Page 1571 – RTO Insider

March 18, 2015

Exelon, Pepco Ink Deal with Md. Counties, but Critics Stand Firm – UPDATE

By Suzanne Herel

Two key Maryland counties have agreed to support Exelon’s controversial takeover of Pepco Holdings Inc. in return for promises to fund customer bill credits, grid reliability improvements, renewable energy projects, energy efficiency programs and help for low-income consumers.

Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, suburbs of D.C., represent three-quarters of Pepco’s customers in Maryland, where Attorney General Brian Frosh, consumer advocacy groups and environmentalists have been urging the Public Service Commission to reject the $6.8 billion deal. (See Exelon ups Merger Offer in Maryland as AG Calls for Rejection.)

The acquisition, which would give Exelon control of more than 80% of the state’s electricity customers, also faces opposition from detractors in D.C. (See Exelon Sweetens the Deal for DC in Pepco Takeover.)

“We believe the agreement is significant because it was signed by a large consortium of low-income consumer advocates and recreational interest groups, in addition to Montgomery and Prince George’s counties,” Exelon spokesman Paul Adams told RTO Insider.

The agreements, filed with the PSC, bring with them a delay in a decision while the public is given time to weigh in.

The parties involved can submit testimony on the settlement until March 30. This is also the deadline for testimony on another settlement with The Alliance for Solar Choice filed March 2. Written public comments may be submitted through April 9.

Hearings Set for April

Evidentiary hearings are set for April 7-9. The PSC had planned to issue its decision on April 8; now it is shooting for April 29.

In a statement announcing the new schedule, the PSC said, “According to the request, the joint applicants have entered into two settlement agreements that they believe resolve all contested issues in this proceeding.”

The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, however, continues to urge the PSC to reject the deal.

“Generally, we disagree with that,” People’s Counsel Paula Carmody told RTO Insider on Tuesday. “Our perspective is that the transaction is not good for our state, not good for ratepayers and not in the public interest.”

Carmody noted the number of parties yet to be won over — among them the Maryland Energy Administration, the staff of the PSC and groups including the Coalition for Utility Reform.

That organization’s counsel, Montgomery County Councilmember Roger Berliner, submitted a filing March 3 asking the PSC to require Exelon to increase its commitment to reliability, renewable energy and distributed generation.

“Exelon is trying to pick folks off, but appreciate the dynamic they face,” Berliner said in an interview, echoing Carmody’s list of critics.

In a brief filed with the PSC, the OPC said, “Nothing in the revised commitments or in the joint applicants’ initial brief overcomes the substantial harms and risk that will result if the subject acquisition is approved.”

It added, “The joint applicants’ commitments that supposedly provide benefits — those concerning reliability, the Customer Investment Fund and low-income assistance — also provide little, if any, value.”

The proposed conditions, OPC said, don’t address what Maryland stakeholders will lose: “the ability and right to compare the policy proposals and performance of two investor-owned utilities serving customers in Maryland that are subject to the same laws and regulations.”

“The concern about Exelon is that it will favor its nuclear power plants at the expense of renewable energy. In the absence of Exelon making a commitment to renewable and distributed energy in Maryland, I don’t think this merger will be found in the public interest.”

‘Necessary but not Sufficient’

Berliner commended some of the settlement’s aspects, in particular Exelon’s agreement to pay $500,000 for the PSC to retain a consultant to study how to transform the electric grid; a commitment to improve reliability by 2018; and the creation of a $50 million “Green Sustainability Fund” to stimulate investment in solar, energy storage and other distributed generation.

“There are good things in the settlement with the counties,” Berliner said. “But to use legal terminology, they are necessary but not sufficient. The bar is a little higher for this merger to be found in the public interest.

“I think they need to do more.”

In the meantime, Gov. Larry Hogan has delayed the appointment of two new members of the PSC until after the five-member board rules on the Exelon deal. The governor has nominated Michael L. Higgs Jr., a telecommunications attorney, and Jeannette M. Mills, former chief customer service officer for Exelon’s Baltimore Gas and Electric.

DC Opposition

Meanwhile, three members of the D.C. Council have penned a letter to the District’s PSC urging the commission to reject the deal, saying that it is not in the public interest, as required by law.

Mary Cheh, Elissa Silverman and Charles Allen said the transaction creates a conflict of interest between Exelon, a producer of electricity, and Pepco, which buys electricity and distributes it.

“A producer looks for the highest prices for its product, but a buyer looks for the lowest prices,” they said.

They cited the commission’s 1999 approval of Pepco’s proposed divestment of its generation assets as being in the public interest and yielding “non-monetary, but no less important, benefits to District ratepayers.”

“With Pepco substantially out of the generation business,” the PSC wrote at the time, “there will be less motivation for the company to act as an inhibitor to the development of a competitive generation market in the District.”

The councilmembers concluded that “the only real beneficiaries of the takeover will be Pepco shareholders (Exelon is buying them out at a more than 24% premium over market value) and Exelon Corp. (which will capture a steady, reliable stream of revenue to offset its riskier generation assets).”

The D.C. Office of People’s Counsel, who also is critical of the proposed deal, said last week that it was too early to tell if the settlement proposed in Maryland would benefit D.C. consumers.

“At this time, the Office of People’s Counsel is focused on the evidentiary hearings” set for March 30 through April 8, People’s Counsel Sandra Mattavous-Frye said. “There may be terms in the Maryland settlement proposal that may be of benefit to District consumers, but I still need more time to carefully examine the details and to determine whether any of these have value to the District of Columbia.”

The acquisition has been approved by the staff of the Delaware PSC, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Exelon hopes to close the deal in the second or third quarter of this year.

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

PJM Planning Committee Briefs

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — Demand response forecasts used in PJM planning studies will drop in all but two of 22 transmission zones under a methodology change endorsed by the Planning Committee last week.

According to a PJM analysis, 10 zones will see drops of 25% or more for delivery year 2020, with the Dayton Power and Light (DAY) and Duquesne Light (DQE) zones falling by almost half (see chart). RTO-wide, forecast DR for delivery year 2020 would drop by one-quarter to 8,200 MW from 11,100 MW.

The current load deliverability analysis uses the amount of DR that has cleared in the last base residual auction to project DR available five years in the future. But PJM officials say that a significant amount of DR that clears the auction is replaced by other resources before the delivery year arrives. In the 2014/15 year, 46.5% of the DR assumed to be available had been replaced by non-DR resources. (See Change Proposed in PJM Demand Response Modeling.)

The new method will base future forecasts on an average of the final amount of committed DR for the most recent three years. The average would be expressed as a percentage of the zone’s 50/50 summer peak forecast for application to future years’ demand.

“All that matters in this method is what has historically committed, not what has cleared in any particular auction,” said Tom Falin, PJM manager of resource planning.

If approved by the Markets and Reliability Committee this month, PJM will begin using the new methodology in the 2015 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan.

Falin said the new method is unlikely to have much practical impact, at least in the short term.

A reduction in forecast DR will increase the assumed load of locational deliverability areas (LDAs), resulting in an equivalent increase in the LDA’s capacity emergency transfer objective (CETO) — the amount of power it must be able to import during a localized capacity emergency while remaining within a loss-of-load expectation of one event in 25 years.

Planners compare the CETO level with the LDA’s capacity emergency transfer limit (CETL), the maximum amount of power the transmission system can deliver into the LDA.

For the May 2015 capacity auction, all LDAs have CETO/CETL margins in excess of 115%, large enough that the DR forecast changes are unlikely to impact the areas’ reliability requirements.

“We seem to have very healthy CETO/CETL margins,” Falin said. “The practical impact of this change may not be all that great.”

Change Would Shift Baseline Upgrades to Network Customers

PJM wants to change how it studies long-term firm transmission service requests to ensure individual requesters share in the cost of transmission upgrades required to serve them.

PJM’s Aaron Berner told the Planning Committee on Thursday that the “pancaking” of individual requests sometimes results in a need for reinforcement projects but that the current study process results in the cost of such improvements being assessed broadly on load customers and transmission owners through baseline upgrades rather than on individual requesters through network upgrades.

Berner outlined a proposed problem statement that will be brought to a vote at next month’s committee meeting.

Changes Proposed for Light Load, Wind Modeling

PJM planners are considering lowering the light-load modeling assumption from 50% to 35% of the summer peak based on an analysis that showed a significant number of hours of lower load.

PJM’s light-load period is 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. from Nov. 1 through April 30 of each planning year. Planners said their analysis of three years of data found loads in the MAAC, ComEd and Dominion zones are only 35% of peak load during a significant number of hours.

At the same time, planners are considering increasing the maximum wind ramping from 80% to 100%, which is consistent with the modeling in its neighbor MISO. Five transmission owner zones — AEP, APS, COMED, PENELEC and PL — contain wind generation. Between 2001 and 2014, average maximum wind capacity for the five zones was 92.5%.

PJM will conduct sensitivity analyses on the proposed changes and report back to the Planning Committee. (See Light-Load Study: Generation Up, Load Down.)

PJM Seeks to Revise Definitions in Merchant Network Upgrades

PJM will seek to revise three definitions in the Tariff that it says are making it difficult to properly process requests for merchant network upgrades. Under a problem statement endorsed by the PC, PJM would consider changes to the definitions of “Upgrade Request,” “Customer-Funded Upgrade” and “Merchant Network Upgrades.”

Planners said the current definitions have sometimes resulted in higher-priority interconnection projects negating a merchant network upgrade request.

— Suzanne Herel

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

FERC Cracks Down on Protesters

By Michael Brooks

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said last week it will no longer allow protesters to read statements before its open meetings.

Borrowing language from the Federal Communications Commission, FERC issued an order modifying the Code of Federal Regulations “to clarify that the term ‘observe’ does not include disruptive behavior.”

Over the past year, FERC has been the target of environmental activists over its approval of natural gas pipelines and export terminals. At the commission’s January open meeting, protesters continually interrupted Chairman Cheryl LaFleur as she tried to begin proceedings, leading her to adjourn the meeting while security cleared the floor. (See Protesters Interrupt FERC Open Meeting.) Protesters were also escorted out after disrupting a FERC technical conference on proposed carbon emission rules in February.

While LaFleur has previously allowed protesters to read statements before she begins open meetings, the new order makes it clear that this will no longer be tolerated. According to the order, “communications made or presented by unscheduled presenters will not be considered by the commission.”

One protester, Ted Glick, said FERC should have public comment periods at open meetings.

FERC is in “drastic need for some doses of reality to the impact of their decisions,” said Glick, national campaign coordinator at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “We think the commissioners really need to hear from the public.” He said he did not think the order expressly prohibited unscheduled speakers.

Beyond Extreme Energy, the organization that coordinated the January meeting interruptions, said it is hoping to attract more than 500 demonstrators to protests at FERC in May.

FERC also amended its rules concerning recording open meetings to allow photography, which was previously prohibited. FERC said it recognizes that its “existing regulations concerning recording open meetings are unduly complex and out of date.” It said it was adopting language used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which allows members of the public to record meetings as long as they remain seated.

March 17, 2015

Constitution Pipeline: Headed to Completion or to Court?

By William Opalka

Opponents of a 124-mile natural gas pipeline that would provide New York and New England access to Pennsylvania shale gas have threatened to go to court next week to force federal regulators to reconsider their approval of the project (CP13-499, CP13-502).

The proposed Constitution Pipeline won a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Dec. 2.

Stop the Pipeline, a citizens group intervening in the case, said it will go to court if FERC does not consider its request for a rehearing “on the merits” by Friday. The group is being assisted by the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, which lists environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a supervising attorney.

FERC issued a procedural order for rehearing on Jan. 27 but has not taken any further action. Pace said this amounts to a “constructive denial,” a de facto refusal to rehear the case without an actual order saying so.

Stop the Pipeline said in its request for a rehearing that the certificate of public convenience was illegally granted before the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had issued water quality permits and before constitutional questions of affected property owners were resolved. It also said that FERC violated federal law by separating this project from other gas infrastructure projects in New York that should have been reviewed in total.

ISO-NE says inadequate natural gas infrastructure has threatened reliability and driven up power costs as New England has become increasingly reliant on gas as fuel for electric generation. The region, which now relies on gas for about half of its power generation, sees prices spike on cold days when more gas is needed for home heating and the grid operator has to turn to expensive fuel oil.

The Constitution Pipeline, which is entering the final phase of environmental reviews by New York regulators, would start in Susquehanna County, Pa., and travel northeast through New York, where it would connect with the Tennessee Gas and Iroquois Gas pipelines.

Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee pipeline is a major east-west natural gas artery that supplies Texas and Gulf Coast gas to upstate New York and New England.

The Iroquois pipeline heads to the southeast, serving New York City and its environs. An expanded compressor would be added by Iroquois in nearby Wright, N.Y., at the terminus of the Constitution line.

Constitution’s path includes a section of New York that has its own potential for fracked shale gas. However, in December, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively banned the practice due to health concerns. (See Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York.)

Williams, Cabot Oil & Gas, Piedmont Natural Gas and WGL Holdings are partners in the Constitution project.

“There is this supply of stranded gas that is needed in New England that can’t get there because the infrastructure hasn’t kept up,” said Christopher Stockton, a spokesman for Constitution. If permits are granted, construction would start this summer and take about a year, with the pipeline in operation by mid- to late 2016.

He added that the Pennsylvania supply, closer to where it is ultimately used, would cut fuel costs by half. Most of the natural gas currently used in New York and New England originates in the Gulf Coast and Texas.

The Constitution project is now before the New York DEC, where an extended comment period ended in late February. Opponents said they delivered 5,000 comments to the department office in Albany on the final day and now believe the project is in trouble.

DEC permits and approvals are required for construction and operation of the pipeline. Additional permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are also pending.

The 30-inch pipeline would deliver 650,000 dekatherms of gas per day. The pipeline was first proposed in April 2012.

This pipeline is essentially parallel to the New York section of Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. The Kinder Morgan project is two years behind Constitution in the regulatory and planning cycle, with proposed operations in 2018.

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

Developers Lament Lack of Tx Competition, Interregional Projects under Order 1000

By Rich Heidorn Jr. and Michael Brooks

WASHINGTON — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission needs to do more to ensure Order 1000 opens transmission development to competition and results in interregional projects, developers said last week.

“FERC needs to go back to the drawing board,” Kristine Schmidt, vice president of regulated development for ITC Holdings, told Infocast’s 18th annual Transmission Summit, which drew more than 80 industry officials over three days. (Presentations from the conference are available here.)

Schmidt, a one-time aide to former FERC Commissioner Nora Mead Brownell, said Order 1000’s intent has been “watered down” since former Chairman Jon Wellinghoff left the commission in 2013, as a result of compromises to accommodate regional differences and “carve outs” on the original order’s prohibition against transmission owners’ rights of first refusal (ROFRs).

Schmidt said that while competition may eventually take hold as it did for independent power producers under FERC Orders 888 and 890, “we’re far away from that” now.

Randy Satterfield, executive vice president for Duke-American Transmission Co., agreed. “ROFR laws are in the way,” he said. “That has to be taken care of through FERC or the courts.”

Last May, FERC ruled that transmission planners may exclude consideration of non-incumbent proposals on projects subject to state ROFRs. FERC had previously required transmission providers to remove from commission-approved tariffs and agreements ROFRs giving incumbent utilities preferences to build transmission facilities selected in the regional transmission plan.

The commission ruled 3-1 that its previous position would require planners to evaluate non-incumbent proposals that had no chance of getting built because of state rules assigning them to incumbent utilities. (See Order 1000 Reversal: Reality Check or Surrender to Incumbents?)

‘Evolution’ in the RTOs

Satterfield said “the process is still evolving,” noting that while PJM has opened several “windows” for competitive proposals, SPP hasn’t identified any projects for competition and MISO has said it doesn’t expect to open any windows before 2016 at the earliest.

“So we’re being held back in that the opportunities in some of the RTOs are not yet there,” he said. He said that his company is “doing a fair amount of work in California,” which he said is “leading the pack.”

Although FERC has approved RTOs’ Order 1000 regional planning and cost allocation rules, “there’s still things that need to be buttoned up and tightened down” to ensure fair competitive processes, said Todd Fridley, vice president of Transource Energy. “We in the industry understand there will be growing pains as the market emerges.”

Schmidt said SPP made a wise decision in appointing an independent panel to judge competitive proposals and not leaving it to RTO planning staff, as in PJM. The panel’s recommendation would be submitted to SPP’s board of directors for review and approval.

“The RTOs were never formed to be the ones to choose winners and losers,” she said, adding, “RTOs have a long way to go to prove they have the discipline to evaluate proposals.”

Artificial Island

PJM’s April 2013 solicitation for a fix for stability problems at Artificial Island has proven a cautionary tale.

RTO planners recommended the selection of Public Service Electric and Gas last June. But objections by environmentalists and disappointed bidders led the PJM board to reopen the competition to four finalists. With the process still incomplete, PSE&G is now fighting PJM before FERC. (See related story, PJM: PSE&G’s Remedy for Artificial Island Bid Process ‘Draconian,’ ‘Self-Serving‘.)

“It’s not ideal. This is PJM’s first attempt at this,” said R. Mihai Cosman, a principal in Exelon’s corporate transmission development unit. “They’re trying to do the right thing. We in the future will have some sort of a standard process.”

Robert Daileder, a partner in law firm Nixon Peabody, said the unwieldy solicitation increased costs for competitors. “At the end of the day, the [winner] will probably be the best project … but the process may be much more expensive than anybody anticipated because of the changing goalposts,” he said.

“I think PJM has learned that maybe they didn’t scope it tightly enough,” said James Nicholas, who specializes in siting and licensing for CH2M Hill, an environmental and engineering consulting firm.

Interregional Projects

Developers also criticized the lack of interregional projects under Order 1000. The order requires transmission providers only to “consider” whether the needs identified in their local and regional transmission plans could be addressed most cost-effectively through joint projects with a neighboring region.

Satterfield said another obstacle to interregional projects is the disparities in competitive processes and cost allocation between regions.

“There can be great projects that cross seams and right now there is not a way to ensure those projects can proceed,” he said. “That’s got to get fixed.”

Schmidt said SPP’s northern expansion to Canada means its seam with MISO is growing. “It’s costing us a lot of money not having these projects on the table,” she said.

“Order 1000 did no favors to interregional planning. In fact, it’s not interregional planning, it’s interregional coordination,” said George Dawe, vice president of Duke-American Transmission Co.

“The RTOs, frankly, are doing what they’ve been required to do,” which is sharing information. He said the RTOs are conducting “quick-hit” studies that are not resulting in actionable projects.

Diana Rivera, director of market development and regulatory affairs for Clean Line Energy Partners, said interregional coordination is only occurring between neighboring regions, with much of the focus on seams issues. “Transmission needs that are broader in scope, like how do we move renewables to market, are not being addressed by interregional planning or cost allocation processes,” she said.

Brian Thumm, director of planning for ITC Holdings, compared Order 1000 to Aesop’s fable “The Monkeys and Their Mother,” in which the mother accidentally smothers one of her sons due to overly nurturing it.

The moral of the story is “The best intentions will not always ensure success.”

“I can think of no greater paradigm for what I’ve seen in the planning processes than to say that the best intentions of the industry have not guaranteed success in anything that we’ve done with respect to Order 1000,” Thumm said.

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

PJM Reducing Transmission Spending by $3.2B

By Rich Heidorn Jr.

Flat load growth, the lapse in federal subsidies for wind generators and a slowdown in coal plant retirements have caused PJM to reduce its transmission construction plans by $3.2 billion.

pjm — Generator deactivations announced in 2014 (left) and selected baseline upgrades driven by retirements (right).

PJM’s 2014 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan report, released last week, provides details of the $1.7 billion in transmission projects approved by PJM’s Board of Managers. The board approved 197 baseline projects totaling $1.1 billion and 148 network upgrades to address reliability criteria violations at a cost of $605 million.

But these new projects were more than offset by the removal of 651 network upgrades totaling $4.7 billion and 40 baseline projects estimated at $177 million, resulting in a net reduction of $3.2 billion from the spending anticipated at the end of 2013.

Generation Withdrawals

PJM said the network upgrade cancellations resulted from the withdrawal of 212 generation interconnection requests totaling 15,302 MW, one-quarter of them for wind turbines.

Generation withdrawals can reflect developers’ response to capacity auction prices. PJM also took note of the boom-bust cycle of wind development, based on the availability of the federal Production Tax Credit. The most recent iteration of the PTC covered only projects under construction by the end of 2014.

Network upgrades allow customers to interconnect to the PJM grid and obtain capacity rights. Such upgrades are recommended to the PJM board based on system impact studies, after developers receive facility study agreements.

Slowdown in Retirements

Baseline upgrades include both market efficiency projects to reduce congestion and reliability projects needed to correct violations, such as those identified in thermal and voltage analyses.

PJM said the reduction in baseline upgrades reflects flat load growth and a slowdown — perhaps temporary — in retirements of coal-fired generation. The RTO received 31 generator deactivation requests in 2014, totaling about 4,300 MW, down from 14,444 MW in 2012 and 7,745 MW in 2013.

The retirements were largely driven by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which take effect this year. PJM has begun analyzing the impact of EPA’s proposed limits on generator CO₂ emissions, which are expected to create a new wave of retirements. (See related story in PJM Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee Briefs.)

The 2014 RTEP includes 27 transmission upgrades in PJM’s Mid-Atlantic and Western regions to address retirements. The upgrades include both new and upgraded transmission lines, transformers, shunt capacitors and substation improvements.

Since 1999, PJM’s board has approved almost $25.7 billion in transmission projects, including $21.5 billion of baseline transmission upgrades and $4.1 billion in facilities needed to connect more than 60,000 MW of new generation. Almost $10 billion of those projects are in service with an additional $4.2 billion under construction.

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

Federal Briefs

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week approved a much-needed natural gas pipeline expansion project to supply New England.

Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market Project, which will run from New York to Massachusetts through Connecticut and Rhode Island, still needs approval from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation before construction can begin.

FERC discounted opponents’ concerns about the pipeline’s proximity to Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear generating station. “I’m dumbfounded that FERC could just be blithely going ahead,” said Susan Van Dolsen of the group Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion.

More: The Journal News

Sen. Alexander Blasts NRC for Not Asking for More Yucca Mountain Funding

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) criticized the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for failing to request additional funding that he says will be required to license the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Alexander said in a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing last week that the NRC has unspent funds in its budget to start the licensing process, but will need more resources. “So I think it’s fair to ask the question: Knowing that there are additional steps and they will cost money, why would you not request additional funds in your budget?”

Alexander, a nuclear power proponent, has said it is crucial to break the “25-year stalemate” over nuclear waste.

More: The Hill

Judge Criticizes EPA’s Response to Foundation’s Records Request

A federal judge criticized the Environmental Protection Agency’s “fumbled” response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by a conservative group, but ruled that the group failed to prove the agency acted in bad faith and declined to award damages.

Judge Royce Lamberth in D.C. said the EPA allowed some records, including emails, to be destroyed in spite of pending discovery requests from the Landmark Legal Foundation, which sought the records to determine if the agency delayed issuing regulations before the 2012 election for political purposes.

“Despite admonitions from this court and others … EPA continues to demonstrate a lack of respect for the FOIA process,” Lamberth wrote in his opinion. “Neither EPA nor its counsel has offered Landmark or this court any indication of regret.”

More: The Hill

PennEast Pipeline Opponents Say FERC Consultant has a Conflict of Interest

The mayor of a New Jersey town in the path of the proposed PennEast Pipeline has called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to replace an environmental consultant hired to review the project, saying the consultant’s ties to the shale-gas industry present a conflict of interest.

Hopewell Township Mayor Harvey Lester says the FERC consultant, Tetra Tech, is a paid member of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group that supports the proposed 114-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania into New Jersey.

The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club also objected to FERC’s hiring of Tetra Tech to review the project’s environmental impact statement. “This is an outrageous conflict of interest and a violation of the FERC rules,” wrote Director Jeff Tittel.

More: NJ.com

House Committee Chair Seeks Deleted EPA, McCarthy Texts

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science Committee, said he’ll seek a subpoena to obtain text messages to and from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy if the agency doesn’t give them up voluntarily.

Smith said the agency declined to provide the text messages to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in response to a public records request. The agency provided emails but has said it did not believe that text messages were required to be retained.

More: The Hill

NRC’s Annual Reviews Show 94% of US Reactors in Top Performance Categories

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual assessment letters show that 75% of the nation’s 100 nuclear reactors met all safety and security objectives in 2014, and 94 of those reactors were in the top two performance categories.

Nineteen reactors were identified as needing one or two “low significance” items. They are Calvert Cliffs 2 (Maryland); Clinton (Illinois); Davis-Besse (Ohio); Diablo Canyon 1 and 2 (California); Fermi 2 (Michigan); Fitzpatrick (New York); Limerick 1 and 2 (Pennsylvania); Millstone 3 (Connecticut); Oconee 1 (South Carolina); Oyster Creek (New Jersey); Palisades (Michigan); Point Beach 2 (Wisconsin); River Bend (Louisiana); Salem 1 (New Jersey); St. Lucie 1 (Florida); Waterford (Louisiana) and Wolf Creek (Kansas).

Two reactors — Pilgrim (Massachusetts) and Point Beach 1 (Wisconsin) — fell into the “degraded” performance category and will be the subjects of increased oversight. The twin-unit Arkansas Nuclear One reactors fell into a fourth category of oversight after the NRC made safety findings of “substantial significance.”

More: NRC

EPA Designates Mahomet Aquifer as ‘Sole Source’

The Environmental Protection Agency has designated the Mahomet Aquifer system in east-central Illinois as a “sole source” aquifer, raising the possibility of heightened federal review of projects in an area that may be targeted for natural gas development involving hydraulic fracturing.

The “sole source” designation, which means more than half of the population depends on the aquifer as its drinking water source, allows the EPA to review the effect that any federally funded project might have on the aquifer.

Gas exploration companies have leased mineral rights in the region, although the amount of drilling is less than the state first anticipated.

More: EPA

DOE Report Sets National Wind Energy Goal of 35% by 2050

A Department of Energy report says that wind energy could provide 35% of the nation’s electricity by 2050, up from the current 4.5%, if the cost of wind turbines comes down and new territories are opened up for development.

The report, “Wind Vision: A New Era of Wind Power in the United States,” makes no policy recommendations, but it does provide what it calls a “roadmap of targeted actions.”

The American Wind Energy Association said the goal is within reach. “We can do this,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the association. “The industry stands ready to achieve these numbers.”

More: USA Today; Energy Department

NRC’s Burns Touts Safety Improvements, but Public Citizen Accuses it of ‘Sluggishness’

The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the agency and the nuclear industry have improved safety at U.S. reactors since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but a watchdog group accused the NRC of “sluggishness” in improving standards.

NRC Chairman Stephen Burns said that “both the NRC and the U.S. nuclear industry took swift and decisive action to address many of the key lessons learned from that event.” He said the main safety improvements would be completed by the end of 2016.

But Allison Fisher, outreach director of Public Citizen, said the NRC “has yet to require nuclear power plant operators to complete implementation of a single one of the post-Fukushima safety upgrades recommended by the agency’s own staff.”

More: The Hill

NRC to Review Korea Electric’s APR1400 Nuclear Reactor

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it will conduct a full design certification review of the APR1400 nuclear reactor design from Korea.

The NRC said a design for a 1,400-MW reactor submitted in December by Korea Electric Power Corp. and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power met the requirements for a full certification review. The agency’s review will determine whether the reactor design meets U.S. safety requirements.

The APR 1400 is a pressurized water reactor based on the Korean Optimized Power Reactor 1000.

More: Penn Energy

McConnell Urges US Governors to Defy Clean Power Plan

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed urging governors to refuse to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed emissions reduction regulations, calling the regulations an “attack on the middle class.”

McConnell, a coal proponent and Obama administration foe, said governors could simply refuse to submit their state plans to the government.

“Think twice before submitting a state plan — which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits — when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won’t be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism,” he wrote in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

More: Lexington Herald-Leader

Study: PJM Has Most at Stake in Fate of Order 745

PJM stakeholders face the greatest potential disturbance in the use of demand response in the wholesale capacity market if a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling limiting the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is allowed to stand, according to a report released by EnerKnol Research, an energy policy analytics company.

However, the study concluded DR resources would continue to grow. “Demand response resources could still thrive in retail and ancillary markets if Order 745 is vacated, but with varying impacts to industry,” Chief Policy Strategist Erin Carson said in the report, “Demand Response to Grow Under Alternate Scenarios Regardless of FERC Order 745.”

PJM is set to receive more than $20 billion in demand response value through future capacity commitments.

FERC and PJM have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. (See FERC Files EPSA DR Appeal with Supreme Court.) The RTO in January submitted to FERC a contingency plan to incorporate DR in May’s Base Residual Auction if the Supreme Court allows the ruling to stand.

More: EnerKnol Research

Compiled by Ted Caddell

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

Hydro-Quebec Seeks to Boost Exports to Northeast

By William Opalka

CROMWELL, Conn. — Hydro-Quebec is looking to expand its exports to its long-standing customers in the Northeast power markets, Marianne Bonnard, spokeswoman for the Quebec Government Office in Boston, told the winter meeting of the Connecticut Power and Energy Society on Wednesday.

From 2008 to 2013, the provincial utility doubled its net exports of hydroelectricity. “In 2013, out of 32.2 TWh of electricity exported out of Quebec, HQUS [HQ Energy Services U.S.] delivered 15.7 TWh of power here to New England. This is a figure which represents about half of Connecticut’s annual electricity consumption,” Bonnard pointed out.

Increasing exports further will require more transmission.

HQ is a partner with Eversource Energy on the proposed 1,200-MW Northern Pass transmission line from Quebec to New Hampshire.

In addition, the proposed Champlain Hudson Power Express, a 1,000-MW merchant transmission line, would connect Quebec with New York City. The line would run underneath Lake Champlain for part of its 330-mile route.

Bonnard noted that New England and the Eastern Canadian provinces share climate goals, with a common target of reducing emissions by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020.

The province is already one of the most active governments on the continent in a nascent carbon market. Quebec began a cap-and-trade system for CO₂ emissions linked to California at the beginning of 2014. “This is the first market ever to be run by sub-national governments of different countries,” she said.

The first joint carbon auction in November delivered $33 million for initiatives in the province’s Climate Change Action Plan. The second joint auction, Feb. 18, produced more than $190 million for Quebec.

March 17, 2015June 15, 2023

FERC Seeking Its Role on Carbon Rule ‘Safety Valve’

By Rich Heidorn Jr.

WASHINGTON — Members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said last week they are trying to craft the commission’s role in administering a “safety valve” to ensure reliability is not threatened by the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emission rule.

Speaking at the third of four FERC technical conferences on the EPA Clean Power Plan, Commissioner Philip Moeller said he hopes the commission will reach consensus on a “very specific” safety valve proposal to the agency.

Janet McCabe, EPA’s acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, repeated her promise — also made at FERC’s first conference Feb. 19 — that the agency’s final regulations this summer will be responsive to criticism of its initial proposal. (See EPA on Carbon Rule: We’re Listening.)

Responding to Moeller, McCabe said that although she couldn’t yet provide specifics on a safety valve, she expected “that we will be able to have a conversation as the rule moves closer to final on how to handle that both within the rule and … as we look at implementation expectations.”

FERC Chairman Cheryl LaFleur said the commission could work with RTOs and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to “develop a record” on the reliability impact of shuttering individual power plants and the time needed to construct pipelines or transmission.

But she said she had misgivings about the commission having a formal adjudicatory role in disputes between state officials seeking deadline extensions and environmental groups pushing them to do more. “I don’t see us comfortably looking at, ‘How good is your rooftop solar program? Have you really maximized [it]? What are you doing with energy efficiency?’” she said. “… You get on thin jurisdictional ice pretty fast.

“I think we either need to develop a list of questions we’ll answer and stick to those questions and the EPA will, I guess, weigh them, or work out an approach with others such as the states which have their fingers on other parts of it,” she added.

The ISO-RTO Council has said that EPA’s final rule must include provisions for reliability reviews to address problems that may arise during implementation.

“Because of the limited nature of the scenarios we studied — and the fact that the rule itself is not yet final, nor have state plans been developed — we are simply not in a position to make definitive conclusions as to the reliability impacts of the Clean Power Plan on the PJM footprint,” Mike Kormos, PJM executive vice president of operations, said in written testimony. “… The answer to the question, ‘is it reliable?’ is not a ‘once-and-done’ inquiry.”

Ohio Public Utilities Commissioner Asim Haque said he supports the concept of FERC, NERC or RTOs performing a “reliability check” on state implementation plans. But he said the third-party review must be one of “mediation” rather than mandatory.

“If the states cannot [resolve the reliability concerns], then in my mind the [emission] rates need to be adjusted … so that the reliability concern is allayed,” he said.

March 17, 2015

MidAmerican’s Fingerprints on Shakeup at Iowa Utilities Board?

By Chris O’Malley

Gov. Terry Branstad last week shook up the Iowa Utilities Board, demoting Chairman Elizabeth “Libby” Jacobs and removing board member Sheila Tipton.

The unexplained move came after officials of MidAmerican Energy met with the governor to complain about the board’s February ruling requiring the company to refund $2 million annually to consumers over a wind project.

Branstad appointed Iowa Finance Authority official Geri Huser to replace Jacobs, whose term as chair was set to expire next month.

Jacobs, appointed by Branstad in 2011, declined to comment on the reason for the governor’s actions, but she told RTO Insider she plans to complete her term on the three-member board, which runs through April 2017.

“I’ll continue as [Organization of MISO States] president through Dec. 31, 2015, and I’ll also continue to serve [the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners] as the co-vice chair of the Electricity Committee and as a member of the Task Force on Environmental Regulation and Generation,” she said.

Tipton was appointed by Branstad in 2013 to fill an unexpired term ending next month.

In February, the board ordered MidAmerican Energy to return $2 million annually to customers following a review of a $280 million wind turbine project that had been publicly praised by Branstad.

The board said the rewards of the project were “skewed too much towards MidAmerican” without the extra payment. The order modified a settlement that MidAmerican had negotiated with the Office of Consumer Advocate.

MidAmerican has confirmed that it met with Branstad to complain about the board’s decision but insisted it did not press the governor for personnel changes.

Branstad’s spokesman, Jimmy Centers, declined to discuss the speculation. He said Huser, a former state legislator, was chosen by the governor “because he’s been impressed with her career in public service.”