ISO-NE can consider transmission-only battery storage as an option to address transmission system issues, FERC ruled Oct. 19. The commission-approved filing allows the operators of these assets to recover costs through transmission rates, while imposing tight restrictions around how the storage must be operated.
The tariff changes “will result in the selection of SATOAs [Storage as Transmission-Only Assets] only when those resources perform a transmission function, consistent with commission precedent,” FERC wrote, noting that it had approved SATOA filings for MISO in 2020 and SPP in 2023.
SATOAs will be largely prohibited from participating in ISO-NE’s markets in order to “minimize market impacts and ensure a SATOA does not receive dual recovery of its costs via both cost-of-service rates and market-based rates,” ISO-NE wrote in its filing.
To be selected as a SATOA, battery facilities must be identified as the best solution in a transmission study, connect directly to pool transmission facilities and be controlled by ISO-NE. The RTO will also limit the total capacity of SATOAs to 300 MW across the system and 30 MW per substation.
“In these circumstances, SATOAs are properly characterized as transmission assets, and the costs of a SATOA are appropriately recoverable through transmission rates,” FERC wrote.
ISO-NE’s filing was supported by a range of stakeholder groups, with some calling on the RTO to go further in enabling batteries as storage solutions. Advanced Energy United (AEU) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) both called the filing a “first step.”
“This is only a first step in expanding the capability of the transmission system through the deployment and recognition of energy storage,” wrote Michael Jacobs of UCS, adding that the organization “urges the commission to take action to further expand opportunities for storage as transmission.”
Jacobs added that storage should be included as an option to meet transmission needs identified in the interconnection process for large generators and said ISO-NE’s set of constraints “omits opportunities for economic or reliability improvements.”
Caitlin Marquis of AEU wrote that the SATOA capacity limits are “reasonable as ISO-NE gains experience and comfort with the use of storage as a transmission asset but should be evaluated over time to ensure they do not serve as an artificial and unnecessary barrier to SATOA participation.”
Marquis said SATOAs should eventually be allowed to participate in ISO-NE’s markets to tap into their full value.
“With the right guardrails in place, allowing storage to participate as both a transmission and market asset would optimize utilization of storage resources and maximize benefits to ratepayers,” Marquis wrote.
But the New England Power Generators Association (NEPGA) called the limits “critical” to ensuring that SATOAs do not result in price suppression and operational issues.
“Price suppression is a real concern,” NEPGA wrote. “When locational energy and ancillary service prices do not reflect the marginal economic cost of production, but instead are suppressed, for example, by cost-of-service resources indifferent to the economics of the market as ‘price-takers,’ the markets are less attractive to capital and thus less able to satisfy the common goal of cost-effective and efficient electric system reliability.”
In approving ISO-NE’s filing, FERC denied NEPGA’s request that the RTO’s Internal and External Market Monitors report on how effectively the SATOA limits mitigate adverse market effects. The commission said AEU’s and UCS’ calls for expanded uses for SATOAs were outside the scope of the proceeding.
FERC ordered ISO-NE, NEPOOL and New England Transmission Owners to submit the effective date of the SATOA changes, which ISO-NE did not specify in its filing.
Republicans on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources attempted to paint the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) and other programs as tarnished with political and financial conflicts of interest during a Thursday hearing intended to examine the agency’s decision-making process for competitive loans and grants.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the committee’s ranking member, opened the session with a blistering attack on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and LPO Director Jigar Shah, who was one of three DOE officials at the hearing.
He was joined by David Crane, under secretary of infrastructure, and Teri L. Donaldson, the department’s inspector general.
DOE Under Secretary David Crane | Senate ENR
Citing a report he released Thursday, Barrasso labelled the IRA “irresponsible, reckless and alarming,” arguing that it was weakening the U.S. and increasing the country’s dependence on China for critical minerals and other clean energy technologies.
“It can’t be salvaged; it needs to be repealed,” he said.
His attack on Shah centered on the LPO director’s founding of an industry group, the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable (CLR), in 2017. Barrasso said the CLR “appears to be a gatekeeper for companies seeking DOE funding” and touts its relationship with Shah, who has spoken at several group events, including dinners.
Noting that the LPO recently announced a $3 billion loan to a solar company, Sunova, that is a member of the roundtable, Barrasso told Shah, “I think it’s a very bad look for you personally and a very bad look for the Department of Energy.” He then pressed Shah to commit to severing any ties with the group as long as he is at DOE.
Committee chair Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) defended the IRA and Shah. While he continues to criticize the Biden administration’s implementation of the law, Manchin called it “an all-in policy that’s working.”
“We’re producing more energy in the country today than ever in the history of the United States of America,” he said, citing high figures for oil, natural gas and solar and wind production. He also noted that he and certainly other lawmakers regularly attend industry conferences, like CERAWeek, where attendees pay to hear him speak.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) | Senate ENR
While agreeing to keep his distance from CLR dinners, Shah also countered Barrasso’s questions by noting that career federal staffers oversee the evaluation and vetting of LPO applications, and he personally has no part in the decision-making on individual loans.
“I’m more accessible than a ham sandwich,” Shah said of his attendance at myriad industry conferences. “I go to lots of places, wherever American innovators and entrepreneurs need to meet me, so that they can be convinced that this country wants them to onshore and reshore their technology here in this country.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) also responded to Republican barbs about Shah’s attendance at industry conferences. “After years and years of people complaining that government is unresponsive to private industry, we finally have an administration who will meet anyone with any technology, whether it’s fossil or renewable or nuclear, and actually work with them in a way that is friendly to the private sector,” he said.
“And that is not something I think we should be discouraging. We should expect more.”
‘They Take Their Time’
Crane came in for his share of heavy interrogation from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who wanted to know why his state was not chosen as one of the seven regional hydrogen hubs announced on Oct. 13. The hubs are being funded with $7 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. (See DOE Designates Seven Regional Hydrogen Hubs.)
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) | Senate ENR
“I’m told that the merit reviewers of the Louisiana application, several of them did not provide any comments or ask any questions regarding the application,” Cassidy said. “In fact, there’s no evidence that they actually reviewed it. What I’m worried about is that the fix was in before we even started.”
He also suggested that the hubs designated for awards are predominantly in states with Democratic lawmakers in Congress.
Like Shah, Crane stressed that no politics were involved in the review of the applications. “The independent merit review, the federal panels, the selection officers are all career civil servants, and they evaluated many, many criteria,” he said.
Crane also explained that, as laid out in the IIJA, the regional hubs were required to be in different parts of the U.S., and “the Gulf Coast had multiple very, very strong [applications].” Texas, which like Louisiana has two Republican senators, was designated for development of a Gulf Coast hub.
Crane said funding applications for the hubs and other DOE programs all go through the agency’s recently established vetting center, which “takes as much time as they need to review all that they need to review.”
Referring to the hub announcements and the $3.46 billion for 58 grid resilience and improvement projects announced Wednesday, Crane said, “If it had not been for the vetting … process, we would have been announcing those awards at the beginning of September. So, they take their time. It’s only when they’re done and they’re comfortable that we move forward with selection.” (See DOE Announces $3.46B for Grid Resilience, Improvement Projects.)
Inspector General Underfunded
Political theater aside, the main focus of the hearing, raised by both Manchin and Barrasso, centered on ensuring that neither IIJA nor IRA dollars are going to projects that might have connections to China or other U.S. adversaries, such as Russia or Iran.
Barrasso and other GOP lawmakers had criticized the agency for a proposed $200 million grant to Microvast, a U.S. battery manufacturer with a Chinese subsidiary. Earlier this year, DOE announced it had ended negotiations with the company, which would not be receiving the grant.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) | Senate ENR
More recently, Barrasso and others have zeroed in on the LPO’s announcement of an $850 million conditional loan guarantee to Kore Power, an Idaho-based battery manufacturer that is building a gigafactory in Arizona. The catch is the company previously has done its manufacturing in China and will be licensing technology from a Chinese company.
Donaldson, DOE’s inspector general, said the department’s due diligence and vetting processes still are not rigorous enough and could put taxpayers’ dollars at risk because of the huge amounts of money flowing through the department and the speed at which awards, loans and grants are being made.
More than 70 new programs are “all trying to develop criteria, including due diligence criteria,” Donaldson said. “You have massive amounts of money moving quickly. All these things happening at once create a level of risk that may candidly be unprecedented in terms of the amount of federal money moving in such a complicated landscape.
Teri L. Donaldson, DOE inspector general | Senate ENR
“I cannot say often enough that this is a very risky landscape,” Donaldson said. “On the issue of not funding our adversaries, I am greatly concerned about how things are going in that regard.” The vetting center is a step in the right direction, she said, but it is understaffed and has no written procedures.
Similarly, Donaldson’s own office is critically underfunded, she said, and her requests for more funding so far have been unsuccessful. According to her written testimony, only $62 million of the $64 billion DOE received from the IIJA were earmarked for her office.
At EPA, the inspector general’s office received $269 million of the $61 billion EPA received from the law.
Shah defended the LPO’s vetting process, saying the office “has an ability to do due diligence on these projects that many private sector banks don’t have because we have access to the 10,000 engineers, scientists and experts” at DOE and its national laboratories.
Further, many of the tech startups seeking federal loans are in the process of commercializing technology originally developed with DOE funding, he said. “For many of these technologies, which are frankly scary to the private sector — it is why the LPO was created — we can do rigorous due diligence and look back into demonstration projects and other data that we have to see whether the technology will work.
“We never take ‘will it work, or won’t it work’ risk today here at the LPO,” Shah said. “We do take execution risk, scale-up risk, a lot of other risks that are real risks that we have to do due diligence on.”
On the issue of Chinese influence, Shah outlined a list of steps the LPO has taken to avoid such investments, such as ensuring foreign entities cannot get board representation at companies receiving federal loans.
“Second, we make sure that all [intellectual property] licenses are one way, so that the technology comes to the United States tied to the American worker, but no additional innovations that occur here can go back to that country,” he said.
FERC issued a final rule Thursday directing NERC to develop standards to improve the reliability of inverter-based resources (RM22-12).
The final rule, which had not been posted as of Thursday evening, covers solar photovoltaics, wind, fuel cell and battery storage, which make up most of the projects in the interconnection queues.
“These standards will help us solve one of the biggest problems we’re facing as we make the transition to clean energy resources,” FERC Chairman Willie Phillips said at the monthly open meeting. “We need to make sure that these promising new technologies can enhance, not weaken, reliability of the grid. We mean it when we say that at FERC, reliability is, and remains, Job No. 1.”
NERC was directed to develop rules addressing IBR data sharing, model validation, planning and operational studies, and performance standards. The reliability organization has to submit the rules in three tranches, with each one due no later than Nov. 4 over each of the next three years.
The order gives NERC 90 days to make a filing that includes a detailed, comprehensive standards development and implementation plan.
IBRs use electronic devices that change the direct current power produced by generators into alternating current power that is then transmitted on the bulk electric system. The concern is that IBRs can respond to grid disturbances differently from traditional resources; at least 12 events have occurred on the bulk power system in which 1,000 MW of IBRs tripped offline, showing the risks they can pose absent reforms, Phillips said.
“We have a lot of clean energy and renewable energy resources that are being connected to the grid. And this new rule is a great step to address what we see as reliability concerns regarding this transition” Phillips said during the open meeting.
“When appropriately programed, IBRs can provide operational flexibility. And the ability of IBRs to perform with precision, speed and control could mitigate disturbances on the bulk power system,” he added.
Commissioner James Danly called the rulemaking “long overdue” and the “most important action we’ve taken on reliability in the last year or two.”
Commissioner Allison Clements said IBRs offer “an exciting opportunity for dynamic response and for increased operational flexibility.”
She said she was disappointed that the final rule only directs NERC to consider requiring transmission owners to share data with IBR resources. She said NERC should require such sharing be required.
“The record in the preceding indicates the generator owners require data to support the modeling and performance requirements we are now directing NERC to create,” she said. “I think it’s kind of tough to make people bake the cake without giving them the recipe.”
Clements said most current IBRs in place today should be able to meet the updated standards with simple software updates, but some older models may not be able to do so.
The rule directs NERC to consider exceptions for these older IBRs. “I hope to see such exceptions, as doing so will allow these older resources to continue to provide value to customers without compromising system reliability,” she said.
QUEBEC CITY — Ingrid Rayo’s fellow panelists nodded when she said participants in next month’s GridEx security exercise should focus on the people and organizations most relevant to their mission — in contrast to previous years’ emphasis on encouraging participation from as wide a range of groups as possible.
“I remember in one GridEx that we had a … daycare center right next to the control center that we were hosting GridEx from,” said Rayo, a senior consultant on governance, risk, cybersecurity and compliance at Burns & McDonnell, at this week’s GridSecCon security conference in Quebec City. “We pulled them in, and there was also a news station behind us and we pulled it in. And so we had all these people interacting, and the next thing you know, the news station was talking about the [daycare]. We forgot about the grid, because we were focused on the kids.”
Amid chuckles from the other panelists, Rayo explained that while there is value in getting buy-in from stakeholders in other sectors on which the electric industry depends — such as the telecommunication and natural gas sectors, which participated in GridEx VI in 2021 — it is easy to “take a rabbit hole” and overcomplicate the scenario. (See GridEx VI Incorporates Recent Cyber Lessons.) She recommended utilities “focus on those individuals that are truly active in the recovery plan and incident management” to make best use of their efforts.
The Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) holds GridEx every two years to help electric utilities and other stakeholders test and improve their security incident response plans. The exercise consists of a two-day distributed play exercise, with the E-ISAC creating a general scenario that each participating organization customizes for its own workforce, along with an executive tabletop for executives from the electric and related industries, along with U.S. and Canadian government officials.
Moderating the panel was Jesse Sythe, the E-ISAC’s GridEx Program Manager, who noted that GridEx distributed play scenarios have “consistently been ahead of reality,” with elements such as physical attacks on transformers in 2013’s GridEx II echoing that year’s shootings at California’s Metcalf substation. (See Substation Saboteurs ‘No Amateurs’.) He observed that GridEx IV in 2017, “in our most prescient move,” incorporated the impacts of a pandemic on workforce participation.
The distributed play for GridEx VII is scheduled for Nov. 14-15; Erin Rowe, the director for incident response at MISO who is organizing the distributed play exercise for her organization, said that this year she wants her team to “practice like we respond.” To that end, Rowe said, she intentionally sent out invitations with no location specified for the event.
“I don’t want them to sit in the conference room waiting, I want them to actually get that phone call, get the [Microsoft] Teams message, whatever mode that communication is going to come by, I want them to actually have to do it and go through the process for how we escalate that incident,” Rowe said.
Panelists emphasized that personal interaction is key to encouraging participation in GridEx. Saad Ansari, a senior specialist for emergency preparedness at Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, assured audience members they don’t “have to reinvent the wheel” by scheduling face-to-face meetings just to discuss the exercise, but they should try to “leverage existing channels” by, for example, adding a GridEx discussion item to already-scheduled meetings.
Ashley Wemhoff, the incident response drill coordinator for the Nebraska Public Power District, acknowledged that organizations new to GridEx may feel intimidated by the idea of the two-day exercise and observed that participation in both days is not required. Several utilities in Nebraska are taking part only on the first day, she said.
Asked by Sythe for further advice on encouraging participation in GridEx, panelists urged organizations to try to emphasize the fun aspects of the event, which they acknowledged could be draining. Wemhoff jokingly suggested including glitter bombs in invitation packages, while Rayo said appealing to employees’ greed can be a winning strategy.
“People love swag, right?” Rayo said as the crowd laughed. “If you give them a free shirt, a free hat, whatever … as long as we have some [free gifts], you will get people to come to you and they will want to participate. It’s actually marketing for your next GridEx, because now they want to have the T-shirt like everybody else. We’re all a community, we all want to look alike and feel like we’re part of something.”
FERC on Thursday approved a transmission asset swap between Idaho Power and PacificCorp as part of the companies’ plans to develop a 300-mile-long, 500-kV line that will deliver Wyoming wind to the Pacific Northwest and hydropower to the Intermountain West (EC23-111).
In August, Idaho Power said it expected to begin construction work on the Boardman to Hemingway Transmission Project (B2H) this fall. The line between northeastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho is expected in service by June 2026.
The two companies said they sought the transfer to improve the alignment of their transmission assets with their load service areas after the Bonneville Power Administration dropped out as a partner in the B2H project.
Although Bonneville initially had proposed to participate in the project to facilitate service to wholesale customers in southeastern Idaho, it withdrew, choosing to take long-term firm transmission service from Idaho Power.
The transaction will give PacifiCorp 300 MW of west-to-east transmission capacity and 600 MW of east-to-west transmission capacity over the transferred facilities. Idaho Power will gain 200 MW of bi-directional transmission capacity over facilities through Idaho and more than 600 MW of capacity in the Goshen, Idaho, area to support network service from Idaho Power to BPA’s southeastern Idaho wholesale customers.
The commission concluded the transaction would not harm horizontal competition because it does not involve any generation assets and vertical competition would be unaffected because the transmission facilities involved will provide service under FERC-approved Open Access Transmission Tariffs. It also said the deal would not impact wholesale rates because the assets will be transferred at net book value with no acquisition premiums.
The commission conditioned its approval of the deal on the parties’ completion of a memorandum of understanding to address Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ (UAMPS) concern that the transaction could impact transmission service to UAMPS’ members in southeastern Idaho.
“We find that applicants have sufficiently addressed UAMPS’ concerns, provided that they follow through on their commitment to enter into the memorandum of understanding,” FERC said, ruling UAMPS’ request to be held harmless “moot.”
In a separate order, the commission also approved revisions to add the B2H project to Idaho Power and PacifiCorp’s joint ownership and operating agreement over transmission facilities in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming (ER23-2463).
The B2H project will run between a new switching station near Boardman, Ore., and the existing Hemingway substation near Melba, Idaho. Idaho Power says the project, which it identified in its 2006 integrated resource plan, is the least-cost alternative for serving its customers in fast-growing southern Idaho and eastern Oregon. PacifiCorp said the line will aid its service into northeastern Oregon and provide a second connection between the PacifiCorp-East and PacifiCorp-West balancing authority areas, currently connected only by the Midpoint-to-Summer Lake 500-kV line.
Idaho Power said the project will connect two regions whose peak production of clean power is mismatched with their peak demand. The Pacific Northwest sees energy demand peak in the winter, driven by heating loads, while its peak hydropower production is in the spring and summer. In contrast, electricity demand in the Intermountain West peaks in the summer from irrigation and air conditioning loads, while its wind energy peaks in the winter.
FERC is moving to grant a solar developer’s request to force the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative to allow interconnection.
The proposed order FERC issued Thursday gives AEPCO and developer THSI 30 days to negotiate the terms. If FERC finds the terms acceptable, it will issue a final order reflecting them. If the two sides are unable to reach agreement, FERC will prescribe the terms, consider the two sides’ positions, then issue a final order.
Docket TX23-5-000 centers on the Three Sisters Solar Project, a 300-MW solar array with 300 MW/1,200 MWh of battery storage proposed in southeast Arizona by BrightNight and its subsidiary, THSI.
THSI formally submitted the interconnection request to AEPCO in November 2019. After multiple studies, the dispute arose. In May 2023, AEPCO notified THSI it had removed Three Sisters from the interconnection queue.
In June 2023, THSI asked FERC to direct AEPCO to provide interconnection, finalize the large generator interconnection agreement and restore Three Sisters to its position in the queue.
From early July to early September, AEPCO protested; three industry associations (American Public Power Association, Large Public Power Council and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association) sought to intervene, then also jointly protested; and THSI, AEPCO and the power authorities then filed successive arguments, protests and responses to each other’s filings.
FERC’s proposed order includes the following points and counterpoints by the two sides:
THSI said it originally proposed an Aug. 2, 2022, commercial operation date, then early this year proposed Dec. 15, 2025. It said AEPCO initially raised no concerns but on May 16, 2023, said the new date was a material modification that would necessitate a new interconnection study, and that Three Sisters had been removed from the queue.
Informal dispute resolution attempts were unsuccessful, THSI said.
THSI said all necessary interconnection studies had been performed and found no potential reliability issues and no significant need for network system upgrades. Further, the parties had already negotiated a large generator interconnection agreement.
So, there is little else to discuss, THSI said.
But AEPCO countered there are genuine issues of material fact because there is no certainty whether or how much Three Sisters would serve the wholesale market.
AEPCO said THSI’s initial interconnection request made no mention of something that later came up in a state environmental review: a co-located green hydrogen production facility that would be an off-taker for the solar power generated there. This makes Three Sisters’ grid output uncertain, it said.
But THSI has not secured the right to serve a retail load such as the hydrogen plant, AEPCO said, adding that an AEPCO member has state approval to provide power to the plant.
(THSI counters that there is no binding agreement with the hydrogen facility potentially to be built on site.)
AEPCO says there is no controversy over its willingness to interconnect with THSI, only over whether it must maintain THSI’s position in the queue.
AEPCO questioned whether the public interest is served by allowing a developer to hold an interconnection queue position for more than five years, potentially to the detriment of other developers, for a project that might provide only behind-the-meter power to an industrial end-use off-taker.
AEPCO also laid out multiple reasons it believes FERC lacks jurisdiction to consider the matter. (The power associations made similar arguments. THSI offered counterarguments.)
AEPCO asked FERC to dismiss THSI’s request with prejudice, preserve its right to update the studies and allow it to participate in evidentiary hearings if the matter is not dismissed.
In its proposed order, FERC explains why it does have authority to consider THSI’s request, then explains why it is granting the request.
FERC said it finds the public interest would be served by directing AEPCO to provide interconnection service to THSI because precedent holds that transmission availability enhances competition in power markets, which should result in lower prices for consumers.
A potential future hydrogen facility does not necessitate new interconnection studies, FERC said, because THSI has made no changes to its 300-MW interconnection request.
Nor is there any genuine issue of material fact that would call for an evidentiary hearing, FERC wrote.
Market monitors from all of FERC’s six jurisdictional grid operators have endorsed calls for a NERC-like gas reliability organization.
The monitors sent the commission a letter Oct. 10 endorsing the recommendations from the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) Gas Electric Harmonization Forum, issued in July. (See NAESB Forum Chairs Push for Gas Reliability Organization.)
“In a time of unprecedented transformation, the reliability of the bulk electric system (BES) is increasingly dependent on the reliability of natural gas-fired generators,” the monitors wrote. “As noted in multiple forums, recent winter storm and summer heat events have highlighted that the electric and natural gas systems do not function in an integrated manner when needed most, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives and over $100 billion in economic damage from the 2021 and 2022 winter storms alone.”
The letter was signed by PJM Independent Market Monitor Joe Bowring, SPP Market Monitoring Unit Vice President Keith Collins, CAISO Department of Market Monitoring Executive Director Eric Hildebrandt, ISO-NE Market Monitoring Executive Director David Naughton and Potomac Economics President David Patton, the market monitor for MISO and NYISO.
“We recognize that the report’s primary recommendation is that an optimal solution likely requires federal legislation that creates a NERC-like organization for the natural gas industry,” they said. “However, that outcome is uncertain. Given that uncertainty, we strongly support FERC’s past, current and future efforts to improve the reliability of natural gas-fired generators within the North American BES.”
FERC Chairman Willie Phillips highlighted the letter and its endorsement of the recommendations at the commission’s regular meeting Thursday.
“The primary recommendation of the NAESB report is the establishment of a NERC-like organization for the natural gas industry,” Phillips said. “And I welcome the support of all six independent market monitors, not only for NAESB’s recommendations, but their encouragement that FERC, quote, ‘take actions to use recommendations in this report.’ I could not agree more.”
The market monitors think gas-electric harmonization is a key issue that needs to be addressed, Bowring said in an interview.
“It’s essential to maintaining the reliability of electric power markets as we … transition to more renewables,” Bowring said. “We believe that gas is going to continue to be necessary. And it’s essential that to the extent possible, we get better information, more transparency and more coordination between the two industries.”
While the recommendations are national, Bowring said that they leave enough room for the different regional markets to adapt them to their specific needs.
“There needs to be somewhat different solutions, depending on the market, for sure,” Bowring said.
For instance, PJM currently has a lower level of renewables than most of the ISO/RTOs, but it is facing a very high level of expected coal retirements and that means even more gas will be needed, he said.
Bowring said the most important recommendations from NAESB center on transparency. In PJM, it would benefit to know when pipelines invoke their tariffs to require generators to take the same amount of gas at all hours — which impacts power plant’s ability to ramp up and down — and when they require strict adherence to their nomination schedules, because the gas trading day and power days do not align.
“One of the things that happened during Elliot was that PJM was not aware of these long nomination periods, and therefore they called on resources that couldn’t get gas because they hadn’t nominated it,” Bowring said.
Electric-natural gas harmonization has been a concern for years. Winter Storm Elliot last December was just one of five winter reliability events over the past decade that would have benefited from improved coordination. (See Déjà Vu as FERC, NERC Issue Recommendations over Holiday Outages.)
Although the years of talk have not produced enough changes, Bowring said he was hopeful the momentum around the issue would lead to substantive reforms this time. Dealing with the issue will involve both industries coming together to develop rules that are consistent with their relative incentives.
“The business models are somewhat inconsistent. But there have to be ways to coordinate,” Bowring said. “The idea is not to force anything on the pipelines, or force anything on the generators. But I think it’s in both sides’ interest to coordinate. For whatever reason, it hasn’t happened, and I’m hoping this is a wake-up call to both sides.”
At least 44 California cities now have automated, real-time permitting systems for residential rooftop solar projects, following passage of a state law last year requiring them to adopt a permitting platform such as SolarAPP+.
Senate Bill 379, also known as the Solar Access Act, was passed to reduce approval times and permitting costs for residential solar and solar-plus-storage projects.
Turnaround times for residential solar permits have averaged two to three weeks and can often be longer than 60 days, Lucio Hernandez, energy specialist at the California Energy Commission, said during a CEC business meeting last month.
“That’s a long time to wait,” said Hernandez, who noted that the delays can cause homeowners to cancel their rooftop solar plans.
But with SolarAPP+, which was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), permitting for rooftop solar occurs in an instant.
Under SB 379, California cities with a population of more than 50,000 and counties with a population of more than 150,000 were required to adopt an online, automated permitting platform for residential solar projects by Sept. 30, 2023. Cities with a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 have until Sept. 30, 2024, to comply. Cities with a population of fewer than 5,000 and counties of fewer than 150,000 are exempt.
Implementing SolarAPP+ is one way to comply; permitting software from Symbium or custom in-house software platforms are other potential options.
SB 379 tasked the CEC with collecting solar-permitting data during the transition.
The larger jurisdictions with a Sept. 30, 2023, compliance date include 179 cities and 32 counties, according to a list the CEC provided to NetZero Insider.
As of Sept. 30, 44 cities and nine counties on that list had reported being in compliance with SB 379.
But more local governments may be complying than are shown on the list, CEC spokesperson Michael Ward said. That’s because annual reporting for many of the jurisdictions will start next year, at which time they’ll indicate whether they’ve implemented an automated permitting system and provide data on the number of permits issued. Jurisdictions aren’t required to report their compliance before submitting their annual reports, Ward said.
Varied Reasons for Non-compliance
Dave Rosenfeld, executive director of the Solar Rights Alliance, said reasons vary as to why many California cities with a Sept. 30, 2023, deadline are not yet in compliance. The nonprofit has been tracking California cities’ progress in adopting an automated, instant rooftop solar permitting process.
“Some are close and just dealing with some technical issues,” Rosenfeld told NetZero Insider. “[For] others, it is not clear what the holdup is.”
But more cities and counties are reaching full compliance each week, “so we’re hopeful that’s the trend,” Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld encouraged NREL and the CEC to provide as much technical support to local governments as needed, and urged elected officials to check with their building departments to see if they need help overcoming hurdles to streamlined solar permitting.
The transition to automated solar permitting got a boost from the CEC’s California Automated Permit Processing (CalAPP) grant program, launched in 2022. Cities and counties can apply for grants ranging from $40,000 to $100,000 depending on their population. As of last month, 315 grants totaling $17.5 million had been awarded, with $1.5 million remaining.
CEC Chair David Hochschild said that in contrast to the technology innovation the commission typically funds, the CalAPP money was going toward “administrative innovation.”
“But it’s more significant in many ways,” Hochschild said during the CEC’s business meeting last month. “A lot of projects do fall out because of these kind of delays.”
Data presented during the meeting showed the impact of SolarAPP+.
For example, median review time was about 15 days in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and more than 30 days in Tucson, Ariz. After deploying SolarAPP+, permit turnaround became instant in both cities. (See NREL’s SolarAPP+ Slashes Rooftop Solar Permitting Times.)
‘Extra Prodding’ Needed?
The CEC is aware that many cities are working toward compliance with SB 379, such as through participation in the CalAPP grant program.
But for some jurisdictions, the CEC is “not aware of activity” toward compliance. Those local governments “might need some extra prodding to get on board with SB 379,” according to Ward.
A list of those jurisdictions includes the city of Newport Beach, which had a Sept. 30, 2023, compliance deadline.
Newport Beach spokesperson John Pope said the city went live with SolarAPP+ this month and is now fully compliant with SB 379. A few permits have already been processed.
The CEC was also not aware of compliance activity by San Diego County. County spokeswoman Donna Durckel didn’t answer directly when asked whether the county is in compliance with SB 379.
Durckel said the county has an online process called Accela Citizen Access, in which applicants upload plans for new roof-top solar and battery storage projects. Applicants receive same-day or next-day review, comment or approval in 90 to 95% of cases. For the remaining projects, additional information is needed.
“Each year, on average, we’ve approved over 9,000 rooftop solar permits, offering online submittals and fee waivers, which makes the county of San Diego a leader in this area,” Durckel said.
Staff from the Illinois Commerce Commission last week put their own spin on an analysis showing how much Ameren’s switch to PJM could cost MISO.
ICC staff said a previous study from Charles Rivers Associates (CRA) concluding it would cost Illinois more than $3.3 billion from 2025 to 2034 if Ameren were to leave MISO and join PJM needs more context for the commission to consider. They qualified CRA’s cost analysis with potential benefits that the consulting firm didn’t ponder.
Ameren commissioned CRA to complete the analysis at the direction of the ICC last year.
ICC staff said as a state with a retail access setup, Illinois may be a “better fit” with PJM’s true capacity market than under MISO’s residual capacity auction with “serious design flaws” and “wildly” fluctuating clearing prices. They said MISO’s balancing market design only allows load-serving entities to purchase relatively small quantities of capacity and is best suited to vertically integrated states that “exert more control over generation and explicitly plan to meet their reliability needs,” not for Illinois’ reliance on competitive markets to determine resource expansion.
“Such an auction design is not complementary to Illinois polices and is a detriment to Illinois ratepayers. Staff acknowledges that MISO is taking steps to address issues with its capacity market. However, such efforts are still in the discussion phase and will likely not be implemented for some time,” ICC staff wrote, noting the importance of MISO adopting a sloped demand curve in its auction.
Staff said unless MISO corrects its Planning Resource Auction, it could lead to continued price separation in Southern Illinois’ Zone 4.
ICC staff also said benefits in the CRA study could have been contemplated on a longer-term horizon than 10 years since MISO itself uses 20-year future scenarios to plan transmission.
“Staff now believes that, while reasonable to assess initial impacts, this time frame may not capture all the benefits of new transmission over time and undervalues transmission assets,” staffers wrote. “… If the benefits of transmission are considered over a longer and more realistic time frame, costs that are prohibitively high in the Ameren study could potentially be mitigated.”
ICC staff said the CRA study discounts the reliability risks of Ameren remaining in MISO. They said MISO is set to experience significantly more solar and storage in its generation fleet than PJM. With that portfolio mix, MISO could more easily exhaust reserves during high demand sunrises and sunset periods, they said.
“Overall, the results point toward PJM having a more resilient system as compared to MISO, which would be a benefit in the join PJM case. This is a significant result and the inability of the MISO market to prevent unserved demand may be one of the primary reasons for considering a change in RTO participation,” staff said.
Staff said CRA might be overestimating the impact of increased capacity costs under the PJM market. They said although the PJM market’s sloped demand curve would cause Zone 4 to procure more capacity — at more expensive prices because of PJM’s annual capacity product — the higher capacity prices could incentivize developers to build new generation or owners to delay retirements and ultimately lower capacity prices.
Finally, ICC staff said the study also assumed that because of their interdependence on Ameren, all utilities in MISO’s Zone 4 will either stay in MISO or join PJM. However, staff said it’s not a given that City Water Light and Power and the Southern Illinois Power Cooperative will follow Ameren’s lead.
MISO declined to comment on the ICC staff’s opinion of market shortcomings. The grid operator similarly had no comment when the ICC opened the notice of inquiry.
The five transmission lines in MISO and SPP’s joint targeted interconnection queue (JTIQ) portfolio are among the 58 grid resilience and improvement projects designated to receive a total of $3.46 billion in funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Announcing the awards during a Wednesday press call, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hailed the funding as the “largest-ever investment in the American grid,” which would help to deploy 35 GW of new renewable energy projects — providing a 10% increase in renewable capacity — as well as 400 microgrids. Matching funds to the IIJA awards will bring the total investment to $8 billion, she said.
“Right now, the U.S. electric grid is the largest connected machine in the world. It’s 5.7 million miles of transmission and distribution, and about 55,000 substations; and it needs upgrading, clearly,” Granholm said. With the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act unleashing a “tidal wave of clean energy investment, the grid as it currently sits is not equipped to handle all the new demand. We need it to be bigger; we need it to be stronger. We need it to be smarter to bring all of these new projects online and to meet the president’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035.”
Aimed at improving interregional connections and transfers along the MISO-SPP seams, the JTIQ projects are designated to receive $464 million — the largest single award made — which will put a major dent in the latest revised costs for the portfolio of $1.86 billion. Adjusted for inflation and other rising costs from the original project estimate of $1.1 billion, the revised price tag had raised concerns among stakeholders in the seven states involved: Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. (See JTIQ Portfolio Cost Estimate Nearly Doubles to $1.9B.)
MISO and SPP have been collaborating with the Minnesota Department of Commerce and the Great Plains Institute on the project. MISO has estimated the projects will help to interconnect 28 GW of new, mostly renewable resources.
Maria Robinson, director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, praised the portfolio as a model. “My hope is that by this particular project showing what excellent planning and amazing cooperation and coordination across RTO lines can do that we will see more of those types of projects in future iterations.”
In a joint press release, Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Grace Arnold called the award “a historic opportunity to leverage federal clean energy funds to deliver reliable, affordable and safe energy that is increasingly generated by carbon-free and renewable energy resources.” The JTIQ will “expand our electric grid with new transmission lines and to reduce the burden of costs to utility ratepayers for adding those needed transmission lines,” she said.
Echoing Robinson, David Kelley, SPP vice president of engineering, said, “It’s tremendously exciting to think about what these funds will mean for the SPP and MISO regions, and for our industry. As our organizations worked together with our partners and with the DOE, it’s been our goal not only to create value for people living in our service territories, but also to model effective collaboration that spans the borders of states, utilities and grid operators.”
The program is aimed at enhancing grid reliability and resilience in the face of the increasingly extreme weather caused by climate change, while also funding innovative, “transformative” grid projects.
The $3.5 billion going to the 58 projects represent the first round of the funding, which drew about 700 initial applications, according to a senior administration official. About 300 of those applicants then were invited to submit full proposals.
The funding also will create good-paying jobs, DOE said in a press release, with about three-quarters of the projects partnering with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. All projects also were required to have community benefit plans, a senior administration official added in a Wednesday press teleconference.
A second round of funding should begin accepting new applications before the end of the year, Granholm said. As with other DOE funding announcements, the projects selected still have to go through contract negotiations with the department before the awards are finalized.
The amounts range from $1.1 million to the municipal utility in Naperville, Ill., to install a distributed energy resource management system to $250 million for new transmission lines to connect renewable energy resources on tribal lands east of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains to Portland General Electric’s urban demand centers.
According to DOE, the Oregon project could bring 1,800 MW of clean energy from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation to PGE. The utility will also “deploy an artificial intelligence-enabled, grid-edge computing platform to improve the connection of distributed energy resources, such as solar, as well as informed modeling that can predict pre-outage conditions and assist real-time decisions,” the release said.
Clean energy advocates stressed the effect the funding would have on grid resilience and renewable energy deployment.
“As we learned this summer, a larger grid is a resilient grid, and the funding for planning and coordination from today’s grants will go a long way toward accelerating these efforts,” said John Moore, director of the Sustainable FERC Project at the National Resources Defense Council. The funding is “a critical step in [DOE’s] efforts to expand the capacity of the nation’s transmission system, increase connectivity between regions and add more clean energy.”
“This announcement shows how important building new transmission is to making the transition to a 100% clean energy grid across the country,” said Harrison Godfrey, managing director of Advanced Energy United. “The best use of public funds is to leverage [them] to unlock private sector investment and create new, good jobs across America.”
The Permitting Question
Besides being the largest, the JTIQ award also is the only one for interregional transmission lines, which are widely seen as critical for grid operators to begin interconnecting the 2,000 GW of renewable and storage projects sitting in their queues at present.
Other projects will provide intrastate HVDC lines, such as the Railbelt Innovative Resiliency project in Alaska, which will receive $206.5 million to bolster grid reliability in the state with the addition of an underwater HVDC line and battery energy storage.
Several projects also will deploy grid-enhancing technologies to increase power flows on existing lines. For example, the Electric Power Research Institute is partnering with the Vermont Electric Power Co. on a project that will use a technology called advanced power flow control, which can pull power from congested lines and redirect it to lines with excess capacity. The project grant is $18 million.
Electric cooperatives were well represented in the funding, with a range of projects focused on improving grid resilience in rural areas. In New Mexico, the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative is vulnerable to power outages from wildfire threats, drought and high winds. The co-op will receive $15.4 million to add battery storage and microgrids in key locations so it can, if needed, shut down its grid for public safety power outages to prevent wildfires while still keeping the power on for critical services in remote communities.
During the press call, a reporter asked about obstacles these projects might face with permitting, as any efforts at permitting legislation have ground to a halt with the House of Representatives still without a speaker.
A senior administration official said that, in general, the projects were developed with strong support from their state or local governments and other stakeholders. Many of them also will provide benefits to low-income, disadvantaged communities. A priority for DOE, the official said, was to choose projects that would be able to move forward quickly.
