Gavin sold? (Updated)

American Electric Power has had the Gavin power plant at Cheshire, Ohio, up for sale for nearly two years, and now it looks like a deal is near to sell it.

Gavin is one of the largest power plants on the Ohio River in terms of capacity, but it's been running at lower capacity in recent years as natural gas has produced electricity at less cost than coal.

I checked stats going back to 2001. Last year Gavin generated about 14.17 million megawatt hours of electricity, a pretty big drop from its high of 21.1 million in 2008.Except for a slight uptick in 2014, Gavin's output has decreased every year since 2008. Fracking for natural gas took off in the upper Ohio Valley around 2010, plus 2008 was right before the Great Recession, which for many people in the valley has not yet ended.

Gavin gets the great majority of its coal from mines in Belmont and Jefferson counties in southeastern Ohio, although it also buys some from mines in Kanawha and Marshall counties in West Virginia and some from mines in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

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Here's another version of the story, from the Columbus Dispatch.