First Energy, the parent company of MonPower and Potomac Edison, has asked the Public Service Commission to reject calls for a public hearing on the company's integrated resource plan, which has come under fire from outside groups in recent weeks.
The electric utility company, which serves 523,000 customers throughout the northern half of the state, told the public service commissioners that its resource plan - a 15-year forecast of the company's electricity demand and supply - didn't need to be reviewed in a public hearing.
"The companies believe that a review of the filing, along with comments to be filed by stakeholders, will permit the Commission to make any such determination, if needed," First Energy's lawyers wrote.
Last week, the Sierra Club, a national environmental group that has challenged electric utilities throughout the country, called for a public hearing on First Energy's proposed energy plan, which suggested the West Virginia subsidiaries would seek to buy another coal-fired power plant in the near future.
That request built upon a growing list of concerns that other groups have raised about the underlying evidence presented in the First Energy resource planning case.
Last Friday, the Sierra Club's lawyers raised many of those same questions, including how pending federal rules on carbon emissions affect First Energy's projected cost of purchasing another coal-fired power station and retrofitting existing plants, including the Harrison power plant near Clarksburg, to co-burn natural gas.
Almost all of the questions submitted in the case seem to revolve around one simple point: How is it that First Energy's analysis is showing that the cheapest way to provide power to customers in West Virginia involves purchasing another coal plant, when market conditions have been unfavorable to coal of late and First Energy itself has had to idle other coal plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania?
In its response to the Sierra Club, First Energy officials said they should not be singled out from other electric utilities in the state that filed resource plans with the PSC for the first time this year.
"There are seven IRPs filed with the Commission, and all should be treated the same procedurally by the commission," First Energy's lawyers wrote. "The companies' IRP should not be treated any differently."
They went on to state that conducting hearings on all of the IRPs - which some states do every year - would not be "productive."
While all of West Virginia's electric utilities including, Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, submitted resource plans, only First Energy's has drawn substantial attention, or criticism.
Part of that attention is driven by the fact that the company didn't take into account things like energy efficiency improvements or the Clean Power Plan, even though those federal carbon regulations are working their way through the court system.
The three-member commission has not ruled on whether they will schedule a public hearing on the case.
Reach Andrew Brown at andrew.brown@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4814 or follow @Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.