The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) has approved two large natural gas-fired power plants that would add 2,040 MW to the regional transmission grid.

The 1,100 MW Guernsey Power Station is being jointly developed by Apex Power Group LLC and Caithness Energy LLC in southeast Ohio’s Valley Township. The OPSB said the developers plan to build a natural gas pipeline that would tie into the Rockies Express Pipeline system. Construction is to start in December with a targeted October 2020 in-service date.

The partners pre-filed for the project last year. Apex has developed facilities in California and Texas, while Caithness has developed more than 40 power projects and recently broke ground on the 1,029 MW Caithness Moxie Freedom Generation Station in Luzerne County, PA, which is to be supplied with Marcellus Shale gas from Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.

The OPSB also cleared for construction Clean Energy Future LLC’s 940 MW Trumbull Energy Center in the village of Lordstown, about 16 miles northwest of Youngstown. The facility was announced last year and would source its gas from a Dominion East Ohio pipeline. Construction is set to begin in October with a targeted startup by June 2020. Clean Energy is constructing another power plant also in Lordstown, the Lordstown Energy Center currently under construction. The OPSB this month approved a request to increase the capacity to 940 MW from 800 MW.

Clean Energy recently started up another gas-fired power plant in the northwest part of the state and is developing other plants throughout Ohio.

The approvals are the latest in a series of similar facilities that have either come online or that are under construction throughout the Appalachian Basin as developers have flocked to the region to take advantage of low-cost shale gas.