The Indiana Senate has approved a controversial bill that would phase out the state’s retail net metering program.
State senators voted 39-9 to approve Senate Bill 309, which gradually lowers the payments residents receive for selling excess energy from their distributed resources back into the grid. The bill now proceeds to the state’s House of Representatives.
Indiana residents currently earn the retail energy rate for their excess electricity, but the bill would reduce that compensation to 25% above the wholesale rate.
The bill originally contained a “buy-all, sell-all” provision that, if passed, meant homeowners would not have been able to use the power generated by their own solar or wind resources. Instead, they would have been required to sell all output to their local utility at wholesale, to be repurchased at retail. That provision was removed from the bill before the full Senate vote.
The bill underwent other amendments, including the addition of a grandfather clause — expiring in 2047 — for existing net metering customers and any residents who have equipment installed before July 1. Residents who sign up for net metering over the next five years would be covered under existing retail rate rules until 2032.
A provision that would altogether eliminate net metering by 2027 was also tossed from the bill.
The proposed law would also allow utilities to discontinue offering net metering in their service areas when net metering generation equals 1% of their peak summer demand load.
In a Feb. 22 opinion in Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette, bill author Sen. Brandt Hershman (R) praised the legislation, calling it a “net gain for Hoosiers.” The bill encourages “renewable energy generation while bringing more fairness and market sensibility to the way privately owned solar panels and wind turbines are subsidized by other customers,” he wrote.
Hoosier Energy Power Network Solar Power Plant in Bloomington, In. Inovateus Solar
Hershman said that having electric utilities pay full retail rates for consumer-generated energy is unfair and that the prices are “two to three times the actual value of the energy on the market.” Net metering was established to encourage investments in consumer-owned solar and wind generation when installation costs were higher, he contended, but the generation is now more affordable. He pointed out that the federal government has reduced its incentives for residential renewables.
The bill has found support from Indiana’s major utilities, according to Mark Maassel, president of the Indiana Energy Association, which represents major Indiana electric utilities Duke Energy, American Electric Power’s Indiana Michigan Power, Indianapolis Power and Light, Vectren and Northern Indiana Public Service Co.
“All Indiana’s investor-owned utilities are working together on this,” Maassel said. “The companies are very thankful for Senator Hershman.”
Maassel said the utilities did not have a hand in authoring or revising the bill.
“The bill, where we ended up at, is a positive step and something we would like moved forward,” Maassel said.
But solar and renewable advocates are not happy with the final product, arguing that the bill gives utilities too much control over residential solar and wind.
“Senator Hershman, Indiana’s monopoly utilities and their friends in the legislature who are backing the bill say it was ‘fixed’ with amendments, but that’s not true,” said Wendy Bredhold, an Indiana-based representative of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “The utilities want to control solar power and take away Hoosiers’ freedom to generate their own.”
Bredhold called the bill a “step backwards” for Indiana and “energy freedom” and said that it “effectively kills homegrown, rooftop solar” in a state “controlled by powerful utility interests.”
The Indiana Distributed Energy Alliance said the bill “will eviscerate net metering and customer-owned solar and small wind in Indiana.”
Sean Gallagher, vice president of state affairs for Solar Energy Industries Association, said the bill’s language fails to account for the full range benefits that residential generation can provide.
“Compensating … local power at average wholesale prices, as SB 309 proposes, significantly undervalues the benefits of producing that power — such as avoiding the need to build new power lines — and ignores the fact that solar power is produced during daytime peak periods when wholesale energy prices are higher,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher has called on Indiana’s legislature to let the Utility Regulatory Commission investigate the costs and benefits of rooftop solar before setting “arbitrary limits or determining compensation that customers would receive in statute.”
Great Plains Energy has complied with the Missouri Public Service Commission’s order that it seek commission approval on its proposed acquisition of Westar Energy.
Great Plains, the parent of Kansas City Power and Light, relented on filing the $12.2 billion sale with the regulators in response to the commission’s Feb. 22 ruling on a complaint by the Midwest Energy Consumers Group.
Westar Transmission | Westar
The group cited KCP&L’s 2001 application to reorganize into a holding company (EM-2001-464). The restructuring — which created Great Plains as parent and KCP&L its subsidiary — contained an agreement that Great Plains would not attempt to merge with or acquire a public utility without first seeking commission approval.
The PSC had ordered Great Plains to file by March 4. Great Plains is asking that the commission render a decision before April 24 to keep the expected spring transaction closing date on schedule.
The commission said last year that it should have jurisdiction over the sale, but Great Plains said that the deal didn’t require its approval because Westar is a Kansas company. (See Great Plains Energy, Westar Shareholders OK $12.2B Deal.)
Great Plains had argued that allowing the PSC in on the decision would “improperly expand the commission’s jurisdiction to include the acquisition of non-Missouri regulated utilities by Missouri-based holding companies.”
PJM has received FERC approval to divide $40.8 million from an enforcement settlement with GDF SUEZ Energy Marketing among market participants who were impacted by the company’s scheme to improperly capture make-whole payments.
FERC’s Office of Enforcement, which reached the settlement with GDF, approved of PJM’s plan to distribute the funds as negative operating reserve charges to any market participants that incurred deviations between the day-ahead and real-time energy markets between May 2011 and September 2013, according to an email from David Budney, the RTO’s manager of market settlements. It noted that the adjustments have been processed and are available in the market settlements reporting system.
The Troy Energy gas-fired plant in Luckey, Ohio, is one of the units GDF Suez used to own in PJM.
The funds are part of a nearly $82 million payment by GDF to settle market manipulation charges for offering generation below cost to capture make-whole payments in PJM. Enforcement charged GDF with violating the commission’s Anti-Manipulation Rule for an improper bidding strategy designed to increase its receipt of lost opportunity cost credits (LOCs).
According to the settlement, the Houston-based power marketer offered below-cost bids on some of its 12 natural gas-fired units to clear PJM’s day-ahead market and profit off the LOCs when the units weren’t dispatched in real time. GDF used a probabilistic, risk/reward approach to compare when units were unlikely to be dispatched against the risk of running the units at a loss, the settlement said. (See GDF SUEZ to Pay $82M in PJM Market Manipulation Settlement.)
GDF’s parent company rebranded as ENGIE in 2015 and sold off its U.S. fossil-fuel generation assets in 2016. PJM has since updated its rules to eliminate the loophole of which GDF took advantage.
ERCOT announced it is terminating its reliability-must-run agreement for NRG Texas Power’s Greens Bayou Unit 5 in Houston, effective May 29.
Greens Bayou
The grid operator said studies using new criteria indicated the unit would not be needed for transmission system reliability after Exelon’s 1,148-MW Colorado Bend II Generating Station in Wharton County, Texas, becomes operational in June.
The new criteria took effect with the passage of Nodal Protocol Revision Request 788 last fall. NPRR 788 requires a potential RMR unit to have “a meaningful impact on the expected transmission overload” to be considered for an agreement.
ERCOT said the previous rules, which used a forecast based on a 90% probability of exceedance, were overly conservative and that the new criteria should reduce the use of RMR contracts for reliability concerns that have a very low probability of occurring.
The RMR, ERCOT’s first since 2011, was approved last June to run through June 2018. Greens Bayou 5 is the largest of seven units at NRG’s Harris County complex. Built in 1973, the 371-MW natural gas unit was mothballed in 2010 and 2011, but returned afterward. (See “Greens Bayou Still Needed Under RMR Protocol Changes,” ERCOT Board of Directors Briefs.)
New England’s needs for energy infrastructure, which have been debated in the courts and state legislatures, moved to ISO-NE’s Planning Advisory Committee last week as stakeholders began discussing the potential for major transmission projects under FERC Order 1000.
Although EPA’s Clean Power Plan may be eliminated by the Trump administration, state clean energy goals could drive projects that deliver Canadian hydro and wind power from Maine and the Atlantic Ocean. Order 1000 requires public utility transmission providers to consider “transmission needs driven by public policy requirements [PPR] in both the local and regional transmission planning processes.”
ISO-NE transmission needs to satisfy renewable public policies | Avangrid
ISO-NE last month invited stakeholders to identify public policies that could drive transmission needs, in compliance with the FERC rule. National Grid, NextEra Energy Transmission and TDI New England were among those that submitted ideas before the Feb. 25 deadline.
At the PAC meeting Thursday, the Conservation Law Foundation and Avangrid gave their views, prompting a debate with the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) over FERC’s and the RTO’s jurisdiction.
“This is a very important program and crucial to both the states’ and [ISO-NE’s] ability to meet their obligations in this area,” said David Ismay, senior attorney for CLF.
State renewable portfolio standards, which will require about 20% of ISO-NE load to be served by renewables by 2030;
The 2016 Massachusetts Energy Diversity Act, which mandates procurement of 9.45 TWh of hydro or hydro and RPS by 2022 and 1,600 MW of offshore wind by 2027; and
The Massachusetts and Connecticut Global Warming Solutions Acts of 2008, which require 2050 statewide emissions limits at least 80% below 1990 (Massachusetts) and 2001 (Connecticut) levels.
Ismay said ISO-NE’s 2016 Economic Study — still in development — and the 2015 Economic Study: Evaluation of Offshore Wind Deployment indicate the scale and type of upgrades that could meet the RPS targets and import large amounts of Canadian hydro and offshore wind.
Those studies identified transmission to eliminate bottlenecks between load and wind resources in Maine; a project for moving Canadian hydro to Southeast Massachusetts (SEMA); and transmission to SEMA from the Rhode Island/Massachusetts Wind Energy Area designated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
“We think there is a need for a north-south connection from Canada, from Maine, from both of those perhaps, to the SEMA load zone and this is a need that has been much discussed,” Ismay said.
Ismay said the RTO should conduct a transmission study to identify “a range of cost-effective” upgrades able to satisfy the state initiatives, adding “I’m sure there’s other ways to do it” beyond those identified in studies to date.
‘Could This Go Anywhere?’
“All well and good,” one stakeholder responded when Ismay finished his presentation. “But if the states have no agreement as to cost sharing, could this go anywhere at all?”
“The way I read the language that’s already in the Tariff and the way I read the FERC orders, this is a process that already has cost allocation in the Tariff for it,” Ismay answered. “The cost allocation can potentially be modified if the states reach agreement, but it’s not dependent on the states reaching an agreement. As the Tariff and the last order from FERC currently stand, it’s clear that this is an ISO process — not one that the states may wholly control but one that they absolutely may contribute to and may drive.”
Dorothy Capra, director of regulatory services for NESCOE, disagreed with Ismay’s interpretation.
“I don’t want to get into a legal argument here, but let’s just say NESCOE disagrees with the way CLF is interpreting Attachment K,” she said, referring to the section of ISO-NE’s Tariff governing the regional system planning process. “We believe that the states do have the right to say whether or not their policies actually require transmission.”
Ismay acknowledged states can challenge public policy declarations. “Say a stakeholder other than the state identifies a valid PPR … and the states say, ‘You know that second one? We’re good. We’ll show you how this doesn’t impact regional transmission.’ I would expect [ISO-NE] to consider that and to weigh that in its assessment,” he said.
Jose Rotger of Emera Energy asked for the RTO’s legal interpretation. “Does the ISO believe that it can begin a public policy transmission study regardless of whether there was a request filed by NESCOE and the states?” he asked.
“I’m not going to do the hypothetical,” responded Theodore Paradise, assistant general counsel for operations and planning. When Rotger persisted, Paradise would not budge. “If this was court, I’d say, ‘Asked and answered.’”
Jurisdictional Challenge to FERC
NESCOE and state regulators from the region have challenged FERC’s May 2013 order accepting ISO-NE’s compliance filing amending its Tariff in accordance with Order 1000’s local and regional transmission planning and cost allocation requirements, as well as the commission’s March 2015 order on rehearing (ER13-193 and ER13-196).
Transmission developer LS Power Transmission and others have also challenged FERC’s rulings, saying the compliance filings by ISO-NE, NYISO and SPP still favor regulated incumbents over independent developers. (See Tx Developers Challenge NYISO, SPP, ISO-NE Order 1000 Filings.)
Order 1000 described PPRs as those “established by local, state or federal laws or regulations (i.e., enacted statutes passed by the legislature and signed by the executive and regulations promulgated by a relevant jurisdiction, whether within a state or at the federal level)” and include “local laws and regulations passed by a local governmental entity, such as a municipal or county government.”
NESCOE said the commission was arbitrary and capricious in “requiring the selection of public policy-driven projects in the regionwide transmission plan, rather than solely the establishment of procedures to consider (i.e., identify and evaluate) transmission projects driven by state and local public policy requirements.”
The committee also said FERC exceeded its authority under the Federal Power Act and violated state sovereignty in expanding the requirements of Order 1000 “from an obligation to consider public policies in transmission planning to an obligation to select policy-driven projects” (15-1139, 15-1141). Oral arguments in the case were held before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 13.
Details
Steve Garwood of New Hampshire Transmission asked ISO-NE officials about the level of detail they sought in filings due Feb. 25, noting that the RTO’s template “asks for very specific upgrades.”
Director of Transmission Planning Brent Oberlin said the level of detail provided by CLF is “a start.”
“We laid out the template … hoping for much more specificity,” he added.
In considering transmission projects for Canadian hydropower, for example, “I don’t know what the cost of the [energy] source is … so depending on where I land [the beginning of the transmission line], I may be picking the most expensive generator on the planet. And since the ISO doesn’t procure resources, it’s a little tough to work out.”
Avangrid: Leverage Existing Tx
Also presenting was Avangrid’s Paul Dumais, who highlighted the same public policies as CLF, while also mentioning the Clean Power Plan.
Dumais noted that the region has already made significant transmission investments through reliability projects, saying the RTO should insist that in ensuring sufficient transmission to accommodate public policies “we leverage the investments we’ve already made.”
He also expressed concern over the choice of planning assumptions, saying the RTO should balance reliability against cost.
“For example the assumptions made about generation dispatch in the minimum interconnection standard versus the capacity capability interconnection standard will drive different levels of upgrades,” he said.
“We would encourage NECSCOE … to talk about how … it’s not necessarily needed that the system be designed for the peak day with generation at nameplate rating and the interconnection at New Brunswick flowing at the 1,000-MW [limit]. … What’s more important is that over the 8,760 hours [per year], the generation is generally deliverable into the market. This requires us to look at it differently, such that we’re not building transmission to necessarily meet the worst-case situation — that there’s recognition that at some points in time there’s likely to be some congestion and people can live with that given the cost to overcome it.”
Untangling from CPP
In his environmental regulatory update, ISO-NE’s Patricio Silva gave the PAC a briefing on what he said were the steep challenges facing the Trump administration’s plan to scuttle EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Silva noted that EPA acted following its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions present a threat to public health and welfare and that the agency had a duty to act.
“It’s a final rule. Withdrawing the finding requires an additional rulemaking and they have to offer a justification to essentially counter the existing regulatory record,” he said. “This approach presents a variety of legal hurdles and some administrative rulemaking hurdles. It is not clear that this would succeed. There are ample example of litigation where such approaches came to naught.”
Successfully withdrawing the endangerment finding would eliminate EPA’s rationale for regulating emissions from existing generators under Clean Air Act Section 111(d) and new units under Section 111(b).
Silva said that could pose a new risk to generators, who have been protected from private litigation over GHG emissions by the Supreme Court’s 2011 American Electric Power vs. Connecticut decision, which said EPA’s regulatory authority over emissions precluded any “private right of action.”
“If EPA determines they do not have the authority under 111, the decision in AEP vs. Connecticut seems to imply … that generators could subsequently be subject to private litigation,” Silva said. “This is a very complicated area of law and regulation that is fraught with significant risk for existing and new generators. … Many of my counterparts at the other ISO/RTOs are watching this matter with a great deal of focus for the potential impacts.”
Stakeholders last week continued discussions on MISO’s pseudo-tie approval process, even after narrowly approving more stringent requirements in December.
In a Feb. 22 Advisory Committee conference call, stakeholders learned that MISO did not file the proposed pro forma pseudo-tie agreement and Business Practices Manual language with FERC, as originally planned after the 5-4 approval by the Reliability Subcommittee on Dec. 16. There were 13 abstentions on that vote. (See MISO Stakeholders Narrowly Support New Pseudo-Tie Rules.) The RTO cited the narrow margin of victory and the fact that abstentions outnumbered ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes in its decision to postpone a filing to better explain the proposed process to stakeholders.
Advisory Committee Chair Audrey Penner said the topic was brought back to the committee for more discussion at the request of stakeholders. She said no action was required under the Stakeholder Governance Guide, and the item was placed on the agenda only to bring it to the attention of the committee. “This doesn’t happen very often,” Penner said.
“It really signals that more stakeholders were interested in getting more information from MISO,” Vice Chair Tia Elliott said.
The proposed rules dictate that pseudo-tie owners notify MISO a year in advance of implementing a new pseudo-tie and create a congestion management process; the rules also say proposed pseudo-ties can be rejected if a market-to-market flowgate is not within 2% of MISO and the neighboring market’s calculated generator-to-load distribution factor.
Penner said MISO will not revoke existing pseudo-ties that fail the 2% test. “MISO believes that all pseudo-ties currently meet this requirement, and that’s why it won’t be retroactively applied,” Penner said.
Reliability Subcommittee Chair Tony Jankowski said he has not heard from MISO staff on whether the issue will be brought up for more discussion in his subcommittee. Stakeholders and the RTO are currently creating agenda items for the next subcommittee meeting in April.
Entergy’s Matt Brown said his company voted against the pseudo-tie proposal because of incomplete information but would consider a better documented agreement, even one with a requirement more stringent than the 2% threshold.
Committee to Hold Current Events Discussions
The Advisory Committee will begin holding quarterly current events discussions in response to stakeholder calls for more in-depth policy conversations.
Penner said the committee will set aside time for discussions of policy issues and industry trends beginning at the next in-person meeting in New Orleans on March 22. Penner said she envisioned committee members tackling no more than two topics per meeting. The quarterly discussion format arose from MISO’s stakeholder redesign. (See MISO Takes Stakeholders’ Temperature on Redesign.)
American Electric Power’s Kent Felix said he viewed the discussions as another opportunity for stakeholders to guide MISO on policy issues. WEC Energy Group’s Chris Plante asked if the committee’s stakeholder sectors might vote to express positions on the topic. Penner said committee leadership had not discussed the possibility of voting during the discussions, but it could be explored.
Madison Gas and Electric’s Megan Wisersky asked if the discussions would be recorded in minutes. Penner said she would take notes, as she could not partake in the discussion as chair, but said it remains to be seen if there would be formal notetaking from MISO.
Penner asked for topic ideas for the first discussion by March 1.
Steering Committee Able to Approve Charters, Management Plans Again
Stakeholders approved a correction to the Stakeholder Governance Guide that restores the Steering Committee’s power to approve charter and management plans.
Elliott said edits approved in December inadvertently deleted a sentence that delegated charter and management plan review for MISO parent committees to the Steering Committee.
“If we don’t get to this change, the Advisory Committee will have to approve all of the charters,” Elliott said.
After its powers were restored, the Steering Committee approved by consent several charters or management plans, including those governing the Market Subcommittee, the Seams Management Working Group, the Resource Adequacy Subcommittee, the Loss of Load Expectation Working Group, the Planning Advisory Committee, the Planning Subcommittee and the Interconnection Process Task Force.
Gas-electric topics currently discussed in MISO’s Resource Adequacy Subcommittee will move to the Reliability Subcommittee where they are a better fit, Steering Committee members decided during a Feb. 22 conference call.
Gas-electric coordination is more closely related to grid reliability than resource adequacy, leadership of the two panels said.
“Once I started to review stakeholder comments on its applicability to resource adequacy, I said, ‘Yes, these issues have more applicability to the Reliability Subcommittee,’” said Shawn McFarlane, MISO liaison for the RASC.
RSC Chair Tony Jankowski said he also agreed with the swap.
Among the RSC’s duties will be providing input to MISO on a pilot program that sends hourly estimated gas usage profiles to selected pipeline operators so they have advance notice of generating units’ fuel needs. The profiles are based on MISO’s day-ahead market results. (See “Gas-Electric Discussions in 1st Quarter,” MISO Resource Adequacy Subcommittee Briefs.)
RASC Chair Chris Plante said his subcommittee will continue to talk gas-electric coordination as it relates to implementing a seasonal aspect to the Planning Resource Auction.
MISO Stakeholders to Hear Changes to Alternative Dispute Resolution
MISO will describe proposed changes to its alternative dispute resolution process in a presentation at the March Advisory Committee meeting, repeating the presentation at the April Informational Forum, to ensure wide exposure of the revisions, the Steering Committee decided.
MISO legal counsel Daniel Malabonga said changing Tariff Attachment HH’s language on alternative dispute resolution has been on his “wish list” for years. Malabonga said the attachment is used when parties want to “meet in the middle” over contractual disputes; the revisions include a confidentiality agreement and the legal definition of indispensable parties — parties whose participation is necessary to work out an agreement. MISO’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee, which meets in private, has already approved the changes, which have not yet been made public.
Steering Committee Chair Tia Elliott asked that MISO address stakeholder responses before filing the changes with FERC to avoid protest filings.
“Even though this may be on the fast track to being filed, I would like stakeholders to have the opportunity to provide feedback,” Elliot said.
Justin Stewart of MISO’s stakeholder relations unit said the RTO would honor the request.
Auction Redesign Drives 2016 Overspending
MISO Finance Subcommittee Chair Mitch Myhre said the RTO ended 2016 $2.2 million over its operating budget (1%). Capital spending was $2 million (6.5%) over budget. Myhre said both instances of overspending were driven by the development of the rejected capacity auction redesign.
WILMINGTON, Del. — PJM and its stakeholders last week found themselves at odds for the second month in a row over requirements for external generators, as members insisted on more time to consider the RTO’s pro forma pseudo-tie agreement.
The stakeholders’ decision to delay a vote came at Thursday’s Markets and Reliability Committee meeting. Later, in the Members Committee meeting, the RTO announced that the Board of Managers will unilaterally file a contentious pseudo-tie rule that members rejected at the January MRC meeting.
Stakeholders had voted to apply stricter requirements to new pseudo-ties but declined to apply them to existing pseudo-tied units, as PJM requested. The lack of endorsement meant that PJM can’t file its proposal under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act and will file instead under Section 205. (See “PJM Uncomfortable with Separate Pseudo-Tie Rules,” PJM Markets and Reliability and Members Committees Briefs.)
“PJM management’s fairly strong recommendation to the board was to file both [new and existing] as 205,” said Senior Vice President of Operations and Markets Stu Bresler. “I can tell you that the board is sensitive to adhering to the stakeholder process,” Bresler said. He said PJM plans to file with FERC by March 10.
PJM Public Power Coalition’s Carl Johnson commended the RTO on its openness throughout the process but said the proposal created an unreasonable lack of certainty on whether units will be approved.
American Municipal Power’s Ed Tatum said the proposal could have been revised enough to find common ground between PJM’s desire for stricter standards and stakeholders’ concerns.
“It is a bit unfortunate,” he said. “We could have prevented what will likely be many protests. I feel like we could have gotten this right.”
Members Balk at Pro Forma Agreement
Earlier in the meeting, stakeholders stood fast, insisting on additional time to improve the language of the pro forma pseudo-tie agreement despite concerns that further delay could create confusion during an emergency. Members said that FERC’s lack of a quorum meant there was no pressing need to rush the agreement for a commission filing.
“It’s not just delay for delay’s sake,” Johnson said. The existing document is better than previous versions, he said, but additional improvements could be made.
The pro formaagreement is intended to ensure uniformity in the rules for future pseudo-tie generators. But PJM said it has had trouble obtaining agreement with other balancing authorities on pseudo-tie terms, and variations in wording have created confusion about correct operating procedures. PJM staff said they have discussed it with neighboring transmission operators, including Duke Energy, SPP, MISO and East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
The agreement will address congestion management with entities where PJM doesn’t already have such an agreement, ensure impacts of the pseudo-tied unit are recognized in market flows, require firm status for transfers and require use of NERC’s interchange distribution calculator redispatch mechanism.
“What I’m finding is that even in discussions with other [balancing authorities] … not one of them has a problem with the agreement per se. They just have a concern with pseudo-ties. MISO feels the agreement is redundant. … The vast majority of what’s in there is not redundant,” PJM Associate General Counsel Jacqui Hugee said.
Bruce Bleiweis of DC Energy said he recently attended a NYISO meeting where stakeholders didn’t know what a pseudo-tie was, so it’s unlikely that the education process would be expedient there.
PJM: Let FERC Sort it Out
Several stakeholders asked that any disputes be resolved before submitting the agreement to FERC, but PJM General Counsel Vince Duane urged the opposite.
“After trying as best we can to get substantive input from our neighbors, [the idea is to] file with the commission, and that will allow everyone to come in and file their opinions,” he said. “We need to get a forum in place, and I’m not confident the stakeholder processes outside of PJM are going to provide that forum any time soon.”
While the new process might take longer than before to secure necessary approvals, PJM expects it will give applicants more certainty about expectations for pseudo-ties. The agreement would also expand the RTO’s existing reimbursement agreement, which would be codified in the Tariff. If the parties can’t come to terms on the agreement, PJM would file the unexecuted agreement for FERC review.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said last week it is satisfied that federal agencies are collaborating with each other on grid resilience and not duplicating efforts.
A GAO report released Friday, “Electricity: Federal Efforts to Enhance Grid Resilience,” notes that the federal government has launched more than two dozen efforts and spent nearly a quarter billion dollars between 2013 and 2015 to improve the grid’s ability to withstand everything from hurricanes and geomagnetic disturbances to physical and cyberattacks.
The Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and FERC reported implementing 27 grid resiliency efforts since 2013.
The efforts addressed three federal priorities: developing and deploying tools to enhance awareness of potential disruptions; planning and exercising coordinated responses to disruptive events; and ensuring actionable intelligence on threats is quickly communicated between government and industry.
GAO concluded that the grid reliance efforts are not being pursued in silos and are stressing collaboration between federal agencies as well as states and private industry stakeholders. In researching the report, GAO not only surveyed federal officials, but also representatives of the Edison Electric Institute, American Public Power Association and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, whose members own most of the grid.
“We have previously reported that fragmentation has the potential to result in duplication of resources,” GAO said. “For example, fragmentation can lead to technical or administrative functions being managed separately by individual agencies, when these functions could be shared among programs. However, we also have reported that fragmentation, by itself, is not an indication that unnecessary duplication of efforts or activities exists.”
GAO auditors did not find any instances of duplication among the 27 federal grid resiliency efforts. “None of the efforts had the same goals or engaged in the same activities,” GAO said.
Of the 27 efforts, 12 were related to FERC’s role in reviewing and approving mandatory NERC reliability standards. Cyberattacks were considered in 15 of the 27 programs, while physical attacks and natural disasters were addressed in 12. Operational accidents were analyzed in only five of the programs, GAO found. Federal funding for DOE and DHS grid resiliency activities from fiscal year 2013 through fiscal year 2015 totaled approximately $240 million.
Efforts Have Sparked Progress
Federal grid efforts have sped the development of new technologies and improved coordination and information sharing between the federal government and industry related to potential cyberattacks, GAO said. It cited Homeland Security’s Resilient Electric Grid program, which developed a new superconductor cable that can connect several urban substations, mitigating disruptions by enabling multiple paths for electricity to flow if a single substation loses power.
Three DOE and DHS efforts addressed resiliency issues related to large, high-power transformers, but the goals were distinct. One effort focused on developing a rapidly deployable transformer to use in the event of multiple large, high-power transformer failures; another focused on developing next-generation transformer components with more resilient features; and a third focused on developing a plan for a national transformer reserve.
Homeland Security and Energy officials identified the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, an industry group, and the Energy Sector Government Coordinating Council as key mechanisms that help coordinate grid resiliency efforts. (See States Want Cyber Best Practices; Santorum Seeks ‘Warriors’.)
The GAO study was dated Jan. 25 and was initially presented to Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), the ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
ISO-NE’s wholesale electric market totaled $4.1 billion in 2016, down 30% from 2015, thanks to low natural gas prices and mild weather that cut demand and eliminated pipeline congestion and resulting price spikes.
LMPs averaged $28.94/MWh last year, down from $41/MWh, while natural gas — which produced 49% of the region’s electricity — averaged $3.09/MMBtu, down from $4.64/MMBtu. The Energy Information Administration reported last month that gas prices last year were the lowest since 1999.
ISO-NE said preliminary figures showed demand for electricity fell 2.1% last year to 124,323 GWh. “An unconstrained transmission system allows the least expensive power plants to be used to meet demand across the region,” the RTO noted in a press release. “Congestion has been virtually eliminated in New England with $8 billion in transmission upgrades since 2002.”
“When New England’s natural gas power plants can access low-cost fuel, wholesale power prices tend to remain low,” CEO Gordon van Welie said in a statement. “By comparison, extremely cold temperatures three winters ago resulted in pipeline constraints and caused natural gas — and wholesale electricity — prices to hit record highs.”
Those studies identified transmission to eliminate bottlenecks between load and wind resources in Maine; a project for moving Canadian hydro to Southeast Massachusetts (SEMA); and transmission to SEMA from the Rhode Island/Massachusetts Wind Energy Area designated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
