By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
June 18th the email and First Class Mail lines were busy between the offices of West Virginia Department of Commerce Deputy Secretary Nicholas S. Preservati and Fundamental Data’s Responsible Person Casey Chapman over what the State was a failure on Chapman’s part to register the project as a “High Impact Data Center” by the appropriate deadline.
Preservati in his June 18th letter referenced a May 18th meeting in Tucker County in which Chapman, along with other representatives of Fundamental Data, LLC met with the Tucker County Commission, the Mayors of Davis and Thomas, members of Tucker United and the general public in an event organized by the West Virginia Office of Energy. Preservati said that Fundamental Data not only described the Ridgeline Project in detail during this meeting the month prior, by answered detailed questions. The following specific details were asserted to have been revealed during the meeting and were outlined in the letter:
“1) the project will include a microgrid data center;
2) the gas-fired power plant for which Fundamental Data, LLC submitted an Air Quality Permit Application with the WV DEP on March 15, 2025, is part of the microgrid center project;
3) the gas-fired power plant will be located in Tucker County, West Virginia and the data center facilities will be located in Tucker and Grant Counties, West Virginia;
4) Fundamental Data, LLC owns, operates, or otherwise controls the property to be utilized for the project;
5) Phase 1 of the project will include approximately 800 MW of power generated from natural gas, 1.3 GW of electricity generated from solar, and 14 data center buildings that will utilize the over 2.0 GW of power.
6) Phase 2 of the project will include an additional 3.1 GW of gas-fired generation and sufficient data center buildings to utilize that amount of generation.”
Preservati stated that based on representations made by Fundamental Data at the meeting, the Ridgeline Project met the definition of a High Impact Data Center and therefore, was required to have submitted a request for certification within 30 days or by June 17th.
“Based upon Fundamental Data, LLC’s representations on May 18, 2026, and given that no application has been received more than 30 days later, it appears that Fundamental Data, LLC is in violation of 145 CSR 20-10.1,” the letter states.
The letter gave Chapman and Fundamental Data five days to respond if plans had changed or Fundamental Data did not believe that the project applied to H.B. 2014. The letter also gave the company 10 days to submit their application for a microgrid district and High Impact Data Center.
Chapman’s response came quickly with cc’s to Christopher G. Morris, the Director of the West Virginia Data Economy Office and Matt Herridge, the West Virginia Secretary of Commerce.
Chapman claimed that Preservati had confused the definitions of High Impact Data Center and Certified Microgrid District. “They are not the same thing, as the statute and the promulgated rules make quite clear,” Chapman writes.
The letter goes on the state that, “the data center market – consistent with both our public statements and what we have told your office privately and repeatedly,” is conceptual and while the company anticipated that to be the end user of the power generated, may not be the sole user.
“Those users may or may not qualify as High Impact Data Centers…what is certain, is that the obligation…attaches only to the entity that satisfies that definition, measured by that entities own awareness,” Chapman writes. “Nothing in 145 CSR 20 imposes that entity-specific obligation on a generation developer merely because it is associated with a project.”
Chapman agreed that Certified Microgrid District Certification could apply to the project, but asserted that the certification was voluntary and no filing deadline applied. Chapman called it an “elective regulatory status” that an eligible entity could petition for by submission of a Letter of Intent with no compliance deadline applying. “There is no triggering event, no 30*day clock, no compliance deadline, and no penalty attaching to a party that has not sought it,” Chapman writes.
“The demand is defective for a further reason,” Chapman writes. “Your letter directs Fundamental Data to file ‘for a microgrid district and High Impact Data Center within ten (10) days.’ Those are two separate certifications, governed by separate provisions and separate timelines: the microgrid decisions runs on a two-month schedule combines them into a single ten-day filing obligation. The Department has no authority to collapse two distinct processes into one deadline of its own creation.”
The letter goes on to dispute that Preservati established the 90-megawatt threshold of “critical IT load.” Chapman claimed that figures described in the May 18th meeting were “planned generation capacity of the power complex,” a category of different measure to what the letter identified and therefore no critical IT load was established at all by Preservati’s letter. “The Department has therefore established no qualifying element,” Chapman writes.
Chapman went on to question the motivations for the May 18th meeting. He claimed that the meeting was arranged by the West Virginia Office of Energy and Fundamental Data attended in good faith and was open and honest throughout. The company answered all questions with candor, he claimed.
“A company’s candor at a public forum the agency itself convened cannot be turned into a trigger for an enforcement action – all the more so where the rule ties the obligation to the entity’s own awareness that qualifies, not to the Department’s characterizations of statements made at a meeting the Department arranged,” Chapman writes. “This is not how we would expect the State to treat a company that has chosen to invest in West Virginia at no cost or risk to its residents.”
The letter concluded with a statement that Fundamental Data requests a finding in their favor in writing and that no deadline is currently running against the company. It also reiterates the company’s intent to continue to work with the State in good faith.
“Fundamental Data has conducted itself in compliance with applicable West Virginia law throughout the development of this project and intends to continue doing so, but, in the process, we will make our own decisions regarding any regulatory pathways that may be available to us at the appropriate time,” Chapman writes.
