WILMINGTON, Del. — PJM will ask FERC to act within the next couple of months on its Capacity Performance compliance filings and any related outstanding hearing requests, Stu Bresler, senior vice president for markets, told the Markets and Reliability Committee on Thursday.
“PJM recognizes there is a fair amount of uncertainty among our asset owners and operators as to what will occur come June 1 and beyond,” he said. “The purpose of requesting FERC action is to achieve as much certainty as possible ahead of summer 2016.”
Staff expects to make the filing before Christmas.
Load Forecast to Include Distributed Solar
With eight objections and five abstentions, the committee approved manual changes that allow PJM to consider distributed solar generation in its load forecast.
“The reason PJM sees this as important is that this behind-the-meter generation of solar is by far the quickest growing component,” said PJM’s Tom Falin. “It’s really taken off the past three to four years … exponentially. We believe it’s important to recognize this phenomenon now in the forecast.”
In the near term, the model will affect only a few hundred megawatts, he said.
Steve Herling, PJM vice president for planning, said staff wants to act now so it is not caught flat-footed when solar’s growth increases.
“We don’t want to see the phenomenon like we did with energy efficiency variables, which we talked about for a couple of years and by the time we implemented a change it was a pretty substantial change,” he said. “We want to get it into the forecast so we can tweak it as it grows.”
PJM agreed to review the process in a year to see how accurate it is and if any changes need to be made. The revisions will be made to Manual 19: Load Forecasting and Analysis. (See “Distributed Solar to be Included in Load Forecast” in PJM Planning Committee and TEAC Briefs.)
In a related matter, the committee approved manual revisions that aim to prevent energy efficiency resources from being counted both as capacity and load reduction in the new forecast model. The changes will be incorporated in Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market and Manual 18B: Energy Efficiency Measurement & Verification.
The motion passed with 12 no votes and one abstention. Members had delayed the vote until after an additional education session regarding the proposed addback. (See “Members Ask for More Time to Consider EE Resource Manual Changes” in PJM Markets and Reliability Committee Briefs.)
Ways to Mitigate Risk in CP Market to be Studied
A controversial problem statement proposing to study ways capacity suppliers could minimize underperformance penalties by netting them against overperforming units was approved with 80% of a sector-weighted vote.
Those who supported the measure said it was needed to level the playing field between small and large companies and to encourage financial investment.
Opponents said it was a solution without a problem and threatened to unwind a core aspect of the Capacity Performance model.
Bob O’Connell, who brought the problem statement forward on behalf of PPGI Fund A/B Development, responded to consumer advocates who asked what the problem was by saying, “Investors are looking at the market and deciding whether to invest in the energy market or Hollywood films. If investors see too much risk in the market, they may wait several years to bring a project forward.”
Market Monitor Joe Bowring opposed the problem statement.
“This seems to me … an attempt to unwind some critical parts of Capacity Performance,” he said.
Lisa Moerner, of Dominion Energy Marketing, said the concept does not undermine the Capacity Performance construct.
“We plan to do everything we can to perform during an emergency event under CP,” she said. Such risk-mitigating opportunities just give generators more options to do so, she said.
“We’d much rather overperform than pay penalties,” she said. “If we can provide megawatt-hours rather than pay a penalty, how is that a bad thing?”
Jason Barker of Exelon said that while that company’s general policy is to endorse problem statements and let discussion take place, it would be voting against the problem statement.
“This is really an attempt to rewrite Capacity Performance before the ink is even dry and before we’ve had a day of performance under this plan,” he said.
“If you follow the problem statement through to conclusion, it would provide incentives for market participants to underinvest in generation assets, threatening reliability, and enable those market participants to go into a secondary market and find replacement capacity at lower cost than the established non-performance penalty.
“The level of investment and the level of risk should be reflected in capacity market offers.”
Committee Approves Manual Changes
Members endorsed the following manual changes:
- Manual 10: Pre-Scheduling Operations. The changes define a generator planned outage and restrict scheduling planned outages during peak maintenance season; define generator maintenance outage; define unplanned outage and clarify notification requirements; and correct the definition of non-synchronized reserve.
- Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market and Manual 28: Operating Agreement Accounting. Changes reflect Tariff revisions approved by FERC regarding the energy market offer cap that went into effect Monday (ER16-76). Cost-based offers for incremental energy are capped at $2,000/MWh and allowed to set prices. Costs above that cap will be recovered through an after-the-fact review and make-whole payments. Market-based offers for individual units are allowed to rise with their cost-based offers. (See PJM Members OK $2,000/MWh Energy Market Offer Cap.) There was one abstention and one objection to this issue.
- Manual 14D: Generator Operational Requirements. Revisions reflect the annual review of the manual as well as revisions to the reactive testing process. Revises and renames the wind farm communication model, making it applicable to all jointly owned resources to avoid confusion among control room operators. Adds definitions of generator planned, maintenance and forced outages. There was one “no” vote on this issue.
- Manual 39: Nuclear Plant Interface Coordination. Updates are the result of a three-year review and include safe shutdown loading requirements developed by the nuclear generation owners’ user group.
— Suzanne Herel
House Republicans are questioning the legality of EPA’s use of social media in its climate rule campaign. While not citing any specific alleged abuses, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said that last week’s Government Accountability Office report accusing EPA of violating the law when promoting its water rule calls into question “the use of social media to promote other rulemaking activity.”
Electricity derived from renewable sources made up more than half of the country’s new energy capacity installations in 2014, according to a 
The beneficial use of post-combustion coal products — more commonly known as ash — surged in 2014, mostly because of the clarification of federal regulations governing its use.
Global coal demand stalled for the first time since the 1990s because of increased renewable energy production, more stringent environmental regulations and a decline in industrial use, according to the International Energy Agency.
Ohio company Echogen Power Systems is getting a $1.3 million Energy Department grant to develop a cleaner coal-burning power plant. The government’s Supercritical Transformational Electric Power program is providing it with funding to explore the use of supercritical carbon dioxide, or carbon dioxide at high temperature and pressure.
The Siting Council last week issued a 16-page draft fact-finding report on the 63.3-MW fuel cell power plant Beacon Falls Energy Park. The council is expected to rule early next year on whether the plant can be built on a former sand and gravel pit.
Delmarva Power and Light customers will begin seeing how much of their monthly bill goes to subsidize Bloom Energy under an order approved this month by the Public Service Commission.
The Commerce Commission has suspended an $800 million plan to replace 250 miles of Peoples Gas mains over the next three years.
Residents turned up last week to protest NIPSCO’s proposed electric rate increase at a Utility Regulatory Commission regional hearing.
The Corporation Commission has taken a first step toward figuring out how the state will comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which forces states to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Gov. Sam Brownback and other state and county leaders recently inaugurated the Buckeye Wind Energy Center, a 200-MW project northwest of Hays. The 25,000-acre wind farm, owned and operated by Invenergy, includes 112 GE 1.7X100 turbines.
South Portland officials have rejected two proposals from developers seeking to build solar power farms on city properties, including a former landfill.
The Public Service Commission granted a $238 million rate increase to DTE Energy that would raise the average monthly residential bill by $8.22.
The state’s farming community is still blocking Clean Line Energy’s $2.2 billion Grain Belt Express transmission line, which has been approved in three other states.
The market value of Talen Energy’s stake in a coal plant has declined 87% over the past two years, according to figures provided to the Great Falls Tribune by state revenue officials.
The Board of Public Utilities last week approved plans by South Jersey Gas to build a 22-mile natural gas line through the Pine Barrens without any further review. The decision came after the staff of the Pinelands Commission approved the project without putting it to the commission’s board.
The state legislature continued its renewable push by passing a bill that requires the Board of Public Utilities to reconsider the Fishermen’s Energy offshore wind project, regardless of its cost.
The Public Regulation Commission last week adopted a plan to shutter part of the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station, bringing to a close years of wrangling over the best way to curb pollution while limiting the effects on utility bills and the region’s economy.
The solar industry on Long Island is turning its attention from residential installations to commercial systems. One of the island’s largest commercial rooftop installations was unveiled at the Clare Rose beverage distribution facility in Yaphank, a $3.5 million project that will supply more than 90% of the company’s electricity and pay for itself in less than five years. The federal tax credit for that project will exceed $1 million.
Ohio University’s on-campus power plant burned its last ton of coal on Thanksgiving Day and is now heating its buildings with natural gas, a switch that was completed six weeks ahead of schedule. The university had set Dec. 31 as the deadline to switching fuels, but work on the changeover was completed early.
A newly announced EPA haze rule could cost the Coleto Creek coal-fired power plant near Victoria more than $100 million.
El Paso Electric’s proposed rate increase should be reduced almost $48 million, or 67% less than the utility has sought, the City of El Paso said in documents filed with the Public Utility Commission.
Odessa Development Corp. voted to extend the land agreement with Summit Power Group, allowing the company to build a $2.5 billion power plant that captures and stores carbon on a 600-acre site.
Green Mountain Power says it will build a manure digester in St. Albans that will turn cow dung from three farms into electricity and reduce phosphorous pollution into Lake Champlain.
