West Virginia’s Power Systems Industry: History, Directions, and Future

West Virginia (WV) is well known across the United States for its coal mining industry.However, while coal has been the state's largest source of power for decades, a shift to shutting down coal-fired power plants is resulting in WV exploring new power generation methods.As the interest in renewable energy increases, the state is displaying a new interest in technologies like solar or wind energy methods.However, such developments involve further considerations on the distribution of power as well as the need to withstand inclement weather conditions (ranging from heavy rainfall, high heat and humidity in the summer, gusts of heavy wind, ice, and below-freezing temperatures in the winter).Additionally, the topology and demographics of WV are important to understand, with WV being heavily rural and mountainous, residents can wait several days or weeks to regain power to their homes during blackouts.As an education exercise for a power engineering student at WV, this study discusses the history and current state of WV's power system industry as well as the future potentialities.