Search
`
November 5, 2024

Posted on

Massachusetts Moves to Limit New Gas Infrastructure

Massachusetts has moved to discourage new investment in natural gas infrastructure by blocking utilities from recovering costs unless they can show they first considered non-gas alternatives. 

The order issued Dec. 6 by the Department of Public Utilities in Docket No. 20-80 follows more than three years of work by the DPU to engineer a reduction in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.  

But it is only a first step, an attempt to discourage and dissuade rather than to ban. Ratepayer discretion is preserved, and the order’s effectiveness will depend in large part on the decisions they make. 

There are many more steps to come as the DPU works to balance all the moving pieces, competing interests and still-unknown factors to create a climate-protection solution that is workable, affordable and equitable. 

The Acadia Center, which had been pushing for a strong statement by the DPU, applauded Wednesday’s order, calling it a potentially transformative measure that addresses many of the clean energy advocacy group’s priorities. 

Eversource Energy and National Grid, which combined have more than 1.5 million gas customers in the Bay State, said in separate statements they support the state’s net-zero goals and are reviewing details of the 140-page order. 

Consider the Options

With the order, the DPU no longer will allow a utility to recover what it spends on natural gas infrastructure unless the utility can prove it considered alternatives such as electrification or district geothermal heating. It also will not allow cost recovery for efforts to promote expansion of natural gas. 

It sets the framework for much more, including management of stranded costs for utilities, cost control for customers, environmental justice and workforce transition. 

In announcing the order, DPU Chair James Van Nostrand called it a “forward-thinking framework that charts a path for moving toward clean energy and enhancing the state’s ability to achieve its climate goals while ensuring a fair, equitable and orderly process.”   

The gas utilities will need to file climate compliance plans every five years and undertake pilot projects with the preferred alternatives to gas — electrification and networked geothermal. 

The order excludes renewable natural gas and hydrogen as potential decarbonization solutions. Concerns surround the cost, availability and carbon footprint of RNG and hydrogen. Both may well have a role in Massachusetts’ journey to net-zero status, the DPU said, but at this stage of the process, utilities cannot use them as an alternative to fossil natural gas to comply with Wednesday’s order.  

Some other components of the wide-ranging order: 

The gas utilities each have their own mechanism to calculate the cost of line extension; the DPU will move to standardize them. 

Close coordination will be required between gas and electric utilities because reduced gas use likely means increased electric use, and grid capacity may vary by region, or even from one neighborhood to the next. 

The cost of the clean energy transition may be considerable, but the need for the transition is too pressing to slow the timetable. Instead, the DPU in a separate proceeding will investigate solutions to the cost burden the transition will place on low- and middle-income ratepayers. A change in its statutory authority likely will be needed for it to carry out some of those solutions. 

Utilities will continue to recover the billions of dollars they have invested in natural gas infrastructure — the order affects future efforts, not past spending. But the DPU will scrutinize future infrastructure spending to limit future stranded costs. 

It is important, the order states, for gas utilities to move beyond “business as usual” and actively participate in developing innovative solutions in what is expected to be “an exceedingly complex undertaking.” 

The Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan calls for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with an emissions reduction of at least 85% from 1990 levels. 

Reactions

Wednesday’s order prompted responses from some of those affected. 

National Grid said: “We support the commonwealth’s goals and are committed to achieving net zero emissions. Our proposed strategy will reduce energy use, right-size and decarbonize our network, and maintain affordability and reliability for customers, while recognizing the critical role the gas networks play in keeping people warm and our economy going. We are reviewing the order and will have more to say later how we think it achieves these outcomes.” 

Eversource said: “We are working every day to help the commonwealth achieve its nation-leading decarbonization goals and we remain fully engaged with other utilities and stakeholders to define a practical path forward to reach them. We are currently reviewing the order and are thankful to the Department of Public Utilities for bringing together all stakeholders in an open and transparent process. Our customers’ energy needs are diverse, and it’s important that the clean energy transition provides access to safe, reliable and affordable energy for everyone.” 

The Beyond Gas Coalition said: “Today’s ruling is a historic and transformative climate decision. Not only is the DPU’s decision a major victory for the millions of Massachusetts gas customers who would otherwise be stuck paying for risky, unproven gas utility ventures, but sets a precedent for utility regulators across the country to rein in gas utility spending. From the outset, it has been clear that plans to blend ‘renewable’ natural gas with hydrogen for home heating would not only fail to measurably reduce emissions, but would be dangerous, expensive and not feasible. Highly efficient electric equipment, paired with weatherization and better insulation, is the only viable way to affordably build healthier communities and meet Massachusetts’ ambitious climate goals. The DPU is absolutely right to throw cold water over these risky utility plans and instead protect consumers.” 

Gas Transition Allies said: “The Department makes clear that the commonwealth is committed to ensuring that there is a just transition that includes equity for both customers and gas workers. Gas companies must not only address the potential for stranded assets that risk leaving customers holding the bag for gas companies’ imprudent investments, they must also work with electric companies to develop integrated plans to decarbonize buildings through increased electrification.”   

The Acadia Center said: “The 20-80 order today from the DPU has the potential to be one of the most transformative decisions in Massachusetts climate history. … That being said, implementation and follow-through will be incredibly important, as always. Thoughtful planning by the Department and the commonwealth will be needed to ensure positive outcomes on key areas such as customer affordability, a just transition for gas workers, and infrastructure planning and management. This order therefore serves as an important midpoint in a multiyear process, as this decision will now lead to other key dominos like evaluation of gas utility stranded asset risk, decoupling mechanism revisions, systematic consideration of non-gas pipeline alternatives, and reassessment of gas utility policies on new and existing customer connections.” 

Posted on

FERC OKs $150K Penalty on Black Hills for Delayed Filings

FERC on Dec. 5 approved a $150,000 civil penalty on Black Hills Corp. (BHC) and its three electric public utility subsidiaries for their failure to timely file 103 jurisdictional agreements (IN23-10).

The stipulation and consent agreement between FERC’s Office of Enforcement (OE) and BHC and its subsidiaries — Black Hills Power; Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power; and Black Hills Colorado Electric — stems from a prolonged FERC investigation triggered by the utilities’ self-reporting of their omissions.

Jurisdictional agreements detail rates, terms and conditions of services regulated by FERC and are essential for ensuring transparency, regulatory compliance and fair pricing.

On July 14, 2017, Black Hills Power reported to FERC that it had failed to submit six jurisdictional agreements as mandated by the Federal Power Act and FERC regulations (ER17-2095). This lapse led to Black Hills Power refunding $8,621 to customers.

This incident prompted BHC to conduct a more extensive investigation into its subsidies to determine if there were any other unfiled contracts.

By November 2021, BHC expanded its self-report to include an additional 97 unfiled contracts, leading to an estimated $1.2 million in refunds.

As of October 2021, BHC had filed all 103 previously unfiled agreements with FERC, some of which have been accepted, while others are still under review.

“As a result of these violations,” the stipulation said, “Black Hills provided jurisdictional services without an accepted just and reasonable rate on file at the commission.”

The agreements consisted mainly of short-term firm and nonfirm transmission service contracts, but also included transmission wires-to-wires interconnection agreements, delivery service to wholesale customers over distribution assets agreements, and joint ownership agreements and operation and maintenance services agreements on transmission assets.

FERC acknowledged BHC’s cooperation with the OE throughout the investigation.

In addition to the financial penalty payable to the Treasury, BHC was required to admit its non-compliance and implement measures to prevent future violations.

These measures include submitting semi-annual status reports that detail the status of each of the 103 previously unfiled agreements every six months for two years or until FERC has accepted or disposed of all the unfiled agreements. It must also undergo compliance monitoring for two years following the acceptance or final disposition of all filed agreements by the commission.

BHC must pay the civil penalty within 20 days of the agreement’s effective date and submit its first semiannual status report six months thereafter.

FERC Commissioner James Danly did not participate in the order.

Posted on

MISO and IMM: M2M Flowgate Issue with SPP not Sustainable, May Require Litigation

ORLANDO, Fla. — MISO and its Independent Market Monitor agree that legal action is likely on the horizon concerning the RTO’s payments to SPP for a market-to-market flowgate.  

Monitor David Patton said congestion costs remain high at nearly $600 million over the fall in MISO. At a Dec. 5 Markets Committee of the MISO Board of Directors, he singled out the 230-kV Charlie Creek-Watford line, a market-to-market flowgate with SPP, as a major source of congestion. 

The line recently began delivering power to 220 MW in new load from a cryptocurrency mining operation in northwest North Dakota. Patton said Charlie Creek-Watford’s status as an M2M constraint should be revoked because MISO can offer SPP little relief.  

Patton also suggested MISO’s millions of dollars in firm flow entitlement payments to SPP involving the constraint might be improperly calculated by SPP. He added SPP has had challenges in modeling use of the line.  

“This is a mess,” Patton said. “This is really a bad scenario for MISO customers … I think there’s a good chance we head to litigation at FERC because we can’t keep these payments up.”  

Patton said the line accounts for most of the current funding shortfalls in MISO’s financial transmission rights market.  

“This one is going to be a legal issue in how we interpret the joint operating area, and we just need to sit down with SPP to work it out,” MISO CEO John Bear said.   

MISO Executive Director of Market Operations J.T. Smith said new load was allowed to be activated in an already constrained SPP load pocket. Smith said while transmission upgrades are planned for the area, they’re not yet in place  to help the situation. The load pocket is served by several other lines in addition to the line in question.  

SPP maintains it and MISO have “robust coordination procedures in place to ensure the market-to-market congestion management processes are working as intended” and in accordance with the RTOs’ joint operating agreement. 

“Over the last few months, the RTOs have extensively discussed the congestion issues associated with the Charlie Creek-Watford market-to-market flowgate that is being impacted by the operation of both markets,” SPP spokesperson Derek Wingfield said in an emailed statement to RTO Insider. 

Wingfield said if SPP and MISO are unable to reach a solution through informal discussion, SPP is still optimistic that it and MISO will be able to leverage the formal dispute resolution procedures contained in their JOA. SPP is hopeful for a “mutually agreeable outcome prior to this becoming a legal matter at FERC,” Wingfield said.

Posted on

Iowa ROFR Law Overturned, Throwing Multiple MISO LRTP Projects into Uncertainty

ORLANDO, Fla. — An Iowa court has formally struck down the state’s right of first refusal (ROFR) law, deciding the procedure used to pass the bill is unconstitutional.

The decision stands to affect $2.6 billion in projects that are located at least partly in Iowa from MISO’s $10 billion long-range transmission plan (LRTP) portfolio.

The Polk County District Court’s decision Dec. 4 stops any current permitting processes on Iowa’s portion of five of MISO’s LRTP projects where incumbent developers had benefited from the law (CVCV060840). Incumbents ITC Midwest, MidAmerican Energy and Cedar Falls Utilities all exercised their option to build the LRTP projects, shutting out competition from other developers, including LS Power, which instigated the case.

The court said that since the March remand of the ROFR, “no party has presented any additional information that would lead this court to reach a different conclusion than the one reached by the Iowa Supreme Court when it issued the preliminary injunction in this case.”

That means the state Supreme Court’s rationale that the ROFR’s passage ran counter to Iowa’s rule that an act should address just one subject in the title stands unchanged. (See Iowa Regulators Ponder MISO Tx Projects After ROFR Ruling.)

“As the parties concede, this court’s analysis of plaintiffs’ constitutional claims must begin and end with the title and text of H.F. 2642,” the court said, referencing the name of the 2020 appropriations bill that contained the ROFR law.

Through spokesperson Brandon Morris, MISO said it’s reviewing the court’s decision. The grid operator did not elaborate on whether it’s communicating with the incumbent transmission owners or whether it might be preparing to issue requests for proposals on the affected LRTP projects.

“I would love to say I have a firm grasp of the order [already],” Deputy General Counsel Kristina Tridico told MISO members at a Dec. 6 Advisory Committee meeting during the RTO’s quarterly Board Week in Orlando.

Tridico said MISO will “be more responsive” once it pores over the decision and has a clearer idea of the implications. She reminded members MISO is not a party to the proceeding, and it will track closely defendants’ and intervenors’ next steps and how those will impact the timeline of the LRTP projects.

In a joint statement, MidAmerican and ITC Midwest said they’re disappointed with the decision and are discussing their options.

The two said it’s important to remember the district court’s decision is predicated on the ROFR’s inclusion as part of a larger appropriations bill and not on the merits of the ROFR itself. They also said the Iowa legislature for years has rolled laws together using appropriations bills without incident, and the ROFR “is no exception.”

“As public policy, the ROFR protects Iowa landowner interests, meets the needs of energy consumers, and ensures a coordinated approach to planning and safely operating the electric grid to support a growing Iowa economy,” MidAmerican and ITC Midwest said.

The five 345-kV LRTP projects located at least partly in Iowa likely to get a regulatory restart in the Iowa Utilities Board are:

    • The Webster-Franklin-Marshalltown-Morgan Valley line.
    • The Beverly-Sub 92 line.
    • The Orient-Denny-Fairport line.
    • The Madison-Ottumwa-Skunk River line.
    • The Skunk River-Ipava line.

Seemingly before it was aware of the ruling, MISO reported at its Board Week that four of the first cycle of LRTP projects have entered regulatory processes for approval, including the Webster-Franklin-Marshalltown-Morgan Valley line.

At a Dec. 6 System Planning Committee of the MISO Board of Directors, Executive Director of Transmission Planning Laura Rauch said she was excited to begin delivering status updates on LRTP projects as they progress in permitting.

The other three lines that have been introduced to regulators are located in and near Minnesota.

“Kudos to Minnesota,” Rauch said.

Rauch said MISO has seen good outreach and preparation work from all the developers of its LRTP projects. She said MISO has coordinated with developers on how best to manage the outages of existing transmission that must take place during LRTP construction. The lines under the first LRTP portfolio made extensive use of existing rights of way, so outages will be necessary, Rauch said.

“That is a technical challenge that we are stepping forward and engaging on,” she said.

MISO Moving Toward 2nd Portfolio of LRTP Projects

MISO is conducting analyses that will yield a second LRTP portfolio that again will focus on MISO Midwest.

Vice President of System Planning Aubrey Johnson said MISO is striking a balance between devoting due diligence on concerns the Independent Market Monitor has raised and moving forward with badly needed planning. (See IMM Criticizes MISO’s Modeling Software Used for Long-range Tx Planning.)

Johnson said MISO’s initial reliability and economic modeling shows MISO will need more “arteries” on the system to flow power and avoid overloads.

“Our system is like 5 p.m. at the 405, and we’re going to add more cars,” Johnson said, referencing an Amtrak route.

Johnson said if MISO doesn’t incorporate another major transmission buildout, MISO members will have to add significantly more generation than already planned to serve load. The transmission future MISO is using to plan the second LRTP portfolio predicts load will be 125% of current levels by 2042.

Johnson added that MISO will test a “lower bound” of fleet transition on the second LRTP portfolio to make sure the lines demonstrate value under a variety of settings.

With the first stage of analyses out of the way, Johnson said MISO is beginning to feel out what lines it might recommend. (See MISO Says Overloads and Congestion Loom Without 2nd Long-range Tx Portfolio.)

“We’re at the phase where our engineers are at Disneyland, excuse me, SeaWorld. You get the idea, an amusement park,” he joked with a nod to MISO Board Week’s location at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld.

Johnson said he borrows a phrase from a song in the movie “Smokey and the Bandit” to sum up planning in MISO: “We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”

Yvonne Cappel-Vickery, the clean energy organizer for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, urged MISO to move quickly on planning the second LRTP portfolio,

“Every delay in building this grid costs customers,” she said.

Cappel-Vickery said new, long-range lines will provide benefits to consumers for decades by reducing congestion, avoiding generation outages and allowing access to low-cost renewable energy.

Posted on

ERCOT Technical Advisory Committee Briefs: Dec. 4, 2023

Members Support 2024’s Ancillary Services Methodology, Despite Costs

ERCOT stakeholders endorsed the grid operator’s proposed ancillary service methodology for 2024, but only after extracting a commitment from staff to bring the proposal back for further review by April 30. 

The approval came after ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor, Potomac Economics, said the methodology has generated artificial shortages that produced “massive” inefficient market costs totaling about $12.5 billion this year through Nov. 27.  

The Monitor also told the Technical Advisory Committee that the methodology diminishes reliability by withholding units needed to manage transmission congestion, is not based on sound reliability criteria, and has led to excessive reserves procurements that far exceed those by other grid operators. 

“I don’t want to exaggerate how bad this is, but this is the worst performance we’ve ever seen since the beginning of organized electricity markets almost 25 years ago,” Potomac’s David Patton said. “I’ve been racking my brain to try to figure out whether I’ve ever seen anything like this, and I really haven’t.” 

Patton, whose firm also monitors the MISO, NYISO and ISO-NE markets, said there’s no way to pretend the costs are “efficient,” as ERCOT was not experiencing shortages during periods with $5,000 capped prices.  

“We weren’t close to being in shortage and yet the market, with this large increase in 10-minute reserves that gets held out of the energy market, perceived a shortage that didn’t really exist,” he said. 

“Inefficiency is not how we operate in this market and provide reliability. Our objective is to provide reliability at lowest cost,” said MD Energy Consulting’s Mark Dreyfus, who represents the city of Eastland and 154 other commercial consumers. “Since the very beginning of this market, commercial consumers have been very clear. They support competitive market outcomes, wherever possible. By supporting competitive market outcomes, we will get the lowest cost reliability possible.” 

At issue is ERCOT contingency reserve service (ECRS), the grid operator’s first new ancillary service in 20 years that was deployed early this summer. Dreyfus called for a commitment to reconsider how the service is used and to better understand the Monitor’s report. 

The service is economically dispatched within 10 minutes of deployment, using capacity that can be sustained at a specified level for two consecutive hours and supplementing the ISO’s conservative operations posture of setting aside ample reserves. 

The IMM has said ECRS essentially meets the same reliability requirements that previously were met solely by responsive reserve service. In its initial assessment of ancillary services, the monitor said ECRS “likely” raised the real-time market’s energy value by at least $8 billion. (See ERCOT Board, IMM Debate Ancillary Service Costs.) 

ERCOT disputed the Monitor’s analysis, noting the $12.5 billion figure is not the direct cost of procuring ECRS, but a study that estimates how much lower real-time energy costs would have been if resources were not reserving capacity to provide ECRS. It said in a statement that actual costs were likely much less than that and other factors, such as the historically hot summer, contributed to increased prices. 

Potomac urged stakeholders to reject the AS methodology and requested that ERCOT use a reliability analysis that models the uncertainties that drive reliability problems and then quantify the needed reserves. It said staff could mitigate its concerns with several changes, including reducing ECRS’ deployment back to one hour.  

ERCOT staff has made minor changes to the 2024 AS methodology. It said the ECRS proposal reflects the minimum volume of 10-minute reserves needed to cover the risks should a large unit trip offline or frequency losses occur.  

However, the grid operator also allowed that a “separate, broader discussion is warranted” to identify improvements to the ECRS market. 

Given that caveat and as required by the protocols, TAC endorsed the 2024 methodology with a 21-3 vote. Six members abstained. An earlier vote to approve the methodology as recommended by ERCOT failed 12-7 with 11 abstentions. 

Potomac’s four-year contract as ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor expires Dec. 31. It remains the only listed applicant to the Public Utility Commission’s request for a new four-year contract, but no announcement has been made (55222). 

Staff Withdraws DRRS Change

The committee approved ERCOT’s request to withdraw a nodal protocol revision request (NPRR1203) implementing a new ancillary service that faces a tight statutory timeline. 

Staff had proposed adding dispatchable reliability reserve service (DRRS) as a subtype of non-spinning reserve, saying it was the only way to meet a Dec. 1, 2024, deadline set by state law. TAC tabled the NPRR in October after lawmakers objected to ERCOT’s plans and said the standalone service should be developed even if it fails to meet the deadline. (See ERCOT Technical Advisory Committee Briefs: Oct. 24, 2023.) 

The PUC last month linked its approval of the budget to meeting several performance metrics. They included implementing the DRRS product “aligning it with the real-time co-optimization plus battery project (RTC+B). (See Texas PUC OKs Smaller Budget, Admin Fee Increases for ERCOT.) 

Kenan Ögelman, ERCOT’s vice president of commercial operations, said staff plans to develop DRRS as a standalone service “as expeditiously as possible” and will file a draft NPRR by April that aligns with real-time co-optimization’s (RTC) implementation. He also agreed with stakeholders’ requests for a workshop to review the NPRR’s details. 

“The goal would be to make sure everybody is fully informed on the functionality and features that we were putting into the NPRR and that we absolutely got stakeholder feedback on making that better or adjusting it, such that we had a product that the stakeholder community was comfortable with and that also met the statutory goals,” he said. 

The DRRS work will also align with the Real-time Co-optimization plus Batteries Task Force, which is developing the market tool that procures energy and ancillary services every five minutes. The team is developing business requirements for RTC and single-model batteries, with plans to complete its project in 2026. (See ERCOT Technical Advisory Committee Briefs: Aug. 22, 2023.) 

“The feedback I’ve gotten so far from the commission is RTC+B is the priority,” Ögelman said. 

TAC endorsed ERCOT’s plan 28-0, with Luminant and Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) both abstaining over the statutory deadline concerns. Luminant’s Ned Bonskowski said his company did not want to stand in the way of those wanting to move forward. 

“I am a little worried about certain policy decisions being driven by secondary timeline goals,” LCRA’s Emily Jolly said. 

Staff also withdrew two other binding document requests (OBDRR049, OBDRR050) related to NPRR1203. 

West Texas Projects Endorsed

TAC endorsed two Tier 1 transmission projects in the West Texas weather zone projected to cost a combined $1.17 billion, placing both on the combination ballot. 

The Regional Planning Group’s West Texas Synchronous Condenser project accounts for the bulk of the costs at $892.2 million. It involves installing synchronous condensers at six 345-kV substations to address reliability risks in West Texas driven by the region’s increased penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs). ERCOT expects more than 42 GW of IBR capacity by 2026 in the zone. 

Staff said the prevalence of IBRs coupled with the lack of conventional synchronous resources has further weakened the system and increased the likelihood of potential instability issues, such as the recent Odessa disturbances. (See NERC Repeats IBR Warnings After Second Odessa Event.) 

The project, involving Wind Energy Transmission Texas, LCRA Transmission Services Corp. and Oncor, has an in-service date of May-October 2027. 

ERCOT’s proposed synchronous condensers at six 345-kV substations in West Texas. | ERCOT

The second project, submitted by Texas-New Mexico Power, is projected to cost $273.1 million. The upgrade involves the construction of two 345-kV substations, two 345/138-kV substations and 20 miles of 138-kV line to address reliability needs. The project is expected to be completed by June 2027. 

With capital costs exceeding $100 million, the Tier 1 projects must be approved by ERCOT’s board, which next meets Dec. 18-19. 

TAC Remembers Brad Jones

Members shared the memories of the late Brad Jones, who chaired TAC at one point and served as ERCOT’s interim CEO and COO. Jones, who also served as NYISO’s CEO, passed away Nov. 8. (See Brad Jones, Former ERCOT, NYISO CEO, Dies at 60.) 

Reliant Energy Retail Services’ Bill Barnes, who attended a memorial service Saturday in Austin along with many other stakeholders, said ERCOT’s membership was one of his most important families. 

“We heard a lot about Brad’s optimism,” he said. “The thing that I will take with me forever is the spirit of compromise. That’s why we’re here, to hear from different perspectives, hear from other segments, each other’s opinions, and think about how we can work together as a team to solve the very challenging problems that face us.” 

“You could argue with Brad up and down, back and forth, and respect was always maintained through that entire process,” said Engie’s Bob Helton, whose relationship with Jones goes back to the market design work of the late 1990s. “That’s one of the things that was wonderful about Brad. He would listen to you, argue with you, and we’d come to a good decision.” 

“Brad is one of the core reasons we have what we have today,” Golden Spread Electric Cooperative’s Mike Wise said. “He’s one of the godfathers of our market.” 

“Obviously, Brad was a very special and influential person at ERCOT. He had two stints with us, made amazing contributions, and brought a lot of joy and laughter to the folks at ERCOT,” Ögelman said. “In some of our darkest moments, he was our shining light as we were trying to deal with the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri. I certainly miss him every day and appreciate all that he’s done for everybody in this room and in the industry and ERCOT as well.” 

Retail Choice Coming to Lubbock

TAC’s unanimous endorsement of the combo ballot resulted in approval of a change to the retail market guide (RMGRR176) that lays out the processes Lubbock Power & Light must use when it begins offering customers their choice of electric providers March 4. 

Oncor’s Debbie McKeever, chair of the Retail Market Subcommittee, told the committee that more than two dozen electric retailers are preparing to offer plans in LP&L’s service territory.  

The municipal utility is migrating the final 30% of its load from SPP to ERCOT by Dec. 11. LP&L first announced its intention to join ERCOT’s competitive market in 2015. Texas regulators approved the transition in 2018. (See Six Years in the Making: LP&L Migrates Load to ERCOT.) 

The combo ballot included three other NPRRs that, if approved by the board and the PUC, would: 

    • NPRR1181: Require qualified scheduling entities representing coal or lignite resources to submit to ERCOT a seasonal declaration of coal and lignite inventory levels and to notify ERCOT when the inventories drop below target and critical-level protocols. 
    • NPRR1201: Reduce exposure from resettlements and default uplift invoices for historical operating days by limiting resettlement timelines due to errors that are discovered and a market notice is provided to the market within one year after the operating day. This limit does not apply to alternative dispute resolution resettlements, a procedure for return of settlement funds or a board-directed resettlement addressing unusual circumstances. 
    • NPRR1204: Implement the state-of-charge (SOC) concepts necessary for awareness, accounting and monitoring energy storage resources’ SOC within the RTC+B project. 
Posted on

Industry Considers Building its Own Generation to Decarbonize

While the power and transportation sectors can highlight some success in cutting emissions, hard-to-decarbonize industry is severely lagging behind them, with the sector likely to become the biggest emitter in coming decades, according to a report released by the Rhodium Group last week.

“As other sectors decarbonize, industry very likely remains the biggest source of emissions by a wide margin,” Rhodium said. “In fact, by 2050, industrial emissions exceed all emissions from power, transportation and buildings combined in our projection mean. Without meaningful solutions to decarbonize industry, global emissions will remain stubbornly high for the foreseeable future.”

The lack of viable alternative technologies to power industry means Rhodium’s projections are based largely on pure economic considerations, such as China’s decadeslong growth slowing down. The legacy industries such as steel, chemicals and cement are already built out in the U.S., so they are going to change over to cleaner energy production measures when their equipment needs to be replaced, Intersect Power CEO Sheldon Kimber said in an interview.

“We see emerging electrification of whole new industries that don’t even exist today,” Kimber said.

Kimber’s firm wants to attract new industries such as clean hydrogen, artificial intelligence data centers and direct air capture to areas such as the Texas Panhandle, where both wind and solar resources offer high-capacity factors.

Bringing industry to where clean energy resources can produce the most power at the best price also gets around the issue of needing to build out the transmission grid, which to successfully decarbonize needs to expand by 60% by the end of this decade and triple by 2050, according to widely cited estimates from Princeton University. That is a massive political, regulatory and economic lift; Kimber doubts the grid can grow that much on that time scale.

Getting the equipment to meet that 2030 target given the realities of the supply chain is going to prove difficult, with Kimber saying it would take five to seven years to even start construction on major new lines even if the policy questions were all answered correctly tomorrow.

“So, you’re talking about mid-2035, before even the first trickle of transmission comes online, if you get it perfect right now,” Kimber said.

That would likely require additional legislation because the kind of lines that need to get built are not shipping power across one state, but across multiple jurisdictions to bring renewables to market.

“The big projects we need are to get essentially the really high-capacity factor, low-cost cheap renewables into the load pockets,” Kimber said.

It is not just about connecting any kind of clean power, but getting to those areas where the wind and the sun can offer 60 to even 70% capacity factors without battery storage, he added. It will make sense for big industries to move to areas where they can get wind and solar nearby and then ship their products, rather than transmitting electricity across multiple jurisdictions.

Creating new jobs and economic growth in rural areas, which are largely conservative, also can bolster the political consensus around clean energy.

“This country needs a durable, sort of political consensus around clean energy,” Kimber said. “And the only way we’re going to get that is if everybody can participate in the clean energy industry: across the political spectrum, socioeconomic spectrum, different parts of the country. And I think we’re starting to get that now under the” Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRA has showered the clean energy industry with incentives just as the era of worry-free, cheap solar panels from China is slowing down, with a renewed focus on stable supply chains. Intersect has domestic supplies of panels lined up through deals with First Solar.

“We’re going to build $20 billion of infrastructure before the end of the decade,” Kimber said. “And we’re going to get all those modules from Ohio, Alabama and Louisiana.”

Building out high-quality renewables to directly serve new sources of load also avoids the issue of finding space on the grid, which is becoming increasingly crowded. Data center growth in Northern Virginia has made it so some sites have to run their on-site, inefficient gas generation as baseload to keep running, Kimber said.

“I think that hydrogen is going to be very similar, in that a lot of these folks are expecting to see an availability of interconnection that just isn’t going to be there,” he added.

Even if a large customer can plug into the grid, the only generation they will be able to find could be too far away.

“Any generation you can possibly source in the wholesale market is so far away from you on a basis perspective that you’re going to be paying four times as much, and you’d be better off building a pipe from the panhandle to that site than you would be building a wire from the panhandle to that site,” he added.

Producing clean hydrogen is a good example of an industry that Intersect wants to support because the electrolyzers to produce the fuel are costly, so the more they run, the greater amount of product those costs can spread around.

“That’s why I think in the near term, you’ll see a lot of those folks moving to places where you can get high-capacity factors from renewables only so you can get to 65 to 70% in the Panhandle of Texas; you add some batteries, [and] you can start getting closer to 80, 90 or 100%,” Kimber said.

Big Customers are Considering Going Nuclear

Renewables are not the only way to decarbonize. Lately industry has focused on building out its own nuclear plants for uses historically reserved for combined heat and power systems. Even Microsoft posted a job notice in September looking for a nuclear expert to help its energy strategy for data centers.

On the other side of Texas from the panhandle, Dow is developing small modular reactors at its Seadrift facility near the middle of the state’s coastline.

The firm is working with X-energy to deploy four 80-MW SMRs to supply its factory with power and steam, which will replace the more traditional cogeneration units on the site, Edward Stones, Dow’s vice president for energy and climate, told a Senate hearing recently. (See Senate Energy Committee Examines the State of Advanced Nuclear Reactors.)

Dow’s Seadrift facility is massive, covering 4,700 acres and producing 4 billion pounds of materials a year that go into applications ranging from food packaging and preservation, to wire and cable insulation, to packaging for medical and pharmaceutical products.

“Advanced nuclear provides a huge opportunity for industrial users of power and steam,” Stones testified. “Navigating the deployment challenges will require continued engagement between the private sector and federal government, particularly around the financial and operating risks to early adopters of this technology.”

One key consideration is timing because the SMRs Dow plans to install will replace aging cogeneration facilities so they cannot be tied up in regulatory processes that drag on so long the old plants break down, he added.

While 80 MW is small compared to the major nuclear plants with two or more reactors producing 2,000 MW or more, even smaller reactors are being developed that could help cut carbon from remote facilities such as mines.

NANO Nuclear Energy CEO James Walker said the market for “micro-reactors” — nuclear reactors that can fit inside a standard shipping container and be easily transported to sites that need power — was largely untapped when the company was forming.

“So, it’s almost like a nuclear battery and you’re competing with a diesel generator, and you could ship that anywhere in the world using conventional transportation infrastructure: trains, trucks, helicopters,” Walker said in an interview.

That kind of easily transportable reactor could serve mining sites, oil and gas production, data centers and car-charging stations, or it could replace the fossil fuel engines used on commercial ships around the world, he added.

Similar-sized reactors have been used in naval applications since the 1950s, so it is a matter of taking what is known from their use and adapting it for commercial purposes. The micro-reactor space is new, and it will take some time to win regulatory approval for such technologies, but Walker said they should be ready to start deploying by the end of the decade.

“We know that there are a lot of industries that were very keen on, say, wind and solar like that, but it was too intermittent,” Walker said. “The storage costs involved were enormous. The land usage required was prohibitive, often so prohibitive that it actually looked like it had increased their carbon footprint by the amount of land they would need.”

The Grid Will Still Serve Many Industrial Loads

While industry is considering building its own generation to help decarbonize, plenty of big customers will continue to draw power from the grid as they reach for net-zero emissions, but that is no longer just a matter of matching up some renewable energy credits with the amount of power consumed.

A shorthand for the new concept of deep decarbonization is “power to X,” which Lancium Director of Regulatory Affairs Andrew Reimers explained on a webinar hosted by the Energy Systems Integration Group. It refers to taking electricity and making something else with it, which is easily understood when it comes to clean hydrogen.

“If these loads can be operated in a flexible or controllable way, they can play a big role in allowing greater adoption of intermittent renewables,” Reimers said. “And so there is a pro to the con of the reliability impact they pose.”

The reliability impact is that many of these loads are very big, so if they were to unexpectedly trip offline, it could lead to grid stability issues. Reimers highlighted the plans for the “Hydrogen City” project in Texas that could scale up to 60 GW — while ERCOT’s all-time peak demand record is just 85.5 GW.

“The reliability issue is very significant, particularly because of how big some of these facilities are,” Reimers said. “And it’s going to take a lot of kind of creative thinking about how to deal with all of that as far as maintaining the reliability of the grid.”

Even beyond reliability issues, electricity is going to be difficult to plan for by grid operators who are ill equipped to monitor global commodity prices for different industries. Some industrial load might curtail significantly when residential air conditioning drives up the demand curve, but others might have contracts they need to meet or inflexible industrial processes incapable of responding to shifts in power prices, Reimers said.

Posted on

Treasury, DOE Issue Proposed ‘FEOC’ Rules for EV Tax Credits

As U.S. automakers pull back their plans to invest heavily in electric vehicles, claiming sales are not growing as fast as expected, the Treasury Department and IRS have issued new guidelines on the federal tax credits for EVs that could further slow sales. 

Beginning Jan. 1, EVs with any battery components manufactured or assembled by a “foreign entity of concern” (FEOC) — meaning, in this case, owned or controlled by China — will not be eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit, according to the proposed rules. 

Issued Dec. 1, the notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) from Treasury and IRS would similarly prohibit tax credits for any EV containing “any critical minerals that were extracted, processed or recycled by a FEOC,” beginning in 2025. 

How to determine if an entity is a FEOC is detailed in additional proposed guidelines, also released Dec. 1, from the Department of Energy. Based on provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the guidelines define a “foreign entity of concern” as being “owned by, controlled by or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a government of a foreign country that is a covered nation.” 

In addition to China, the U.S. has designated Russia, Iran and North Korea as “foreign countries of concern” or “covered nations.” DOE’s proposed guidelines spell out how certain terms in the IIJA should be interpreted, including “government of a foreign country,” “foreign entity,” “subject to the jurisdiction” and “owned by, controlled by or subject to the direction.”

Treasury and IRS previously issued guidelines on the EV tax credits, in December of 2022 and March of 2023, both of which were sharply criticized by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) as providing loopholes that would allow EVs to circumvent the domestic content provisions he wrote into the law. (See IRA’s EV Tax Credits Spark Senate Debate.) 

The new guidelines appear to be aimed at plugging those loopholes, noting that “several critical segments of the battery supply chain today are predominantly processed and manufactured within covered nation boundaries.” 

For example, a company located in but not owned by a covered nation would be considered a FEOC if the covered nation could “exercise legal control … with respect to any critical minerals that are physically extracted, processed or recycled, any battery components that are manufactured or assembled and any battery materials that are processed” in that country. 

Also, a U.S. company could be considered a FEOC if it is “sufficiently controlled” by the government of a covered nation “via the holding of 25% or more of an entity’s board seats, voting rights or equity interest … [or] via license or contract conferring rights on a person that amount to a conferral of control.” 

Manchin remains critical of the guidelines. In a statement released Friday, he said the administration is “trying to find workarounds and delays that leave the door wide open for China to benefit off the backs of American taxpayers.” 

In this case, he may have been referring to provisions in the guidelines on ‘‘non-traceable” or “low-value” battery materials “that may originate from multiple sources and often are commingled during refining, processing or other production processes by suppliers to such a degree that the qualified manufacturer cannot, due to current industry practice, feasibly determine and attest to the origin of such battery materials.” 

These low-value materials include “applicable critical minerals contained in electrolyte salts, electrode binders and electrolyte additives” and make up less than 2% of battery components, according to Treasury. The guidelines propose a transitional rule “that would temporarily exclude a specific list of identified non-traceable battery materials from the due diligence requirements of the qualified manufacturers” through 2026, to give the industry time to develop standards for tracing the low-value materials.  

The Outlook for 2024

As written by Manchin, the IRA placed limits on the EVs and EV buyers that can qualify for the law’s EV tax credits. Light-duty EV sedans can’t cost more than $55,000, while the maximum price for electric SUVs and light-duty pickup trucks is $80,000. 

EV buyers also must meet certain income requirements, earning no more than $150,000 per year for a single consumer, $225,000 for a single head of household and $300,000 for couples filing joint tax returns.  

For the full $7,500 tax credit, EVs also have to meet domestic content provisions, separate from the proposed FEOC rules. For example, in 2023, to qualify for the credit, 50% of the value of battery components in an EV must have been manufactured or assembled in North America. In 2024 and 2025, the percentage goes up to 60%, with additional yearly increases eventually rising to 100% by 2029. 

Similar requirements are in place for the percentage of critical minerals in an EV battery. These provisions already have kept many foreign-made EVs ineligible for tax credits on new EV sales to consumers. 

At present, according to DOE’s fueleconomy.gov website, for the 2023 model year, more than 20 different models of EVs or plug-in hybrids, mostly from U.S. automakers, qualify for either a $7,500 or $3,750 tax credit. For the 2024 model year, the list shrinks to 10 models.  

For the 2023 model year, Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup qualified for a $7,500 tax credit, while the Mustang Mach-E SUV qualified for a $3,750 credit. At present, Ford has no 2024 models eligible. 

The impact on EV sales remains uncertain. The National Automobile Dealers Association reported that the U.S. has racked up more than 1 million new EV sales in 2023 — with a month still to go — the first time sales have exceeded 1 million in a single year.  

Neither Ford nor General Motors have issued public statements on the guidelines. Both companies recently paused work on new EV factories. However, on Dec. 5, GM announced the opening of 17 public EV charging stations in 13 states, which it developed in partnership with Pilot Travel Centers and EVGo. 

Both the Treasury and DOE proposed guidelines were published in the Federal Register on Dec. 4, beginning comment periods. The comment period for the DOE guidelines on FEOCs closes Jan. 3. Comments on the Treasury guidelines are due by Jan. 18. 

Posted on

Panelists Warn of Winter Weather’s National Security Risks

After multiple severe weather events threatened grid reliability in recent years, the ongoing threat of winter weather is well known. But in a webinar hosted by the American Council on Renewable Energy on Dec. 5, several speakers said the risks to one particular customer are not fully appreciated.

Planning processes “do not take Department of Defense or national security loads into account,” said Jonathon Monken, a principal at consulting firm Converge Strategies. According to the most recently available data for fiscal 2021, there were more than 6,000 energy outages at DOD installations across the U.S., he said. The potential for mission impact is significant. “As far as I know, they’re the only [grid] customer that launches nuclear missiles.”

The webinar focused on the dangers extreme weather could pose to electric reliability at military bases and other critical national security loads. The topic was timely, considering multiple reports in the past month highlighting the risk of extreme weather events to grid reliability.

NERC’s 2023 Winter Reliability Assessment, released last month, provided plenty of material for panelists, as did FERC and NERC’s final report on the December 2022 winter storms that caused widespread load shed across the Southeast U.S., released the same week. (See FERC-NERC Elliott Report Calls Winter Outages ‘Unacceptable’.) NERC’s assessment found that large portions of the North American electric grid are at risk of electric shortfalls in above-normal peak conditions. (See NERC: Grid Risks Widespread in Winter Months.)

Thomas Coleman, executive director of energy think tank SAFE’s grid security project, emphasized that the danger of military bases losing power goes beyond that of a typical business, because “each military installation is very unique” in terms of national security benefits.

Monken said part of the challenge is that “DOD is not steeped in a very deep understanding of how the [grid] works,” and base commanders in particular do not always understand the importance of “what’s happening outside of their fence line with regard to critical infrastructure.” He pointed out that 90% of DOD bases depend on commercial utilities for energy, and there are multiple areas in the country where clusters of military bases all rely on the same energy provider, creating a major common point of vulnerability.

Monken and Coleman suggested investments in transmission could help mitigate these vulnerabilities by removing some of these single points of failure. They said they hoped NERC’s Interregional Transfer Capability Study, which Congress ordered the ERO to complete by next December, would be an important step in identifying the places where transmission investments could help the most — not just for protecting national security, but with encouraging the adoption of renewable energy sources.

“Wind power in Iowa … is so much less expensive than what we’re seeing in New York and L.A. on the coasts, but we don’t really have the way to transmit those electrons to the coasts,” Coleman said.

Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of reliability assessments, said if grid planners and DOD work together, they can help understand each other’s needs and abilities. He said future studies can ensure the grid has the flexibility to always optimize energy use, rather than just avoid major catastrophes.

“We really need to understand all the unserved energy that is occurring over the span of a year … and when we can get our tools and planning processes to be able to have that kind of granular view, we’re in a much better position to be able to make sure all the critical needs are being met,” Olson said.

Posted on

Maine Ethics Commission Resolves Probe of NECEC Foes

Maine’s ethics watchdog has resolved alleged campaign finance law violations surrounding the controversial New England Clean Energy Connect project.

The two entities targeted in a probe by the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices consented to a combined $210,000 in penalties in an agreement executed Nov. 29. Neither admitted liability or wrongdoing, but both agreed they should have registered as a political action committee or ballot question committee.

The NECEC line is designed to carry up to 1.2 GW of electricity from hydro facilities in Quebec to Massachusetts. It has faced multiple challenges since it was first proposed in 2017, including a citizen referendum seeking to block construction. Avangrid resumed construction in August 2023, four months after winning a key court ruling. (See New England Clean Energy Connect Wins Court Battle.)

Two separate but related cases arising from the fight over NECEC went before the Maine ethics commission, one involving Clean Energy for ME LLC (doing business as Stop the Corridor), the other involving Alpine Initiatives LLC.

Advocates for NECEC complained in January 2020 that Stop the Corridor should have registered as a political action committee because it engaged in financial activities to support petitioning for a citizen initiative on the project.

Stop the Corridor challenged the ethics probe, dragging out the time frame.

The commission ultimately gathered 6,339 pages of documents and conducted five interviews to show the involvement of Stop the Corridor in efforts to block NECEC or impede progress on it.

The commission concluded Stop the Corridor qualified as a ballot action committee, should have registered with the commission and should have filed campaign finance reports.

Among its other findings, the commission discovered Stop the Corridor made payments to Alpine Initiatives. A consultant transferred $160,000 to Alpine, which then donated $150,000 to the Maine Democratic Party, the leaders of which were viewed as more likely to oppose NECEC.

The public did not learn of the source of this pass-through contribution because it was reported only in Alpine’s name.

The commission began to investigate Alpine in July 2021, concluded Alpine through its actions did qualify as a political action committee and said it should have registered as such and filed a campaign finance report.

Alpine agreed to pay $160,000 in civil penalties, and Stop the Corridor agreed to pay $50,000.

Supporting documentation posted in the Spot the Corridor case shows only one source of money: $95,726 provided by NextEra Energy Resources from August 2019 to March 2020.

NextEra operates the 1.24 GW nuclear power station in Seabrook, N.H., and through the years, the Florida-based utility has run interference on the NECEC project, which would provide an influx of low-cost clean energy competing with the emissions-free output of Seabrook.

A late 2021 report indicated NextEra spent $20 million to influence public opinion against NECEC in the runup to the Maine referendum.

Posted on

Hydro Fuels Uptick in CAISO Exports, Market Monitor Reports

CAISO’s net energy exports have increased sharply this year, with imports being displaced by increased output from California’s hydroelectric and natural gas resources, the ISO’s Department of Market Monitoring (DMM) said Dec. 1.

Speaking during a call to discuss the DMM’s market report for the first and second quarters of 2023, Amelia Blanke, the department’s manager of monitoring and reporting, said the trend reflected the reduction in imports and a “tremendous amount” of exports coming out of CAISO into the Western Energy Imbalance Market, flowing into the Southwest and Northwest, with substantial volumes going into BC Hydro’s territory.

The flows tended to reverse during CAISO’s net load peak hours, she said — except for the exports into BC Hydro. Most of the imports into CAISO came from the Desert Southwest.

While the DMM hasn’t released the Q3 report, Blanke noted the quarter saw “absolutely unprecedented levels of exports.”

The Monitor highlighted the significant role hydro played for California this year.

“The weather pattern that prevailed coming into 2023 is one that resulted in relatively high rainfall and snowfall in the CAISO BA,” Blanke said. There was less precipitation in the Northwest, though, resulting in a relative shift of hydroelectric output between the Northwest and CAISO’s footprint.

The strong hydro equated to low prices during many intervals in Q1 and Q2. Those quarters typically see the highest levels of hydropower in combination with solar and wind, increasing the frequency of intervals with very low — and even negative — prices.

Blanke also highlighted the new resources that have been added to the CAISO fleet, including a “very large penetration” of battery resources.

The year began with high natural gas prices, which declined across the system in Q2, bringing wholesale electricity prices down as well, Blanke said.

Q1 electricity prices average about $97/MWh in the day-ahead market, $93/MWh in the 15-minute market and $87/MWh in the five-minute market. Q2 saw much lower prices across the board, though there was still a persistent gap between the five- and 15-minute markets, and lower 15-minute prices on average compared with the day-ahead, boosting the profitability of virtual supply.

“Historically, that’s been due in large part to a consistent imbalance conformance for the CAISO BA,” Blanke said, referring to the process by which the ISO dispatches units up and down to match grid conditions to prevent frequency deviations.

While CAISO has assumed that it can rely on flexible ramping resources to reduce the need for imbalance conformance, that did not hold for most of the period in covered by the analysis.

But CAISO did change some operational practices in the middle of Q2 to reduce the need for conformance.

“It was the first time in many years that our quarterly metrics show a reduction in imbalance conformance,” Blanke said.