By Stephen Smoot
Last month, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey headlined the State Office of Energy’s Annual Summit. This brings together all elements of the power generation and distribution sector that relate to West Virginia to provide an update and also discuss the future.
One of the main foci lay in the presentation from Asim Z. Haque, Senior Vice President of PJM. PJM is a non profit entity that controls distribution in part or all of 13 states with a territory stretching from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River. It covers the entirety of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, the first three states to be served by it. West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware, the District of Columbia, and almost all of Ohio rely on PJM. The organization also serves the eastern half of Kentucky and bits of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois around the Chicago area.
“The primary task,” says the PJM website, is “to ensure the safety, reliability, and security of the bulk electric power system.” That includes knowing “customer needs” while providing “valued service to meet those needs in a cost-efficient manner.” Its goal of reducing costs comes through operating “robust, competitive, and non-discriminatory electric power markets.”
In essence, the mission lies in balancing the needs of maintaining a reliable grid and power access system while keeping the cost to the consumer as low as possible. This comes from PJM’s policy of ruthlessly purchasing only at the lowest price, regardless of source. It also works toward supporting policies at the government level to keep costs as low as possible.
PJM also works within a broader regional framework called the Eastern Interconnection.
While PJM does buy from natural gas, coal, wind, solar, and other sources, trends in 2025 pointed toward the rising efficiency of buying natural gas and solar generated power while coal and wind sources saw less purchases in recent months.
Haque discussed evaluations of system reliability undertaken by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. PJM uses the three levels of risk as a means to communicate the likelihood of a power shortfall in extreme cold or heat conditions when power use is at its highest.
“High risk” areas include many of the states bordering or near the Mississippi River through its entire length. It refers to the strong possibility that power production shortfalls will take place during normal conditions, as opposed to the extremes found in winter and summer.
Low risk areas will not likely see power interruptions from shortfalls of supply. Much of the Deep South east of Mississippi enjoys this status.
PJM and systems covering the Northeast and Pacific Coast see “elevated risk,” or the possibility that shortfalls may occur in extreme conditions, especially during winter and summer when vulnerable populations need reliable power the most.
One of the key elements driving the rise in power demand comes from construction of data centers to serve the expanding needs of the artificial intelligence industry. In the 21st century, its importance in securing a prosperous future and technological independence equals the 19th century need for steel mills, the coal mines that provided the energy, and the railroads that connected them.
Just as passing on building the infrastructure to support steel would have surrendered the next century to the Germans, not investing in data centers represents a cession of power to countries like Communist China or Russia working to expand their capabilities to first in the world.
To function, AI needs secure and reliable sources of energy, facilities to operate, and transmission lines to connect producers of power to consumers.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey over 2025 has rolled out a number of big picture policies designed to put the Mountain State at the center of efforts to expand capacity to meet demand. This effort dovetails with PJM’s decision to “jump start” the evaluation and approval process in its “transition cycle.”
The “50 by 50” plan, for example, envisions expanding West Virginia power production from its current 15 gigawatts to 50 by 2050. In comparison, Pennsylvania has a capacity of just under that currently while Texas leads the nation at just under 170. Morrisey noted that “I recognize it is ambitious. I recognize it will be challenging, if not downright difficult. But we have no choice. Just as our government did during World War II, we have the patriotic duty, the solemn obligation, to meet this challenge head-on.”
Expanding capacity will require capital to construct in the short-term, but will provide a high enough supply to meet needs and also keep prices down for all consumers.
Since October, the Governor has touted several major and key investments to boost power production as quickly as possible. At the summit, he announced a $70 million investment from Diversified Energy to plug old wells for environmental considerations, a $1.2 billion 625 MW power plant in Harrison County with 805 construction jobs, a First Energy $2.5 billion facility with a $1.2 billion ground-based energy plant (the term “fossil fuels” is outdated since science now knows that hydrocarbon energy resources also percolate up from deep in the Earth) and also a 70 MW solar facility. Mon Power will spend $1.44 billion to upgrade its key coal-fired plants.
In two months, these and other pledged investments totaled $4.17 billion and almost 4,200 jobs while increasing capacity by nearly two GW. The State of West Virginia only put in $1 million to promote this series of investments, a miniscule percentage of the total level of private sector spending proposed. These announcements did not include solar farms proposed and under construction in the Potomac Highlands.
Additionally, transmission line operators “overbuilt” in the 1970s to ensure proper capacity for decades to come. Now the system is reaching its limits and proposed new lines constructed by Dominion will connect current and future power production facilities in North Central West Virginia with both data centers built in state and also meet the demands of the National Capital Region. Most power will be generated by American Electric Power and First Energy.
The purpose of the lines shall be to “strengthen electric reliability across the 13-state PJM region over the next decade.
Haque also described West Virginia’s growing expected power needs. He shared that summer peak demand will grow by just over three percent per year while that of winter will rise by just under four.
PJM suggested that its member states’ agencies that oversee utilities, such as the West Virginia Public Service Commission, or state legislatures themselves, examine the distribution of how customers pay for the improvements. Expanded capacity will lead to more stable rates, but paying for that capacity could bring up prices in the relative short term.
Indeed, many critics oppose data center development on some level based on these fears.
“Costs can be allocated away from residential and small business customers,” stated Haque, “and toward other customer classes more directly driving tightening supply.” In other words, PJM is suggesting that states adjust rate regulations so that the cost of capacity expansion falls more on major corporations, especially those connected to data centers.
