Infrastructure · 30 October 2026 · 5 min read

FirstEnergy’s 7.9 gigawatts are large-load contracts. The Maidsville turbines are reserved, not installed

The 27 October release says contracted demand from large-load customers is 7.9 gigawatts, nearly double since the start of the year, with about 4 gigawatts more in negotiation. It does not call the 7.9 gigawatts data centres. Siemens turbines for the proposed Maidsville plant are under a reservation agreement, with delivery expected in 2030. A West Virginia order is still projected for this quarter.

An aerial view of a coal-fired power station with two large cooling towers, striped chimneys and a river, set against forested hills. — A photograph of the Fort Martin coal station at Maidsville, West Virginia. FirstEnergy lists that station at 1,098 megawatts. The towers are the plant that already runs. They are not the proposed gas plant, and the Siemens turbines have not been delivered.

FirstEnergy’s release, on 27 October, puts third-quarter GAAP earnings at $557 million, or $0.96 a share, on revenue of $4.6 billion, against $441 million, or $0.76, on $4.1 billion a year earlier. The company also reports core earnings of $0.98 a share, against $0.83. Core earnings are its non-GAAP figure. The load sentence is separate from the profit: across the service territory, “FirstEnergy has 7.9 gigawatts of contracted demand from large-load customers, nearly double since the beginning of the year, and is in active negotiations for approximately 4 gigawatts of additional load.” Large-load is the category the company wrote. A data centre can sit inside it. The release does not say the 7.9 gigawatts is data centres, and it does not say the electricity has been delivered. The 4 gigawatts are still negotiations.

Maidsville is a proposal with a place in a factory queue. The release says the company “has secured turbines through a reservation agreement with Siemens for the proposed Maidsville Energy Center, with delivery expected in 2030,” and that it is pursuing approval from the West Virginia Public Service Commission, “with a final order projected in the fourth quarter of 2026.” The company’s generation pages describe that proposal as a 1,200-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant adjacent to the Fort Martin station, plus 70 megawatts of solar. The October release does not repeat those megawatts. A reservation is not a machine on a foundation. Fort Martin, the coal station already on the site, is listed by the company at 1,098 megawatts. That is the plant that runs.

The transmission line in the same release is an expectation, not a spent budget. The 7.9 gigawatts and the regional grid “are expected to drive at least a 25% increase” in the current $19 billion transmission plan for 2026 to 2030, when that plan rolls forward to 2027 to 2031. The five-year Energize365 programme is $36 billion. The company says it deployed $4.9 billion of that in the first nine months of 2026. Deployed capital is money that has gone out. It is not a new megawatt at Maidsville.

Brian Tierney, the chairman, president and chief executive, called Maidsville “the first of a broader set of opportunities in West Virginia,” and said the company is “working with prospective customers.” Prospective is his word. Contracted demand, of the sort another utility put in a release the same week, is a signature. A Siemens reservation with delivery expected in 2030 is a slot. Neither is the meter on the coal station that is already there.