As the nation's fifth-largest investor owned electric system, Akron-based First Energy has long provided conventional power to 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Now, it has taken a 92-acre first step toward developing a massive natural gas and compressed-air power plant near Akron. But this certainly isn't your typical FirstEnergy power plant. The site in Norton would employ technology that compresses air through a turbine when demand is low at night, and release it during the day when demand is at its highest. And it could prove to be capable of producing as much electricity as three nuclear reactors.