Pennsylvania Coal Plant To Transform Into 4.5Gw Gas-Powered Plant

Aep Expects To Add 24 Gw Of Load By 2030, Mainly From Data CentersAmerican Electric Power expects its utilities will interconnect 24 GW of new load by 2030 — up nearly 15% from its previous estimate — with 18 GW coming from data centers, according to William Fehrman, AEP president and CEO. The 24 GW is backed by signed customer commitments and consists of 13 GW in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas market, 9 GW in the PJM Interconnection and about 2.5 GW in the Southwest Power Pool, Fehrman said Wednesday during an earnings call. In ERCOT, the pending load includes about 5 GW in cryptocurrency operations and 2 GW in data centers, according to Fehrman. “Texas is clearly becoming the crypto center for us,” he said. The pending load in PJM includes about 3.7 GW of data centers in Ohio and about 3.1 GW of data centers in Indiana Michigan Power’s service territory, Fehrman said. AEP’s utilities have inquiries about possible new load totaling 190 GW, Fehrman said — a significant increase for a 37-GW system. “Potential customers are drawn to AEP's footprint because of our advanced transmission network capable of delivering consistent large load power,” he said, adding that the company owns more 765-kV lines than all other utilities combined. AEP’s weather-normalized peak demand grew 12%, to 37.6 GW, at the end of the second quarter, up from 33.5 GW a year earlier, according to Trevor Mihalik, the company’s CFO. Data centers and other industrial customers coming online in Indiana, Ohio and Texas largely drove the increase, he said, resulting in about $200 million in additional revenue. AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio, expects weather-normalized retail electricity sales by its utilities will increase 5.7% this year, up from 3% growth in 2024. The company anticipates sales will jump 8.4% next year and 8.9% in 2027, according to an earnings presentation. In part due to those new load expectations, AEP expects this fall it will increase its five-year capital spending plan by 30%, to about $70 billion, up from $54 billion, Fehrman said. AEP expects transmission investments will account for half the additional expenditures, followed by generation at 40% and the distribution system at 10%, according to Fehrman. Under the pending capital expenditure plan, AEP Texas could spend about $7 billion on transmission. Changes to federal clean energy tax credits signed into law July 4 don’t appear to affect AEP’s $9.9 billion plan to build wind and solar projects, according to Fehrman. A few renewable energy projects potentially could be affected by a July 7 executive order directing the U.S. Treasury Department to issue guidance on determining when a project may be deemed “under construction,” a key issue for qualifying for tax credits, Fehrman said. In November, AEP agreed to buy 100 MW of fuel cells from Bloom Energy, with an option to buy up to 1 GW in total by the end of this year, the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday. AEP’s subsidiaries are offering the fuel cells to data centers and other large customers as an immediate option for addressing their needs while grid infrastructure upgrades are being completed to accommodate their demand. Ohio Power, an AEP utility, has two contracts approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, totaling about 98 MW, for electricity service from fuel cells, according to the SEC report. Ohio H.B. 15, which takes effect Aug. 14, repealed the statute that permits electric utilities to provide customer-sited renewable generation service such as fuel cells, but the law grandfathered the two PUCO-approved contracts, AEP said. Texas H.B. 5247, which became law in June, is “incredibly constructive” legislation for AEP Texas, according to Fehrman. The bill allows eligible utilities to use a “unified tracker mechanism” to recover their expenses, reducing regulatory lag, he said. The cost-recovery mechanism could increase AEP Texas’ return on equity by 0.5% to 1%, according to Mihalik. The utility has an 8.6% earned ROE, he said. “This is highly supportive of increasing our capital allocation to Texas as we participate in the massive infrastructure build-out needed to drive the economic growth in the state,” Fehrman said. AEP’s utilities have about 5.6 million customers in Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

Utiltiy Dive Generation

powerplant

01 August 2025

4 min read

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Pennsylvania Coal Plant To Transform Into 4.5Gw Gas-Powered Plant

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