The 100-megawatt solar facility will be built by Potomac Hills Energy on a 650-acre former strip mining site.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission has approved a solar project in Mineral County.
The 100-megawatt solar facility will be built by Potomac Hills Energy on a 650-acre former strip-mining site.
A 200-megawatt-hour battery storage system is also planned. The facility will connect to FirstEnergy, the parent company of Mon Power and Potomac Edison.
The U.S. Department of Energy will provide up to $129 million for a solar project in Nicholas County on two former coal mines. It is planned to generate 250 megawatts of electricity.
Savion, a subsidiary of Shell based in Kansas City, Missouri, will build the project.
Across the country, people took a moment out of their day on Monday to watch the solar eclipse.
West Virginia was no exception. The greens of the Mountainlair, West Virginia University’s student union, were completely covered by students and community members watching the sky.
Across the country, people took a moment out of their day on Monday to watch the solar eclipse.
West Virginia was no exception. The greens of the Mountainlair, West Virginia University’s student union, were completely covered by students and community members watching the sky.
Students like senior Claire Dursa made up the majority of the crowd. She works at the student union, and took advantage of her proximity to the event to come outside and see what was happening.
“If I’m correct with what I heard, I think the next one’s quite a few many years away,” Dursa said. “I think we’re going to enjoy this one as much as we can because you know that we won’t get to have this kind of experience for quite a long time.”
Jackson Taylor is a physics Ph.D. student at West Virginia University, and a graduate student assistant at the university’s planetarium. He said seeing the general public excited about astronomy makes the experience all the better.
“It’s great today, just the opportunity to reach so many people,” Taylor said “So many people are excited about astronomy. This is like astronomy day, it almost feels like. People are asking great questions. People are just having a great time.”
Taylor estimated more than a thousand people came to the Mountainlair, based on how many eclipse glasses were handed out.
“We gave out solar eclipse glasses, we gave out about 1100 to 1200 of them,” he said. “We ran out promptly, because there’s a lot of people here.”
Zach Tallman looks at the eclipse through a homemade pinhole projector April 8, 2024.
Photo by Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Event attendees were given the opportunity to view the eclipse through specially filtered telescopes April 8, 2024.
Photo by Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Taylor and others from the astronomy department set up solar telescopes looking at the sun, with special filters including a corona telescope, which lets viewers look at the sun through clouds. They also provided historical information about previous eclipses, including their scientific and societal importance through millennia of human observation.
Not everyone got a pair of eclipse glasses, but many were quick to share with friends and even strangers. Others like Zach Tallman took things into their own hands.
“I didn’t decide I was gonna watch the solar eclipse until this morning,” he said. “I was like nobody, nowhere is gonna have filters or glasses. I might as well just make something out of what I got here at my house.”
He made a pinhole projector using instructions from NASA and common household objects like a cereal box, aluminum foil and printer paper.
As the eclipse progressed, changes started to manifest even to the naked eye.
“You can definitely tell just looking out it’s definitely a lot dimmer,” Tallman said.
Close to the peak of the eclipse, a cloud started to make its way across the sun. For a moment, some in the crowd believed it to be totality, a complete covering of the sun that did not occur anywhere in West Virginia.
The cloud briefly allowed even those without eclipse glasses to see the crescent of the sun, filtered through the water vapor miles above.
“I’m seeing just a little tiny sliver of the sun, the rest of it is black,” said Jane Connor, who traveled up from Clarksburg. She knew an eclipse like this won’t happen until at least 2045, and that time far from West Virginia.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” Connor said. “So my daughter and granddaughter and I came up here today to experience it with a lot of people. It’s really exciting.”
In this composite image, six discs taken with a solar lens filter show the progression of the eclipse April 8, 2024.
Compositive image by Eric Douglas/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Later Monday, a solar eclipse will draw a path across North America. Although West Virginia is not directly in that path, there are still amazing opportunities to safely observe a unique celestial event.
Later Monday, a solar eclipse will draw a path across North America. Although West Virginia is not directly in that path, there are still amazing opportunities to safely observe a unique celestial event.
Early in the afternoon, the moon will pass between the Earth and the sun blocking the light of the sun to observers. For those in the path of totality just north and west of West Virginia, they will experience a total solar eclipse.
“Totality means that the entire disk of the sun is covered,” said Susie Paine, a physics PhD student at West Virginia University, and a graduate student assistant at the university’s planetarium. “So it’ll be almost like nighttime in the day. Totality is rare. We won’t have totality in West Virginia, unfortunately, we’re getting like 95 percent of the sun covered by the moon.”
She said the path of the moon and earth actually produces eclipses fairly often. What makes Monday’s event special is just how many people in North America will be able to observe it without having to travel.
“The appearance of rarity is that most of the Earth is not a great place for humans to be in the middle of the ocean,” Paine said. “So most solar eclipses are not going to happen in a place that’s convenient for any particular person to see them.”
It really is a once in a lifetime experience. According to NASA, the next total solar eclipse that will travel across the lower 48 states from coast to coast is in 2045, but that will cross from California to Florida. A total eclipse like this isn’t going to come close to West Virginia for another 100 years.
But if you only know one thing before the eclipse, Paine needs it to be about safety.
“The big thing is buy and wear solar eclipse glasses,” she said. “I cannot stress this enough, wear eclipse glasses.”
Paine said the only time to safely look at the eclipse without protection is during totality, something that won’t happen anywhere in West Virginia. The risks of staring at the sun are no joke.
“It could cause cataracts which can cause other eye diseases,” she said. “If you look at it for too long, then you’re gonna go blind. So don’t do that.”
Eclipse glasses like these are a crucial tool to enable direct observation of a solar eclipse.
Photo Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
One of the safe ways to indirectly observe the eclipse, without looking directly at the sun, is a pinhole projector. A projector can be made with a simple piece of paper, a shoe or cereal box or even by holding up a colander to let the sunlight shine through the holes and onto the ground or a white sheet. As the eclipse progresses, you’ll notice changes in the pinholes of light.
“You’ll see a bite taken out of it,” Paine said. “Sort of like when the moon is waxing or waning, it’ll eventually look crescent. Then most of the sun will be obscured, and then there’ll be a bite on the other side, and that’ll pass away.”
Jackson Taylor is also a graduate student at WVU and also cannot stress enough the importance of safety when observing the eclipse.
“Just to reiterate, nowhere in the state of West Virginia will it be safe to view the eclipse without eclipse glasses. Nowhere in the state,” he said. “Even with the eclipse glasses, you should still give your eyes a rest. You shouldn’t really be looking at the sun for more than five minutes, even with eclipse glasses.”
Taylor said the eclipse offers scientists unprecedented opportunities to learn more about the sun.
“For astronomers, we love solar eclipses, because they block out the light of the sun, and it lets us see the outer solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun, which extends way past the actual visible part of the sun to our eyes,” he said. “Because it’s getting blocked by the moon, we’re able to see parts of the sun that we’re not able to see on any given day.”
Eclipses have led to incredible discoveries, including the element helium – helios is Greek for sun – burning in the corona, and even the confirmation of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“The sun is the closest star to us so by studying our own sun, we’re able to study all the other stars,” Taylor said. “So if we’re not taking into account the corona for our own sun, our own star, then we cannot take it into account for the other stars that we’re studying.”
The public will benefit from that scientific fervor because even if it’s cloudy, Taylor said NASA will be live streaming the eclipse online. And Paine has one more parting piece of advice.
“Wear your eclipse glasses,” Paine said. “Just don’t look directly at the sun, the same rules that have applied every other day of your life apply on April 8.”
New solar customers will get a reduced net metering credit starting next year. And Mon Power will be able to recover fuel costs from electricity customers over the next three years.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission has approved settlements in two cases involving Mon Power.
New solar customers will get a reduced net metering credit starting next year. And Mon Power will be able to recover fuel costs from electricity customers over the next three years.
Starting Jan. 1, households with rooftop panels will receive an approximately 9 cents per kilowatt hour credit for the power they generate that goes to the grid.
Under the settlement the PSC approved, existing solar customers will get the higher rate of 11 to 13 cents a kilowatt hour for the next 25 years.
The settlement was a compromise. Mon Power and Potomac Edison had proposed reducing the net metering credit to 6.6 cents a kilowatt hour.
As of March 27, Mon Power began recovering $55.4 million in deferred fuel costs. That will continue through the end of December.
Next year, the company will be allowed to recover $99.5 million, and $95.8 million in 2026.
Like many electric utilities, Mon Power paid steeply higher prices for coal in 2021 and 2022.
Current law allows for projects of 50 megawatts. But it also includes a sunset provision that ends the window for such projects early next year. HB 5528 would have lifted the provision.
The bill passed by wide margins in both chambers: 61 to 36 in the House and 32 to 1 in the Senate.
The veto comes as utilities are expanding renewable power, especially solar. Mon Power’s Fort Martin solar facility in Monongalia County became operational in January. It produces 19 megawatts.
Mon Power is building two other solar projects and seeking approval for two more.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced funding up to $129 million to construct a solar facility on two former coal mines in Nicholas County. The governor’s veto should not affect the project.
In a letter to lawmakers Tuesday, Justice said he vetoed the bill to protect the coal industry. Justice himself owns numerous coal companies.
“I fear this well-intentioned bill will further encourage these companies to drop coal generated power and continue to turn toward more expensive options outside of West Virginia,” Justice wrote. “It could also lead to job loss by putting coal mines and coal generating facilities out of business quickly.”
Nearly 90 percent of the state’s power comes from coal, though nationwide, coal use has fallen below 20 percent.
