A group representing MISO power producers filed a complaint with FERC on Monday alleging that the RTO is improperly accounting for the deliverability of some capacity resources, driving down payments to those demonstrably positioned to deliver on their obligations.
The Coalition of Midwest Power Producers (COMPP) urged FERC to force MISO to properly account for deliverability of capacity resources before the annual capacity auction in April in order to safeguard reliability (EL19-28).
MISO control room | MISO
COMPP said MISO’s loss-of-load expectation (LOLE) study process is flawed because it assumes that all capacity resources are fully deliverable on an installed capacity (ICAP) basis. However, the group argued, MISO’s megawatt count from deliverable resources comes up short annually because the RTO allows certain resources to demonstrate deliverability only up to the unforced capacity (UCAP) level.
MISO’s Tariff requires capacity resources to demonstrate either network resource interconnection service (NRIS) or energy resource interconnection service (ERIS) coupled with firm transmission service up to each resource’s ICAP level. While the RTO already requires that all resources be deliverable to load to qualify as capacity resources, its deliverability requirements stipulate that ERIS resources must only secure firm transmission for their UCAP values, which tend to be about 5 to 10% below full ICAP levels.
The discrepancy amounts to a Tariff violation and risks MISO’s adherence to its own planning reserve margin, COMPP said.
“By failing to ensure deliverability on an ICAP basis for all capacity resources, MISO is acting contrary to the assumptions of its LOLE study and failing to procure enough fully deliverable resources needed to meet its [planning reserve margin] as its Tariff requires,” COMPP said.
“The seriousness of this issue is evident in the historically low reserve margins that MISO is experiencing,” COMPP said. “Requiring compliance with the Tariff for the upcoming [Planning Resource Auction] is essential both to maintaining reliability and to ensuring rates are just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory. Yet, despite the gravity of the situation, the RTO is proceeding in a manner that will continue to improperly count approximately 1,400 MW of undeliverable generation toward satisfying its reliability requirement.”
MISO’s Independent Market Monitor last year also advised the RTO to require a planning resource’s ICAP be deliverable over the network regardless of which interconnection service it uses. (See MISO Concurs with Monitor Ideas, Pledges More Study.) The Monitor found it problematic that MISO’s LOLE study assumes all ICAP megawatts are deliverable when they’re not.
It later pointed out that during past PRAs, as much as 1,400 MW in capacity may not have been capable of delivering to load. At the time, MISO said it would work on rule changes in time for the 2020/21 PRA.
For COMPP, those changes won’t come soon enough. The group pointed out the problem is poised to recur in the upcoming 2019/20 PRA “despite the IMM having recommended that MISO fix it for the past two auctions.” It also maintains that swings even smaller than 1,400 MW “can lead to material differences in the clearing price that fails to send accurate price signals for entry and exit.”
COMPP said that despite MISO’s apparent agreement with the Monitor, it contended that the RTO has designated the issue a low priority by “only targeting to correct its failure” for the 2020/21 PRA.
“Leaving this problem unaddressed for another day fails to abide with [Federal Power Act Section] 206’s requirements and should be deemed unacceptable by the commission. … The lack of urgency on this issue is particularly galling given MISO’s focus on dealing with current reliability issues that have resulted in some 19 emergency actions since the start of the 2016/2017 planning year,” COMPP said.
The organization also requested fast-track treatment from FERC.
MISO said it was in the process of reviewing the complaint.
ERCOT enters 2019 with a major coal plant going into mothballs and two aging gas units set for decommissioning.
After burning the last load of coal at its J.T. Deely plant on New Year’s Eve, San Antonio utility CPS Energy is now in the process of mothballing the two units, which date back to 1977 and 1978.
CPS Energy’s J.T. Deely plant | CPS Energy
The municipal utility in 2011 said it would retire Deely by the end of 2018, 15 years ahead of schedule, thus avoiding millions in environmental retrofit costs. It notified ERCOT of its plans to mothball the plant in 2013, but it must submit a notification of change of generation resource designation (NCGRD) before officially retiring and decommissioning the units.
CPS spokesperson Trace Levos said the utility plans to begin razing the plant in 2025, but utility officials are also pondering converting Deely into a gas-fired plant.
ERCOT spokesperson Leslie Sopko said the grid operator will not have to conduct another reliability-must-run study whenever CPS is ready to retire the units, as the ISO already considers the units to be unavailable.
Deely’s two coal units have a combined capacity of 871 MW. Along with Luminant’s shuttering of three coals plants in late 2017, ERCOT will have seen slightly more than 5 GW of coal-fired capacity shut down over a year. (See ERCOT OKs Luminant Coal Retirements.)
The Texas grid operator survived record-breaking demand last summer without resorting to emergency measures. It is expected to enter this summer with a historically low reserve margin of 8.1%, almost three points lower than last year. (See ERCOT Faces Tight Summer Margins, Market Changes.)
Meanwhile, NRG Texas on Dec. 28 submitted an NCGRD to ERCOT, saying it intends to decommission and permanently retire two previously mothballed gas units at its SR Bertron plant near Houston, effective Jan. 23.
The Eisenhower-era units each have a capacity of 230 MW. They were shut down for economic reasons in 2011.
State utility regulators in MISO and PJM have voiced concerns that FERC’s proposed changes to transmission rate-setting could drive up costs while hampering development of more efficient non-transmission alternatives.
| MISO
In separate letters last month, the Organization of MISO States and the Organization of PJM States Inc. urged the commission to examine whether current return on equity incentives on top of a new base ROE will result in excessive customer costs.
FERC in October signaled it will allow changes to how transmission owners set ROE rates, no longer relying solely on the discounted cash flow (DCF) model it has used for about four decades. Instead, it will rely equally on results from the DCF and three other techniques: the capital asset pricing model, the expected earnings model and the risk premium model. (See FERC Changing ROE Rules; Higher Rates Likely.)
The changes come in response to a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals 2017 ruling vacating Opinion 531, FERC’s 2014 order on New England TOs’ ROE rates. The new policy would evaluate and incorporate industry-wide risk into ROE estimates — and likely raise rates.
In its Dec. 19 letter, OMS urged the commission to “balance the authorization of sufficient rates of return to encourage the investment on needed transmission against concerns about excessive costs to customers.”
ROE incentives on top of the base ROE should be “targeted and exceptional,” OMS wrote in the letter, signed by board President Ted Thomas, chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission.
“Supporters have concerns that at least some incentive adders have become overly generous and do not change or incent the intended behavior on the part of the transmission owners, resulting in excessive costs to customers. Ineffective adders may also be an unintended disincentive to development of non-transmission alternative solutions for reliability and congestion concerns,” OMS said.
Following OMS’s letter, OPSI on Dec. 28 also cautioned the commission that ROE incentives may become too generous under the new ROE. The organization said FERC should be careful to craft ROE incentives that are “truly merited.”
“OPSI has concerns that at least some incentive adders have become overly generous and do not change or incent the intended behavior on the part of the transmission owners, resulting in excessive costs to customers. Such adders may also be an unintended disincentive to development of non-transmission alternative solutions for reliability and congestion concerns,” the organization said.
RTO Adder ‘Questionable’
Both organizations singled out FERC’s 50-basis point adder incentive for RTO participation. OMS said the adder is of “particular concern and warrants scrutiny by FERC,” noting it’s worried the adder “will last in perpetuity.”
“[T]he landscape has changed drastically since 2006 when these adders were first initiated. After more than 15 years of experience with RTOs, the resulting benefits to utility members are now better understood. RTOs are no longer a new policy experiment. Moreover, transmission owners may no longer need an additional incentive adder to simply join an RTO,” OMS said.
OMS also pointed out that FERC over the years has provided other regulatory mechanisms such as formula rates, projected revenue requirements — trued up to reflect under-recovery — abandoned plant and construction work in progress, “all of which reduce transmission owners’ risk.” The group said the mechanisms “should be carefully examined in the context of this and other ROE incentives.”
OPSI called the RTO adder “questionable” since the benefits of RTO participation are now well understood.
OPSI recommended FERC open a notice of inquiry on the ROE issues “for the purpose of examining not only policy around the application of new incentive requests, but also the ability of existing incentives to achieve desired outcomes.”
OMS likewise requested a review of ROE incentive policy “to ensure that customers pay no more than is necessary to develop and to maintain a reliable and efficient transmission grid.”
OMS has previously expressed concern about whether it would be able to contribute its views to the New England ROE docket.
“You have these pretty impactful policy discussions taking place … and it’s not a docket that we are party to,” former OMS Executive Director Tanya Paslawski said during the organization’s Oct. 29 annual meeting.
FERC has approved PJM’s proposal to change how it measures seasonal demand response resources, rejecting a protest by the RTO’s Independent Market Monitor.
PJM currently permits curtailment service providers (CSPs) to combine DR resources within the same transmission zone into a single DR registration, with the capacity value based on the lower of its total summer- or winter-period reduction capability.
Under the changes approved by the commission Dec. 31, resources above 100 kW will be registered individually, with separate summer and winter capacity values (ER19-244).
PJM said the change will give it greater flexibility by allowing dispatch of individual DR resources. It will also aid CSPs, who will no longer have to determine which end-use customers should be aggregated on a DR registration to maximize the nominated value, PJM said.
The change will be effective with delivery year 2019/20, beginning June 1.
Under PJM’s old process (left), customers 3 and 4 would be combined in a single demand response registration with an annual value of 3 MW, the lesser of the combined summer and winter values. Under the new process (right), the two customers would have separate registrations with a combined 3 MW in summer and 4 MW in winter. | PJM
The IMM protested the proposed change, saying that it will overstate the capacity value of DR, displacing other resources, and that allowing more intra-zonal matching will erode locational price signals.
The commission disagreed, saying the changes should result in more accurate DR capacity values.
It also noted that CSPs are already permitted to aggregate end-use customers in a single transmission zone within a registration and satisfy a DR capacity commitment with multiple registrations. “The proposed revisions do not modify either of these permissions, and we find no evidence in the record to suggest that the instant changes will erode locational price signals,” the commission said.
The Monitor also objected to how PJM proposed to estimate load reductions for some resources, saying all should be required to have five-minute interval metering.
The commission said PJM’s use of “flat profiling” for DR that lack five-minute metering can “reasonably reflect” DRs’ performance during emergencies.
“In multiple orders, the commission has declined to require demand resources to upgrade to five-minute metering,” the commission said, adding that such technology is not necessary because of RTOs’ ability to create five-minute load and generation profiles using telemetry and hourly revenue-quality data.
The chairman’s health had become the subject of increasing speculation since a fall that left him visibly uncomfortable at the commission’s July open meeting.
Change in Appearance
McIntyre seemed healthy when he and fellow nominee Richard Glick testified at their Senate confirmation hearing in September 2017, but he had a shaved head when he was sworn in as chairman three months later.
Last March — as E&E News was about to publish a story detailing his cancer diagnosis — McIntyre explained his appearance, issuing a statement saying he had undergone “successful surgery” for a “relatively small” brain tumor discovered unexpectedly in summer 2017.
“I was advised … that, with the surgery and subsequent treatment behind me, I should expect to be able to maintain my usual active lifestyle, including working full time, and that expectation has proven to be accurate,” he said then.
He appeared healthy in May, when he was the keynote speaker at the Energy Bar Association’s annual meeting. (See “McIntyre Recalls First Day at FERC,” Overheard at EBA Annual Meeting.)
At the July open meeting, however, he wore a sling and appeared uncomfortable after disclosing he had injured his arm and suffered compression fractures in two of his vertebrae in a fall. It was the last meeting he would attend and one of his last public appearances.
In September, Commissioner Neil Chatterjee began FERC’s open meeting by reading a statement in which McIntyre apologized for his absence, saying his “ongoing recovery” prevented him from attending.
At the October meeting, Chatterjee said simply: “Chairman McIntyre is not here. My prayers are with him and his family.”
A week later, McIntyre issued a statement saying he would remain on the commission but would relinquish the chair’s role “and its additional duties so that I can commit myself fully to my work as commissioner, while undergoing the treatment necessary to address my health issues.” However, he did not participate in any orders following his statement.
In their opening remarks at FERC’s last meeting Dec. 20, the commissioners wished McIntyre and his family well for the holidays. But unlike at earlier meetings, none of them offered hopes of him returning to work.
Accomplishments
Before relinquishing the chairmanship, McIntyre and the commission approved major orders on energy storage, generator interconnections and transmission rates, and opened an inquiry on gas pipeline licensing. Last January, he led a 5-0 vote rejecting the Department of Energy’s proposed bailout of coal and nuclear generation, instituting a new resilience docket. (See Ailing Chair, Resilience Inquiry Topped FERC News in 2018.)
McIntyre joined FERC after two decades at Jones Day, where he represented energy clients in administrative and appellate litigation, compliance and enforcement matters, and corporate transactions. A graduate of San Diego State University and Georgetown University Law School, he was co-leader of Jones Day’s global energy practice.
He is survived by his wife of 10 years, Jennifer Brosnahan McIntyre, chief counsel for Boeing Defense’s Autonomous Systems unit, and three children, Lizzie, Tommy and Annie. McIntyre’s mother, Alice L. McIntyre, was a retired pastoral counselor, and his father, John R. McIntyre Jr., was a retired Air Force colonel.
McIntyre’s widow released a statement through FERC thanking “the entire FERC family for their hard work every day for the American people and for their faithful support of Kevin during his time at the commission, especially in the last few months.”
“Kevin often said that being chairman of FERC was his ‘dream job’ — he truly loved and believed in the agency, its mission and its people,” she said. “He was always energized by the challenge of leading the agency ‘full steam ahead,’ even when his health faltered. His commitment to his duty, and his faith in the FERC team, never wavered. We will always be grateful for the opportunity, however brief, that Kevin had to serve our country as FERC chairman.”
FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Carmen A. Citron swears in Kevin McIntyre as his wife, Jennifer Brosnahan McIntyre, looks on. | FERC
Condolences
“Today is a deeply sad day for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and for all those who had the pleasure of knowing Kevin McIntyre both personally and professionally,” Chatterjee, who replaced McIntyre as chairman, said in a statement. “During his tenure at the commission, Kevin exhibited strong leadership and an unmatched knowledge of energy policy and the rule of law. He exemplified what it means to be a true public servant each and every day, no matter the challenges that lie ahead of him.
“In the face of adversity, Kevin’s dedicated faith, devotion to family and sharp wit never faltered. His unwavering strength was — and will continue to be — an inspiration to us all. I will miss the wise guidance of my colleague, the dear camaraderie of my good friend and the frequent banter with my fellow sports fanatic, Kevin.”
Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur said the commission “was very fortunate to have Kevin McIntyre at the helm for as long as he was, and I was honored to serve with him. I particularly appreciated his keen legal judgment, unstinting commitment to the rule of law and deep concern for the organization even in the face of his personal struggles. On a personal level, I appreciated his warm collegiality and ready Irish wit, and was frequently charmed by his Catholic school vocabulary.”
Glick said he got to know McIntyre during the confirmation process. “It did not take long to recognize that Kevin was a man of great intellect and principle. He brought both qualities to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission where, as chair, he guided the commission to bipartisan consensus during a particularly tumultuous time,” Glick said. “But there was much more to Kevin than being a FERC chairman. He was extremely kind and witty. I most enjoyed our conversations about our respective lives. Kevin often spoke glowingly about his wife, Jenny, and their three wonderful children … and never failed to inquire about my family.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, also expressed condolences for McIntyre. “As a lawyer, a commissioner and as FERC’s chairman, he always had the utmost respect for the agency and its mission. He was as warm and engaging as he was knowledgeable about the issues that came before him.”
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said McIntyre’s “expansive knowledge and expertise of energy law was a tremendous asset to the commission’s important responsibilities and helped shape U.S. energy policy for years to come.”
John Moore, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Sustainable FERC Project, said McIntyre “led FERC with a steady hand and with an emphasis on preserving open electricity markets and maintaining the independence of the commission. We especially salute his high civic calling.
“As we look to the future, we urge Congress, the administration and the commission itself to preserve both the spirit and letter of fairness and evenhandedness that marked Chairman McIntyre’s tenure,” he added.
“He was smart and kind, and I was glad to have met him, even briefly,” said Katherine Hamilton, former president of the GridWise Alliance.
Successor to be Named
McIntyre’s term would have expired on June 30, 2023. His death leaves FERC with two Democratic and two Republican commissioners, including Bernard McNamee, who joined the commission Dec. 11 but has not yet begun voting on orders.
Once McNamee begins to vote, analysts at ClearView Energy Partners noted Thursday, FERC could face 2-2 deadlocks on votes on “LNG terminals and natural gas pipelines, and potentially on orders that impact the fuel mix of the electric generation sector.”
“It is not clear yet whether Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will try to press [Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.] and/or the White House to either renominate Cheryl LaFleur — whose term expires on June 30 — or nominate a different Democrat to FERC at the same time as a replacement for McIntyre,” the analysts said. “While conventional wisdom would suggest that pairing a Republican and Democrat (given LaFleur’s expiring term) could smooth the confirmation process, the reality that a simple majority suffices to confirm nominees likely makes this prior custom far less relevant.”
SPP will partially sate its hunger for expansion this year when it begins providing reliability coordinator (RC) services to more than a dozen entities in the Western Interconnection.
At the same time, the RTO continues to reinvent itself with a pair of stakeholder-led initiatives that may change the way it allocates transmission costs and recovers its administrative fee.
A year ago, SPP was well on its way to adding Mountain West Transmission Group participants as members, following much the same process as it did in adding Nebraska’s public utilities in 2009 and the Integrated System in 2015. However, those plans were blown up in April by Xcel Energy’s surprise decision to leave Mountain West, taking almost half the group’s load with it. (See Xcel Leaving Mountain West; SPP Integration at Risk.)
Opportunity soon presented itself again several months later, when Peak Reliability, the RC provider for much of the Western Interconnection since 2011, announced it would cease operations by the end of 2019. (See Peak Reliability to Wind Down Operations.)
While CAISO signed RC contracts with the bulk of Western load, SPP picked up about 12%, including most of the original Mountain West members. Among the entities: Xcel’s Public Service Company of Colorado subsidiary. (See CAISO RC Wins Most of the West.)
“We’ve worked hard over the last several months to demonstrate the quality and breadth of our service in terms of technical expertise, a customer-centric approach to doing business and the integrity of our people and processes,” SPP COO Carl Monroe said at the time.
The contracts will add two more states — Arizona and Utah — to SPP’s now 16-state footprint. The current timetable has SPP assuming Peak’s RC services on Dec. 3, though the Western Electricity Coordinating Council would like to see that pushed up to Nov. 1 to coincide with CAISO’s transition date. SPP stakeholders are resisting the move.
SPP’s Western RC footprint | SPP
HITT Squad
The events out West are just some of the dramatic changes that have taken place within the industry and the markets over the last decade. To accommodate those changes and plan for a changing future, SPP last year created the Holistic Integrated Tariff Team (HITT), comprising RTO directors, state regulators and members, to determine the best way to align its planning processes, cost-allocation methodologies, and market products and services.
The HITT spent much of 2018 listening to presentations from staff, market participants, consultants and stakeholders, hashing over ideas that have been discussed in other working groups or brought up by stakeholders time and again.
“There’s certainly a lot of work that’s been going on through the different groups in SPP … we don’t want to overlap that or re-digest those things,” said Nebraska Public Power District’s Tom Kent, HITT chair. “We want to build off the work that’s already being done and make sure we can account for the work that’s being done in those other groups and support them. We don’t want to retrace ground other groups are working on.”
The team is only now discussing how to organize a report with its final recommendations. The report is due to the Board of Directors and Members Committee in April, but the HITT has also scheduled an educational session before the Markets and Operations Policy Committee’s January meeting in New Orleans.
The HITT was modeled after the 2008/09 Synergistic Planning Project Team, which resulted in SPP’s Integrated Transmission Planning process and the highway/byway cost allocation methodology. Under the methodology, “highway” projects rated at more than 300 kV are allocated 100% systemwide on a load-ratio-share basis. “Byway” projects (100 to 300 kV) are funded two-thirds within the transmission zone and one-third systemwide.
The RTO has approved or built $6.3 billion in transmission infrastructure since 2010, with another $2.9 billion to be completed by 2022.
SPP’s Western RC timeline | SPP
Spreading the Fee
The Schedule 1A Task Force’s objective is slightly less daunting: determine whether there is a better way to recover SPP’s administrative fee.
The fee, which is being reduced this year to 39.4 cents/MWh from 42.9 cents/MWh, is collected under Schedule 1A of SPP’s Tariff on transmission contracts between transmission providers and customers. Point-to-point contracts are billed against reserved transmission capacity, and network service is billed against the prior year’s average monthly zonal peak.
The problem is, different state regulators use different calculations and rely on historical data for current-year costs. The Integrated Marketplace has also required additional staff and IT costs, which has increased the amount to be collected.
SPP CFO Tom Dunn has proposed using energy metrics to reduce the fee, as financial-only players not currently paying Schedule 1A fees would also be contributing.
The task force is currently evaluating how best to recover costs in SPP’s transmission congestion rights market. The group was to present its recommendations during the January governance meetings, but it has a meeting scheduled for Feb. 5.
WASHINGTON — A year ago, the electricity policy-sphere was on pins and needles over how FERC and its new Chairman Kevin McIntyre would respond to the Trump administration’s bid to bail out coal and nuclear generators.
McIntyre won plaudits in January when he led a 5-0 vote rejecting the Department of Energy’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and instituting a new resilience docket (AD18-7).
FERC begins 2019 with a new chairman and renewed questions about whether it will resist the president’s efforts to deliver on his campaign pledges to coal country.
Republican Bernard McNamee — who helped author the DOE NOPR and who has complained that renewables are disruptive to “the physics of the grid” — was sworn in as commissioner after winning Senate confirmation on a 50-49 party-line vote. At his first open meeting, days before Christmas, McNamee was greeted by protests and questions over whether he would recuse himself from the resilience debate.
In two rounds of filings in the new docket, RTO officials and other commenters generally agreed that FERC should let stakeholder processes work and not issue broad and costly new mandates. The commission has given no indication how soon it will rule or what it will do with the information.
McIntyre gave up the chairmanship in October after revealing that he had suffered a “serious setback” in his battle with a brain tumor. The chairman’s health had become the subject of increasing speculation since a fall that left him visibly uncomfortable at the July open meeting, the last he attended. Although he remains on the commission, he is unable to come to FERC headquarters and is not participating in any decisions.
Pipeline Inquiry, Storage Rule, ROE
Before relinquishing the chairmanship, McIntyre and the commission approved several important rulemakings. In January, McIntyre announced the commission would open a Notice of Inquiry to consider changes to its 1999 policy statement on the permitting of natural gas pipelines, drawing praise from Democratic Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur (PL18-1).
In May, however, the commission’s Republican majority narrowed the circumstances under which FERC will estimate greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas pipeline projects, sparking dissents by LaFleur and Democrat Richard Glick, who said the decision effectively eliminates any consideration of GHG emissions associated with a project (CP14-497-001).
In February, the commission also approved Order 841, which required regional grid operators to remove barriers to electric storage in their capacity, energy and ancillary services markets. Dylan Reed, head of congressional affairs for Advanced Energy Economy, said the compliance filings by grid operators in December “could lead to a minimum of 7 GW of storage deployment in the RTO markets and potentially could lead to 50 GW across the country. For scale, the rule’s impact is essentially the equivalent of 86% of all installed solar capacity to date,” Reed said during AEE’s year-end webinar. “So, this really is a monumental rule.”
The commission’s NOPR had also proposed giving aggregated distributed energy resources the same treatment as storage, but the panel concluded it needed more information before it could act, ordering a technical conference and new dockets for the issue (RM18-9, AD18-10).
In April, the commission revised its pro forma large generator interconnection procedures and large generator interconnection agreement (LGIA) to increase the transparency and timeliness of the interconnection process (RM17-8). The rulemaking, which was prompted by a complaint by the American Wind Energy Association, applies to generators larger than 20 MW.
Days before McIntyre gave up the gavel, the commission issued its response to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2017 ruling vacating FERC’s 2014 order on calculating return on equity rates. The commission said it would no longer rely solely on the discounted cash flow (DCF) model it has used since the 1980s; instead, it said it will give equal weight to results from the DCF and three other metrics, a change likely to result in higher ROEs (EL11-66-001, et al.).
McIntyre also navigated two controversies in his brief chairmanship. The first came when Commissioner Neil Chatterjee disclosed in January that former FERC General Counsel Bill Scherman had improperly contacted him “indicating his concern that the commission would shortly issue an order adverse to the interests of” his client, FirstEnergy. At a press conference, McIntyre declined to say whether the commission would investigate the ex parte communication by Scherman, whom he called a “good friend.”
Later, McIntyre came to the defense of Chief of Staff Anthony Pugliese, who came under fire for partisan comments at a speech and in an interview with right-wing media outlet Breitbart.
Chatterjee, who had held the chairmanship on an acting basis for more than four months in 2017, was appointed McIntyre’s replacement Oct. 24. Chatterjee said his priorities as chairman will be grid resilience and reliability, cybersecurity, processing LNG facility applications and eliminating barriers to entry for new technology.
A former energy adviser to coal state Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Chatterjee praised McIntyre for helping him understand “that politics could not be allowed to interfere with the work of the commission,” advice he said aided his transition “from formerly partisan legislative aide to independent regulator.”
After the commission’s Dec. 20 meeting, Chatterjee told reporters he was confident that McNamee would similarly transition from a fuel-wars partisan to an impartial adjudicator. “So, all I would ask is that he be given an opportunity to demonstrate that, like myself, [McNamee] will be an earnest public servant.”
Chatterjee comes in with numerous pieces of unfinished business, including the pipeline policy review and the rulemaking on DERs.
With the arrival of McNamee, “it’s unclear where [the DER ruling] is going to go in 2019,” said AEE’s Reed. “Fortunately, we do know that Chairman Chatterjee is committed to innovation and removing barriers to technologies as he’s now said in numerous public speeches over the last few months.”
After winning a third term in November, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month announced 2019 plans that include tackling climate change with a program reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days as president during the Great Depression.
“New York must be the most progressive state in the nation moving to renewables,” Cuomo said Dec. 17. “There is new economic growth potential, and New York will launch the Green New Deal to make New York’s electricity 100% carbon neutral by 2040 and ultimately eliminate the state’s entire carbon footprint.”
Con Edison CEO John McAvoy (right) leads New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on a tour of a substation in Astoria Queens where an electrical fault on 138,000-volt equipment caused a sustained electrical arc flash visible across a wide area of the city on Dec. 27. Cuomo asked state regulators to investigate the incident, which disrupted operations at LaGuardia Airport and a nearby subway line. | Gov. Cuomo
Cuomo’s effort will build on the state’s energy-related progress over the past year, which included a draft carbon pricing proposal, energy storage programs and new targets for offshore wind and energy efficiency.
The same day Cuomo spoke, the state’s Integrating Public Policy Task Force (IPPTF) met for the last time before handing over its final carbon pricing proposal to IPPTF Hands off Carbon Pricing Proposal to NYISO.)
NYISO and the New York Public Service Commission created the task force in 2017 to explore ways to price carbon into the wholesale electricity markets to align them with state decarbonization policies, including the zero-emission credit program for uneconomic nuclear plants.
NYISO published the IPPTF Carbon Pricing Proposal on Dec. 7 after recommending it no longer require emissions-free resources with existing renewable energy credit contracts pay the carbon component of locational-based marginal prices (LBMPc). The requirement would create “a distortion in the market … that places the ISO in the position of picking winners and losers,” an ISO official said. (See IPPTF Updates Carbon Charge Analysis, Treatment of RECs.)
Emissions reductions from a carbon charge in New York | Brattle Group
Offshore Wind is Coming
2018 should prove to be a watershed year for the development of offshore wind, now poised to become a significant source of New York’s energy over the next decade. Early last year, Gov. Cuomo released the comprehensive New York State Offshore Wind Master Plan, which calls for 2.4 GW of offshore resources by 2030.
In July, the New York Public Service Commission authorized state agencies to procure 800 MW by this year. (See NYPSC: Offshore Wind ‘Ready for Prime Time’.) In consultation with the New York Power Authority and the Long Island Power Authority, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority on Nov. 8 followed up with a request for proposals for 800 MW of offshore wind energy (ORECRFP18-1).
NYSERDA expects to announce the first offshore wind contract award in the second quarter of 2019 and, if needed, issue a second solicitation this year to meet the 800-MW goal of the first tranche.
The U.S. Department of Energy last year awarded a NYSERDA $20.5 million grant to lead a nationwide research and development consortium for the offshore wind industry, with the state matching the federal funds. The consortium in November issued its R&D Roadmap, and in December published its first report, an examination of several technical challenges facing the industry.
The consortium will issue a series of RFPs throughout the four years of federal funding, with the first R&D solicitation planned for next month. Initial project awards are expected to be selected by the end of March.
Energy Storage
New York regulators last month approved measures that will sharply increase the state’s energy storage and efficiency targets. The state’s Department of Public Service and NYSERDA in June issued New York’s Energy Storage Roadmap, and the PSC adopted many of its recommendations.
Rulings by the PSC last year doubled New York’s existing 2025 storage goal to 3,000 MW by 2030 and require the state’s utilities to reduce building energy use by an additional 31 trillion British thermal units (TBtu) to meet an energy efficiency target of 185 TBtu by 2025. (See NYPSC Expands Storage, Energy Efficiency Programs.)
The commission’s Dec. 13 storage order (Case 18-E-0130) said that the targeted deployment of energy storage “will result in reductions in system peak load demand during critical periods, increases in the overall efficiency and resiliency of the electric grid, and displacement of fossil fuel-based generation.”
Deployment scenario resulting in 1,500 MW of energy storage by 2025 | NYSERDA
Resulting public benefits include more than $3 billion in gross lifetime benefits to New York’s utility customers, creation of approximately 30,000 jobs, about 2 million metric tons of avoided greenhouse gas emissions and improved public health by avoiding air-pollutant emissions such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulates.
The order also authorized $310 million in market incentives to be administered by NYSERDA for pairing storage with solar projects, in addition to the $40 million announced the previous month. It also directed the utilities to hold competitive procurements for 350 MW of bulk-sited storage systems.
NYSERDA and the DPS also developed the state-mandated energy efficiency targets (Case 18-M-0084), which now include a 3% annual reduction in electricity sales by 2025 and 5 TBtu of savings from the installation of heat pumps, which help reduce emissions from the heating and cooling of buildings.
CEO Transition
NYISO CEO Brad Jones left the organization abruptly in mid-October and was replaced — at least temporarily — by General Counsel Robert Fernandez. The ISO declined to elaborate on the reason for the departure, except to say it was “a personal decision by Brad.” (See Brad Jones out at NYISO.)
Stakeholders told RTO Insider that senior ISO officials at the time told them the news was a surprise to them. “It’s a really big mystery … it came out of nowhere,” said one stakeholder who asked not to be identified.
The ISO’s Board of Directors has yet to say whether it will initiate a search for another chief executive. Fernandez was named the ISO’s general counsel and chief compliance officer in 2000 after stints at Long Island Lighting Co. and independent power producer Sithe Energies.
CAISO will tackle its new role as reliability coordinator for much of the West in 2019, and California lawmakers will struggle with preventing wildfires sparked by power lines.
Major events in 2018 prompted both efforts.
CAISO will oversee reliability coordination in much of the West from its headquarters in Folsom, Calif. | CAISO
In July, Peak Reliability stunned the West by announcing it would end its RC operations across the Western Interconnection by the end of 2019. That set off a competition between CAISO and SPP to sign up clients for their own RC services.
Then in November the deadliest wildfire in state history leveled the town of Paradise, Calif., killing 85 residents in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Suspicion quickly fell on PG&E for the Camp Fire, prompting talk of state action to reform or break up the utility.
Other challenges that faced California and the West in 2018, and will continue in 2019, include making CAISO’s congestion revenue rights more equitable to ratepayers and continuing efforts to establish a Western RTO led by CAISO.
Keeping Reliability Coordination Reliable
Peak Reliability stunned the electricity sector in July when it announced it would wind down its role as reliability coordinator for the West and withdraw from its effort to develop a regional electricity market competing with CAISO. The Vancouver, Wash.-based company said it would shut its doors as early as Dec. 31, 2019, after transitioning its customers to other RCs. (See Peak Reliability to Wind Down Operations.)
Several months before the announcement, CAISO, a Peak RC customer, said it would “reluctantly” leave Peak, develop its own RC services and offer them to others at reduced costs. Most of the Western Interconnection signed nonbinding letters of intent to take advantage of CAISO’s RC services.
CAISO’s move was seen as a reaction to Peak entering a partnership with PJM to form a Western RTO to compete with the ISO’s expansion.
FERC approved a set of Tariff revisions covering CAISO’s new RC services in November, clearing the way for about 72% of the region’s load to sign on with CAISO, compared with 12% for SPP. BC Hydro is proceeding with plans to provide RC services for its own territory in British Columbia, representing about 7% of load in the region overseen by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council. (See CAISO RC Effort Gets FERC Go-ahead.)
CAISO, SPP and BC Hydro are scheduled to take over Peak’s duties in four handoffs through 2019. CAISO will assume the RC role for its existing territory on July 1. BC Hydro will become the RC for a large swath of southwestern Canada on Sept. 2. CAISO will then take over RC services for many areas outside of California on Nov. 1, while SPP will take responsibility for other regions of the West on Dec. 3, although NERC is encouraging the RTO to accelerate its timeline to match CAISO’s.
The process provides ample opportunities for errors and shortcomings, including staff attrition at Peak, those involved say. Some employees have already left Peak, and others could follow. The company is hoping that severance packages will encourage most others to stay until they’re no longer needed.
CAISO and SPP will become the reliability coordinators for the Western Interconnection in 2019. | WECC
Jim Shetler, general manager of the Balancing Authority of Northern California and chair of Peak’s Member Advisory Committee, briefed WECC board members on the transition process in December, saying he had concerns about whether Peak would remain in business until the transitions are completed at the end of 2019.
“What keeps me up nights [is worry over] whether Peak is a going concern in the next 12 months,” Shetler said during the board meeting at WECC headquarters in Salt Lake City. (See RC Transition is Fraught with Pitfalls, WECC Hears.)
Others have said they’re confident the transition will go as planned, but all agree it will be important keep a close eye on the RC switchovers in 2019 to avoid lapses in critical services.
“This is a risky year, and I think everyone’s posture is really focused on this,” Linda Jacobson-Quinn, regulatory compliance manager for the Farmington Electric Utility System in New Mexico, told WECC in December. “At the end of the day, it’s the customers that must have an RC.”
Wildfire Policy Could Target IOUs
When the California State Legislature reconvenes Jan. 7, one of its first orders of business will be dealing with the problem of catastrophic wildfires, particularly those sparked by electrical equipment operated by investor-owned utilities.
Lawmakers thought they’d made significant progress in 2018 when they passed SB 901, a 71-page bill of wildfire prevention measures that included new vegetation management and reporting requirements for the IOUs. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in September, also provided a means for IOUs to issue long-term bonds to cover wildfire liability costs. (See California Wildfire Bill Goes to Governor.)
PG&E’s costs have been estimated in the billions of dollars for a series of devastating fires in Northern California wine country during the 2017 fall fire season. State fire officials have declared the utility at fault for at least 16 of the fires, though the Tubbs Fire, which wiped out part of the city of Santa Rosa, remains under investigation.
Brown and other policymakers worried about PG&E’s solvency following the 2017 blazes and enacted the bond provision, but that measure didn’t cover fires in 2018, and the Camp Fire’s estimated costs could equal or exceed all the wine country fires combined. PG&E’s stock price took a pounding in the days after the Camp Fire and remains less than half of what it was before the blaze.
The Camp Fire started at 6:33 a.m. on Nov. 8 near Tower :27/222 on PG&E’s Caribou-Palermo 115 kV transmission line, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) and PG&E reported in December. PG&E told the California Public Utilities Commission it had experienced a fault and fire near Tower :27/222 shortly before the Camp Fire ignited. (See PG&E Grapples with Line Safety After Camp Fire.)
If CalFire investigators eventually find PG&E equipment caused the fire, the utility could be held liable for all resulting damage, even without a showing of negligence, under the controversial legal doctrine known as “inverse condemnation,” the strict liability standard California applies to utilities for fires sparked by power lines.
During their 2019/20 session, state lawmakers likely will consider clean-up legislation that allows utilities to issue bonds to pay for 2018 fires. With public anger high, however, elected officials may fear a backlash for any bill deemed a bailout for PG&E or other IOUs.
Another possibility being discussed is state action to break up PG&E and hand over control of some of its parts to cities such as San Francisco. (See Camp Fire Prompts Talk of PG&E Bailout or Breakup.)
Changing PG&E’s corporate governance also is on the table.
National Guard soliders searched through rubble in November after the Camp Fire tore through Paradise, Calif., killing 85 and casting suspicion on PG&E. | California National Guard
Sen. Bill Dodd, one of the authors of SB 901, has called for a management shakeup at PG&E in the wake of the fatal 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion and the massive fires of 2017/18.
“PG&E has demonstrated a pattern of poor management and illegal conduct that has shattered lives across California,” Dodd said in a Dec. 20 news release. He called for “systematic change, which must include change on the board of directors and in the executive suite.” The utility currently has a “bunker mentality” that prevents improvement in its safety practices, Dodd said.
“This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night,” Picker said at the time.
On Dec. 21 the commission released a ruling regarding the investigation that asked whether the company’s management should be replaced, whether members of its board of directors should resign, and whether the company should be broken up into separate gas and electric divisions.
In the meantime, PG&E has vowed to do better. “We are acting decisively now to address these real and growing [wildfire] threats, and we are committed to working together with our regulators, state leaders and customers to consider what additional wildfire safety efforts we can all take to make our communities safer,” company CEO Geisha Williams said in a December news release.
CRR Shortfalls and Regionalization
CAISO’s other priorities in 2019 will include its continuing efforts to rein in congestion revenue rights insufficiencies that have left ratepayers footing a bill of about $100 million per year, according to the ISO’s Department of Market Monitoring.
The chronic shortfall in CRR revenues, which are allocated based on power consumption, has been an ongoing problem for CAISO. This year the ISO sought FERC’s approval for changes it hoped would help in 2019, but the commission only gave CAISO part of what it wanted.
In November, FERC accepted an ISO revised proposal, providing for CRR holders to be paid for their entitlements “only to the extent the CAISO collects sufficient revenue through day-ahead market congestion revenues and other sources to fund those entitlements.” (See FERC OKs CAISO Plan to Deal with CRR Shortfalls.)
CAISO may also continue to pursue its efforts to form a Western RTO, despite the failure of several proposals in recent years to begin the process. The latest, AB 813, failed to make it out of a legislative committee in 2018. The bill would have started the process of turning CAISO into an RTO by initiating changes in its governance structure to allow for out-of-state members.
California lawmakers have been opposed to relinquishing state control. CAISO’s governors are now appointed by the California governor and confirmed by the Senate. At the same time, industry leaders from other Western states don’t want to cede authority to a CAISO board controlled from Sacramento.
As Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, put it to a Northwest industry group in October: “We need a big bipartisan win, and I don’t think we’ll get it on carbon tax in the short term, but I’ll tell you a place where we can get it … enhanced regional grid integration.”
ISO-NE closed out 2018 like a trucker wheeling a wide load down a twisting service road on the flanks of Mount Washington. Despite a few bumps, scrapes and scares along the way, it delivered on time — in this case dispatching key market initiatives.
The RTO’s most important issues are winter fuel security and addressing the states’ desire to bring in more carbon-free resources, but it also must plan to operate a grid that is already experiencing a surge in renewable energy resources — with massive amounts of offshore wind energy now visible on the horizon. (See Mass. Offshore Lease Auction Nets Record $405 Million.)
The bumps and scrapes last year came in a contentious stakeholder process over both issues and in FERC approvals accompanied by criticisms, dissents and partial dissents by various commissioners.
FERC last month approved the ISO-NE’s interim proposal to use an out-of-market mechanism to address concerns about fuel security in a region heavily reliant on natural gas and in March approved its two-stage capacity auction to accommodate state renewable energy procurements. (See Split FERC Approves ISO-NE CASPR Plan.)
Controversy in the Details
Soon after a severe cold snap last January, ISO-NE published an operational fuel security analysis that found the New England grid is vulnerable to a season-long outage at any of the region’s major energy facilities. (See Report: Fuel Security Key Risk for New England Grid.)
In a related issue, Exelon in March said it would retire its 2,274-MW Mystic Generating Station in Massachusetts after the facility’s capacity obligations expire in May 2022.
FERC in July denied an ISO-NE a Tariff waiver to enter a cost-of-service agreement to keep Mystic Units 8 and 9 running after the expiration, instead directing the RTO to revise its rules to allow such agreements to address fuel security.
The commission last month finally approved a Mystic agreement, including payments to the Exelon-owned Distrigas LNG facility that supplies the plant with fuel, while also ordering a paper hearing on the issue of return on equity for the units. (See FERC Approves Mystic Cost-of-Service Agreement.)
Winter LNG deliveries to New England interstate pipelines | ISO-NE
Reserve Energy Bank
In a concurring opinion in last month’s fuel security order, FERC Commissioner Richard Glick said “ISO-NE’s apparent need to retain units for fuel security is the result of a market failure” (ER18-2364).
“Winter energy security is a good problem for markets,” said a report on fuel security prepared by Brattle Group on behalf of NextEra Energy Resources. “New England’s energy security challenge can be converted into demand for clearly defined products that many, diverse resources can compete to provide at least cost … [but it’s] essential that any chosen solution will provide planners/operators with the certainty that winter reliability will be maintained, thus avoiding any need for out‐of‐market intervention.”
In a related effort to address fuel security issues holistically, ISO-NE Vice President for Market Development Mark Karl said in November that the RTO is proposing to incorporate into the real-time market an additional constraint that looks at the ability to provide energy storage — or an energy bank.
“I want to be careful here because it’s easy to think about this from the standpoint of conventional generator fuel, but this will apply to any sort of resource that has the ability to maintain essentially a reserve bank of energy that can be converted into electricity when needed,” Karl said.
The idea is to optimize the use of limited energy over more extended periods compared with how markets are currently designed to optimize energy over the course of an operating day, he said. (See New England Talks Energy Security, Public Policy.)
New Renewables
ISO-NE proposed the Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR) construct last January to address state regulators’ concerns about ratepayer costs for policy-driven resources and generators’ fears that out-of-market procurements would suppress capacity prices.
In the commission’s March ruling on CASPR (ER18-619), Commissioner Robert Powelson dissented, while commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick criticized the minimum offer price rule (MOPR) included in the measure.
Under CASPR, ISO-NE will clear the Forward Capacity Auction as it does today, applying the MOPR to new capacity offers to prevent price suppression. In the second Substitution Auction generators with retirement bids that cleared in the primary auction will transfer their obligations to subsidized new resources that did not clear because of the MOPR. The RTO will phase out the renewable technology resource exemption, which has allowed it to clear 200 MW of renewable generation in its capacity auction annually (to a maximum of 600 MW) without regard for the MOPR.
Integration of new renewable resources is not a problem for the RTO and likely won’t be for the next decade, ISO-NE Vice President of Market Operations Robert Ethier told industry stakeholders in November. It’s a two-fold economic challenge involving the energy and capacity markets.
“Bring in these zero-marginal-cost resources and insert them into our real-time supply stack, and it lowers energy prices for everyone … [and] when the states contract for these resources, they don’t just affect the energy market, they also affect our capacity market,” Ethier said.
Having new state-sponsored resources buy out old resources in the market will help manage and ration the entry of these resources into the market and prevent price suppression, he said. (See Canada, New England Talk Trade, Politics and Clean Energy.)
The CASPR filings include proposed Tariff revisions to allow a renewable technology resource to be located out of state — such as in federal waters offshore — and still qualify for a MOPR exemption.
Renewable energy advocates RENEW Northeast supported the RTR revision, as did Vineyard Wind, a partnership between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners that last May won the contract to supply Massachusetts with 800 MW of offshore wind energy. (See Mass., R.I. Pick 1,200 MW in Offshore Wind Bids.)
Progress on Emissions
The RTO last month issued its draft 2017 ISO New England Electric Generator Air Emissions Report, which showed that since 2001 sulfur-dioxide emissions have declined 98%, nitrogen oxide by 74% and carbon dioxide by 34%.
Regional emissions of SO2, NOX and CO2 declined in 2017 compared to the previous year, according to preliminary data, with lower emissions due largely to a decline in electricity generation by power plants that use fossil fuels, said the report. The year-over-year declines continued long-term reductions in the emissions produced by New England power plants.
ISO-NE Total System Emissions: 2016 and 2017 New England system emissions (ktons) and emission rates (lb/MWh) (all figures are preliminary). | ISO-NE
NEPOOL Press Ban Proceeding
In August, the New England Power Pool asked FERC to approve amendments to its Agreement to codify an unwritten policy of banning news reporters and the public from attending the group’s stakeholder meetings (ER18-2208). The group drafted the revisions after RTO Insider reporter Michael Kuser applied for membership in NEPOOL’s Participants Committee as an End User customer in March.
RTO Insider responded to NEPOOL’s filing with a Section 206 complaint asking the commission to overturn the organization’s ban or terminate the group’s role and direct ISO-NE to adopt an open stakeholder process like those used by other RTOs (EL18-196). New England is the only one of seven U.S. regions served by RTOs or ISOs where the press and public are prohibited from attending stakeholder meetings.
RTO Insider’s filed response included letters submitted by six U.S. senators and 12 members of the House of Representatives calling on FERC to open the meetings. (See New England Senators Urge FERC to End Press Ban.)
It also included a copy of a Sept. 6 RTO Insider article quoting former FERC Commissioners Pat Wood and Nora Brownell as saying they were unaware of NEPOOL’s closed-door policy when they approved it as ISO-NE’s stakeholder body. (See Wood, Brownell: Unaware of Press Ban When OK’d NEPOOL.)
Public Citizen filed comments challenging NEPOOL’s claim that its members “voted overwhelmingly against having press reporters as NEPOOL members” at the June 26 Participants Committee meeting. Only 115 of NEPOOL’s more than 500 members were present or had proxies at the meeting.
While 32 votes were cast in favor of the press ban, 24 members were opposed and 59 abstained. In addition, NEPOOL records show that six officers or their associates represented companies that provided 21 of the 32 votes for the ban.
The six have conflicts of interest in voting for the ban because they earn income selling “intelligence” about NEPOOL proceedings, said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program.
