West Virginia Made Its 69% Coal Capacity Rule a Goal, Not a Mandate

The West Virginia Public Service Commission issued its final proposed rule for data center power on Oct. 15, and the central question in it came out as a target rather than a requirement. The commission determined that the 69 percent coal plant capacity figure written into House Bill 2014 is aspirational. Utilities should strive to reach it, the rule says, but are not bound to it when doing so would raise what customers pay.

The rule sets a minimum net capacity factor of 69 percent for coal-fired units, measured on a 12-month rolling average beginning each January, and conditions it on not requiring rate increases for residential or industrial customers. The commission built the language partly on joint amendments proposed by American Electric Power, which owns Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, and FirstEnergy, which owns Mon Power and Potomac Edison. The West Virginia Coal Association and the United Mine Workers had asked for a hard mandate. The commission said a mandate would exceed what the Legislature intended.

House Bill 2014, the Power Generation and Consumption Act, passed in 2025 and took effect July 11 of that year. Its other half created certified microgrid districts and certified high-impact data centers, both approved by the secretary of the state Department of Commerce. A high-impact data center is defined as a facility with a critical IT load of 90 megawatts or more placed in service after July 1, 2025. A microgrid district may cover a nearly contiguous area of up to 2,250 acres, must send more than 70 percent of the power it generates to data centers, and may deliver no more than 10 percent to the wholesale market.

That structure moves a large amount of generation and distribution work outside the utility framework. A generator inside a certified district can qualify as an exempt wholesale generator and is not subject to the commission''s siting certificate requirements, its jurisdiction over rates and service conditions, or state interconnection and net metering standards. Regulated utility customers cannot be charged for the generation, transmission, or distribution facilities serving a district. Counties and municipalities are barred from enacting or enforcing ordinances that would prohibit or hinder one. Projects proposing 300 megawatts or more are exempt from the requirement to spend 120 days negotiating for utility supply first.

What survives on the regulated side is maintenance. The rule directs utilities to maintain their coal-fired units and schedule maintenance to limit downtime, and adds reporting requirements covering coal supplies and contracts along with quarterly dispatch reports. Outage and maintenance work at generating stations is commercial and industrial electrical scope, and the state''s data center pipeline is still early: West Virginia had seven data centers at the time the certification rules were written, against more than 650 in Virginia. Property taxes from certified centers are filed with the Board of Public Works and split 50 percent to a personal income tax reduction fund, 30 percent to host counties, 10 percent across all 55 counties per capita, and 5 percent each to an Economic Enhancement Grant Fund and an Electric Grid Stabilization and Security Fund.

The rule now goes to the Legislative Rule-Making Review Committee, which a co-chair said will take it up in November or December, and then into a rule bundle in the session that opens in January 2027.