In Giles County, officials hope to breathe new life into an old coal power plant

In the small town of Glen Lyn, in Giles County near the West Virginia border, a large defunct coal-fired power plant sits by the New River.

After nearly a century of service beginning in 1919, it no longer generates electricity. Today, officials hope that a study funded in part by a recently awarded federal grant will shine some light on their best options for reusing the site.

One possibility is that it becomes home to a business such as a manufacturing company, which would help replace jobs and tax revenue lost when the plant shut down in 2015. The building features sturdy masonry, high ceilings, tens of thousands of square feet of potentially usable space and ready access to transportation and utility infrastructure.

“For all the reasons it was a great site in 1919, it still is today,” said Giles County Administrator Chris McKlarney.

The power plant employed hundreds of people over the years, said Teresa Hamilton Hall, spokesperson for Appalachian Power, which owns the property and is working with Giles County on the reuse study.

“Heavy manufacturing is one potential use, but we aren’t boxing ourselves in,” Hall said in an email. “We want the study to provide much needed, valuable insight into potential uses for the property.”

A ‘beautiful and amazing structure’

McKlarney said the old power plant has a lot going for it, including its 45,000 square feet of usable space and 60-foot ceilings. Most of the structure is built of brick, and inside are multiple overhead cranes, including one that can lift 100 tons.

“There’s a lot of opportunity in a building that size, probably a lot of things we haven’t even considered,” McKlarney said.

The site is just off U.S. 460 and a short drive from Interstate 77. A rail line that used to deliver coal runs right next to it. It’s adjacent to electric transmission lines, with an active power substation next door.

The building is a “beautiful and amazing structure” the likes of which wouldn’t be built today, McKlarney said.

“A community of our size could never afford to build a facility like that,” he said.

Rehabilitating the property will come with challenges. Figuring out exactly what steps will be necessary is one of the goals of the study, which McKlarney estimated could take four to six months.

Officials know that some demolition will be required. Floors will need replacing. Equipment, including the power plant’s old turbines, will need to be removed.

“There’s a lot of environmental remediation that has to happen there,” McKlarney said.

Coal ash — the waste byproduct of burning coal in a power plant — remains on the property. Legislation passed during the 2020 General Assembly mandates its removal, and Hall said Appalachian is making plans.

“At this time, the coal ash has not been disturbed,” she said in an email. “Under Virginia law, it must be placed in a lined landfill. Appalachian Power has identified a potential landfill site near the Glen Lyn Plant and is seeking a permit for this location from the state of West Virginia.”

It may be that the reuse study reveals that the old building doesn’t have a viable future — perhaps because it would be too expensive to fix up.

If so, the next steps would be up to Appalachian Power, McKlarney said. If the building must come down, the study is supposed to advise how to accomplish that in a way that ensures the site can still be used for industry.

“Regardless of whether the building is there, it’s still a great industrial site,” McKlarney said.

Plant’s history goes back more than a century

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson was president. The world was emerging from what was then called “the Great War” but which we know today as World War I. Virginia’s population was less than a third of what it is now.

In July of that year, a single 15-megawatt unit went online in Glen Lyn, supplying electricity to the coal mining industry and nearby communities.

In May 1944, a 95-megawatt unit called Unit 5 entered service there. In May 1957, the plant’s Unit 6 came online, producing another 240 megawatts of power — more than the previous five units combined.

The plant’s four original turbines and 13 original boilers were retired in 1971. Units 5 and 6 continued operating until 2015, when the plant was shut down.

“The Glen Lyn Plant was the focal point of the village of Glen Lyn, and of Giles County,” Hall said. “When the plant was originally built from 1917 to 1919, it boosted the town’s population from 50 to 400.”

The U.S. Census today puts the town’s population at just under 100 people, down from 115 in 2010 and 151 in 2000.

“Although many of the plant’s employees commuted to the plant to work from nearby towns,” Hall said, “historically many plant employees served in the community as elected officials, firefighters, and in many community activities.”

McKlarney’s grandfather, an electrical engineer, moved to the area in the 1950s to work on building out the plant. McKlarney himself worked on site for an engineering firm that reported to the electric utility during the 1990s.

When the power plant ceased operations in 2015, about 30 people still worked there, Hall said.

“Some moved on to other jobs at the company, while others retired,” she said.

In all, about 700 people were employed there over the years.

“That put food on a lot of tables and built a lot of houses in the community,” McKlarney said.

The plant’s closure cost Giles County about $400,000 in annual tax revenue, while the town lost about $230,000 annually.

Also by 2015, the 95-megawatt Unit 5 had earned a new distinction: No longer the largest coal-fired generator in the Southeastern U.S. like it was when it started up in 1944, it had become the electric utility’s oldest and smallest coal-fired unit instead.

Federal program aids coal communities

The reuse study to determine the best path forward for the power plant property is backed by a $200,000 federal grant, announced last week, along with $50,000 from the local industrial development authority.

The grant comes from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Assistance to Coal Communities program, which aims to help places that have historically relied on coal for jobs and prosperity but have seen their fortunes change as the industry has declined.

More than 80% of power generated in Virginia today comes from natural gas or nuclear sources. Only about 4% comes from coal-fired plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Many coal power plants have closed. Some, such as Appalachian Power’s Clinch River Plant in Russell County, were converted to natural gas and still operate today.

Lauren Stuhldreher, the EDA’s Virginia representative, said Giles County’s grant application succeeded in explaining how the downturn in coal has affected the county.

“They did a good job of talking about how this project will really allow thinking through the reuse of this site and providing economic resilience and growth in another way, through another industry, looking past coal to the future of the community,” Stuhldreher said.

Efforts to find new uses for old power plant sites aren’t unprecedented. In New Jersey’s Lacey Township , the EDA has provided funding to examine alternative uses for a nuclear power plant that stopped operating in 2018. In Northern Virginia , a builder plans to turn the site of the old Potomac River Generating Station, a coal-fired plant in Alexandria that shut down in 2012, into a mixed-use development.

Like McKlarney, Stuhldreher sees potential for the Glen Lyn site thanks to its location and proximity to infrastructure.

If it’s not suitable for heavy industry, other potential options could include using the old plant for workforce development or as a makerspace, she said.

“The opportunities here could be large scale,” she said. “We could be thinking about a variety of different industries because the site is on a main route through the community.”

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