favor of gas, Jennings said.

“When you switch from coal to natural gas in a power plant, you reduce your emissions by about 60 percent – between 50 and 60 percent, depending on the efficiency of the coal plant and the efficiency of the new gas plant,” he said. “So that’s really the biggest benefit.”

In addition to cutting carbon emissions, gas plants produce no sulfur dioxide, which can form acid rain and must be removed with devices called scrubbers. It emits less nitrogen oxide, which forms smog. And it avoids the disposal costs of coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater if not handled properly.

Gas, though, still emits carbon dioxide. The production and transportation of gas emits methane, an even more powerful planet-warming gas than CO2.

Gas as a substitute for coal generates some opposition where coal has a lot of support, Jennings said.

“But I think maybe the larger place where you tend to see resistance to this is from the environmental side,” he said.

Rising Costs

If EPA’s rules prevail, existing coal and new natural gas plants will have to capture 90 percent of their CO2 emissions within a decade, or shut down.

Environmental groups would prefer to see Appalachian Power’s coal plants retired and replaced with renewables like wind and solar, and battery storage.

Sooner or later, the company will have to make a decision on the future of its West Virginia coal fleet.

Appalachian Power’s West Virginia coal plants, which include Amos, Mountaineer and the Mitchell plant, half owned by Kentucky Power and Wheeling Power, have operated less than half the time in recent months and have lost money when they did run.

Appalachian Power executives testified to the West Virginia PSC over the summer that the plants had too much coal on site, so it was burned to manage the supply, even when it was not economically justified.

The plants are aging, and that increases the cost of operating and maintaining them. Mountaineer began operating in 1980 and Amos and Mitchell in the early 1970s.

Electricity rates, meanwhile, have been on the rise. In August, Appalachian Power asked the West Virginia PSC to increase them 17 percent for residential customers, or about $28 a month. The PSC dismissed the case on a technical issue, but heard an outcry from residents and elected officials.

Feaster says the plants might be at a tipping point, where it becomes more attractive to run them on gas instead of a fuel long associated with the state.

“You may want to support the coal industry in the state, but if it’s going to raise costs for ratepayers,” he said, “then it starts to become an increasingly challenging proposition to come up with the money that supports keeping it a coal plant.”

The 2,900-megawatt John E. Amos power plant is the largest in the state.

Curtis Tate / West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Mon Power Begins Construction On 3rd Solar Site In State

Mon Power is building a 5.75 megawatt solar facility on 36 acres of former coal ash landfill in Berkeley County.

The company activated its Fort Martin solar facility in January, the state’s largest at 19 megawatts. It is also building one at Rivesville with 5.5 megawatts.

One megawatt is enough to power about 173 households.

“The redevelopment of this site into a clean, renewable energy source is aligned with our commitment to support economic growth in West Virginia as well as our efforts to build a more sustainable future for the communities we serve,” said Dan Rossero, vice president of West Virginia energy generation for Mon Power parent FirstEnergy.

Solar is the fastest growing source of electricity nationwide. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, U.S. solar capacity reached 209 gigawatts in the second quarter.

By comparison, U.S. coal capacity was at 177 gigawatts in April, a decline of nearly half from 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

West Virginia still lags other states in renewable energy development.

‘It Feels Like Home’: Steel’s Heritage Lives At Form Energy Weirton Site

Long before this gleaming, 500,000 square foot factory went up, the site churned out steel products for generations, and Dot Gilliam’s family was part of it.

Dot Gilliam coordinates the installation of equipment at Form’s Factory One in Weirton.

Long before this gleaming, 500,000 square foot factory went up, the site churned out steel products for generations, and Gilliam’s family was part of it.

“My grandfather worked here. His dad worked here. My dad worked here,” Gilliam said. “I have many cousins, uncles.”

Thousands of workers labored around the clock at Weirton Steel. Production waned and employment dropped as steel production moved overseas. The plant closed.

Form Energy chose the site for its first factory for storage batteries. They’re the kind that can take electricity generated by wind and solar – really, any source – and store it for days until it is needed on the grid.

For Gilliam, it was a chance to continue in his family’s footsteps.

“When I heard about Form coming in, I really saw this opportunity to work here on the same property my family all came from,” he said. “And it feels like home.”

The Form factory bears little resemblance to the steel mill. Weirton Steel was hot, noisy and dirty. Form’s factory is air conditioned, clean and relatively quiet.

Robots do a lot of the physical labor of building the batteries. The plant has about 250 workers now and is projected to have as many as 700, nowhere close to full employment at the steel mill.

Still, Gilliam thinks the same motivation drives Form’s workers as did the steel mill’s workers.

“The heritage is still here,” he said. “It took a lot of grit to get Weirton Steel going. And now we’ve got Form here and use that same grit to get this going.”

Instead of steel for bridges, buildings and battleships, Gilliam and his co-workers are building another kind of American power.

One Of Coal’s Top Foes Looks To Clean Energy Future For State

For a decade, Mary Anne Hitt led the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

As West Virginians grapple with the rising cost of maintaining coal’s dominance over the state’s electricity supply, Curtis Tate spoke with her about what’s changed and what hasn’t.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tate: You said you left the Sierra Club in 2021. What changes have you seen since then?

Hitt: Well, a couple of big changes come to mind. One is we have had this concentrated period of all of these rate increases from AEP (American Electric Power) and First Energy that have really been tied to how much coal the state is insistent on using. And so I think that the public frustration with that has kind of reached a peak that I hadn’t seen before. Multiple rate increases over just a couple of years, and now our electric bills are going up faster than almost any other state in the country. I have seen for the first time people really questioning whether it’s in our financial interest, for our families and for our state, to just keep insisting that we’re going to burn so much coal and refusing to diversify our energy mix. That’s one thing that I feel like is changing.

Another thing that’s changed is we’ve had the Inflation Reduction Act pass, and that has created an incredible amount of new opportunity here in the state for clean energy. There’s, by one measure, over 5,000 new clean energy jobs in the state. Here in West Virginia, there’s also all of these programs for supporting coal communities as they make an economic transition. I’ve heard some economic development folks in the state call it a once-in-a-generation opportunity to really reinvest in making West Virginia part of the 21st century energy economy.

Tate: Is any of the state’s policy trying to stymie clean energy?

Hitt: Here in West Virginia, there are a lot of hurdles and roadblocks for clean energy. We just have seen over the last few months, the big utilities have tried to reduce net metering. They have tried to reduce what kind of financial benefit you can get from having solar on your rooftop. And so as we are in a time when we need more energy, and we need that energy to be clean, we have our utilities here in West Virginia that are trying to make it harder to build clean energy in the state, and that is certainly the wrong direction to be going. We are going to be grappling with this need for more electricity at a time of a climate crisis, and at a time when we’re all dealing with the effects of air and water pollution. Let’s try to make as much of that energy clean as possible. Let’s not go in the opposite direction here in West Virginia.

Tate: The EPA has issued new, tougher standards for power plants, and they’ve been challenged in court. Where do you see that going?

Hitt: The coal plant operators are never happy about those stronger pollution standards, because it requires them to make financial investments in those plants to clean them up. But we have some of the dirtiest coal plants in the country, here in West Virginia, from both the air pollution and a water pollution standpoint. These are just common sense public health safeguards to deal with the air pollution and the water pollution from these coal plants. And they are, of course, being challenged in the courts. Every single EPA pollution standard has the industry running right to the Supreme Court if they can to try to get them to intervene. But I think the reality is these EPA standards that are dealing with this air and water pollution are really common sense. Kind of bread and butter. EPA doing its job of protecting public health. While they might be challenged in the courts, I think they’ll ultimately be upheld, and that will result in cleaner air and water for people here in West Virginia.

Tate: In addition to coal, West Virginia has an abundance of natural gas. Why shouldn’t we use that to generate electricity?

Hitt: The prices for the gas to fuel power plants has just skyrocketed in recent years, and then it’s crashed, and it skyrocketed, and then it’s crashed, and so that leaves West Virginia families and businesses vulnerable to ever skyrocketing electricity prices. Meanwhile when you look at solar and wind power, the fuel for that electricity is free. It’s the wind, it’s the sun, and so we could lock ourselves into another generation of an energy source that is polluting and is also going to continue to drive up our electricity bills. There’s much more of a volatile price for gas than there is for coal, because it’s sold all around the world, versus starting to make that move towards wind and solar and storing that clean energy where the fuel is coming from the heavens. We can be making and building that clean energy right here at home in West Virginia.

Tate: Gas producers will say it’s needed to balance out the intermittency of renewables. Are they wrong?

Hitt: Obviously you couldn’t turn off every coal and gas plant on the grid today, and only count on renewable energy. But over time, I think it’s a question of where, where are we making investments? Do we want those dollars invested in building out the renewable energy and ways to store that renewable energy? Or do we want to build out new gas resources that are going to lock us into a more polluting and volatile source of energy? For now, yes, coal and gas are part of the mix that is keeping the lights on, but we’re talking about, how do we plan for the future? And West Virginia is very far behind when it comes to clean energy.

Tate: What’s the role of battery storage?

Hitt: There are states across this country, like Texas, California, all over the country that have a lot of battery storage that is now actually quite affordable. Wind or solar with energy storage is cheaper than running an existing coal plant just about everywhere in this country. It’s not just here, but it’s here at the right scale. It’s here at the right cost. This is the kind of exciting opportunity that we can be part of here too in West Virginia. We can also be part of building those batteries and building those solar panels and building those wind turbines to be used all over the country. And the Inflation Reduction Act has a lot of incentives for clean energy manufacturing here in the United States, and a lot of those opportunities are starting to come to West Virginia. So it’s not just about the energy that we’re using in the state, it’s about building the businesses and the industries and the jobs here to be powering the rest of the country, as we have for so long, but powering the 21st century energy economy here in America.

Tate: Are the recent investments in clean energy in West Virginia at risk if there’s a change in the White House or the Congress?

Hitt: While these issues can become partisan around clean energy or climate, once those jobs start to land here at home, I think it becomes less of a partisan issue and more of a hopefully bipartisan economic development opportunity. I hope that we’re turning that corner, and our congressional delegation here in West Virginia and our neighboring states, our state leadership will really see that these incentives are helping us keep our young people in the state, create new economic opportunity, attract new businesses to the state, and that it’s in everybody’s interest to keep them and expand them.

Wind Overtakes Coal In March, April In U.S. Electricity Production

Wind alone surpassed coal for the first time in April 2023. It did so again this year, but for the first time, for two consecutive months.

Wind outpaced coal in electricity generation for two straight months in the spring.

Electricity generated from wind exceeded electricity generated from coal nationwide in March and April, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

Wind alone surpassed coal for the first time in April 2023. It did so again this year, but for the first time, for two consecutive months.

Wind and solar combined produced more electricity than coal in the first five months of the year. They did last year, too, but the gap has grown wider.

Wind and solar are forecast to overtake coal for the full year, driven by a rapid expansion of solar.

Coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen to 16 percent from 20 percent two years ago.

Two decades ago, coal generated more than 40 percent of U.S. electricity. Natural gas has largely eroded its dominance, and renewables are beginning to chip away at what remains.