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October 9, 2024

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BOEM DEIS Sparks Sharp Divide on NJ OSW Project

The draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on New Jersey’s first offshore wind project, Ocean Wind 1, drew more than 50 speakers at two hearings this month, offering no consensus on the report’s merits but underscoring the deep division between project supporters and opponents.

The bulk of the speakers at the online forums held on July 14 and 21 cited few specifics from BOEM’s 1,408-page report, instead offering often vigorous perspectives on whether the 1,100-MW, 98-turbine wind farm planned for a site 15 miles off Atlantic City should go ahead.

The DEIS, which BOEM released on June 17, found that Ocean Wind 1 would likely not have a major impact on most of the 19 environmental and related categories scrutinized. But the report also found that the construction and installation, operations and maintenance, and eventual decommissioning of the project could have a major impact on marine navigation and vessel traffic. (See BOEM Draft EIS Finds Potential Major Impacts from 1st NJ OSW Project.) About 140 people attended the forum Wednesday.

Clean Ocean Action, a nonprofit environmental organization that protects marine life, urged the federal agency to extend its public input period by 60 days to allow a more thorough analysis of the report. It also urged BOEM to approve only a pilot offshore wind project to allow the impact to be evaluated before committing to the portfolio of projects under development.

“Clean Ocean Action is not opposed to offshore wind, but the ocean deserves protection,” Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, told the bureau July 14. “We are very concerned, and we have many questions.”

Among them, she said, are: What will be the impact on the ocean from its “massive industrialization” by wind projects? How would it “undermine the ocean’s ability to buffer climate change”? Will the area lose local seafood resources? And what are the “long-term consequences” of the projects?

“Do we really understand and know what we’re doing?” asked Zipf, one of four Clean Ocean Action speakers at the hearing. “The answer, we believe, is ‘no.’”

Property owners from Jersey Shore towns that face the planned wind farm site also spoke vigorously against the plan, fearing it would ruin the view and the atmosphere of the shore communities.

Joan-Marie Ebert, who said she owns a second home with her husband in Ocean City on the Jersey Shore, said they only recently learned about the wind project, which was approved in 2019, by accident. She said most Ocean City homeowners are also not well aware of the project because their properties are second homes, and they live out of state.

“Nobody knows about Ocean Wind. It is alarming to me that a project of this scale and scope and size with impact to our coastal communities is being pushed through so aggressively,” said Ebert, who spoke at both hearings. “My husband and I are not opposed to wind energy. However, 900-foot turbines, 98 of them with Ocean Wind 1, placed 15 miles off the coast, and three substations, will produce a dominant impact on the beach view.”

Supporters

Project opponents, however, were heavily outnumbered by environmental and business groups and other project supporters, who cited the need to move quickly to combat the growing threat of climate change, and the economic benefits and job creation that would come from the projects.

“I understand the fear of the unknown or uncertain,” James Lavor Thompson, campaigns director for the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “But the consequences of opposition to this project will have an effect on our marine life, water quality and air quality. … We have already seen these impacts in a very real way along the Jersey coast: rising sea levels, stronger storms, impact to marine life and coastal erosion. And the crisis is only getting worse.”

Supporters of the project said that offshore wind projects had been operating in Europe for years without problems. And they said the first U.S. offshore wind project, the 30-MW Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island that became operational in 2016, had shown that offshore wind works without causing problems.

“We already have a pilot project in Block Island,” said Drew Tompkins, director of advocacy and policy at the New Jersey Work Environment Council.

Several union representatives — among them representatives of the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, Easter Millwright Regional Council and the Laborers’ International Union of North America — shared their commitment to the project. So did Hilary Chebra, manager of government affairs for the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey.

“The draft environmental impact statement noted that there will be notable and measurable benefits as a result of offshore wind development,” said Chebra. “The jobs and economic benefits of Ocean Wind 1 are vital to the South Jersey region, to help diversify our economy that has been historically dependent on hospitality and gaming industries.”

Focusing more on the impact of Ocean Wind 1 on human beings, three medical professional urged BOEM to advance the project.

“Climate change poses threats to human health, safety and security,” Aviva Gans, a pediatric physical therapist, told the agency. “And children are uniquely vulnerable to these threats.”

Inga Robbins, a cardiologist and a member of Clinicians for Climate Action New Jersey, said she backed the wind projects in part because they would help combat the damage, particularly heart ailments, that are caused by pollution from fossil fuel-fired plants.

“I can’t bear to see the patients I care for every day, already struggling with a disparate burden of cardiovascular disease, find themselves in a hotter city with more flooding events,” she said.

Next Steps

BOEM will hold a final hearing this Tuesday, and the 45-day public comment period ends on Aug. 8, after which the agency will release its final environmental impact statement.

Ocean Wind 1, which is planned for a site about 15 miles from the Jersey Shore around Atlantic City, is one of three offshore wind projects so far approved in two solicitations by the New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU). The agency expects to hold three solicitations to bring the total capacity of the state’s offshore wind sector to 7,500 MW by 2035. (See NJ Awards Two Offshore Wind Projects.)

BOEM said the hearings are designed to solicit public input and new information that would shed new light on the report, such as issues over its accuracy; the adequacy of the methodology and the assumptions; questions seeking to clarify issues in the report; and alternative information sources not used.

The DEIS outlines the impact of several scenarios, including the project not going ahead, advancing as planned and advancing with modifications. These include scenarios that would remove between nine and 19 turbines that are closest to coastal communities, and a proposal to relocate eight turbines so that there is a space between Ocean Wind 1 and the Atlantic Shores project, which is planned for a nearby area.

In most cases, the DEIS concluded that the alternative scenarios would provide only minor to moderate benefits.

Requests and Questions

Kristen O’Rourke, quality of life director for the borough of Point Pleasant Beach, urged BOEM to extend the public comment period on the DEIS, in large part because the municipality’s small staff doesn’t have the time to fully digest the lengthy report at the height of the busy summer season.

An extension is needed “to give people like us — small people, small towns — a fighting chance to review the potential impacts to our environment,” she said.

BOEM officials said they will evaluate all suggestions, including the request to extend the public comment period. And the agency responded to some questions submitted at the hearing, some of which touched on concerns that have surfaced repeatedly at forums on the offshore wind projects.

Among them was why the Ocean Wind 1 proposal places turbines only 15 miles from the shore, when proposed projects in New York are twice that distance to minimize the visual impact.

Will Waskes, project coordinator for BOEM’s New Jersey office, said the state determined the location of wind projects to be built off the state’s coast around 2010. The decision was “intended to protect ecologically sensitive areas and minimize use conflicts,” among them those with vessel traffic and the activities of the Department of Defense, and also crafting a map of “areas that would be of sufficient size to hold a commercial-scale development.” Those decisions also were based on the technologies available at the time, he said, apparently referring to smaller turbines that were the norm then.

BOEM also addressed a concern often raised at hearings about the potential health risks from electromagnetic fields (EMF) emanating from high-voltage transmission lines that will run undersea and onshore through communities. Srinivas Vishnubhotla, a civil engineer for BOEM, said the agency studied the issue in 2019, and EMF levels associated with offshore wind projects were “found to be well below the recommended limits for human exposure.”

“The recommended limits for human exposure are 12 to 100 times higher than the EMF levels from cables measured at the seafloor,” he said. “Onshore export cables would be buried and housed within a single duct bank buried along the onshore export cable route.”

Vishnubhotla also addressed a speaker’s question on the ability of turbines to withstand a hurricane, and how the agency could “guarantee the workmanship and integrity on such a huge project.” He noted that a small land-based wind farm near the sea in Atlantic City “survived Hurricane Sandy and was back to full operations shortly after the storm passed.” Construction integrity is ensured by having a neutral third party certified verification agent (CVA) oversee the “design, the fabrication and the installation of any approved projects” and to verify compliance with BOEM requirements.

Ric Bertsch, a resident of Ocean City, said his reading of the report suggested that some mammals could suffer hearing loss from construction of the projects.

“Marine mammals, in particular in North Atlantic right whale, are at increased risk of greater mortality,” he said.

Greg Fulling, a marine biologist for BOEM, said the impact to marine mammals, sea turtles and fish depends on the distance from the noise source. “BOEM has worked directly with the National Marine Fisheries Service in evaluating and reducing these potential impacts,” he said.

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‘Collaboration and Innovation’ Key for New DC PSC Chair

First appointed to the D.C. Public Service Commission in 2021, Emile C. Thompson was confirmed by the D.C. Council as the panel’s chairman on June 7 for a term ending June 30, 2026. Earlier some council members had questioned whether Thompson met its requirement that the next person appointed to the PSC have “experience in electric grid modernization and renewable energy integration or technology.”

Thompson addressed that concern and talked about his vision for reaching the district’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2032 in an interview July 13 with NetZero Insider reporter Martin Berman-Gorvine. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. What are your priorities for the PSC?          

Externally, making sure we meet our mandate of providing safe, reliable, affordable service to our ratepayers, while also meeting the District’s clean energy commitments. I don’t look at these as independent of each other. And we’ve started to move in that direction. One good example is our Pepco rate case, in which we approved a modest increase for residential ratepayers but also put into effect many performance-tracking mechanisms that include climate and energy goals that we hope will become fully operational in the future and will help the District in achieving our clean energy commitments. We’re also going to continue to prioritize grid modernization and the proliferation of solar around the District. Internally, it’s about improving employee retention and satisfaction.

Q. What are the biggest obstacles to reaching DC’s climate goals? (a) Cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half, District-wide, by 2032, and going carbon-neutral by 2050; and (b) 100% of electricity from renewable sources by 2032. 

Looking at those two goals, we really think of collaboration and innovation. Collaboration, because these are not goals that solely rest on the commission action. For example, in D.C., roughly 23% of our greenhouse gas emission comes from vehicles, so we have to work with District agencies on how we’re going to look at the conversion of vehicles: gasoline and diesel-powered to EVs. Also, we have to look at our building codes and see how we can improve those. So that’s DCRA [the District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs].

And then, of course, innovation, because we don’t yet have all the tools in our toolkit to reach our goals. As new technologies develop and become more cost effective, it will make our 2032 goal and our 2050 goal both more attainable and not have a huge cost burden on our residents.

Q. What is your response to concerns that you lack “experience in electric grid modernization and renewable energy integration or technology,” as required by the DC Council? What are you bringing to your new job from your previous roles as an assistant United States attorney and board member of DC Water?

Out of law school, I clerked for a judge, and that really gave me the background into how one thinks in this type of position, because we are a quasi-judicial body — we issue orders that are based on our opinions. I would also add that my undergraduate degree was in computer science, and I had a math and biology minor. So, this allows me to get down into the weeds, and I actually enjoy the numbers and some of the technical aspects.

I worked in city government for a number of years. That really taught me about collaboration and bringing parties to the table to reach a common goal and consensus. I then went to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and from there, I’m taking two main skills. One, the ability to delve into a subject deeply and substantively and become a subject matter expert; it also taught me to have a critical eye to what’s being presented to me. My time at DC Water was critical because DC Water really is on the forefront, especially with respect to renewable energy integration. On their campus, they have solar arrays; they have a geothermal heating and cooling system that powers the entire building. The big word there was innovation, especially when it came to renewable, resiliency in terms of how you respond to and plan for weather events like 100-year storms and 500-year storms that are becoming much more prevalent.

At the commission, I’m gaining grid modernization experience through on-the-job training and prior experience.

Q. What is your response to Nicole Rentz, Chesapeake Solar & Storage Association, who said solar developers are “facing arbitrary cost delays, barriers and inefficiencies imposed” by Pepco? She also cited a recent complaint filed with the PSC against Pepco for allegedly mishandling billing on community solar projects.

This is an allegation that I and Commissioner Beverly took very seriously. We studied the complaint, the response from Pepco, and the comments from the other parties involved, and we opened an investigation immediately. We are in the process right now of compiling an RFP for an audit into Pepco’s practices. [See DC PSC order issued June 30 in Case 1171.]

In Pepco’s response, they didn’t necessarily deny the allegations. What a lot of their response centered around was that the rules didn’t necessarily call for what the complaint alleged [they hadn’t done]. We are asking the parties to submit additional comments to see if there’s certain things the commission needs to do to make the process more transparent, to make the process easier, etc. The CREF [community renewable energy facilities] program provides a lot of the benefits of solar to our low-income residents, and we want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to take part in and benefit from this program and receive the credits that they signed up for.

Q. What is the role of natural gas in DC’s future? Do you support the Washington Gas 30-year project to replace gas pipes for a total cost of as much as $3 to $4.5 billion? Do you worry these could become stranded assets, given the city’s 2050 goal of carbon neutrality?

That’s the million-dollar question. That’s why the Commission opened Case 1167, our climate business plan case where we required Washington Gas and Pepco to file 30-year plans to explore what that road map looks like for carbon neutrality in 2050. As part of that, we’re going to be exploring many of the long-term assumptions that Washington Gas asserts and is trying to implement. People talk a lot about Washington Gas’s 30-year plan to replace the pipes. We have taken a very, very, very incremental approach to PROJECTpipes [the utility’s 40-year pipeline replacement program, which began in 2014 and completed its first phase in September 2019.] We require Washington Gas to file plans to replace pipes, and after every round of pipe replacement, we’re conducting audits and doing our due diligence to make sure we aren’t just replacing every pipe — we’re replacing only those that cause gas leaks and greenhouse gas emissions and explosions.

As we develop more of the Climate Business Plan, and we see the direction the District as a whole is moving to achieve these goals, that will continue to inform the direction we move with Washington Gas. In PROJECTpipes 2, we approved $150 million, which is a huge amount, but far less than $3 billion.

Q. How do you plan to address the interconnection issue for solar and wind power?

We’ve done a lot there. We look at interconnection in two ways: We look at it locally, and we look at it on the PJM level. PJM is doing this big interconnection reform in which they’re trying to reduce the backlog. [See

PJM Challenged on Interconnection Rule Transition.] A lot of that is caused by big projects going on the grid. And that has huge implications for us, because we don’t have any traditional generation within our boundaries. We rely on the PJM grid at large for a lot of our power.

[At the local DC level], we have established a cost-sharing program to reduce the burden of distribution upgrades when we do CREF projects. We have an issue with hosting capacity on a lot of our feeders, and so sometimes when you put on these larger CREF projects, it causes the hosting capacity to be exceeded, which requires the distribution upgrades. And so instead of having the developer of that CREF pay that money in full, we’ve developed a cost-sharing mechanism. It’s a 50K cap per project; PEPCO pays a part of it, and the developer pays a part of it.

Next, we’ve established a public interconnection queue so people can go into it and look for where their project is. So there’s more transparency there. We also, this past January, established a similar cost-sharing mechanism for net metering projects because we were running into the same hosting capacity issue with some homeowners who wanted to get solar in their house. There were large distribution upgrading costs. And so we put a rulemaking out, and we received comments. The commission is currently evaluating them and trying to determine the best way to go.

We are having more solar coming online than we ever had. Last year, 2021, was the first year that hit our solar carve-out, as required by the RPS statute, and so we’re very proud of that. This year we’re on track to outpace the number of applications we had next year. Yes, there are opportunities for improvement, but we’re adding solar in the District at a high number, and we’re very proud of that,

Q. From the PSC’s annual report on the Renewable Portfolio Standard, it looks as if what’s happening is that the utilities are meeting annual goals by buying renewable energy credits, not putting new clean generation on their systems. So how do you want to address this situation wherein D.C. ratepayers are not getting more clean energy but are paying for the RECs?

Wholesale electricity suppliers are the ones who are bound by the RPS, not the actual utilities. Pepco procures electricity through PJM auctions. But those wholesale providers are the ones who are responsible for ensuring that energy from renewable resources is in their bid.

The question really is, how do we encourage more renewable energy on the grid? I think we’re starting to see that in D.C. In our fuel mix versus the PJM fuel mix, we have 12% renewable energy, versus the PJM region, which is 6%. So we are better than the region. We are trying to be innovative in our approach. We have Pepco in the process of securing a long-term PPA. As the cost of solar is reduced, you’ll see more people buying solar energy. And as we make the procurement of renewable sources easy, you’ll see a lot of electricity suppliers do that. Right now, they do have the ability to just buy RECs. Some of it is just a financial proposition. Some of these things are controlled by market forces and things that we don’t have the power to require explicitly at this time.

Q. Why was there no substantive meeting in early July about encouraging Pepco and Washington Gas to apply for IIJA funds, report monthly to the PSC, and track their expenses? Are there plans for the commission to open its process and make it really public, transparent and engaging?

When we have our open meetings, the purpose of the open meeting, the majority of times unless stated otherwise, is to purely vote on matters before the commission. But we engage in a very, very robust stakeholder process. In the proceeding you mentioned, we told people two things. One, we want the utilities to file their plans with us, so that everybody can see them, so that there’s not this complaint later that Pepco and Washington Gas have filed their plan with the federal government that the commission didn’t know about, nor did the public. Once the plans are filed, we ask the public to comment. In the commission’s opinion, that’s the ideal transparency, because we’re making Pepco and Washington Gas come to the table and submit their programs. A lot of times in our other meetings, when we make orders, our orders will have the justifications for our reasoning, as well as the e-docket system that allows the public to go through and search anything they want with respect to any case. We very frequently grant intervenor status, so that parties that have an interest in the case can submit pleadings. We sometimes have open meetings hearing-style in which we allow public comment. The commission has, in my opinion, a very robust transparency process, to the point where some people complain it slows us down.

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PJM MRC/MC Preview: July 27, 2022

Below is a summary of the issues scheduled to be brought to a vote at the PJM Markets and Reliability and Members committees on Wednesday. Each item is listed by agenda number, description and projected time of discussion, followed by a summary of the issue and links to prior coverage in RTO Insider.

Markets and Reliability Committee

Consent Agenda (9:05-9:10)

B. Load Management Resources Testing

The MRC will be asked to endorse changes to Manual 01: Control Center and Data Exchange Requirements, Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market and Manual 28: Operating Agreement Accounting to conform with new testing requirements for demand response and price-responsive demand. The changes, which were approved by FERC in June 2020, will become effective with delivery year 2023/24 (ER20-1590).

C. Timing of Generation Deactivations

Members will be asked to endorse revisions to Manual 14D: Generator Operational Requirements to support the process timing changes for generation deactivations. (See “‘Quick Fix’ Changes OK’d for Manual 14D,” PJM Operating Committee Briefs: July 14, 2022.)

D. Start-up Cost Offer Development

PJM will seek stakeholder endorsement of revisions to Manual 28: Operating Agreement Accounting to support the start-up cost offer development proposal the MRC approved in May. It clarifies what intervals are included in segments for determination of balancing operating reserve credits. (See “Start-up Cost Offer Development Proposal Endorsed,” PJM MRC Briefs: May 25, 2022.)

Endorsements (9:30-10:25)

2. Application of Designated Entity Agreement (9:30-10)

Members will choose between two issue charges on PJM’s administration of the designated entity agreement: one proposed by the Delaware Division of the Public Advocate and the New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel, and a second by East Kentucky Power Cooperative on behalf of transmission owners. The latter would make out of scope any consideration of changes to the rights and responsibilities of PJM and the TOs under the Consolidated Transmission Owners’ Agreement. (See PJM TOs, Consumer Advocates at Odds over DEA Inquiry.)

3. Market Seller Offer Cap (10-10:25)

Members will be asked to approve revisions to the market seller offer cap endorsed by the Resource Adequacy Senior Task Force. (See “Stakeholders Wary of ‘Narrow’ Change to Market Seller Offer Cap,” PJM Markets and Reliability Committee Briefs: June 29, 2022.)

Members Committee

Consent Agenda (1:25-1:30)

B. Start-up Cost Offer Development

See MRC Consent Agenda item D.

Endorsements (1:30-2:05)

1. Manual 34 – CBIR Matrix Solutions Options (1:30-1:40)

John Horstmann of Dayton Power & Light and Adrien Ford of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative will seek endorsement of revisions to Manual 34: PJM Stakeholder Process to allow PJM and stakeholders to add options to a Consensus Based Issue Resolution (CBIR) matrix before posting the matrix for discussion. (See “Members Debate Change to CBIR Matrix Procedure,” PJM Stakeholders Pump the Brakes on ‘Clean Energy Expertise’ for Board.)

3. Market Seller Offer Cap (1:40-2:05)

See MRC Endorsements item 3.

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Could Hydrogen Supplant Natural Gas in Power Generation?

The Northeast U.S. could meet its winter peak power needs with LNG or even hydrogen-fired gas turbine generation rather than relying on oil or firing up idle coal plants, argues a Houston-based entrepreneur who views hydrogen as gradually augmenting and, in some areas, supplanting fossil natural gas.

Hydrogen “fits into New England and East Coast fundamentals,” argued Scott Shields, a founding partner of the New Energy Development and a participant last week in a webinar produced by the Northeast Energy and Commerce Association.

Shields said his company began in New England, providing LNG to “peak-shaving” turbine power plants, which typically operate only a few days a year to meet peak demand. Because the gas pipeline system in the region is inadequate, he said, such turbines are often oil-fired. But given the infrequent use, the turbines can run on LNG stored on-site, he said.

But “we found that LNG wasn’t good enough. It had to be sustainable LNG; it had to have a green focus; and hydrogen fit right into that,” he said.

The company today is expanding to partner with client companies on projects that begin with electrolysis to produce green hydrogen for liquefaction or immediate injection into pipelines for power plant consumption.

New Energy Development Co (New Energy Development Co) Content.jpgSmall amounts of green hydrogen injected into gas transmission lines today would cut millions of tons of CO2 emissions equivalent to the carbon pollution created by millions of cars annually, argues Scott Shields, a founding partner of Houston-based New Energy Development Company and participant in a Northeast Energy Commerce Assn. webinar this week. | New Energy Development Co.

 

Shields argued that the future of hydrogen in the U.S. is blending with natural gas. “There’s not a [gas] turbine on the planet that can’t burn a blend of 15% hydrogen right now,” he said, adding that at that level, “we are making a huge dent in the carbon footprint of North America.”

But building gas pipeline infrastructure is difficult. Shields said the number of gas pipeline projects that have had to be scuttled because of public opposition and legal challenges has “created an opening for other fuels that otherwise wouldn’t be competitive”; in other words, green hydrogen.

“We are finding that green hydrogen is a unique substitution that goes hand in hand with LNG. Does New England need green hydrogen or LNG?” He said it does because during times of peak demand, the region must turn to oil and coal plants, totaling nearly 13 MW of capacity.

From a national perspective, he said gas-fired generation has grown, surpassing coal in 2008, but that hydrogen will gradually supplant gas, especially as green hydrogen production ramps up.

“The biggest surprise is the hydrogen use right now,” he said. “There is 13 Bcf of hydrogen produced every day. The U.S. has about 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines — not counting the [local] distribution systems — but only 1,600 miles of dedicated hydrogen pipelines. …

“Is there going to be a flip of a switch and hydrogen is going to supplant natural gas? Absolutely not. That’s not how anything happens,” he said.

The Biden administration’s efforts to jumpstart the development of hydrogen hubs, he added, will help the growth, but that in general, hydrogen would grow with the right tax policies; “letting capital allocate to the most realistic and most cost-efficient areas would make the most sense.”

“It makes sense for hydrogen to supplant some of the most expensive natural gas markets where you cannot build pipelines,” he said, adding that by his company’s count, there are now 520 large hydrogen projects being planned across the nation.

Brian Jones, a partner at Boston-based Environmental Resources Management, said the administration’s hydrogen hub projects, funded by $8 billion allocated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is driving interest in hydrogen as the program calls for developments producing 50 to 100 metric tons of clean hydrogen per day.

He said the arguments over what constitutes “clean” hydrogen will likely come down to the carbon intensity of the method used to produce the hydrogen.

“There’s really a lot of focus from other stakeholders on what the emissions footprint looks like from that production process for hydrogen and then its uses,” he said. “Fuel cell-based technologies at the end-use can enable zero emissions in a bunch of different sectors, whether it be transportation, stationary remote power or portable power applications.”

Jones too said blending hydrogen into natural gas will likely occur, as well as the development of 100% hydrogen-capable gas turbines, enabling power producers to integrate intermittent renewable technologies with combustion generation.

“Clearly, there needs to be linkages between the renewable energy resources so we have a responsive fleet that can balance the intermittency of renewables as we get into a higher penetration in the future.

“When that day comes, we cannot rely solely on unabated natural gas, and so companies are looking at pilots and blending processes and even working towards 100% power generation from hydrogen and … then blending [hydrogen] into pipelines to repurpose existing assets,” he said.

At this point, however, the U.S. hydrogen strategy appears to be well behind European goals, particularly those of the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany, said Claire Thornhill, associate director at Frontier Economics, based in London.

“Europe has set really ambitious targets for the carbon hydrogen at the EU level, and the aim is to have 40 GW of renewable hydrogen in place by 2030. In the U.K., the aim is to have 10 GW of low-carbon hydrogen in place by 2030, and 5 GW of that should be electrolytic,” she said.

“At the end of 2021, there was a total of just 180 MW of installed capacity across Europe and the U.K. of green hydrogen.”

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SPP Issues Resource Advisory for Monday

Following a relatively calm weekend, SPP has again declared a resource advisory for Monday across its 14-state balancing authority area because of expected high loads and concerns over generation availability.

The advisory, which does not require public conservation, is effective from noon to 10 p.m. CT. Under the advisory, the BA can commit units earlier than under standard day-ahead market procedures and commit resources in reliability status.

The RTO’s most recent conservative operations and resource advisories expired as scheduled Thursday night.

The National Weather Service says an approaching cold front will cool down parts of the Midwest by late Sunday into Monday, but “searing heat” will remain in the Southern Plains into early this week.

A persistent high level ridge from the Southern Plains to the Southeast has resulted in record-breaking triple-digit temperatures as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Oklahoma and Texas. Highs well above 100 F are expected in the early part of the week and for the foreseeable future. (See related story, ERCOT Sets Record for Demand … Again.)

SPP set a new mark for peak demand last week at 53.2 GW on July 19. It was the fourth time this year the RTO has recorded a new high. The record before this year was 51.04 GW, set last July.

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States Back FERC Interregional Transfer Requirement

SAN DIEGO — State regulators generally expressed support for minimum requirements on interregional transfer capacity Wednesday, saying they believed it could produce cross-border transmission projects where FERC Order 1000 failed.

But defining the minimum and ensuring it doesn’t result in inefficient, single-purpose transmission lines remain concerns, the regulators said during the fourth meeting of the Joint Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission. The session, which concluded the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Summer Policy Summit, focused on interregional transmission planning and project development and FERC’s April Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (RM21-17), which would require planners to use longer time horizons and consider multiple scenarios. (See Christie Talks up Flexibility of Transmission NOPR.)

Lessons from Uri

FERC Chairman Richard Glick said the need for more interregional capacity was demonstrated during Winter Storm Uri, when “a couple hundred people [in ERCOT] died, literally, just because they didn’t have access to power.” In contrast, SPP and MISO, which also lost many generating units, were able to minimize blackouts because they were able to import power from PJM and other regions, Glick said.

FERC Commissioner Mark Christie noted that PJM was able to export 6 GW of energy this week despite approaching its projected summer peak of 149 GW. “Interregional transfers do have reliability benefits, no question about it,” he said.

Several state members of the task force said minimum transfer requirements could simplify cost allocation, one of the most vexing barriers to new transmission.

“I don’t know of any regulators in the West who aren’t willing to pay for reliability and resilience,” said Utah Public Service Commission Chair Thad LeVar.

Richard Glick Jason Stanek 2022-07-21 (RTO Insider LLC) Alt FI.jpg

FERC Chair Richard Glick and Maryland Public Service Commission Chair Jason Stanek | © RTO Insider LLC

“If we are in agreement that the reason for building projects is resilience and prevention of service interruptions, I see a real possibility that there could be a more across-the-board cost allocation,” said Andrew French, chair of the Kansas Corporation Commission. “It gets much more difficult and much more granular if you start to justify lines based on economic benefits or public policy benefits.”

“It simplifies the cost allocation to set the minimum [requirement]. It also simplifies the benefit calculation by basically assuming benefits,” said Ted Thomas, chair of the Arkansas Public Service Commission. “If you can study rigorously and get the level set right, I’d rather spend that money than trying to come up with a formula that measures the impact of what might happen [in the future] and use that to come up with a cost allocation methodology. I think the minimum transfer benefit solves a lot of those other problems.”

He added: “We’re in a foot race between implementing the solution and the next time we get hit. And laying down a marker is important. If somebody gets hit and we didn’t act, it’s on us.”

Thomas said FERC should set such levels first in the organized markets. “If the non-RTOS don’t like it, you know, or want to study it or want to see what happens, that’s their choice. [I would] point out when you do that, you’re picking up a pair of dice and hoping” for the best.

Kansas regulators made a straw proposal to set the minimum at 10% of each region’s peak load. “That was essentially based on the experience during Winter Storm Uri — the level of demand that had to be interrupted, and the level of imports that we relied on,” French said. “I don’t know that we’re here saying that’s the right number. I’ve seen numbers as high as 40%.”

North Carolina: No Thanks

A numerical requirement would not be welcome in North Carolina, said North Carolina Utilities Commissioner Kimberly Duffley. Although a small part of the state is within PJM’s territory, most of it is not part of an RTO.

“Areas of the country like the Southeast — where through the IRP [integrated resource plan] process the generation is located close to load — may not need this type of interregional transmission, or they just may need less of this transfer capability,” she said.

Duffley also said the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (SEARUC) states would oppose “top-down” planning, preferring a “bottom-up” process that preserves regional flexibility.

“When I say regional differences, I mean market structures, natural resources, job development, just the geography of the different regions, to name a few,” she said, noting that Duke Energy does not measure market efficiency benefits based on LMPs, unlike PJM and other RTOs. “A one-size-fits-all approach is not an appropriate way to incent new transmission.”

She also urged caution on FERC establishing a minimum set of benefits to be considered in evaluating new transmission. “There are some states that are opposed to that, but I’m not taking any position on it here today,” she said.

Responding to Duffley, FERC Commissioner Allison Clements said that for interregional planning to be successful, two entities must come to an agreement despite having different resources, methodologies and benefit determinations. “The Order 1000 interregional coordination process kind of just assumed those differences would go away; they don’t go away,” she said.

Role for NERC

Duffley endorsed Michigan Public Service Commission Chair Dan Scripps’ proposal that any minimum transfer requirement be a “definition” rather than a number, “so that non-RTO states are not burdened with a too high of any type of minimum.” Christie, who has warned against FERC being overly prescriptive in its rulemaking, also expressed support for a definition.

Vermont Public Utility Commissioner Riley Allen said he was “intrigued” by a minimum transfer capability but feared that it could lead to “stopgap solutions that are kind of singularly focused on one category … undercutting the benefit cost or the economic case for a larger solution.”

If the focus is on reliability and resilience, he said, perhaps NERC should “identify what that level should be and whether it should vary between regions.”

LeVar said it was unclear how a minimum transfer capacity would affect the WestConnect and NorthernGrid planning regions, which have little or no cost allocation authority. “If that’s an issue that’s going to be pursued, the NERC reliability standards process is a great process for an issue like that,” he said. “WECC can be a valuable tool … because they don’t have an agenda other than reliability.”

Glick also hinted at a role for NERC, saying a FERC rulemaking could be based not just on Federal Power Act sections 205 and 206 — the source of much of FERC’s authority — but also under its reliability authority under Section 215, which the commission used to delegate to NERC the power to impose mandatory reliability standards.

FERC Commissioner Willie Phillips said he hoped the national laboratories’ efforts to quantify the resilience benefits of new construction would provide a foundation for a FERC rulemaking. Under current rules, he said interregional projects have often foundered because neighboring regions could not agree on benefit calculations. When “those projects fall out … we do wash, rinse, repeat — things don’t get built.” Phillips said.

FERC Commissioner James Danly, the lone dissent on the April NOPR, questioned whether FERC could make the “showing” necessary for the commission to issue any requirements.

“I have yet to hear anything that makes me think we’re going to be able to make that showing for us to actually impose something,” he said. “I don’t believe that every wrong can be remedied under the statutes that we administrate.”

Thomas and French disagreed, citing Uri. “I frankly think we have a pretty strong evidentiary basis right now that something needs to be done,” French said.

Pushback on ROFR Reversal

Another subject of discussion was the NOPR’s proposal to reverse Order 1000 and allow incumbent transmission owners a federal right of first refusal (ROFR) if they give an unaffiliated company a “meaningful level of participation and investment” in the project. (See Ratepayers Protest FERC Retreat on Transmission Competition.)

“I can’t say we have consensus in the West about this … but I can speak for myself and the PUC,” said California Public Utilities Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen. “We strongly oppose the idea of a conditional ROFR. We think it’s a step backwards.

“We’ve had experience with competitive bidding in California: It’s worked,” he said. “It’s reduced prices. It’s been successful. We have a lot of regionally cost-allocated projects. There’s no real evidence that in states with ROFRs, that they have more regional projects, or that costs are lower.”

Rechtschaffen said FERC should consider other steps to address “legitimate concerns” about unanticipated effects of Order 1000’s ROFR provision. “At a minimum, our recommendation is that FERC leave it up to each state to determine whether or not transmission should be developed competitively,” he said.

Kansas’ French said he had “very complicated” thoughts on the issue. “But we have seen tremendous cost savings in our region, as well, over the last few years on several projects. And it seems the wrong time to turn away from that,” he said.

Rechtschaffen said he welcomed the NOPR’s proposals for more transparency in local transmission planning and said they should include “repair and replacement” or supplementary projects, which receive little or no scrutiny under regional planning processes.

Rechtschaffen said these “utility self-approved” projects represent half of all investor-owned utility spending in RTOs and ISOs.

“In 2022, our largest utility, PG&E, forecast $1.2 billion on capital spending; 88% of that will be spent on utility self-approved projects,” he said. “We heard a similar story yesterday on a panel from Greg Poulos,” executive director of the Consumer Advocates of the PJM States.

Appreciative of FERC Outreach

Several of the state commissioners praised FERC for establishing the task force and including in the NOPR a requirement that planners seek states’ agreement on cost allocation.

“We’re very pleased in terms of the direction and tone of the NOPR,” said Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chair Gladys Brown Dutrieuille. “We’re very appreciative because you did put a lot of effort into understanding and hearing the concerns that were expressed by not only us but other people.”

Gladys Brown Dutrieuille 2022-07-21 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgPennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chair Gladys Brown Dutrieuille | © RTO Insider LLC

Brown Dutrieuille said she supported FERC’s proposal to consider an expanded set of benefits in transmission planning and cost allocation but said they should not be “mandatory nor exclusive.

“I do have some concern that list of potential benefit metrics includes metrics that may double count the same benefit,” she said.

“It’s really hard to be frustrated with FERC when they’re actually listening to you,” said Maryland Public Service Commission Chair Jason Stanek, a former FERC staffer. “When I first read the NOPR, I felt like the dog that caught the car. So be careful what you wish for, because FERC is saying if you want a seat at the table, pull up a chair, and you have 90 days to sort it out amongst yourselves.”

Stanek also called on East Coast states to coordinate on building transmission to serve their offshore wind projects, saying New Jersey so far is “going it alone” under PJM’s state agreement approach. (See PJM Sees Wide Range of Costs in NJ OSW Tx Proposals.)

“That is not the way for us to be developing transmission along the coast,” he said. “We have to have clear open communication coordination between the RTOs.”

LeVar said “it’s obvious FERC went to great lengths to try to preserve flexibility and state input.”

“What I don’t know … is what impact this different planning scenario would have on momentum towards RTO development in the West. … I think it’s a real issue.”

French voiced a similar worry, saying FERC should ensure that any new requirements not interrupt ongoing intraregional work. “I have some concerns that could inadvertently press a pause button on some of the important work that’s taking place,” he said.

The task force’s next meeting is scheduled for November at the NARUC annual meeting in New Orleans.

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Energy Storage Market Faces Innovation, Supply Chain Challenges

In Alaska, the supply chain delays now plaguing the U.S. energy storage market mean a federally funded microgrid project that was scheduled to come online in August has been delayed for at least a year.

Equipment ordered from Germany didn’t get on the ship to the U.S. as scheduled, said William Thomson, technical and engineering adviser for the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, which serves 58 communities across the state, many of them only accessible by river or air.

“Our deliveries are made by small plane, and the heavy stuff is always delivered on a seasonal basis by barge,” Thomson said. “The shipping season is from mid-May to early October. If you don’t make that window … you’re stuck; you’re going to have to [go] into next year.”

The cooperative still doesn’t have a delivery date for the storage equipment, he said.

Thomson was speaking at a Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) webinar on July 14, one of two recent webinars focusing on the U.S. storage market and the challenges it now faces as the speed of technological innovation collides with the drag of supply chain delays and inflation.

Prices are up, investors are becoming more cautious, and building out the domestic supply chain for the lithium-ion batteries needed for transportation electrification could take years. Still, innovation is driving an upside, with the industry working to optimize the efficiency and value of lithium-ion batteries, while also developing long-duration, non-lithium alternatives.

At the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Esther Takeuchi, chair of the lab’s Interdisciplinary Science Department, said her team is working on batteries with a higher energy density, using new materials with a longer life. The result could be EV batteries that can be charged up in 10 minutes, she said.

Speaking at a July 13 webinar on storage innovation hosted by Our Energy Policy (OEP), Takeuchi said another lab priority is “scalable” or big storage, which could be used for grid-scale projects, and “what are the characteristics needed to be big?”

“What are the actual materials?” she said. “How toxic are they? How available? Are they available domestically? Are they only available from a few places on earth, and sometimes those places have their own geopolitical challenges? How do you make things big, functional [and] safe?”

Supply chains will also be a core consideration for big storage, Takeuchi said. At the CESA webinar, both Thomson and Harvey Rambarath, assistant director of planning and development for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, reeled off a string of facts and figures on price increases for key components of solar and storage projects they are developing.

While planning a solar and storage project that would provide power for key tribal community buildings, Rambarath saw price increases of 84.7% for steel pipe and tubes and 44.9% for fabricated structural steel. As a result, he said, project costs increased from the original contract figure of about $2.9 million to over $3.5 million.

Flight to Quality

In other words, said Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research at the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, the U.S. “battery supply chain is not really very robust.”

“The lithium battery industry relies on China, South Korea and Japan,” Gyuk said at the CESA webinar. “Transporting the batteries to the U.S. … adds another 4.1 kg of carbon dioxide to every kWh of battery [capacity].”

The U.S. does have lithium supplies, he said, in geothermal brine at the Salton Sea in California and in hard rock deposits in North Carolina and Nevada. “But mining is extremely capital investment intensive, and you need commitments to get started,” Gyuk said.

The lack of a domestic supply chain, the resulting delays and other market disruptions in the U.S. have sidelined 1.2 GW of new grid-scale storage projects that were scheduled to come online in the first quarter of 2022, according to industry analysts Wood Mackenzie. Still, the industry had a record first quarter, with 955 MW of new projects installed. Grid-scale projects accounted for more than 75% of the total.

Supply chain delays could affect the market — though to a lesser extent — through 2023, Wood Mackenzie said.

Sameer Reddy, managing partner at venture firm Energy Impact Partners (EIP), agrees that supply, not demand, is one of the biggest constraints on the U.S. energy storage market; the other is transmission.  

“We just can’t build transmission quickly enough,” Reddy said at the OEP innovation webinar. “As we think about utility-scale solar and wind and attaching storage to that, we can only do that as quickly as we can build out transmission capacity.”

On the financial side of the equation, Reddy sees supply chain disruptions, inflation and threats of a recession driving “a flight to quality” across capital markets, including in the storage sector. “In times like these, the winners get stronger, and the losers get weaker,” he said.

“The infrastructure market for lithium-ion-based projects is incredibly healthy,” Reddy said. Pre-revenue startups developing alternatives to lithium-ion will also be able to secure funding, he said, “as long as they have a very clear story around how they beat lithium-ion technology. … The gap that I am seeing right now in capital markets is all of these new medium- and longer-duration storage technologies.

“It’s really incumbent upon the utilities, in many cases, to pilot those projects and sort of take the initial leap of faith on those technologies to help validate them to the market,” he said.

At the same time, Reddy sees extreme weather events, like the current heat waves in Texas and other parts of the U.S. triggering more “urgency to bring those long-duration technologies on sooner [rather] than later,” The good news, he said, is that several long-duration technologies — gravity-based storage, flow batteries and zinc batteries — are attracting significant investment.  

For example, EIP has invested in Form Energy, a Boston-based start-up that is developing 100-hour-duration storage, Reddy said.

“As we electrify different loads across the grid, we’re going to need long-duration sources of storage to really insulate us from a resiliency perspective,” he said.

But Takeuchi stressed that, looking ahead, geography may determine the form of any given storage project. “Whatever form of storage we use, the location where the storage is going to be placed really determines many of the characteristics that are needed,” she said. “Things that are appropriate in wide open areas are not appropriate for areas like New York City or Chicago or [Los Angeles].”

Lifetime performance and costs should also be essential considerations, Takeuchi said. “It’s one thing to set up a system, but then how often do you need to replace it, fix it. If we had very long-life batteries, then things such as second-life batteries become viable.”

The EV Factor

The growing electric vehicle market is another and perhaps even more critical factor in current state of the U.S. energy storage market and supply chains, with exponential growth projected over the next four years, according to Vinayak Walimbe, vice president of emerging technologies at Customized Energy Solutions, an energy management firm.

The global demand for EV batteries stood at 286 GWh at the end of 2021, but is expected increase to 1,100 GWh by 2025, which will require a 40% year-over-year growth in battery production, Walimbe told the CESA supply chain webinar.

EV Deployment (Adamas Intelligence) Content.jpgElectric vehicles worldwide put 286 GWh of battery storage on the road last year, but that number could jump to 1,100 GWh by 2025. | Adamas Intelligence

 

A major increase in raw material costs could be a drag on that kind of accelerated growth, Walimbe said. The industry celebrated when battery cell prices fell beneath $100/kWh in 2021, he said, but steep price increases in lithium and nickel have created a “bullwhip effect,” where small changes in one area of the industry ripple through the supply chain.

Walimbe sees the current supply chain disruptions affecting industries and countries around the world. “They are going to come up with ways to mitigate this.”

For storage, he sees two solutions ― developing a domestic supply chain and recycling — both of which are targeted by funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, he said.

John Rhodes, special assistant to the president in the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, agreed that the long-term solution is to bring a lot of mining and manufacturing capacity “on shore, and that’s going to take concerted, broad effort around new solutions” for lithium extraction and creating assured markets.

Rhodes pointed to the “nascent market” for electric vehicle chargers with built-in storage as one such domestic opportunity.

“It’s a self-evident solution to some grid build-out issues that confront a charging station developer,” Rhodes said at the OEP webinar. “Just the emergence of digital solutions around controls and situational awareness and fast response … [is] enabling storage through these enhanced controls to play a better and better role,” which will spur further market growth, he said.

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Biden Announces $2.3B for Climate Resilience, OSW in Gulf of Mexico

With a construction site at what was once a 1,500-MW coal plant as his backdrop, President Biden on Wednesday proclaimed climate change a “clear and present danger” to the U.S., to which he would respond “with urgency and resolve.”

In his speech at the former Brayton Point coal plant in Somerset, Mass., Biden did not declare an official national emergency, but he said, “When it comes to fighting climate change, I will not take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Congress has failed in its duty to act on climate, Biden said, “and in the coming weeks, I’m going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that the president possesses.”

Among that will be $2.3 billion in federal funding “to help communities across the country build infrastructure that’s designed to withstand the full range of [climate] disasters,” the president announced.

According to a senior administration official earlier in the day, those funds will come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program. Another $385 million in funding from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, traditionally used for energy-efficient upgrades for homes in low-income communities, is being made available for states to use to set up cooling centers and help low-income residents buy air-conditioning units, the official said.

But both the official and National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, in a morning appearance on CNN’s “New Day,” talked around questions about if and when the president might declare climate change a national emergency and what actions he might take.

Declaring climate change a national emergency is “just not the announcement today,” McCarthy said. “The announcement today is going to be about making the case that climate change is an emergency [and] outlining actions that we’re going to moving forward over the coming weeks.

“We are going to act,” she said. “But the president is going to outline that at his pace.”

Clearing the Way for OSW

That deliberate pacing could account for Biden burying possibly his administration’s most important action halfway through his speech.

The president announced the next step in opening the Gulf of Mexico to offshore wind projects, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) identifying two potential wind energy areas (WEAs) in the gulf and opening a 30-day comment period on the sites.

According to a press release from the Department of the Interior, one of the proposed sites, totaling 546,645 acres, is located 24 nautical miles off Galveston, Texas, while the other, with 188,023 acres, is located approximately 56 nautical miles off the coast of Lake Charles, La.

The sites were chosen using “the most current scientific data to analyze 30 million acres in the [gulf] to find the best spaces for wind energy development,” said BOEM Director Amanda Lefton. “We are invested in working in partnership with states and communities to find areas that avoid or minimize conflicts with other ocean uses and marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“We’re going to make sure that the ocean is open for the clean energy of our future,” Biden said. Projects off the Atlantic Coast and the gulf could provide “a real opportunity to power millions of additional homes from wind,” he said. “Let’s clear the way for clean energy and connect these projects to the grid.”

Biden also highlighted progress on Vineyard Wind 1, the 804-MW offshore project now under construction off Martha’s Vineyard. Brayton Point is now being repurposed as an DC-to-AC converter station to interconnect Vineyard, and potentially other OSW projects, to the grid through underwater transmission. (See Ex-Coal Plant Site Chosen for Mass. OSW Hub.)

On a Tight Rope

Since Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last week shut down negotiations over a pared-down budget reconciliation package that included a number of clean energy tax credits and other incentives, exactly what Biden will do and when he will do it has been a topic of debate and speculation.

Biden’s speech echoed his initial reaction to Manchin’s decision, citing concerns about June’s record 9.1% consumer price index and inflation. (See Biden: ‘I Will not Back Down” on Climate Action.)

Declaring a national emergency would add to a list of more than 40 executive orders in effect under the 1976 National Emergencies Act (NEA), with some issued nearly 30 years ago by President Bill Clinton. But a group of nine senators said in a letter to Biden that it would “unlock powers to rebuild a better economy with significant concrete actions.”

Led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the group said, “You could redirect spending to build out renewable energy systems on military bases, implement large-scale clean transportation systems and finance energy projects to boost climate resiliency,” the group said

Joining the letter, sent Wednesday, were Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

Meanwhile, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was quick to criticize Biden’s focus on climate as out of touch with American families who “need energy that is affordable and reliable. Instead of taking action to ease the pain at the pump, the president doubled down today on his extreme climate agenda. This will only push energy prices higher.”

But Sheila Hollis, acting executive director of the U.S. Energy Association, saw Biden’s speech as an exercise in balance and pragmatism.

“He’s trying to make a statement [that] is in the realm of reality, as opposed to super long-term visions of how things should be,” Hollis said in a phone interview. “He did about the best he could under circumstances because there’s so many competing interests, competing concerns, international concerns and just the complexities of our system of regulating and distributing and making energy available.

“Anybody that is not simply didactic has to walk a tightrope,” Hollis said. “He’s on a tight rope.”

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NERC Standards Committee Approves EMT SAR

At its first in-person meeting since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, NERC’s Standards Committee on Wednesday approved a standard authorization request (SAR) that would introduce electromagnetic transient (EMT) modeling to three of the organization’s reliability standards.

Most of the committee met at the Denver offices of Xcel Energy, with some members joining via conference call. Chair Amy Casuscelli — Xcel’s manager of reliability assurance and risk management — said she was glad to finally be hosting members again. She noted that not only were attendees likely to be “a little bit rusty” on meeting practices after more than two years of exclusive conference calls, but “14 of our 22-member roster are new since” the committee’s last face-to-face meeting and might have never seen the other members in person at all, and thanked them for contributing.

“We know that traveling is expensive for us and our companies. It’s time away from our day job, time away from our families, and we’re all facing tighter budgets,” Casuscelli said. “You guys are all here today because you see value in these interactions and [so do] your companies … so I would challenge you today to think through how we can maximize our time.”

Action Items Pass Without Exception

The EMT modeling SAR was proposed by NERC’s Inverter-based Resources Performance Subcommittee (IRPS) and endorsed by the Reliability and Security Technical Committee at its meeting last month. (See “Procedural Confusion on EMT SAR,” NERC RSTC Briefs: June 8-9, 2022.) It would require transmission planners (TPs) and planning coordinators (PCs) to conduct EMT studies, and apply to:

      • FAC-002-4 — Facility interconnection studies;
      • MOD-032-1 — Data for power system modeling and analysis; and
      • TPL-001-4 — Transmission system planning performance requirements.

The IRPS proposed the SAR in light of the bulk power system’s “rapid transformation towards high penetrations of inverter-based resources”; the subcommittee noted that many TPs and PCs “are concerned about the lack of accurate modeling data” to help plan the introduction of these resources and suggested that putting the modeling requirement in the standards would ensure they apply equally to all stakeholders.

Marty Hostler, reliability compliance manager for the Northern California Power Agency, expressed misgivings about the SAR, warning that it was unrealistic to expect TPs and PCs to be the only ones affected by the new requirements when other stakeholders, including generator owners, might have to be involved in the interconnection process as well.

“A lot of times these EMT models aren’t available, and they’re going to have to hire extra staff that has training on how to do that. So it’s not just going to be, in my view, the planning coordinators and transmission planners that are going to have to do this,” Hostler said. “It’s going to have to be all the people [having] to do system impact studies on their own facilities.”

Despite his concern, Hostler did not vote against the measure. The SAR passed unanimously, with no abstentions.

Frequency Response

The committee also approved without objection the posting of the proposed reliability standard BAL-003-3 (Frequency response and frequency bias setting) for a 45-day formal comment and ballot period after its submission by the standard development team for Project 2017-01 (Modifications to BAL-003). BAL-003-3 is intended to “make the [Interconnection Frequency Response Obligation] calculations and associated allocations better reflect current conditions and better consider characteristics affecting frequency response.”

The Standards Committee’s next in-person meeting is scheduled to be held Sept. 21 at ERCOT’s offices in Austin, Texas. The August meeting will be held via conference call, as will the October and November meetings. The committee will gather in person for the final meeting of the year in Atlanta on Dec. 13.

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Massachusetts Legislators Reach Deal on Clean Energy Bill

Massachusetts legislators on Thursday passed a compromise bill that aims to boost clean energy and electric vehicles and give cities and towns new options for greening buildings.

The bill (H.5060) comes after more than two months of negotiation between the House of Representatives and Senate, which had presented differing visions for the climate bill. (See Mass. Legislators Try to Hash out Next Climate Bill).

“Massachusetts needs to open up huge new sources of green electric power if it’s to stay on course for reducing emissions,” said bill sponsors Rep. Jeff Roy (D) and Sen. Mike Barrett (D) in a joint statement. “Today’s compromise aims to ramp up clean power, especially offshore wind but also solar, storage and networked geothermal, and run it through cars, trucks, buses and buildings — the biggest sources of emissions in the state.”

The bill has wide support in the state, including from groups such as the Green Energy Consumers Alliance and Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Here are highlights of the bill, which now goes to the governor for his consideration.

OSW and Clean Energy

The bill would create a new Clean Energy Investment Fund within the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to support clean energy technology, research, workforce development and infrastructure.

It would also build a new Massachusetts OSW industry investment program and an accompanying trust fund to boost wind employment and economic development.

Helping the OSW industry was central to the House version of the bill and is a key priority of House Speaker Ron Mariano (D).

Electric Vehicles

Key to the Senate version of the bill is a focus on transportation, including changes to the state’s EV rebate program, which made it into the final agreement on the bill.

It would raise the cap on the purchase price of EVs eligible for the rebate to $55,000 from $50,000.

It would also add a $1,500 additional rebate for low-income EV buyers and expand eligibility to used EVs, if they were not sold in the prior two years.

The Baker administration might disagree with the new purchase price cap increase, since the administration previously said it wants to lower the cap to keep the program financially sustainable. (See Changes Coming to Mass. EV Rebate Program, Energy Commissioner Says). But the Department of Energy Resources will likely support the expansion to used vehicles and low-income provisions, which it has supported.

The bill would maintain a higher subsidy for the purchase of medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicles, with a minimum $4,500 rebate. And it would add new reporting and outreach requirements for the state to try to continue expanding the use of the program.

Other EV provisions include a mandate for the state to build charging infrastructure at service plazas and some transit stops and for distribution companies to propose off-peak and time-of-use EV charging rates.

Buildings

The bill addresses an ongoing debate in Massachusetts over whether cities and towns should be allowed to mandate zero-emission buildings.

It authorizes a “demonstration project” for up to 10 cities or towns to adopt zoning ordinances or bylaws that prohibit new building construction projects that are not fossil-fuel free. To participate, a municipality would have to comply with a state law that requires 10% of housing to be affordable.

The state government would then collect data from the demonstration project about the impacts on emissions, building costs, operating costs and other criteria.

Local leaders have been clamoring for the state to allow them to require fossil-fuel free buildings, but the Baker administration has held off from doing so even as it moves to update state energy building code rules. (See Mass. Net-zero Building Code Proposal Faces Barrage of Criticism).