Updated 10:15 with a response from FirstEnergy.
FirstEnergy has considered and rejected the idea of converting Monongahela Power's Albright Power Station in Preston County, slated for closure this year, to burn natural gas or biomass.
"Converting already inefficient generating units designed to bum coal to another fuel source would not change the inefficiencies inherent to the plants," the company wrote in an April 30 filing with the Public Service Commission of West Virginia.
FirstEnergy announced Feb. 8 that it would close Monongahela Power's Albright, Rivesville and Willow Island coal-fired power plants by Sept. 1.
The company cited environmental regulations, although it explained in a March 9 filing with the PSC that the plants' financial performance is a drain on the company.
The commission issued an order April 2 saying it wants to better understand FirstEnergy's reasoning for retiring the plants, and asking the company to submit by April 30 a broad range of information.
Albright, Rivesville, and Willow Island are old, FirstEnergy said in its filing — all have been in operation 60 years and more. They're small. And because they're inefficient, they already operate only during peak periods and generate "a minimal amount of electricity."
It's just not worth upgrading them to meet environmental regulations that kick in Jan. 1, 2015, the company said.
Even to operate them safely and reliably through 2014 would require more than $50 million in reliability investments, according to the filing.
In rejecting conversion of Albright, the most efficient of the three, to another fuel, FirstEnergy did not address the seeming contradiction that other utilities have found it worthwhile to convert old coal-fired units.
FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin gave little further detail in an e-mail response to a State Journal request for clarification.
He reiterated that using a fuel an old, inefficient boiler wasn't designed for compounds the boiler's inefficiencies, that the conversion would be expensive, and that it would be difficult to recover those costs in the current low-power-demand environment.
"As to what other utilities have done, perhaps the age of the boilers that were converted were such that it made economic sense to convert them to gas," he added. "This isn't the case with the units we plan to retire in West Virginia."
The company explained in more detail in its filing that closures are timed, in part, to allow laid off Mon Power employees to seek positions elsewhere in FirstEnergy's system along with employees laid off elsewhere within the system at the same time.
Many of the PSC's questions and FirstEnergy's responses have to do with technical aspects of reliability, obligations and revenues related to regional grid operator PJM Interconnection.
The commission ordered FirstEnergy on April 2 to keep the plants open until it has reviewed this filing.
FirstEnergy said it does not believe the PSC has jurisdiction over the closure of specific plants.
Documents in case number 11-1274, including the April 30 filing, may be searched from the Public Service Commission's search page.
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