An example noted by many in the Clarksburg area is Allegheny Energy's large, 2,000-megawatt coal-fired plant in Harrison County -- the second largest plant in the state after American Electric Power's John E. Amos plant.

"It hasn't been running for a couple weeks," said Allegheny spokesman Allen Staggers Sept. 14.

Allegheny's other West Virginia plants -- notably the 1,300-MW Pleasants station near Belmont and the 1,100-MW Fort Martin plant near Maidsville, both considered "baseload" plants that operate pretty much all the time -- have experienced down-time, too.

And AEP's Appalachian Power has had down-time at its plants as well, according to spokeswoman Jeri Matheney.

Staggers explained that while power plants sometimes are down for regularly scheduled maintenance, at other times they're down because of market factors.

"It's not Allegheny that decides when to bring our plants online, actually. PJM (Interconnection, the manager of the regional transmission grid) brings them online," he said.

Each utility lets PJM know each day how much it will charge for electricity the following day from each of its plants, Staggers explained.

He hypothesized a plant that offers to run when the market price for electricity is $35/megawatt-hour.

"Starting at midnight, maybe the market price for power is $20. The units that have bid in at the lowest price, those will be the ones that run first," he said. "Then, as the demand gets higher than the output of the stations that are online, the next unit that comes online is the next unit that ranks in order based on its price. That ... plant will come online at $35."

Because demand has been especially low, plants that usually operate around the clock have not always been "in the money," Staggers said.

"There haven't been very many times that the Harrison plant hasn't been 'in the money,'" he said, adding that he has had access to this information for about 10 years at Allegheny, although he doesn't always consult it.

"Our four baseload coal plants are running, generally, even when demand is off. This is a little bit different," he said.

U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that utility coal-fired generation in West Virginia year to date through June, the most recent figures available, is lower than at any time in the past decade.

For 2009 compared with 2008, generation is down 25 percent January through June, a decline of 11.6 million MWh. The next closest state in coal-fired generation lost in 2009 is Ohio, with about 10 million MWh.

No other power source is making up the difference. Total generation is down 24 percent in the state.

Neither Staggers, Matheney nor a PJM representative had an explanation for why West Virginia's coal-fired generation should be down so much more than any other state.

Although power plants employ many people -- 220 work at the Harrison plant -- neither utility plans any layoffs, in part because, as Staggers explained, the plants could be dispatched at any time.

In fact, according to Matheney, employees' time is well used.

"We're making use of the time when these units aren't needed to perform maintenance on them -- and we're in fact using more of our own employees to do maintenance than we might have in the past," she said.

The situation may be turning around.

Staggers offered the following observation the morning of Sept. 15.

"If you were fortunate enough to live in Fairmont -- and up on top of a hill that allowed you a view to both the north and south -- you would see that there are distinct white plumes rising from the proximity of Maidsville (Fort Martin) and Shinnston (Harrison)," he wrote in an e-mail.

"And if you could just peek over the horizon to the west, you could see something similar in the area near Belmont, W.Va. (the Pleasants plant)."