MISO will partner with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for the RTO’s inaugural Market Symposium Aug. 18-19 in Indianapolis.
ARPA-E staff will share insights on how technology is reshaping the electric grid. (See “MISO to Hold August Market Symposium,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs.) Other speakers have yet to be announced.
“MISO is excited to offer this event for our stakeholders as we explore the future of our energy markets,” said Jeff Bladen, executive director of MISO market services. “The Market Symposium will allow us to discuss challenges and opportunities around designing the energy market of the future.”
The event will feature experts speaking on industry trends and “how MISO’s wholesale market can adapt to future changes.” Topics will cover the market challenges that accompany a decarbonized wholesale fleet, commodity trends and distributed energy resources — including storage, distributed solar and other new technologies.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is calling for better fire prevention, more stringent anti-terrorist protections and better disaster preparedness at the nation’s sites for storing spent nuclear fuel.
In a recently released report, the organization, which studied the effects of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, said that only luck kept that incident from being much worse.
“This should serve as a wake-up call to the industry and regulators about the critical importance to be able to monitor the condition of the pools, particularly in the event that something happens like Fukushima,” said Joseph Shepherd, an engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the report. The Nuclear Energy Institute, however, said the safeguards are already in place.
A 22-year-old hose linking a storage tank to a pump leading to an emergency generator failed during an inspection earlier this year at Exelon’s aging Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey, leading the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to assess the plant with a “white” finding.
It is one of the lowest safety findings the commission issues, but the commission said the failure was serious enough to merit the violation.
If the finding is affirmed, the plant would be subject to increased federal oversight. Oyster Creek is scheduled for decommissioning in 2019.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the operator of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan have reached a settlement concerning a leak that allowed 80 gallons of radioactive water to escape into Lake Michigan in 2011. Instead of a fine, the commission said it is satisfied with Entergy’s decision to take corrective actions to ensure a leak does not happen again.
The leak, less than one drop per minute, came from a 3-inch pipe flange that showed signs of boric acid corrosion, according to documents. The commission characterized the inadequate reporting of the incident by four workers as “willful.” Entergy defined the problem as a failure of the plant’s “organizational safety culture.”
In lieu of a fine, Entergy agreed to prepare a report on the lessons learned and to upgrade training to include those lessons. It will also take steps to increase transparency with the public, agreeing to hold public meetings to discuss plant safety and to allow the public to ask questions at those meetings.
New York Senators Call For Stop to Algonquin Project
Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer are asking FERC to shut down construction of the Algonquin Incremental Market pipeline until health and safety reviews are conducted.
The pipeline is to run from Pennsylvania to the Hudson River Valley region in New York. The lawmakers say they are concerned about the safety of residents along the route, as well as the sensitivity because the route takes it close to the Indian Point nuclear station.
Construction on the project, which will nearly double the size of the existing 26-inch pipeline to 42 inches, has already started. FERC said it had not yet received the letter from the senators, but it does not comment on congressional correspondence anyway, according to a spokeswoman.
Eastern Shore Gas Applies To FERC for 33-Mile Expansion
Eastern Shore Natural Gas has filed with FERC to expand its natural gas transmission system, including the installation of 33 miles of looping pipeline in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
The company would also install 17 miles of expanded line along with pressure equipment in Sussex County, Del. The system improvements would provide an additional 86,000 dekatherms of gas per day, according to the company.
Seabrook Cited for Slow Response to Concrete Problem
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission cited NextEra Energy’s Seabrook nuclear plant for a low-level safety violation after a March 24 inspection.
The commission cited the New Hampshire plant because NextEra’s staff delayed completion of structure inspections after being told of an alkali-silica reaction in the plant’s concrete.
NextEra said procedures have been changed since the violation occurred. The commission and NextEra confirmed that the plant’s walls, some up to 4 feet thick, still meet federal structural safety standards.
EPA Issues Water Permit Even as Pilgrim Nears Closure
EPA issued a draft water use permit for Entergy’s Pilgrim nuclear generating station, updating a permit that was first issued in 1991. Although opponents of the plant have long argued that the water use permit expired in 1996, the agency said regulations allow the plant to use the original permit until a new one is issued.
The plant’s owner, Entergy, has said it will retire the plant in 2019. Most of the plant’s spent fuel is stored in pools inside, meaning the plant will still draw water from Cape Cod Bay even after it closes, opponents say. When operating at full power, the 680-MW plant draws more than 500 million gallons per day.
FERC last week approved an uncontested partial settlement reached earlier this year among SPP, the Integrated System, MISO and Montana-Dakota Utilities.
The commission said its May 19 letter order resolves all seams issues raised by MDU stemming from the Integrated System members — the Western Area Power Administration-Upper Great Plains Region (Western-UGP), Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Heartland Consumers Power District — becoming transmission-owning members of SPP last October (ER14-2850-006, ER14-2851-006).
MDU said that by setting the seams issues for hearing, FERC recognized that utilities in the Integrated System area have highly integrated facilities “as a result of joint planning and ownership of transmission,” and that the arrangements should be reflected in their service arrangements with SPP (such as through transmission facilities credits under the RTO’s Tariff).
The settlement clarifies that MDU does not need to become an SPP transmission owner to receive credits in exchange for providing the RTO transmission service over its facilities. The value of MDU’s credits will be based on its annual transmission revenue requirement for the facilities in question under the MISO Tariff.
Carmel, Ind. — Independent Market Monitor David Patton last week asked MISO’s Board of Directors to suspend the RTO’s work on the proposed redesign of its capacity auctions, escalating a running disagreement over the issue.
“I regret we’re at this point,” Patton told board members. “We’re talking about carving out Zone 4,” referring to his concerns that a proposed forward procurement plan for retail-choice areas will isolate the Illinois region.
Patton’s request came shortly after RTO staff produced a handful of revisions to its competitive retail solution construct. The changes included transforming the proposed forward auction to fulfilling full — rather than partial — reserve requirements, eliminating a provision for optional participation among load-serving entities and adding forward-looking transmission modeling.
“The [forward auction construct] we’re proposing today is not that dramatically different from our March 18 proposal,” said Jeff Bladen, MISO executive director of market services.
“I feel like the last proposal was more reasonable than this one,” Patton said. “And, of course, I didn’t consider the last one reasonable — because you’re only pricing one capacity value of megawatts.”
Patton continued to oppose the proposal because forward procurement for competitive retail areas remains “a central piece.” He maintained that price “is going to be massively undervalued in Zone 4.” (See MISO Considering Changes to Proposed Auction Design.)
According to the Monitor, generating units in competitive areas cannot guess three years in advance what procurement offer prices will be outside of their areas. Such attempts at guessing would “dominate” the forward auction, he contended.
Patton offered to run simulations to show that a MISO-wide prompt auction with a sloped demand curve applied to deregulated areas would produce efficient price signals.
He argued that, by 2018, expansion of transmission capability will render Zone 4’s local clearing requirement essentially unnecessary and deliverability constraints would disappear.
Board Says MISO and IMM Need Dialogue
Board member Paul Feldman said MISO mixing auction constructs “is problematic” and asked whether the RTO was trying to guide Illinois into an integrated resource planning (IRP) process.
Richard Doying, MISO executive vice president of operations and corporate services, countered that no one in Illinois is offering a plan for resource adequacy in retail-choice areas.
“If no one is going through an administrative planning process … there needs to be a market planning process in place,” Doying said.
MISO board members questioned the use of the vertical demand curve in any of the auctions, saying both retail-choice and regulated states could implement a sloped demand curve. But the board ultimately declined to order MISO staff to pursue that option.
“Vertically integrated constructs do not avail themselves of efficient outcomes, [but] I don’t want to re-litigate the sloped demand curve,” Feldman said. “We need productive relationships with the states.”
Feldman added that he was not convinced that MISO had fully vetted the auction design with third parties. He asked MISO and the Monitor to “get back in the room” to rework the proposal.
Phyllis Currie, another board member, agreed: “I think we need to give more thought to this.” Currie also asked for a presentation to explicitly address price volatility.
Bladen said he was open to scheduling a mediated conversation with the Monitor and other consultants.
Patton’s response: There is no way to “remedy MISO’s proposal” without completely rewriting it.
The board asked both parties to attend a joint work session to run simulations on their respective recommendations and be ready to defend their results.
MISO continues to plan for a July FERC filing for the proposal. It is finishing work on a revised competitive retail solution paper and developing Tariff language for stakeholder review in June.
RTO staff is evaluating a tandem filing with seasonality and locational constructs currently under stakeholder review.
A new auction construct could be in place as early as spring 2017 for the 2017/2018 planning year, said Bladen. “That’s dependent on a lot of things falling in place in a straightforward way, but we do believe it’s feasible.”
CAMBRIDGE, Md. — Retiring PJM board members Jean Kinsey and Richard Lahey marked their final Annual Meeting last week with reminiscences on the industry’s past and some views on its future.
Lahey, former dean of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an expert on nuclear reactor safety technology, was one of two original PJM board members, having joined with Chairman Howard Schneider 19 years ago.
He was there as PJM grew from its roots as a “tight power pool” to its current 13-state footprint with wholesale energy, capacity and ancillary services markets. It became the nation’s first fully functioning ISO in 1997 and the first RTO in 2001.
“We had some advantages in that it wasn’t unusual for us to operate that kind of grid,” he said, noting PJM was founded in 1927. “The disadvantage was you were sort of entrenched in a certain way of doing it and it didn’t scale up. Fortunately, there were people on the board who had been from large corporations, and they made some very positive suggestions on how to scale it up.”
At the beginning, Lahey recalled, “our independence was challenged by some of the members, and we took a position that we weren’t going to sit at the board unless we were independent. And because we did that we’ve been able to function very well.”
Lahey said a strength of the board has been its diversity. “There’s people from retail, there’s people from Wall Street-type backgrounds. There’s people from universities, from the industry. What it means is when we come to reach a decision, we have very rich discussions. And a lot of times there’s quite a few changes depending on the input.”
Kinsey, who holds a doctorate in agricultural economics and is a former University of Minnesota professor who specialized in food safety, recalled the “steep learning curve” she faced after joining the board 13 years ago.
She said the board’s biggest challenge over her tenure was its efforts to perfect PJM’s market design. “We keep tweaking the market as the environment in which [generators] operate changes,” she said, noting current challenges in incorporating the externalities of carbon emissions.
“Going forward, I think the major challenge is going to be how you operate an efficient grid with a lot of smaller generating units — microgrids, behind-the-meter [generation],” she said. “The grid magnifies the economies of scale. If you have things peeling off that, how can you keep the value of that core operation?”
Retirement Plans
Lahey, who retired from RPI seven years ago, is hoping to reduce his outside consulting work to spend more time boating and on the beach with his family at his home in St. Augustine, Fla. “If you retire, it’s sort of nice to have time to enjoy yourself,” he said.
Kinsey, who retired five and a half years ago from Minnesota, is president of the university’s retiree’s association. She plans to spend her free time learning photography.
“I’ve become quite interested in photography becoming art, where you can take a piece of a picture and create a design out of it,” she said. “The other part of my brain is crying to be recognized.”
CAMBRIDGE, Md. — Keeping the lights on, planning for the future and facilitating efficient electricity trading will continue to be PJM’s core mission, CEO Andy Ott told members in reviewing his first year at the helm of the RTO.
But PJM needs to be positioned for changes, he said, like the ones that necessitated the move toward Capacity Performance — legacy assets were becoming less reliable, and new gas generation didn’t have fuel security.
“We addressed that change abruptly. We need to avoid those kinds of abrupt changes in the future — abrupt change in the markets doesn’t help anybody,” he said. “Our goal … is to stabilize our rules to make sure we see these emerging trends coming.”
The industry is evolving rapidly, Ott noted, “not only the volume of change, but how quickly those changes are occurring.”
He pointed to changing load profiles and fuel mix, the Clean Power Plan, gas-electric coordination, renewable and distributed energy resources (DER) and cybersecurity.
“The key is to make sure that as we look forward, we strategically evaluate how those changes are going to affect our markets,” Ott said. “We can’t get caught by surprise. We need to make our systems more and more resilient.”
He also singled out some areas that he said need to evolve: the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan process; PJM markets, to accommodate gas-electric coordination and DER; and enhancing the value of the RTO’s services.
“I see a tremendous opportunity for us if we can find a way to harness the distributed energy resources that are inevitably coming onto the system,” he said. “It will make the grid more resilient and will result in lower cost and … less operational uncertainty.”
Ott said PJM also will be studying the value of fuel diversity from an operational perspective.
“Should we be looking at fuel diversity as an attribute? And under what circumstances would we do that?” he said.
The topic will be the subject of an upcoming report, he said.
Md. Energy Adviser Delivers Keynote
Mary Beth Tung delivered the keynote address at the final session of the PJM Annual Meeting last week, just two days after being appointed director of the Maryland Energy Administration by Gov. Larry Hogan.
Maryland, with 12,264 MW of capacity, is a net importer of energy, she told the group.
Coal and nuclear power supply more than four-fifths of the state’s generation; among the challenges the state faces is that nearly 66% of its coal-fired power plants are at risk of retirement. To address that loss, the state has a number of new natural gas-fired facilities scheduled to come online in the next few years.
A member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Maryland has a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% compared with 2006 levels by 2030, she said.
Maryland faces a unique hurdle in that its geography lends itself to air pollution, Tung said — 70% of pollution wafts in from surrounding states.
Still, she said, the state has been successful in reaching its energy goals.
In 2008, legislation imposed a requirement to reduce per capita electricity consumption by 15% from 2007 levels by 2015. It achieved 99% of that directive and plans to continue toward a 2% reduction in electric sales at a rate of 0.2% annually.
Board Members Elected; Standing Ovation for Lahey, Kinsey
Members unanimously elected Dean Oskvig and Mark Takahashi to the Board of Managers and re-elected Terry Blackwell to a new term. Blackwell was appointed last year to fill the term of William Mayben.
The new members take the place of Jean Kinsey, who served on the board 13 years, and Richard Lahey, who held his seat for 19. They received a standing ovation. (See Committee Recommends 2 Industry Vets for PJM Board.)
Oskvig recently retired as CEO of Black & Veatch. Takahashi is CFO of Ascendant Group.
Stakeholder Survey Indicates Member Satisfaction
A survey of stakeholders last year drew an 87% approval rating, compared with 90% in 2013.
PJM listed the key drivers of satisfaction as markets/reliability management, the stakeholder process, member support and corporate reputation.
Going forward, it plans to establish best practices for employees to assist members via email; increase the use of the Salesforce tool; and promote the knowledge base among members.
PJM also is creating a forum to discuss tool-related changes and information technology efforts that affect members, and offer more tool-specific training.
Members Endorse Revisions
The committee endorsed the following as part of the consent agenda:
Revisions to Manual 34: PJM Stakeholder Process as a result of a periodic review. The changes update language and formatting for clarification and graphics for better readability.
Changing the emergency energy default customer baseline (CBL) from the “hour before” methodology to the current default economic CBL. (See “Members Endorse New Way to Measure Emergency DR,” Market Implementation Committee Briefs.)
Tariff and Operating Agreement updates incorporating business rules for dynamic transfers.
The New Hampshire siting board said Thursday it needs more time to consider the Northern Pass transmission line, pushing back its decision until Sept. 30, 2017.
The state’s Site Evaluation Committee, following guidelines in state law, originally thought it would wrap up its review by the end of the year. (See Committee Rules Northern Pass Application Complete.)
But the Society for the Preservation of New Hampshire Forests, citing the complexity of the case, filed a motion asking for a suspension of the normal schedule. The committee agreed.
Committee Chair Martin Honigberg said it was “unrealistic” to complete the review by the end of the year, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. He said September 2017 “was probably the right date” and didn’t anticipate any further delay.
The 192-mile, $1.6 billion project would bring 1,090 MW of Canadian hydropower into New England. Project developer Eversource Energy, which had hoped to begin construction next year and have the line in operation in 2019, called the decision “disappointing.”
“It will only delay the realization of the substantial benefits of this project in New Hampshire and throughout New England,” Bill Quinlan, president of Eversource’s New Hampshire operations, said in a statement. “We look forward to the written order outlining the details of this schedule and in the meantime will be evaluating our options for seeking reconsideration.”
Eversource had agreed to bury 60 miles of the line, but preservationists and advocates for the state’s tourist industry had opposed the impact of the line on the natural environment and wanted the entire project underground.
“We applaud the SEC subcommittee’s decision to extend the timeframe to consider the Northern Pass application. It will improve the process. Taking an appropriate amount of time to consider all of the impacts a 192-mile transmission line would have on New Hampshire makes sense,” Jack Savage, spokesman for the forest society, said in a statement.
FERC reassured LS Power last week that the company’s plan to base some of its interstate administrative and operational activities in its Austin, Texas, office won’t trigger commission jurisdiction over ERCOT and its market participants (EL16-46).
Cross Texas Transmission is renting 16,000 square feet at the CityView Center building in Austin. Photo source: Loopnet.com
New York-based LS Power, which maintains infrastructure across the country, is developing the Cross Texas high-voltage line connecting wind farms in the Texas Panhandle to the ERCOT grid.
Cross Texas’ primary and backup control centers are in Austin, and LS Power wants to use those facilities to monitor, operate and control similar transmission infrastructure outside of Texas. But first, the company wanted to confirm the administrative work across state borders wouldn’t require FERC’s involvement.
ERCOT doesn’t fall under FERC supervision through the Federal Power Act, and it has been very careful to maintain that autonomy.
LS Power argued that the activities of its Austin-based employees “will not result in any change to the power flows into or out of ERCOT or mean that electric energy is being sold or transmitted in interstate commerce.” Therefore, the terms of ERCOT’s autonomy should remain intact, they argued.
FERC agreed.
“ERCOT utilities are not generally subject to commission jurisdiction under the FPA because their facilities are neither used for transmission nor for sales of electric energy in interstate commerce (except as a result of interconnection and wheeling service provided pursuant to orders under Sections 210 and 211 of the FPA),” the commission said.
“Petitioners’ employees providing control center services does not change that fact; their actions will not involve the flow of electric energy, or the commingling of electric energy, between ERCOT and the rest of the continental United States, nor will they involve sales of electric energy at wholesale between ERCOT and the rest of the continental United States.”
The state is already meeting the carbon dioxide emissions target under the final year of EPA’s Clean Power Plan, thanks to reduced use of coal-fired power generation because of the low price of competing natural gas.
The state’s carbon emissions were 30.1 million tons in 2015, down from 39.7 million tons in 2014, according to an analysis by the Department of Environmental Quality. The state’s target for 2030 is 30.6 million tons.
Southwestern Electric Power Co. said that SPP did not dispatch its Arkansas coal plants as much in 2015 as the previous year. The company said lower natural gas prices and mild weather were the primary factors.
Regulators Reopen San Onofre Rate Deal, Moody’s Frowns
Moody’s Investors Service took a dim view of a Public Utilities Commission decision to reopen a 2014 agreement that shouldered ratepayers with most of the multibillion-dollar shutdown costs of the San Onofre nuclear plant.
The commission earlier this month decided to reopen the $4.7 billion settlement amid disclosures that secret meetings were held before the deal was approved 18 months ago and complaints from stakeholders. The plant was closed prematurely in 2013 after a radiation leak was discovered during the replacement of a steam generator.
Delmarva Power Proposes To Raise Rates Post-Merger
Stockbridge
Delmarva Power, one of the Pepco utilities recently acquired by Exelon, is asking the Public Service Commission for a $62.8 million electric rate hike and an increase of $21.5 million for its gas services.
President Gary Stockbridge said the money is needed to cover $120 million in upgrades to the gas system and $222 million in improvements to its electricity infrastructure.
For a typical residential customer, the increases would translate to $10.23/month for electricity and $13.55 for gas.
Future Shaky for Bill to Save Quad Cities, Clinton Stations
The chair of the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee said Thursday that it’s unlikely Exelon’s “Next Generation Power Plan,” which would extend state clean power subsidies to nuclear plants, will come to the floor before the legislative session ends May 31.
Exelon has said it will shutter its struggling Quad Cities and Clinton nuclear power plants if the General Assembly doesn’t act, and if Quad Cities doesn’t clear the PJM Base Residual Auction. (See Absent Legislation, Exelon to Close Clinton, Quad Cities Nukes.)
Among other provisions, SB1585 would extend state subsidies for clean power to nuclear plants. It also would allow Commonwealth Edison to shift its billing model from one based on monthly kilowatt-hour consumption to a demand charge assessed on a customer’s peak monthly usage.
The amount of employed coal miners in the state has hit a nearly 120-year low, according to a report released this month from the Energy and Environment Cabinet. About 6,900 coal miners are working in the state, the lowest number recorded since 1898.
The cabinet also reported that coal production fell 13% in the first quarter of 2016 to 11 million tons, the lowest level since 1939.
Cabinet Assistant Director Aron Patrick said he anticipates that coal’s decline will bottom out by 2018. “Currently we are supplying coal to power plants that are scheduled to close before 2018,” Patrick said. “So in the near term, i.e., 2016 through 2017, there likely will be continued declines. But 2018 and beyond, there probably will be some sort of stabilization.”
The proposed 26-turbine Somerset Wind project in the Misery Ridge area won’t be affected by a change in zoning regulations that allow communities to opt out of a fast-track wind development zone, according to the project’s developer.
More than 20 communities have petitioned the state for exemptions from a law providing for an expedited permitting area, which allows for the fast-track development of commercial wind farms in parts of the state’s unorganized and rural areas.
Last week, landowner Weyerhaeuser withdrew its opposition to several townships opting out of the expedited permitting area. SunEdison said that those townships were not part of its plans for the project.
Senate Proposes Legislation To Regulate Retail Choice Cap
The Senate is considering legislation that would impose a new electric generation service charge on retail customers entering the deregulated market, which advocates of competition say would hinder retail electric choice.
The proposal, which is supported by utilities, would retain a 10% cap on the amount of power the state can receive from alternative generators and out-of-state suppliers. But, along with the additional charge, it would require alternative suppliers to prove future resource adequacy.
“Adding a punitive new capacity charge will all but thwart electric choice,” said Laura Chappelle of the Energy Michigan trade association. Sen. Mike Nofs, the bill’s sponsor, said the new law is necessary to ensure reliability.
State Becoming a Hotbed for Solar Energy Development
Interest in developing solar power is soaring in the state, with out-of-state developers working to lease land to develop solar farms.
“There’s a lot of prospecting in our area for sure,” said Susan Conell, Cascade County planning director. She said at least six different companies from North Carolina, South Carolina, California and Virginia have called the county inquiring about the county’s solar regulations.
NorthWestern Energy, the largest public utility in the state, has signed five 25-year power purchase agreements with California-based Cypress Creek Renewables for 14 MW of solar power from in-state farms. Statewide, two out-of-state developers alone are proposing 43 solar projects, each 3 MW, NorthWestern said.
JCP&L Revives Controversial Transmission Line Project
Jersey Central Power & Light is reviving plans to build a 10-mile 230-kV transmission line in Monmouth County, a project that was canceled 25 years ago after local protests.
The so-called Monmouth County Reliability Project is virtually identical to the old line, but it will cost a lot more: $75 million, compared to $14.5 million in 1991. The company says the demand for power has caught up to what had been forecast for the area back when the line was first proposed.
PJM has called the project necessary for regional grid stability. It would run along an existing railroad right of way.
A race for a seat on the Public Regulation Commission has become hotly contested, as challenger Cynthia Hall has portrayed incumbent Karen Montoya as being deferential to the state’s largest utility company, Public Service Company of New Mexico.
Hall, a lawyer who finished second to Montoya in a three-way race in 2012, says the incumbent has been “far too close” to PNM. She cites the commission’s approval last year of the utility’s plan to close two coal-fired units at the San Juan Generating Station.
Montoya’s website touts her record as commissioner. She said in the last four years, the commission has approved the largest solar array in the state and lowered the universal service fee on residents’ phone bills.
Albuquerque Delays Decision To Increase Renewable Energy
The Albuquerque City Council has delayed voting on a resolution that calls for the city government to obtain at least 25% of its electricity from solar by 2025.
The two council members who introduced the resolution acknowledged they have no idea how much the effort will cost. The resolution calls on the city’s energy council to weigh various options, from retrofitting existing city buildings with solar arrays to constructing a new solar farm. An implementation plan would be due by 2017 and the City Council could decide what path to pursue.
NYISO said a total of 41,874 MW of supply is available to meet summer power demand in the state, well above its forecasted peak demand of 33,360 MW.
The total capacity includes 38,534 MW of generating capacity from power plants, 1,248 MW in demand response resources and 2,092 MW from out-of-state resources.
Last summer’s peak demand of 31,138 MW, recorded on July 29, 2015, was below the 15-year average of 31,540 MW.
The Public Service Commission created the state’s first-ever Energy Affordability Policy to provide $248 million in direct relief to low-income residents.
The new policy will limit energy costs to no more than 6% of household income.
The order will immediately increase the number of low-income utility customers receiving monthly discounts by 50%, from 1.1 million customers to 1.65 million. The order also creates a multiagency low-income energy task force to develop new strategies aimed at all of the state’s 2.3 million households at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
Duke Ordered to Excavate Coal Ash, but May Get Reprieve
State environmental authorities ruled that Duke Energy must excavate all of its coal ash dumps and ponds, which the utility says would “significantly increase” its estimated $4 billion in coal ash remediation costs. But the regulators said they may later change the ruling to allow the company to make improvements to the storage areas instead.
In response, Duke said it would seek regulatory approval to pass on to ratepayers any additional costs it incurred if it is required to remove all the ash.
Environmentalists said the ruling doesn’t go far enough to protect drinking water of those living near the sites. Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration “is making a mockery of the law and continuing to cower away from taking one iota of meaningful action to clean up leaking coal ash dumps,” said Pete Harrison of the Waterkeeper Alliance.
Bill Would Impose Financial, Safety Regulations on Solar, Wind
Cook
A bill introduced by two Republican state senators would impose safety requirements on wind and solar farms that critics say could be stricter than those on coal-burning and nuclear plants.
Sen. Bill Cook, co-sponsor of SB843, said the increase in renewable projects is prompting complaints about safety, appearance and negative effects on property values. Cook represents the area where a Spanish developer is building the Amazon Wind Farm.
Among the provisions, the bill would require that a wind farm could not generate more than 35 decibels of sound, the volume of human whispering, as measured from a neighboring property.
A House committee last week defeated a bill that would have begun phasing out the state’s zero-emissions tax credit for the wind industry at the end of 2017 rather than 2020.
Members of the state House Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget questioned whether it would be fair for lawmakers to renege on a deal made just last year that included a five-year property tax exemption for the wind industry to expire at the end of this year. The bill was defeated by a 13-15 vote.
The state currently is scheduled to end the 10-year tax credit for new wind farms placed in service after Dec. 31, 2020. By moving the deadline up to 2017, the state would have saved $306 million.
The Independent Regulatory Review Commission last week rejected a proposal from the Public Utility Commission that would have curtailed net metering at 200% of a customer’s annual consumption.
The PUC has 40 days to amend, withdraw or present to lawmakers its rule.
“I don’t believe the authority exists to create such a cap,” IRRC member W. Russell Faber said in explaining the board’s disapproval. The PUC said it worried that homeowners trying to make money from selling back alternative electricity would drive up the cost of power and prevent utilities from being able to collect enough money to maintain the grid.
Power Company of Wyoming said it is reconsidering plans to break ground on the $5 billion Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind farm after two bills moved forward in the State Legislature that would raise taxes on wind energy.
The Revenue Committee advanced a bill to raise the production tax on wind beyond the current $1/MWh and a second bill that would obligate wind companies to hand over to the state some portion of the federal wind energy production tax credits they currently receive.
The bill “has created significant uncertainty and added a huge new risk regarding our plans to construct and operate two new renewable energy businesses in Wyoming,” said Kara Choquette, a PCW spokeswoman. The company has worked for more than a decade to obtain the regulatory clearance for the 1,000-turbine, 3-GW installation.
FERC last week dismissed a complaint by Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative alleging that it has the right to a Capacity Performance credit from J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp., saying the contractual dispute would be better resolved by a court (EL16-35).
In 2011, the parties executed a capacity purchase and day-ahead heat rate call option on physical electricity for the Brandywine Generation Facility from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 31, 2021. The power purchase agreement provides SMECO a 225-MW Reliability Pricing Model capacity credit in exchange for a monthly payment to JPMVEC.
SMECO said that it did not believe JPMVEC intended to transfer the credit under PJM’s new Capacity Performance model and instead treat the product as base capacity.
“Determination of the dispute between SMECO and JPMVEC depends upon whether the parties contracted to sell and purchase capacity specifically from the Brandywine facility with the intent to allow SMECO to meet its RPM obligation, as SMECO claims, or whether the parties contracted for the transfer of any type of capacity from any source without regard to SMECO’s RPM obligation, as JPMVEC argues,” the commission ruled in declining to exercise primary jurisdiction in the case. “The outcome of this matter appears to turn on interpretation of the parties’ intentions and construction of the relevant clauses in the Brandywine PPA rather than any determination requiring our special expertise.”
Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur dissented from the opinion, saying the decision “effectively consigns SMECO to a potentially lengthy and costly court proceeding to resolve what is, in my view, a clear and easily resolved contractual interpretation that is squarely within the commission’s jurisdiction and expertise.”
Not only would she have supported exercising primary jurisdiction in the matter, she said, she would “find that the parties’ contract requires JPMVEC to provide SMECO with capacity credits to meet SMECO’s obligations under the RPM.”
In addition, LaFleur said, FERC erred by “failing to frame the dispute between these two parties in the proper context of the broader transition underway in the PJM capacity market.”
She urged the commission to exercise primary jurisdiction over future Capacity Performance issues to ensure consistent interpretation of common contractual language and avoid the unintended undermining of Capacity Performance reforms.
ARPA-E staff will share insights on how technology is reshaping the electric grid. (See “MISO to Hold August Market Symposium,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs.) Other speakers have yet to be announced.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is calling for better fire prevention, more stringent anti-terrorist protections and better disaster preparedness at the nation’s sites for storing spent nuclear fuel.
A 22-year-old hose linking a storage tank to a pump leading to an emergency generator failed during an inspection earlier this year at Exelon’s aging Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey, leading the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to assess the plant with a “white” finding.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the operator of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan have reached a settlement concerning a leak that allowed 80 gallons of radioactive water to escape into Lake Michigan in 2011. Instead of a fine, the commission said it is satisfied with Entergy’s decision to take corrective actions to ensure a leak does not happen again.
Eastern Shore Natural Gas has filed with FERC to expand its natural gas transmission system, including the installation of 33 miles of looping pipeline in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
EPA issued a draft water use permit for Entergy’s Pilgrim nuclear generating station, updating a permit that was first issued in 1991. Although opponents of the plant have long argued that the water use permit expired in 1996, the agency said regulations allow the plant to use the original permit until a new one is issued.
The commission said its May 19 letter order resolves all seams issues raised by MDU stemming from the Integrated System members — the Western Area Power Administration-Upper Great Plains Region (Western-UGP), Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Heartland Consumers Power District — becoming transmission-owning members of SPP last October (
“I regret we’re at this point,” Patton told board members. “We’re talking about carving out Zone 4,” referring to his concerns that a proposed forward procurement plan for retail-choice areas will isolate the Illinois region.
The state’s Site Evaluation Committee, following guidelines in state law, originally thought it would wrap up its review by the end of the year. (See 
Moody’s Investors Service took a dim view of a Public Utilities Commission decision to reopen a 2014 agreement that shouldered ratepayers with most of the multibillion-dollar shutdown costs of the San Onofre nuclear plant.
The chair of the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee said Thursday that it’s unlikely Exelon’s “Next Generation Power Plan,” which would extend state clean power subsidies to nuclear plants, will come to the floor before the legislative session ends May 31.
The amount of employed coal miners in the state has hit a nearly 120-year low, according to a report released this month from the Energy and Environment Cabinet. About 6,900 coal miners are working in the state, the lowest number recorded since 1898.
The proposed 26-turbine Somerset Wind project in the Misery Ridge area won’t be affected by a change in zoning regulations that allow communities to opt out of a fast-track wind development zone, according to the project’s developer.
Jersey Central Power & Light is reviving plans to build a 10-mile 230-kV transmission line in Monmouth County, a project that was canceled 25 years ago after local protests.
NYISO said a total of 41,874 MW of supply is available to meet summer power demand in the state, well above its forecasted peak demand of 33,360 MW.
The Public Service Commission created the state’s first-ever Energy Affordability Policy to provide $248 million in direct relief to low-income residents.
State environmental authorities ruled that Duke Energy must excavate all of its coal ash dumps and ponds, which the utility says would “significantly increase” its estimated $4 billion in coal ash remediation costs. But the regulators said they may later change the ruling to allow the company to make improvements to the storage areas instead.
A House committee last week defeated a bill that would have begun phasing out the state’s zero-emissions tax credit for the wind industry at the end of 2017 rather than 2020.
The Independent Regulatory Review Commission last week rejected a proposal from the Public Utility Commission that would have curtailed net metering at 200% of a customer’s annual consumption.