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December 9, 2022March 20, 2024

GridCONNEXT Digs into Grid-Telecom Convergence

WASHINGTON — The convergence of the electric grid and telecommunications system is inevitable, critical and underway, according to Commonwealth Edison (NASDAQ:EXC) CEO Gil Quiniones.

“There are a lot more intelligent devices that are installed on the grid, aside from integrating renewables, wind [and] solar,” Quinones told an audience of grid professionals at the gridCONNEXT conference, sponsored by the GridWise Alliance. “There are a lot of smart switches, voltage-optimization devices and other systems that are on the grid. Plus, our customers are having more intelligent building electrical systems. So how do you orchestrate [that]? That can only happen when there’s convergence between telecom and the power grid.

“We really need a new operating system and a new set of application software,” Quiniones said. “That’s starting to happen now, but we need to enable the technology.”

Convergence was a key theme at the two-day conference, with panels on Monday digging into the current state of the interfacing of grid and telecom, and utility information technology and operational technology systems.

“A smart grid needs smart communications,” said Chris Guttman-McCabe, chief regulatory and communications officer at Anterix (NASDAQ:ATEX), a broadband company focused on the utility sector. “What we’re seeing is an absolute necessity for broadband by utilities” to respond to a range of new challenges, from cyber and physical security, to the aggressive decarbonization and environmental justice goals a growing number of electric utilities are adopting.

Like Quiniones, he sees a core “need to rethink everything within your purview, including your communications platform.”

Systems convergence is part of the digitization of the grid that has accompanied its transformation from a one-directional system — “generation, transmission, distribution to load,” as Quiniones said — to a bidirectional system, in which the customer meter is an increasingly permeable interface.

ComEd has been “layering fiber on top” of its power system, Quiniones said. “We’re going to be able to control the devices that we have in place, and we’re doubling down on that, in combination with a wireless network. It’s probably the right business model for us and utilities going forward.

“It is important because there has to be system awareness and visibility; situational awareness and visibility,” he said. “There needs to be very fast communication and switching. All those devices need to talk to each other in milliseconds.”

“It’s also a way for us to isolate faults. If there are outages, we can quickly isolate them and keep many of our customers up and running,” he said.

Anterix has developed an ecosystem of software and applications developers working to integrate and leverage communications systems on the grid. One of its partners, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, has developed a system that can “de-energize a broken line before it hits the ground,” Guttman-McCabe said. “That capability wasn’t usable until it was integrated with high-speed, low-latency, dedicated broadband.”

Communications systems have also been an essential part of ComEd’s Bronzeville microgrid project, a community-level microgrid that can island from ComEd’s distribution system in an emergency and trade or share power with another microgrid at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Such projects “need very fast sampling and time-synchronized decision-making,” Quiniones said. “When we integrate more renewables, when we have more electric vehicle charging stations, when we have more heat pumps [and] hot water heaters that are all going to have devices embedded in them that can communicate with the grid, you need a very robust communications system.”

A Safe Place to Innovate

Similarly, Justin Driscoll, interim president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, sees IT/OT convergence as integral to hitting New York’s aggressive decarbonization goals, such as cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 85% by 2050.

“The integration of information technology systems and big data analytics are systematically allowing the digital information world to see, understand and influence the physical, operational world,” Driscoll said in his opening remarks at Monday’s second convergence-themed panel. “When implemented properly, IT/OT convergence can merge business processes, insights and controls into a single, uniform environment by allowing different technologies to integrate and interoperate efficiently as a single, cohesive system. …

“NYPA will take full advantage of technology and advanced analytics from the generator to the end user,” he said. “And this journey enables NYPA and its customers to leverage the full potential of an advanced technology environment in every aspect of the utility industry value chain.”

One example is NYPA’s “enterprise-wide Cybersecurity Awareness Program that spans both IT and OT environments to ensure that cybersecurity is baked into the culture of everything we do,” Driscoll said.

Adrienne Lotto, senior vice president for grid security, technical and operations services at the American Public Power Association, said IT/OT convergence has been an “ongoing journey” for the past decade. Drivers include the changing generation portfolio, integration of distributed energy resources and the evolution of utility business models, she said.

“The business is changing, and as a result we need more and more data about our operating efficiency, creating the controls, understanding the data points and then responding in a coordinated response perspective,” Lotto said.

Looking at the challenges ahead, Lotto said, “All of these data points have data that is feeding into the utility, and how are we going to manage all of that? How are we going to standardize all of that? How do we run analytics to solve all that, and how do we understand all that while our [industry] is growing, changing and advancing?”

Coming from the IT side, Russell Boyer, energy field director for Dell Technologies, said the goal going forward is to create standard or common platforms “that can take that data and turn it into insights so that we can accelerate” progress toward industry targets.

The challenges he sees are the different skillsets of workers on both the IT and OT sides, who historically have not worked together on a regular basis and may be resistant to learning new skills and processes.

“You’ve got to figure out how to create a safe place to do innovation,” Boyer said. “So that everybody [is] on board, all the stakeholders get together and start doing some testing so that they can understand what this process is going to deliver so that they can get to the buy-in and get on board and ultimately be a part of that solution and the innovation that needs to occur.”

A Different Digital Divide

The digitization of the grid has also opened up a new digital divide, said GridWise CEO Wayland. “For me, it’s bigger than internet access,” she said. “It’s about access to the grid that allows the customer to interact with the grid and allows the customer to understand their energy use” and even use their own DERs to participate in wholesale markets under FERC Order 2222.

Bridging that divide was one reason GridWise pushed hard to have funding for broadband expansion included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “The idea that communications are central to the grid and should be part of that infrastructure was not well understood” in Congress, she said.

Of the $65 billion for broadband in the bill, $1 billion is dedicated to “middle-mile” infrastructure, which helps to connect small or remote communities to larger broadband networks. Utilities, and in particular electric cooperatives, are eligible to apply for the middle-mile funds.

In Illinois, the passage of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act last year means ComEd is planning its system by “what’s best for disadvantaged and underserved communities,” Quiniones said.

The utility has been deploying its own fiber networks to help ensure service to remote and underserved communities, and leasing out excess capacity to internet service providers, which can then provide “last-mile” connectivity, he said.

“We’ve actually applied [for] IIJA funding to kind of accelerate our deployment,” Quiniones said. “It’s beyond broadband. We want to make sure that our customers have access to all the other clean energy technologies that are going to be deployed, whether they are DERs or electric vehicle charging stations or just resiliency and reliability.”

Anterix sees broadband as a versatile “Swiss Army knife” for the grid, Guttman-McCabe said. It is “an underpinning for everything that any utility is facing: the need to aggregate and act upon data, the need to be more equitable with [the] distribution of energy opportunities and offerings … the need to bake in cybersecurity instead of bolting it onto your existing, antiquated communications systems,” he said.

“As a utility begins to contemplate digitization of their grid and all the sensors that are there, all of a sudden you can start to recognize cloud-based computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, virtual augmented reality,” Guttman-McCabe said. “And with that comes an incredible range of opportunities for the utility, for customers, for rapid evolution of distributed energy resources.”

December 9, 2022June 14, 2023

MISO Staff Preview New LRTP Projects with Board

ORLANDO, Fla. — MISO staff on Tuesday gave their board a first look at its concept map of proposed projects under the second phase of its long-range transmission plan (LRTP), saying the new portfolio could cost up to $30 billion.

Stakeholders reacted with disbelief over the portfolio’s possible magnitude when MISO transmission planners unveiled the map last week. (See ‘Conceptual’ Tx Planning Map Troubles MISO Members.)

Aubrey Johnson, vice president of system planning, said the grid operator isn’t “married to” the hypothetical network of 345-kV and 765 kV-lines and an HVDC line across Lake Michigan, but engineers “needed a place to begin work from.”

MISO’s MTEP 22 report cover | MISO

“This is an initial draft,” he said Tuesday during the board’s System Planning Committee meeting. “We view this as a directional starting point.”

Johnson reminded board members that in early 2021, staff warned them that it could require up to $100 billion in new transmission over the next few years for members to achieve their renewable generation additions and carbon-cutting goals. They said the first LRTP, based on the most conservative transmission planning future, could cost up to $30 billion. However, the resulting portfolio cost a little more than $10 billion. (See MISO Board Approves $10B in Long-range Tx Projects.)

“The billion-dollar question, I’m sure, is what it might take. This [portfolio] could be anywhere from $20 to $30 billion to achieve what we think is necessary” under MISO’s moderate second planning future, Johnson said.

Board members worried aloud that the RTO isn’t refreshing its future load assumptions as often as it does with generation predictions.

Alliant Energy’s Mitch Myhre, representing transmission-dependent utilities, said his sector was alarmed by the second LRTP portfolio’s potential scope and cost. He said MISO should consider non-transmission alternatives, synchronous condensers, and other transmission-enhancing technologies under the second LRTP plan.

Southern Renewable Energy Association’s Andy Kowalczyk asked MISO leadership and board members to consider moving up LRTP planning for MISO South. The grid operator is looking at the Midwest region in the first two of four LRTP portfolios.

MISO’s 2022 interconnection queue cycle currently holds 956 generation project submissions totaling 171 GW. More than 96% of those projects are renewable or storage. (See MISO Insists it can Handle Record-setting Interconnection Queue.)

“What sets this year apart is just the record number of requests,” MISO’s Andy Witmeier said.

The project submittals are a 128% increase over 2021’s 77 GW of nameplate capacity submissions. Witmeier said that the Inflation Reduction Act’s approval and MISO’s first LRTP portfolio spurred the increase in generation plans.

MISO has released the first two requests for proposals associated with its first LRTP portfolio: a 345-kV line on the Indiana-Michigan state border and the Denny-to-Fairport 345-kV on the Iowa-Missouri border.

MTEP 22 Winds Down

Board members on Thursday unanimously cleared the way for work to begin on MISO’s $4.3 billion, 382-project 2022 Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP 22). (See MISO’s $4B MTEP 22 Clears 1st Board Vote Despite Criticisms.)

No members took advantage of a public comment period before the vote on the annual plan.

Since MTEP 03, $32 billion in transmission investment has gone into service; another $23 billion remains under development, including the first LRTP.

With MTEP 22 in the rearview mirror, expedited project submittals under MTEP 23 are already accumulating.

Entergy submitted two expedited review projects for MTEP 23 before MTEP 22 was formally approved. MISO found no harm in Entergy Texas’s work on two 138-kV substations in East Texas to accommodate industrial load growth. The utility will commence with a customer’s new, $28 million substation and $10 million in upgrades to another substation, adding a 12 MW load capability and 25.1 MVAr capacitor bank.

December 9, 2022June 14, 2023

Duke Completes Power Restoration After NC Substation Attack

Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) has completed restoration efforts for the 45,000 customers in Moore County, N.C., who lost power over the weekend after unknown attackers damaged two substations with rifles, and the utility is now offering up to $25,000 to help catch those responsible, it said in a statement on Thursday.

The state and county have each matched Duke’s offer, according to a statement North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper released on Wednesday, meaning that up to $75,000 are available for information leading to the culprits’ arrest. Meanwhile, the FBI also issued a release seeking information on the incident.

The restoration went more quickly than expected; on Monday, Duke was still estimating that it would need until Thursday to bring all customers back online. (See Duke: NC Outages from Attacks May Last Until Thursday.) Duke spokesperson Jeff Brooks told RTO Insider in an email that service was restored “to all customers capable of receiving power” by 6 p.m. Wednesday, more than 24 hours earlier than anticipated.

But as Moore County’s government and businesses returned to normal Wednesday night, the threat of violence against the bulk power system remained on investigators’ minds after shots were fired near Duke’s Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway, S.C. According to the incident report by the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office, Duke employees working outside the facility heard shots fired ab 4:30 p.m.; they then saw a car driving away with a man hanging out the window holding a rifle.

Duke Energy substations (FBI) Content.jpg

The Duke Energy substations in Carthage (left) and West End, N.C., that unidentified attackers shot on Dec. 3, leading to the loss of power for around 45,000 customers in Moore County. | FBI

Deputies reported finding shell casings on the road, but in an area where the hydro plant could not be seen. When they went farther down the road in the direction the employees said the car had driven from, the plant was “extremely visible and easily accessible,” but no shell casings were found in this area.

The Sheriff’s Office said that it is conducting a joint investigation with the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI in light of the Moore County incident. However, Sheriff Lee Boan emphasized that police currently have “no reason to believe this shooting incident has anything to do with an attack on the hydro station.”

Duke said that no injuries or property damage are known to have occurred from the Ridgeway shooting, and no outages were reported either. The utility said it is cooperating “closely” with the FBI on the investigation and “will leave it to investigators to classify or compare the nature of the incident at this time.”

No Culprits Identified in NC Outages

The Moore County outages began around 7 p.m. Saturday night near the town of Carthage and quickly spread through most of the county. Sheriff’s deputies and Duke personnel discovered “extensive damage” to two substations caused by multiple shots from firearms; the FBI on Thursday identified the substations as being located in Carthage and West End, about 10 miles apart; one resident living near the West End substation told local media he heard about 20 shots that night.

As of Thursday law enforcement officials had reported no suspects in the North Carolina attacks. Investigators are reportedly focusing on bullets and casings found near the substations in hopes of identifying the types of rifles used.

Brooks said Duke is aware that the outages have been “challenging [and] unsettling” for the utility’s customers. He emphasized that Duke maintains “multiple layers of physical and electronic security, as well as people and processes that work together to … restore power when disruptions occur.”

“Security is an evolutionary process, and we are always working to improve our strategy and stay ahead of the next threat, whether it be weather, physical or cyber in nature,” Brooks added. “We will take learnings from this incident and apply it to our security strategy going forward. And our ongoing grid improvement strategy focuses heavily on strengthening the grid to make it more resistant to outages, and more resilient through the use of automated restoration processes, self-healing technology and a comprehensive outage response plan, to restore power faster when disruptions occur.”

December 9, 2022

MISO System Operations ‘Uneventful’ During Fall

ORLANDO, Fla. — MISO said its system encountered “moderate fall weather that produced minimal operating challenges” this year, encountering rough patches only when unseasonably warm weather clashed with the generator maintenance season.

“The beauty of this fall is that it was wholly uneventful,” J.T. Smith, the RTO’s executive director of market operations, told the Board of Directors during a Markets Committee meeting Tuesday.

Demand averaged 71 GW during the season, peaking at 107 GW. MISO averaged 72 GW during the fall of 2021 and had a 98-GW peak.

The grid operator has gone more than a year without a maximum generation event. In October, it was forced to issue a capacity advisory and order conservative operations for its South region when maintenance outages dovetailed with a late heat wave. It also issued a capacity advisory and hot weather alert in September for its Central region.

MISO’s generation fleet, much of it aging thermal resources, averaged about 53 GW of daily derates and planned and unplanned during the season. That was in line with last year’s average of 54 GW. The grid operator has a little more than 160 GW in accredited capacity.

MISO set a record for wind output at 24.2 GW in late, blowing past the earlier mark of 23.6 GW recorded in January.

Smith said staff continues to work on its unit commitment process by improving its optimal dispatch calculator. Independent Market Monitor David Patton has said MISO often made resource commitments that appear unnecessary during the year.

The grid operator is anticipating a 102-GW system peak in January under typical winter conditions. That would jump to 109 GW should an arctic blast descend on the footprint. (See MISO: Diminished Emergency Possibilities this Winter.)

A January cold snap may have MISO “leaning on imports or walking into” emergency steps to call up its load-modifying resources, Smith said. He predicted active winter storm patterns in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois that could potentially ice over transmission lines and wind turbines.

Smith said staff continues to monitor developments on the nation’s railway system, even after Congress averted a rail strike last week. He said coal production and deliveries remain strained and that an unstable supply chain of chemicals to scrub emissions is also a point of concern.

Director Nancy Lange observed that she wasn’t hearing members’ anxiety or the urgent fuel supply warnings MISO issued ahead of last winter.

“We are seeing less conservation of coal right now, indicating [operators] are more comfortable with their current supplies,” Smith said. “I’m not as concerned as I was last year over procurement.”

Patton agreed that coal conservation is ebbing across the footprint as winter approaches, signaling confidence in fuel supplies.

During a Technology Committee meeting Tuesday, staff reported they encountered a software defect in September that caused a process to fail within its energy management system. They said the defect was caused by too many input constraints, exceeding system capacity, and MISO was forced to transfer critical systems to its backup data center. The vendor managing the software has since come up with a patch to increase the software’s constraint capacity, the RTO said.

December 8, 2022June 14, 2023

FERC-DOE Technical Conference Considers New Standards for Supply Chain Threats

WASHINGTON — Cybersecurity threats in the supply chain have evolved since FERC directed NERC to develop standards covering them in 2016, but there was no consensus on whether the rules need to be updated at a technical conference Wednesday.

FERC and the Department of Energy jointly hosted the event at the commission’s headquarters, just days after a physical attack on two Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) substations in North Carolina. (See Duke: NC Outages from Attacks May Last Until Thursday.)

Puesh Kumar, director of DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) | FERC

“As we saw last weekend in North Carolina, this isn’t really necessarily an academic exercise, it’s a real exercise,” FERC Chairman Richard Glick said. “There are people out there, whether they be people here in the United States or people around the world, obviously governments and so on, that are out there trying to do damage to the grid.”

Glick expressed support for new critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards, saying the supply chain threat has evolved and become more serious over time. FERC approved NERC’s supply chain standard in 2018, with updates in 2021. (See FERC OKs Updated Supply Chain Standards.)

Puesh Kumar, director of DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), said cyber threats are compounding supply chain challenges “from COVID and where the global economy is right now.”

Counterintelligence officials have seen an increase in the number of attacks coming from the supply chain, said Jeanette McMillian, assistant director for the Supply Chain and Cyber Directorate of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Her office, which falls under the Director of National Intelligence, oversees providing outreach to private sector entities that are at risk from foreign intelligence operations.

Jeanette McMillian, National Counterintelligence and Security Center | FERC

The threats can hide in the “noise of the supply chain,” whether it is operating normally like in the SolarWinds attack in 2020, or in the chaos of cyberattacks, said McMillian.

Thousands of federal and private systems were breached when they updated SolarWinds’ Orion network management software after it was hit by a Trojan horse-style attack by suspected Russian hackers, according to the Government Accountability Office.

While new standards generally involve responding to past incidents, McMillian said her office can be more proactive by sharing information on the latest threats through DOE and other agencies that work with critical infrastructure.

Manny Cancel, CEO of NERC’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) | FERC

The federal government has increased information sharing in recent years as barriers have been lowered, said NERC Senior Vice President Manny Cancel, the CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center. But mandatory CIP standards have also helped ensure that the industry has a good baseline of security.

“The CIP standards help a great deal in terms of protecting us,” Cancel said. “When you go back to the SolarWinds compromise … there really was no compromise in the electricity sector. I think a lot of that had to do with some of the protections we put in place with the NERC CIP standards.”

One area that needs to be looked at is how the standards should be applied to different classes of assets, he added. They have different levels of protection for high, medium and low risk assets.

Glick questioned whether those three categories should be scrapped, noting that a cyberattack could originate at a lower risk site and spread to infrastructure that has a much bigger impact on the grid.

Mara Winn, deputy director of DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) | FERC

“You have to assume at this point that something is going to go wrong,” said CESER Deputy Director Mara Winn. “Whether it is a natural disaster, whether it is a direct attack, something will go wrong. And making sure you spend the time in advance to really analyze that resiliency planning [is important] so that you can prioritize.”

The interconnectivity between lower risk systems and higher risk ones needs to be analyzed to ensure that it does not lead to major, cascading problems, she added.

Some value exists in classifying assets by their risk profiles, but because of the hyperconnectivity in cyberspace the spread of risks from lower profile systems is inevitable, said Marty Edwards, deputy chief technical officer for cybersecurity firm Tenable.

“I think what we need to take a look at is having a certain baseline standard of care that applies across the board and then look at [whether] you have to embellish it in some of the higher criticality implementations,” he said.

Marty Edwards, Tenable | FERC

While cybersecurity issues in the supply chain and elsewhere are constantly evolving, several power industry witnesses argued FERC and NERC should not be overly prescriptive in any future standards.

“We know that the standard development process is not a rapid, overnight process,” said Jeffrey Sweet, director of security assessments for American Electric Power (NASDAQ:AEP). “It takes time, and so we have to have that flexibility to be able to respond to the threats that we’re seeing every day. And I believe the standards give us that flexibility.”

Industry responsiveness to those standards could be improved through other ways, such as the cybersecurity incentive policy proposed by FERC in September, he said. (See FERC Reluctantly Proposes Cybersecurity Incentives.)

“Are the standards sufficient? Yes, they are,” said Edison Electric Institute Senior Vice President of Security and Preparedness Scott Aaronson. “They create a very solid foundation on which we can ensure there is a minimum baseline level of security.”

But the industry needs to go above and beyond the standards to protect high risk assets, Aaronson said. That includes ensuring resilience of the power system so it can quickly bounce back from any attacks that do succeed, he said.

Jeffrey Sweet, AEP | FERC

“I think that absolutely we need to consider updating the reliability standards we talked about earlier as they relate to the supply chain,” said Glick. “Clearly, things have changed, and we need to act more quickly. I know that the NERC standards process doesn’t necessarily lead to acting quickly, but it’s important that we start considering that now.”

In an afternoon session, Dick Brooks, co-founder and lead software engineer for Reliable Energy Analytics, cautioned against new standards, saying the industry already faces a “tsunami” from the Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum M-22-18 on federal agencies’ software supply chain risk management and the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022, which requires entities in energy and other critical infrastructures to notify CISA of cyber incidents and ransomware payments within 72 hours.

“It would be a good time to consider … what’s coming out of that before we initiate any new standards development.” Brooks said. “Because we wouldn’t want to take the risk of going down one path and finding out that this new law is really sending us in a different direction.”

December 8, 2022December 12, 2023

NERC RSTC Briefs: Dec. 6-7, 2022

Members Approve IRPS SARs

At its final meeting of 2022, NERC’s Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) voted to endorse two standard authorization requests (SAR) focused on inverter-based resources (IBR), while calling for comments on two more SARs focused on distributed energy resources (DER).

The first two SARs originated in NERC’s Inverter-based Resources Performance Subcommittee (IRPS), which submitted them for comment at the RSTC’s last meeting in September. With the full committee’s endorsement, the SARs — modified in response to members’ feedback — will be sent to NERC’s Standards Committee for approval so that work can begin on the standards.

One SAR would update reliability standard EOP-004-4 (Event Reporting), which identifies the events that utilities must report to regional entities or other responsible authorities. The IRPS identified the standard as having “relatively large generator loss size thresholds” that could leave IBR-related events unreported, as well as “language more suitable for synchronous generation.” The new SAR proposes to lower the generator loss threshold and clarify the language to include IBRs as well.

For the other SAR, IRPS proposed to create a new standard that would require generator owners (GO) to “identify, analyze, and develop mitigations for any abnormal performance issues identified,” while creating requirements for GOs’ mitigation plans to meet. The new standard would also give balancing authorities and reliability coordinators the ability to identify potential issues using their own monitoring capabilities.

The SPIDERWG’s SARs are at an earlier stage of development and not ready for submission to the Standards Committee, the working group’s chair Shayan Rizvi told the RSTC. They would modify FAC-001-4 (Facility Interconnection Requirements) and FAC-002-4 (Facility Interconnection Studies) to require more consideration of potential reliability impacts from DERs before they are integrated to the bulk power system. The SARs will be open for comment by RSTC members through Jan. 13, 2023.

SPIDERWG also brought a reliability guideline for developing parameters for NERC’s DER_A model, as well as a white paper on battery energy storage systems and how they can be incorporated into DER models. The RSTC approved both measures.

White Paper Sparks Debate

Another white paper — this one related to cybersecurity for DERs — led to a lengthy debate as members suggested one of its recommendations was not appropriate for the setting.

The white paper aimed to provide guidance to industry on cybersecurity for DERs and DER aggregators, including suggestions for “certification and standards support” by industry. But several attendees pushed back against a recommendation that the RSTC and its stakeholder groups “identify possible reliability and security risks these entities could pose if compromised.”

Kayla Messamore of Evergy pointed out that “there’s a lot of activity ongoing in that space already,” and questioned whether the recommendation would lead to confusion among industry stakeholders trying to navigate a complex topic. Dominion Energy’s Sean Bodkin added that while there was merit to the recommendation, it should be made in another venue.

“I think … we need to get out in front of [this], but I also have to agree with what Kayla said, that this is not the appropriate place to do it,” Bodkin said. “This is a technical document, not a document about registration or about getting out in front of what would be a NERC initiative to change the registration criteria.”

However, an amendment to strip the controversial language from the white paper failed, and the document received the RSTC’s approval as originally written.

Future Meetings

Despite the committee’s recent return to in-person meetings — the September event was held at the Midwest Reliability Organization’s offices in Minnesota — RSTC leadership announced that most of next year’s meetings will be virtual in some form. (See NERC RSTC Briefs: Sept. 13-14, 2022.)

At a recent meeting of the RSTC executive committee, leaders decided that only the first meeting of 2023 will be fully in-person, Secretary Stephen Crutchfield told participants. That gathering will occur March 21-23. The location is yet to be finalized, but Crutchfield said management aims to hold it in Tampa, Florida. NERC’s headquarters in Atlanta will serve as a backup.

For the June 20-22 meeting, the RSTC will gather at the MRO offices again for a hybrid session in which only members will meet in person, with other observers attending virtually. The committee’s Sept. 19-21 meeting will follow the same format, while the final meeting of the year Dec. 6-7 will be entirely virtual. The March, June and September sessions will be three days long because of the inclusion of an informational session on the first day.

The RSTC’s meeting plan for next year is similar to that of NERC’s Board of Trustees, which announced at its most recent meeting in November that it would hold only two in-person meetings next year, with the others to be either hybrid or fully virtual. (See “Board Makes Meeting Changes Official,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Nov. 15-16, 2022.) NERC management said the schedule is intended to reduce the cost of attending meetings for stakeholders.

December 8, 2022December 31, 2023

Biden Orders Cut to Federal Building Emissions

The White House Council on Environmental Quality on Wednesday issued a federal building performance standard requiring agencies to cut energy use and electrify equipment and appliances in 30% of their building space by 2030.

The Department of Energy simultaneously proposed new standards limiting on-site emissions from new and newly renovated federal properties. Beginning in 2025, new buildings and buildings undergoing major renovations would have to limit emissions to 90% of those recorded at federal properties in 2003.

The federal government owns 300,000 buildings.

The new rules come one year after President Biden issued an executive order announcing the goal to achieve federal energy sustainability while jumpstarting clean energy industries.

The administration’s long-term target is to achieve net-zero emissions at all federal buildings by 2045, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 1.86 million tons and methane emissions by 22,800 tons.

“Ridding pollution from our buildings and adopting clean electricity are some of the most cost-effective and future-oriented solutions we have to combat climate change,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a release. “For the first time ever, DOE is establishing a firm timetable to reduce the government’s carbon footprint in new and existing federal facilities — ensuring the Biden-Harris administration is leading by example in the effort to reach the nation’s ambitious climate goals.”

DOE will solicit comments on its proposal in the coming weeks and will host a webinar on Jan. 5 explaining in greater detail the scope of the rule and proposed timeline.

December 8, 2022

ERCOT Opens Curtailment Program to Crypto Load

ERCOT has created a voluntary curtailment program for bitcoin miners and other large flexible loads that it says will reduce power use during periods of high demand, even as the cryptocurrency industry shows signs of an implosion.

The grid operator said the curtailment program is primarily intended for large flexible customers, but any large customer directly connected to a transmission service provider’s facility can participate, subject to approval by ERCOT. Registration began Tuesday and the program is expected to go live in January.

The program is temporary until ERCOT establishes a long-term set of rules of for the large loads. The grid operator created a Large Flexible Load Task Force earlier this year to develop policy recommendations to integrate the loads. The group has been considering policies related to planning, markets, operations, and large load interconnection processes and reviewing related market rules.

Woody Rickerson, ERCOT vice president of system planning, said the goal is to work with large customers to support system reliability.

“These customers are large power users but have the flexibility and willingness to reduce their energy use quickly, if needed,” Rickerson said in a press release.

Under the program, ERCOT will request curtailment of crypto mining consumption when physical responsive capability declines after non-spinning reserve service has been deployed, but before emergency response service is called on.

Program participants will not be considered market participants and are subject to the grid operator’s confirmation. ERCOT said it will not refer participants to the Public Utility Commission if they fail to comply with any curtailment request under the program.

ERCOT currently has about 1.5 GW of crypto mining load and said in August it was studying 17 GW of load from the sector. By November, 37 GW of crypto load were requesting to be interconnected. (See “Staff Studying 17 GW of Crypto Load,” ERCOT Board of Directors Briefs: Aug. 16, 2022.)

“Not all of that will be constructed, but the challenge is how much will be there in three to four years,” Jeff Billo, ERCOT director of operations planning, told the grid operator’s Board of Directors in August.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former interim CEO Brad Jones have both welcomed miners with open arms, pointing to their ability to quickly shut down should ERCOT need their capacity to meet demand. Jones said earlier this year that crypto offers a “fantastic” resource and said miners are effective in balancing supply and demand.

“We need to work with these folks to bring them in,” Jones told the Gulf Coast Power Association in April. At the time, he expected ERCOT’s crypto load to reach 5 GW in two years.

“I see that as a positive, but we’ve got to think about some policy issues,” he said. (See “Jones: Will Stay as Interim CEO,” Overheard at GCPA’s 2022 Spring Conference.)

ERCOT’s flexible load task force, having agreed on some high-level concepts, has paused until January. That gives staff time to develop language for protocol changes necessary to accommodate the large loads, said Longhorn Power’s Bob Wittmeyer, the group’s vice chair.

ERCOT pays industrial users to shut down during tight conditions. The grid operator’s low wholesale energy prices have also been a draw for crypto miners, but they have been rising recently.

The bankruptcy of FTX, a $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange, has sent shivers through the industry. The financial losses, criminal investigations and skepticism in Washington, D.C. have cast further gloom.

December 8, 2022

Manchin Presses Permitting Proposal Excluded from Defense Bill

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) released the revised text of his controversial permitting legislation Wednesday after congressional leaders refused to include it in a must-pass defense authorization bill.

Environmental groups and Democratic legislators celebrated news that the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would not include Manchin’s proposal, which would accelerate permitting of energy and mineral infrastructure projects.

“Thanks to the hard-fought persistence and vocal opposition of environmental justice communities all across the country, the #DirtyDeal has finally been laid to rest,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement Wednesday. “House Democrats can now close out the year having made historic progress on climate change without this ugly asterisk. Of course, we still have much more work to do to bring justice to those communities who are continuing to bear the brunt of climate change, but I’m at least glad we’re not taking a step backwards today.”

It was the second setback for Manchin, who withdrew an earlier version of the bill from a measure to fund the government in September. The legislation had angered both Republicans upset with Manchin’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act and Democrats, who saw it as a concession to the oil and gas industry. (See Manchin Permitting Package Cut from Spending Bill.)

But Manchin, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, vowed Wednesday to offer the Building American Energy Security Act of 2022 as an amendment to the NDAA. The House is expected to consider the defense spending bill as soon as Thursday.

“Failing to pass the bipartisan, comprehensive energy permitting reform that our country desperately needs is not an acceptable option,” Manchin said. “As our energy security becomes more threatened every day, Americans are demanding Congress put politics aside and act on commonsense solutions to solve the issues facing us.”

The bill would guarantee permit approvals for the Mountain Valley Pipeline and give FERC enhanced electric transmission siting authority. Manchin said his proposal would accelerate permitting “without bypassing environmental laws or community input.”

But more than 750 environmental justice groups, environmental organizations and others urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a letter Dec. 5 to reject the bill, saying it would “fast track fossil fuel infrastructure, restrict judicial review, and erode the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).”

2-Year Deadline

Manchin’s bill would set a two-year deadline for projects that require a full environmental impact statement and reviews from more than one federal agency and a one-year deadline for projects requiring an environmental assessment.

It also would reduce the time community members have to file legal challenges to 150 days. Manchin would require federal district and appeals courts to randomly assign judges for such challenges “to avoid the appearance of favoritism or bias.”

Project applicants would have the right to petition a court for an order requiring any agency that has missed a NEPA or final permit issuance deadline to make a decision within 90 days. It also would require courts to consider such petitions and other litigation of energy project permits on an expedited basis.

It would also seek to close loopholes to bypass deadlines and to reduce permitting workloads by setting page limits on environmental reviews.

The president would be required to designate 25 energy projects of “strategic national importance” for priority federal review, including projects for critical minerals, fossil fuels (including biofuel), non-fossil fuels (including storage), carbon capture, hydrogen and electric transmission.

Impact on FERC

Manchin’s bill would maintain the current FERC backstop authority over electric transmission, which gives states one year to issue, deny, or not act on a permit before the commission can issue a construction permit. It would eliminate the requirement that the Department of Energy make a finding that the project is in the national interest before FERC could act.

Eminent domain could be exercised on state land.

Manchin said the revised bill also amends cost allocation language to address concerns that FERC could otherwise consider direct jobs and property tax revenue when allocating cost of a project.

The Washington Post reported that Manchin’s refusal to schedule a confirmation hearing for FERC Chair Richard Glick, whom President Biden nominated for a second term, was undermining efforts to increase electric transmission. (See Glick’s FERC Tenure in Peril as Manchin Balks at Renomination Hearing.)

“Manchin holding up Glick’s reappointment seriously calls into question whether he even thinks the transmission provisions in the [permitting] bill are necessary or important,” Howard Crystal, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Energy Justice Program, told the Post. “Maybe the fossil fuel provisions in that bill are the things that Manchin really cares about.”

A White House spokeswoman said the administration continues “to hope our FERC nomination can move this year.”

Manchin would give FERC jurisdiction to regulate hydrogen under the Natural Gas Act, while ensuring that existing interstate hydrogen facilities would be grandfathered and permitted to continue operations. It would also clarify that FERC would not be given authority to require natural gas pipelines to be built or modified to also transport hydrogen. (See Lawyers, Industry Debate Path for Hydrogen Regulation.)

Adding the bill to the NDAA would likely require 60 votes in the Senate — an unlikely prospect with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissing the bill as “permitting reform in name only.”

“Potential defections by between six and eight Senate Democrats could leave a gap that outstrips GOP support, especially if Republicans view House control next year as leverage for deeper reform,” said ClearView Energy Partners.

December 8, 2022

NJ BPU Approves Rules for Grid Solar Program

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) on Wednesday approved rules for a competitive utility-scale solar incentive program designed to nearly double the amount of solar capacity installed in the state a year.

The Competitive Solar Incentive (CSI) program will require interested developers to submit projects in one of five categories, each of which will award incentives at a rate determined by a competitive process in which developers submit bids on the minimum incentive they will accept to undertake their planned project.

The five categories are: basic grid supply; grid supply on a built environment; grid supply on contaminated sites and landfills; net-metered nonresidential projects above 5 MW; and storage paired with solar.

The five-member board’s unanimous approval of the program concludes its revamp of its solar incentive program, which in the past stimulated a dramatic growth in solar capacity installation but drew criticism that it cost ratepayers too much. The new program, with its reduced incentives, have drawn criticism from solar developers that the subsidies are too small to stimulate growth, especially as supply chain issues and other problems have pushed up the price of materials. (See Solar Industry Pushes for Bigger Incentives from NJ Program.)

The BPU shaped the CSI rules after six public hearings on different aspects of the proposed rules that attracted more than 130 registrants. The BPU expects to open the first solicitation on Feb. 1, 2023.

“For many types of projects, the CSI program will provide incentives for the first time in New Jersey,” according to the BPU order outlining the program. “There has been some evidence of pent-up demand for larger-scale solar development.”

Before voting to approve the program, BPU President Joseph Fiordaliso said that the state in 2001 had just six solar installations, compared to more than 160,000 installed projects today.

“This is just another step of our unwavering support of the solar industry here in the state of New Jersey,” Fiordaliso said. “Not only are we significantly increasing the amount of solar we purchase, we also expect to see significantly lower costs to the ratepayers.”

Commissioner Bob Gordon called it “a new … and even more exciting chapter in our development of solar in this state.”

‘Record Year’

The CSI program is the second part of the state’s Solar Successor Incentive (SuSI) program, which was approved in July 2021. The first part, the Administratively Determined Incentive (ADI) program, took effect immediately and provided incentives at rates set by the BPU to residential, community solar, and net metered non-residential projects of five MW and less.

The board also approved a measure Wednesday to amend the ADI program, reallocating incentive funds to provide 100 MW of additional capacity for residential projects because the 150 MW allocated in the program will soon be exhausted.

“We’re seeing a record year as far as residential solar,” Fiordaliso said. “I attribute a lot of this to the fact that obviously, the developers are out there pushing this because it is money, but also [to] the fact that our marketing campaign alerted an awful lot of residents in the state of New Jersey that we are doing solar, and how solar can benefit them insofar as their energy bill is concerned.”

The additional incentive capacity for residential projects was moved from two other project categories in the ADI program, with 70 MW coming from a category supporting landfills, brownfields or areas of historic fill, which had attracted only one project applicant since the program was opened a year ago. The BPU pulled another 30 MW from a nonresidential project segment, in which applications to date have only consumed about 20% of the available capacity.

Capacity Goals

The development of the CSI program is part of the state’s effort to reach ambitious solar goals set out in Gov. Phil Murphy’s Energy Master Plan, and state law. They call for New Jersey to install 5.2 GW of capacity by 2025, add another 7 GW by 2030 and reach 17.2 GW by 2035. State law requires the solar generated power to account for 50% of the state’s electricity by 2030.

With 4.2 GW of capacity in place as of October, the state could reach the 2025 goal. It installed 356,882 kW of capacity in the first 10 months of the year, a figure that is 5% higher than the installed capacity for all of 2021. Still, it is far lower than the 750 MW/year of installed capacity that the BPU has set as a target.

The BPU believes that competitively awarded incentives will both protect ratepayers, by incentivizing projects at the “lowest incentive contribution,” and also help developers.

“The fixed, long-term and guaranteed nature of the incentive provides a relatively low-risk incentive structure for developers, thereby encouraging investment of private capital,” the board’s order outlining the rules states.

By structuring the program into five categories, the program will “ensure that a range of competitive solar project types are able to participate despite potentially different project cost profiles,” the order says.

Protected Land

The program will award the largest share of the capacity — 140 MW — to the basic grid supply category. Grid supply on built environment will account for 80 MW; and grid supply on contaminated sites and landfill will account for 40 MW, as will net-metered nonresidential projects above 5 MW. Solar-plus-storage projects will account for 160 MWh.

The rules also set out project siting requirements to protect farmland, natural spaces and other valued land, which apply to not only projects seeking BPU incentives under the program, but all “grid supply solar installations, as well as nonresidential net-metered solar installations with a capacity greater than 5 MW.”

“This requirement will allow the board to track such projects on a nondiscriminatory basis, while also ensuring that non-incentivized projects intending to utilize the land they have reserved do so in a timely manner and are not hoarding available space or otherwise acting in an anticompetitive manner,” the board’s order says.

The guidelines were shaped using stakeholder input provided in two public hearings on a special straw proposal on the issues. New Jersey, like other states, is facing increasing pressure on open space and farmland from solar developers seeking project sites, as well as from housing and warehouse developers, sparking concern that farmland especially may be lost. (See NJ Tries to Balance Solar Growth vs. Farmland Protection.)

The rules prohibit the siting of solar projects on several types of land, among them: land preserved by funds in the state Green Acres program, which awards funds to create parkland and natural spaces; in forest areas in the state’s pinelands area; and on prime agricultural soils and soils of statewide importance.” However, the rules allow developers to seek a waiver from the prohibition in certain circumstances.