Nine years after its coal plant closed, a Virginia town disbands

TRANSITION: Residents of a tiny Virginia town vote to dissolve the town charter and become an unincorporated community as part of a decline that began in 2015 when Appalachian Power closed an aging coal plant. (Cardinal News)

ALSO: The Tennessee Valley Authority will pay a Tennessee county $757,122 as part of ​“tax impact payments” to three counties for the loss of revenue from its planned closure of a coal-fired power plant. (Paris Post-Intelligencer)

STORAGE: A Georgia company announces it will produce and market lithium carbonate — an important component in electric vehicle batteries that until now has only been mined — that it refines at its battery recycling facility. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

OIL & GAS:

• Analysts say natural gas deliveries through Texas’ new Matterhorn Pipeline are displacing supplies from other intrastate pipelines at a key hub, revving up rivalries between different gas-producing regions in the state. (Midland Reporter-Telegram)
• Texas researchers investigate a spike in seismic activity in the Permian Basin and its connection to the injection of roughly 50 billion barrels of produced water from oil and gas operations over the last 15 years. (Houston Chronicle)
• Texas oil executives say they welcome President-elect Trump’s promises to reduce regulations on the industry, but they’re not likely to increase drilling from its already record highs. (Midland Reporter-Telegram)
• Researchers used artificial intelligence to identify 1,300 undocumented oil wells in Oklahoma and California, prompting hope the process can help Texas regulators find and address uncapped wells that predated modern recordkeeping. (Houston Chronicle)

SOLAR:

• A Korean company lands an agreement to build a 120 MW solar farm and 480 MWh battery storage facility to supply San Antonio, Texas’ municipal utility. (Korea Herald)
• A Virginia county considers changing its solar ordinance to expand the size of what’s considered a ​“small” solar farm after its planning commission unanimously voted down a proposed 262 MW project. (Cardinal News)

GRID:

• Two Arkansas electric cooperatives will receive a combined $553 million to improve more than 1,100 miles of power lines. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
• A developer announces plans to build a Virginia data center that will use 300 MW of power from Dominion Energy and an electric cooperative, as well as ​“substantial onsite green power.” (Virginia Business)

UTILITIES: Alabama Power announces it will lower bills for customers by 80 cents per month after winning a $96 million judgment in its lawsuit against the federal government for breaching its contract to remove spent nuclear fuel. (AL.com)

COMMENTARY:

• Blanket opposition to energy projects across Virginia will collide with sharply rising power demand from data centers, even without the state’s clean energy mandates, writes an editor. (Cardinal News)
• A small Virginia town’s demise is directly connected to the 2015 closure of a coal plant that was the oldest and smallest in American Electric Power’s entire fleet, writes an editor. (Cardinal News)