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October 14, 2021June 14, 2023

CAISO Promotes EDAM Effort in Forum

CAISO ramped up efforts Wednesday to expand its Western Energy Imbalance Market from a real-time to a day-ahead market in a virtual forum that brought together utility CEOs, regulators and industry leaders to discuss the plan.

The ISO paused its proposal for an extended day-ahead market (EDAM) after the rolling blackouts and strained grid conditions in August and September 2020. Now back in play, the EDAM faces a more crowded field of potential competitors trying to coordinate pieces of the West’s energy markets or to establish a Western RTO.

“This is an extraordinarily dynamic, challenging and exciting time in the West,” CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said as he opened the session with 400 attendees. “Everyone seems to be talking about and working with a sense of real urgency towards greater regional coordination and market integration.”

Recent efforts include the Northwest Power Pool’s work to form the Western Resource Adequacy Program, SPP’s creation of the Western Energy Imbalance Service and its pitch to lead a Western RTO, and the formation of a Western Markets Exploratory Group (WMEG) to consider coordinated market services such as transmission expansion and day-ahead energy sales. (See Western Utilities to Explore Market Options.)

FERC Chairman Richard Glick has called for establishment of one or more Western RTOs, and Nevada and Colorado passed laws this year ordering their transmission-owning utilities to join an RTO by 2030.

CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer opened Wednesday’s forum. | CAISO

“I have never seen or felt a greater sense of interest and urgency on this topic,” Mainzer said.

CAISO hopes to play a central role in Western regionalization with the EDAM.

The steady expansion of the Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) since its founding in 2014 has demonstrated the value of a real-time market in the West, Mainzer said. The WEIM has generated more than $1.4 billion in benefits for its 15 participants. Six more entities plan to join by 2023, spreading the market’s footprint across nearly all Western states and encompassing 84% of electricity load in the West.

“The growth of the EIM has provided tangible evidence that the West does best when we optimize transmission and resource diversity across the widest geographical footprint possible,” Mainzer said. “And given the level of interest and desire for actionable progress towards a fully integrated market or RTO in the West, we are now prepared and excited to build on the foundation of the EIM and reinitiate our extended day-ahead market stakeholder initiative.”

‘Next Major Step’

Mainzer moderated a panel of CEOs from some of the West’s largest utilities, most of whom praised the EDAM proposal.

“For us at PacifiCorp, the extended day ahead market builds on the solid foundation of the Energy Imbalance Market,” said Stefan Bird, CEO of PacifiCorp subsidiary Pacific Power. Participating in the WEIM has saved PacifiCorp $310 million and reduced its carbon output by 5 million metric tons, he said.

“While the EIM has been hugely successful, it only scratches the surface of what’s possible,” Bird said. “As we now look to the next incremental step in our market partnership with the California ISO and other participants, we see the extended day-ahead market as the next big opportunity to increase customer benefits by optimizing an even larger volume of energy transaction and fuel commitment decisions that occur in the day-ahead and real-time operations.”

The West’s diversity of solar, hydropower and geothermal resources, along with time differences in the region’s vast geography, create an ideal situation for maximizing use of clean energy resources, he said.

The CEOs of PG&E Corp., Southern California Edison, NV Energy, Idaho Power and Seattle City Light also took part in the panel and endorsed continuing with the EDAM stakeholder process.

The EDAM proposal met with some criticism last year before it was put on hold. Some stakeholders complained that, under a July straw proposal, the EDAM would not be as wholly voluntary as the WEIM and would require ceding transmission rights. The ability of entities to participate with few obligations and to leave at will has been a major selling point of the WEIM. (See EDAM Design Could Undermine Tx Rights, Critics Say.)

This summer, with the EDAM plan on hiatus, a working group of stakeholders met to discuss EDAM design.

“The objective of the work group was to facilitate the restart of the general EDAM stakeholder process by reflecting areas of common agreement and understanding among the parties,” said a document titled EDAM Common Design Principles and Concepts, included in Wednesday’s forum materials.

Participants agreed that the EDAM should continue the WEIM’s “concepts of voluntary entry … and no-penalty exit that have worked extremely well for the EIM.” They also agreed EDAM participants should “maximize the amount of transmission (firm, or otherwise high priority) made available to EDAM” but that the market should respect existing open-access transmission tariff frameworks and contractual commitments.

The EDAM stakeholder process calls for market design, implementation and testing to continue through 2022 and 2023 with the goal of going live in 2024.

Mainzer said hurdles will include technical and governance issues. Working through those will allow the EDAM to resolve reliability challenges facing the West as California and a growing number of states enact clean energy mandates, he said.

“We are very motivated and committed to position EDAM as the next major step towards West-wide market integration as we all drive for greater reliability and affordability in achieving our energy policy goals,” Mainzer said.

October 13, 2021June 14, 2023

EBA Panel Discusses Management and Mitigation of Cybersecurity Risks

The complexity and velocity of cyberattacks, coupled with the volume of vulnerabilities exploited by increasingly sophisticated bad actors, make managing and mitigating cybersecurity risks for critical energy infrastructure a staggering challenge.

Speaking on a panel at the Energy Bar Association’s Mid-Year Energy Forum on Tuesday, Manny Cancel, senior vice president at NERC and CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said that approximately 10 years ago, the National Vulnerability Database had about 3,000 vulnerabilities “across a whole year.”

“We’re about 21,000 vulnerabilities projected in 2021, and keeping pace with that is just overwhelming,” Cancel said. “How the [energy] industry evolves to focus on priorities is going to be a challenge going forward, and we all know that unpatched vulnerabilities are a leading cause of breaches.”

One such breach was the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline in May, which crippled 5,500 miles of pipeline that supplies the eastern U.S. with gasoline, diesel and other fuel products. It was an unforgettable day for David Gray, vice president and general counsel for the company. A ransom note appeared on a computer screen in the control room. Gray said the initial reaction was, “Are we sure this is a legitimate threat?”

“You quickly discover that one of the things that are most precious in an event like this is time,” Gray said.

In trying to assess whether the attack came from a state-sponsored or non-state entity, Gray said there was “enough uncertainty” to shut down the pipeline and “quickly pivot into notification” once it was determined it was a criminal act. Colonial called the FBI “almost immediately,” Gray said, and that helped with the recovery of the ransom it ultimately decided to pay.

Eric Meyers, vice president and chief information security officer for the New York Power Authority, said he has been in the cybersecurity industry long enough to remember when the worst threats were people sending chain emails and infected floppy disks. Now, it is phishing emails and inserting malicious code into websites by state and non-state actors alike.

“What used to be the unique domain of some of these well funded state-sponsored actors who invested tremendous amounts of resources in developing those techniques are now out there for anyone to get access to on the web, and even more so, some enterprising entrepreneurs have taken those capabilities and wrapped them up into for-profit services,” Meyers said. “Then anybody with very little technical skill can go out there on the dark web, sign up for and launch an attack on anybody. That’s acting like a true force multiplier, drastically expanding the scope.”

Dan Sutherland, CISA | Energy Bar AssociationDuring a keynote speech that preceded the panel, Dan Sutherland, chief counsel for the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), said that the Colonial attack “sparked” conversation inside and outside the government centered on incident reporting. According to Sutherland, there is legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill that would mandate incident reporting to CISA. He said that is a “direct result” of the Colonial Pipeline incident as Congress felt that it was not reported in a “timely” manner.

The Transportation Security Administration also issued two security directives for owners and operators of critical pipelines in the aftermath of Colonial, which is the first time they have “really exercised their muscles in terms of regulating the pipeline industry,” added Sutherland.

TSA required owners and operators to “report confirmed and potential cybersecurity incidents” to CISA. They also needed to appoint a cybersecurity coordinator to serve as a single point of contact with federal officials 24/7, review their current cybersecurity practices, and report to TSA and CISA any cyber risks identified along with related mitigation measures. Additional requirements, developed alongside CISA, mandated implementing “specific mitigation measures” to protect against ransomware and other threats to information technology and operational technology systems; contingency and recovery plans; and a review of cybersecurity architecture design review. (See TSA Issues New Pipeline Cybersecurity Requirements.)

Cancel commended Colonial for its “transparency” and managing “an incredibly complex issue.” Still, there are a lot of “disruptive technologies” that require time to design their security, which should be done ahead of installation, not after it, he said.

October 13, 2021

Panelists Warn More Work Needed on Grid Cybersecurity

ATLANTA — Speakers at the Smart Electric Power Alliance’s Solar and Energy Storage Southeast conference on Monday praised the electric industry for finally taking cybersecurity risk seriously, but they warned that many entities may not be prepared for the needed investments of both money and time.

“I’ve been in some conversations lately where cybersecurity is a board-level discussion. That hasn’t always been the case; it [used to be], ‘well, find somewhere to put it in the IT budget … because we’re an operation shop, and as long as the control enters are working [and] operators [can] manage the grid, we’re good,’” said Stephen Brown, director of cyber and physical security for SERC Reliability.

Now “you think about the controls that have to be in place to keep the grid resilient, and you think about training; you think about hiring talent, which is another big challenge for companies here in the United States because there’s a … shortage of employees.”

Brown, along with other participants in the “Cybersecurity and Securing a Resilient Grid” panel, said that recent cyber incidents like the SolarWinds hack last year and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in May had helped to demonstrate the importance of electronic security for critical infrastructure. However, the topic can still seem intimidating, even for utility leadership determined to secure their systems.

“There’s thousands upon thousands of pages of requirements. Where do I start? What do I do? Do I need to comply with NERC CIP [Critical Infrastructure Protection] [or] NIST [the National Institute of Standards and Technologies], etc.?” said John Franzino, CEO of engineering and cybersecurity firm Grid Subject Matter Experts. “I completely agree [that] in order to have a mature program that’s repeatable and measurable, you need a good policy, just like in every other aspect of our business. But don’t get stuck on figuring out the big overarching policy … before just taking some basic actions.”

Expanding on Franzino’s point, Brown acknowledged that implementing a strong security culture often involves growing pains and frustration with additional layers of protection. But he warned that this should not become an excuse for abandoning the program, which can lead to much greater inconvenience.

“It can be cumbersome at times, if you have a lot of turnover, but you avoid the big mistakes,” Brown said. “No one really wants to have a process and control in place, until one may fail [and] someone … gets that privilege to access something that could be detrimental to your environment.”

Distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar panels and batteries, have attracted considerable attention on the cybersecurity front. Some experts warn that separating generation into many distributed units may create a much bigger attack surface for hackers to target. (See Rooftop PV’s ‘Hidden Loads’ Challenge Grid Planners.)

Karla Loeb, chief policy and development officer for solar panel manufacturer Sigora Solar, presented a different view. Comparing the decentralized nature of a DER to the now ubiquitous smartphone, Loeb suggested that spreading out generation duties created valuable redundancy, as taking down any single generation asset would affect only a small part of the load.

“How many times have your phones just shut down? Facebook [and] Instagram went down last week, but … it was just those specific applications; you were still able to use your phone, because the technology is so secure on the individual chip level … that they’re not able to infiltrate at that level,” Loeb said.

Franzino acknowledged Loeb’s point but warned that the current implementation of DERs still leaves significant points of vulnerability that utilities must address.

“The distributed nature is a great inherent benefit for resiliency and cybersecurity, but there still are these aggregation points along the way,” Franzino said. “Using your iPhone example, the doomsday scenario for probably 90% of the people in this room … is that Apple’s supply chain is compromised [or its] process of writing firmware, acquiring chips and putting together the whole system. If their supply chain is compromised, that is a huge aggregation point.”

October 13, 2021November 17, 2023

NYISO Exploring Dynamic Reserves

NYISO is evaluating the feasibility of dynamically scheduling reserves, a project that involves determining the minimum operating reserve requirements based on the single largest source contingency during market runs and exploring the dynamic allocation of reserves based on available transmission capability.

The ISO is currently stress-testing the prototype mathematical formulation in the day-ahead security-constrained unit commitment, real-time commitment and real-time dispatch intervals, Pallavi Jain, NYISO energy market design specialist, in presenting an update on the Reserve Enhancements for Constrained Areas project to stakeholders.

“Essentially, we’re adding additional constraints to the optimization to see if we can schedule reserves dynamically,” Jain said. “Right now, because we’re doing day-ahead — and in day-ahead you barely ever see any shortages — we’re looking at the clearing prices to see if it’s being determined correctly, if the right resources are being backed down how we would expect it.”

NYISO is testing the prototype under different scenarios and analyzing the accuracy of the results to test the effectiveness of incorporating it into the market software. The ISO has always operated under static reserve requirements, so moving to a dynamic procurement methodology required studying, Jain said.

The study is also looking at the dynamic allocation of reserves based on available transmission capability; in other words, shifting reserve procurements to lower-cost regions when sufficient transmission capability exists.

“Therefore, a more dynamic reserve procurement methodology could address these two considerations and also improve market efficiency by better aligning market outcomes with how the power system is operated,” Jain said.

The transmission part of the study includes creating locational operating reserve requirements for certain load pockets within New York City and perhaps modeling those requirements based on available transmission capability. The study also will evaluate modeling of certain city load pockets when operating reserves provide congestion relief.

“NYISO believes an efficient, more granular operating reserves concept is dependent on developing the transmission as reserves capabilities,” Jain said.

The ISO expects to implement dynamic reserves in 2025.

“This is a very big change in how we currently model reserves,” Jain said.

October 12, 2021

NJ Plans Permanent Community Solar Program

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) will launch a permanent community solar program next year, targeting installations of up to 150 MW a year, the agency said last week in response to solar developers’ concerns over the lack of clarity about the program’s future and when the winning bidders for its existing pilot program would be announced.

BPU President Joseph L. Fiordaliso revealed the plan for a permanent community solar program at a board meeting last week at which he also said he expects to announce the successful applicants to the second year of the pilot program in October or November. Fiordaliso ruled out the need for a third phase of the pilot program, saying the agency had learned enough in the first two phases to help shape the future program.

“We will be moving ahead with the rapid development of a permanent program,” he said during the BPU’s meeting Wednesday. “We will be developing the permanent program with the goal of ensuring that new community solar applications are able to be submitted as quickly as possible.”

The annual addition of 150 MW of community solar capacity will follow the 150 MW for which the BPU expects to announce the successful applicants soon in the second phase of the pilot program. The BPU awarded 78 MW in the first phase, and the first of the 45 approved applications began operating in January.

The community solar program is one of several that the state hopes will help it reach Gov. Phil Murphy’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2050. Murphy wants to deploy 32 GW of solar by 2025, about nine times the current amount, and in July he signed a bill designed to boost the state’s grid-scale capacity. (See NJ Grid-scale Solar Bill Signed by Murphy.)

Annika Colston, president of AC Power, which submitted nine applications to the second phase of the program, said the announcement of a permanent program is “excellent.”

“We all know there’s incredible demand for the program,” she said, applauding the BPU for listening to the concerns of the solar sector.

Solar Developer Frustration

Colston and other solar developers, as well as representatives of the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA) and Solar Energy Industries Association, two national advocacy groups, told the BPU in public hearing Sept. 28 that the board’s failure to announce the winners to the second program was putting submitted projects in jeopardy. (See Slow Progress of NJ Community Solar Pilot Draws Fire.)

The deadline for applications in the second phase closed Feb. 5, and the BPU said in May that it had received 410 applications, a figure that has since been increased to 412, totaling more than 800 MW. But the board had not until last week offered concrete details about when it would identify the successful bidders in the second phase, leaving developers nervous at the fate of some submitted projects.

Solar representatives said that developers that lined up rooftops and signed contracts to apply for the program were struggling to keep their partners on board, with little information from the BPU to calm concerns. That was compounded by the fact that BPU had at that point said nothing about whether the second phase would be succeeded by a third, a new permanent community solar program or something else, the representatives said.

Colston said she hopes that the BPU at some point outlines its rationale for opting to offer 150 MW each year in the permanent program instead of a larger annual award, given that the solicitations in the second phase totaled five times that amount.

Leslie Elder, CCSA’s Mid-Atlantic director, welcomed the announcement that the winning solicitations for second-phase projects are imminent and noted that the BPU is also allocating a total of 1,125 MW in community solar capacity through 2026.

“We are excited to work with BPU staff to build a permanent program,” she said. The goal is to create a program “that delivers more solar energy to overburdened communities, provides economic benefits to local jurisdictions, creates jobs, and ensures all state residents have access to clean and renewable energy to lower their energy costs,” she said.

Designing the Program

Scott Elias, senior manager of state affairs for SEIA’s Mid-Atlantic region, said the organization is looking forward to working out the kinks in the new program and potentially increasing the available capacity.

“There are issues that need to be worked out in the design of the permanent program,” he said. These range from “consolidated billing, evaluating whether the current rules for [low- and moderate-income] verification are working and appropriate, and shifting to a first-serve, first-come model instead of maintaining the current annual solicitation utilized for the pilot program.”

Community solar projects are targeted at consumers — whether homeowners or small businesses — who either cannot or do not want to have solar on their roofs. A developer builds that project, often on a roof, in a parking lot or on a landfill, and enrolls subscribers who receive a credit on their utility bill, reducing the electricity cost by a set percentage. The solar project operator then supplies the electricity generated in the project to a utility company, which provides power to the consumer in the same way the utility did before opting into community solar.

“Clean energy equity is the cornerstone of community solar in New Jersey,” said Shaun Keegan, CEO of Asbury Park-based Solar Landscape, which developed the first two community solar projects in New Jersey and has submitted others for the second phase of the program. “This program is leading the nation by including all New Jersey residents in the fight against climate change, regardless of their income or ability to install their own solar panels.”

October 12, 2021November 6, 2023

Community Solar/Resiliency Projects Gain Funding, Notice

When the electric grid goes down in Washington, D.C., during the next bad storm, there is at least one apartment building that won’t be completely in the dark.

During a recent renovation, Jubilee Housing’s Maycroft Apartments, a 100-year-old low-income housing building in the capital’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, added a 70.2 kW rooftop solar array and battery storage that will power lighting for stairwells and hallways and an on-site “resiliency center” for up to three days. While residents wouldn’t have power in their units, they would be able to use the resiliency center to store medicines that need refrigeration, charge their phones, power their medical devices and watch television. The ability to shelter in place is essential for low-income residents, who cannot afford hotels or may not own cars.

In addition, 100 of Jubilee Housing’s most “rent-burdened” households will be subscribed to a community solar program that will save them $40 to $50 on their monthly electric bills for the next 15 years.

In a webinar about the project, Martin Mellett, vice president of external affairs for Jubilee Housing, the non-profit that manages the building, said a survey found about 60% of Jubilee’s residents have less than $1,000 available for all other expenses even after paying a very reduced rent. “So, a $50 a month credit on their electric bills is a huge difference,” he said. The batteries and related equipment and installation totaled $130,000; the rooftop solar array cost $197,000.

The resiliency center in the bottom floor of the Maycroft Apartments in Washington, D.C., allows residents to gather and access electricity during an outage. | Pepco

“We had planned to install solar panels anyway in this project,” Mellett said in an interview with NetZero Insider. But Jubilee and New Partners Community Solar were able to increase the ambition of the project thanks to a $9,000 grant they received in 2018 for a “technoeconomic” feasibility assessment of a solar-plus-storage system. The analysis that resulted helped win a $65,000 grant from the charitable arm of local utility Pepco to support the project — the first large-scale battery installation in D.C., according to Pepco.

Montpelier, Vt.-based Clean Energy Group (CEG), a national nonprofit, provided the initial $9,000 grant through its Technical Assistance Fund. CEG announced last month that its total grants to community organizations had surpassed $1 million since it launched the grant program in 2014. The grants are part of CEG’s Resilient Power Project, created following the widespread outages resulting from Superstorm Sandy, to increase resilience through solar plus storage.

The grants are supporting 86 affordable housing and nonprofit community organizations, representing 93 solar-plus-storage projects in 22 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, resulting in 30 completed projects to date. Almost one-quarter of TAF grant awards have resulted in completed solar-plus-storage installations; the remainder are still in the pipeline or were not viable because of economic, finance permitting or structural issues.

Grants have gone to a nonprofit mobility services provider in Colorado, affordable housing for farmworkers in California, fire stations in Puerto Rico, and a remote forestry office in New Mexico.

Connecting the Dots

The Department of Energy recently announced it is putting $16 million into such “capacity building” initiatives for low-income communities. Such communities usually lack the experience, expertise and connections to tap into the funding and technical know-how they need to do solar and storage projects.

Herb Stevens, president of New Partners Community Solar, demonstrates how the Simpliphi batteries work with the rooftop solar array in a grid emergency. | Pepco

CEG doesn’t develop projects or provide financing but connects community groups it is helping with experts on the technologies. Its role is to “help connect the dots for people, whether that’s a municipality or a community-based organization or affordable housing director,” CEG Vice President Seth Mullendore said in the webinar.

“The point of the fund is to serve low-income or otherwise disadvantaged populations,” CEG Project Director Marriele Mango said in an interview. “We rely on the nonprofit or municipal facility, and try not to be too prescriptive, but when it’s municipal we’re more specific to ensure that [the project takes place] in a disadvantaged area.”

In a typical case, “we talk about the program to our partner organizations, or someone reaches out to us, and we ask if there’s a particular facility they want a battery for,” Mango said. “We ask if there’s someone they’re working with on solar feasibility. If not, we connect them with such a developer on the scope of work and the timeline and check if they’re eligible for the funds. We’re in a supportive role — we ask questions and support the community group.”

CEG asks the community partner for electric bills and load data, Mullendore said. “Sometimes the technical assistance provider can build and work as the developer, but in most cases, we prefer to work with a non-invested, third-party developer that is not tied to one specific vendor. In the post-analysis assessment process, we check in to see if there’s anything we can do to help. We help get the word out, so we can write up a case study or do a webinar, so other folks can learn from their project.”

Common Challenges

Many smaller, grassroots groups lack information about resilience, Mango said. “They may know about solar generally, but don’t know that when the grid is off, solar doesn’t continue to power the building. We educate them on how a battery operates and can support your building.”

Other problems may arise after the grant has been made and the project is being implemented. “Often, on the assessment side, there are changes in the scope, for example to replace an HVAC system, or add EV charging,” Mullendore said. Since many of the projects take place in existing buildings that are being rehabilitated, “there can be very interesting and complicated electrical system problems,” he added. “Permitting standards can vary. On implementation, the biggest problem is funding, how to pay for the systems. So, we have to look at revenue, saving people money. Usually, there’s a funding gap. We don’t have money from foundations, except for the $3 million Kresge Foundation loan guarantee program.”

Another resiliency hub CEG helped set up is on the other side of the country, in Santa Rosa, Calif., home of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center. The museum awoke to the need to help its community in that way when the area was devastated by the 2017 Tubbs Fire, and museum staff were handing out water to displaced people in the building’s parking lot.

CEG helped the museum find consultants to advise on how to set up the resiliency center, including the permitting and installation, Nicole Lim, executive director of the museum, said in an interview. CEG also worked with the tribal community to advise them on “different types of systems to help them get access to green infrastructure,” she said. “This is in line with our cultural values of environmental stewardship.”

The resiliency center already has served the community during power shutoffs Pacific Gas & Electric has imposed for up to a week to reduce the danger of its transmission lines sparking more wildfires.

Mango said interest in the Technical Assistance Fund has expanded to new parts of the country each year, an indication of the breadth of the climate crisis, “with more places impacted by severe weather and power outages than ever before.”

CEG is hoping to raise funds to award another $1 million over three years. “We had not widely advertised the program before,” Mullendore said. “We have worried about being overwhelmed, because we could probably increase tenfold to meet the demand we’ve seen, which increases every year.”

October 12, 2021June 14, 2023

Panelists: SEEM Can’t Be Southeast’s End Goal

ATLANTA — Participants in the Smart Electric Power Alliance’s Solar and Energy Storage Southeast conference on Monday described the proposed Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM) as an important first step in an ongoing conversation on alternative market structures in the Southeast.

“I certainly don’t think that this is the end of a process,” Chris Demko, associate general counsel for Southern Co., told the “Market Reform in the Southeast” panel. “It is supposed to be a sort of demonstration of innovation that we’re looking to see. If there’s value there [in other regions], how can we import that without all of the headaches?”

SEEM is intended to reduce trading friction across 11 Southeastern states by introducing automation, eliminating transmission rate pancaking, and allowing 15-minute energy transactions. Proponents, who comprise more than a dozen utilities and cooperatives in the Southeast, including Duke Energy and Southern, also claim it will promote the integration of renewable generation resources like wind and solar.

Chris-Demko-Jennifer-Chen-2021-10-11-(RTO-Insider-LLC)-Alt-FI.jpg

Chris Demko of Southern Co. and Jennifer Chen of CO2efficient | © RTO Insider LLC

These promises have been disputed by some stakeholders, such as the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), which published a report last month suggesting that other models surpassed SEEM’s purported benefits. (See Report: SEEM’s Benefits Beaten by Other Models.) An alliance of environmental groups has repeatedly pressed FERC to reject the proposal in favor of a technical conference on other potential market structures (ER21-1111, et al.), and several North Carolina lawmakers wrote the commission in August supporting this idea. (See NC Legislators Join Call for Southeast Technical Conference.)

Participants in Monday’s panel did not go that far, but several speakers emphasized that SEEM is not the only possible model for improving trading efficiency and promoting the adoption of renewable resources. Jennifer Chen, senior policy counsel at clean energy consultancy CO2efficient, pointed out alternative governance models that ACORE and others have suggested, as well as specific policies found in other regions that might be used in the Southeast.

“There are good practices that we can leverage from each of these regions,” Chen said. “For example … PJM’s tariff itself funds the consumer advocates in PJM states and enables consumer advocates to hire an executive director, hire consults, perform studies, [and] travel to meetings. … There are differences across the regions that we can leverage in terms of best practices for governance.”

Demko emphasized that while other governance models deserve consideration, regulators should not focus on the imperfections of the current proposal and potentially lose the opportunity for at least a partial improvement.

“This is a real option that can be delivered within a year, provided FERC accepts it,” Demko said. “This is something that is real and achievable; it’s not a hypothetical proposal and wouldn’t require scrapping the existing market that is delivering some of the most reliable electricity in the country.”

Joshua Brooks, co-founder and CEO of consultancy Brooksform, suggested that SEEM and other proposed market reorganizations are ultimately “trying to come up with business models that are more closely mapped to the physics of how electricity works,” which could prove useful to market design in general. But the underlying benefit of SEEM or any other structure is the opportunity to push a historically change-averse region toward accepting that new ideas don’t need to be feared.

“It’s the Southeast, right? They are going to have to get familiar with the idea of … just changing something a little bit,” Brooks said. “And what the outcome is may not be technologically related to it at all. I think [SEEM] would be really interesting to look at and study, same with the Southern [energy imbalance market].”

Brooks said he’s seen a “reticence to change” over the 12 years that he’s been engaged in policy regulatory discussions in the region.

“So I think the folks who would make the decision aren’t even looking at it as a technical jump … [it’s a way to] be familiar with the process and see where they could jump in on the next piece.”

October 12, 2021November 17, 2023

CEC Explores Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings

A “connected community” of 62 grid-interactive efficient homes used 44% less energy than a comparable all-electric community, a Department of Energy official said last week during a California Energy Commission workshop.

And the Reynolds Landing pilot project in Hoover, Ala., will soon be followed by other connected community trials. DOE expects to soon announce funding awards to about 10 additional pilot projects, according to David Nemtzow, director of DOE’s Building Technologies Office.

Nemtzow discussed connected communities during an Oct. 5 workshop on grid-interactive efficient buildings, or GEBs. CEC is hosting a series of workshops as part of the process for developing its 2021 Integrated Energy Policy Report.

Grid-interactive efficient buildings incorporate features such as smart thermostats or water heaters that communicate with the electric grid. Some homes might already have those technologies in place.

But GEBs take the technology a step further, by allowing devices to communicate with each other, with the grid, and with distributed energy resources such as solar systems, electric vehicles and energy storage.

The buildings may reduce energy demand through efficient heating and cooling systems or shed load by dimming lights in response to grid signals. They also may be able to export electricity to the grid.

Building Impacts

With nearly 125 million residential and commercial buildings in the U.S., GEBs potentially have a large role to play in meeting climate goals. Buildings account for about 74% of electricity use in the U.S. and 35% of the nation’s energy-related CO₂ emissions, Nemtzow said.

“They are where we spend most of our time; they’re where we breathe most of our air; and they’re where we use most of our energy,” CEC Commissioner Andrew McAllister said during the workshop. “So it’s just of fundamental, human importance in uncountable ways that we try to make our built environment as high-performing as it can be.”

Nemtzow said the benefits of GEBs can be even greater if a group of buildings works together as a connected community, sometimes known as a smart neighborhood. A connected community may be able to achieve economies of scale, take advantage of load diversity to smooth out demand curves, add distributed energy resources and encourage new business models.

“We will not do this on a onesie, twosie basis,” Nemtzow said. “We want the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts.”

Pilot Neighborhood

The 62-home Reynolds Landing project was the first DOE-supported connected community. The homes are highly energy efficient and equipped with variable-capacity heat pumps for heating and cooling and hybrid electric/heat pump water heaters. The appliances are internet connected.

The neighborhood’s centralized microgrid includes solar panels, battery storage and a natural gas-fired backup generator. Nemtzow said the 3,000-square-foot, upscale homes sold for about $400,000 each.

The project was a partnership among DOE, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Alabama Power and its parent company, Southern Co. ORNL software called Complete System Level Efficient and Interoperable Solution for Microgrid Integrated Controls (CSEISMIC) was used in the project.

The software is intended to optimize use of solar, storage and the generator, and can isolate the microgrid during an outage and supply power to the homes.

Two years after Reynolds Landing opened in 2018, the community was using 44% less energy than a comparable all-electric neighborhood. Power demand during winter peak hours was 34% less, ORNL reported.

DOE partnered again with Southern on a smart neighborhood in Atlanta called Altus at the Quarter. The project includes 46 townhouses equipped with rooftop solar, in-home energy storage, and home automation and energy management. Unlike Reynolds Landing, the Atlanta project does not include a microgrid.

Nemtzow said one of the lessons learned from the Reynolds Landing project was that residents would like to know in advance if the system is going to change the temperature of their rooms or hot water. Often the changes aren’t noticeable, but sometimes they are, Nemtzow said.

Residents had the ability to override the system’s algorithm, and some chose to do so, he added.

Commercial, Residential Projects

For the next round of DOE-supported connected communities, Nemtzow said, the projects will be spread out across the U.S.

Although Nemtzow couldn’t reveal the specific projects until DOE makes an official announcement, he said a variety of building types will be represented, including residential, commercial, mixed use, and university or corporate campuses. Some projects will be new construction while others will be building retrofits.

Nemtzow noted that California is known for its leadership on energy issues but said the federal government would like to engage in friendly competition with the state in a “race to the top.”

“I think [it’s] great that we’re doing it together and we’re all moving in the same direction,” California Public Utilities Commissioner Darcie Houck said.

GEB Barriers

DOE has set a goal of tripling energy efficiency and demand flexibility in residential and commercial buildings by 2030, compared to 2020 levels.

The department’s Building Technologies Office released a report in May titled “A National Roadmap for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings.” National adoption of GEBs could result in as much as $200 billion in cost savings for the U.S. electric power system over the next 20 years, the report said.

The report also outlines some of the barriers to widespread adoption of GEBs. Better technology is needed to improve interoperability of the systems, address cybersecurity concerns, and provide greater and more consistent load impacts.

In addition, more workforce training is needed related to GEBs, and consumer awareness must be increased.

October 12, 2021

MISO Tx Expansion Plans Proceeds to Board Vote

MISO’s Planning Advisory Committee has voted to advance the 2021 MISO Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP 21) to the RTO’s directors.

The committee’s sectors voted by email through late September. Seven of the 10 sectors voted in support of the transmission package, with the End-Use, Public Consumers and State Regulatory sectors abstained.

The Board of Directors’ System Planning Committee will consider MTEP 21 during an Oct. 25 teleconference before it goes before the full board on Dec. 9.

MTEP 21 includes 339 new projects worth $3.04 billion, a drop from 367 projects totaling almost $3.25 reported by MISO during its September Board Week. This year’s package is also significantly smaller than MTEP 20’s final $4.05 billion spend on 493 projects.

Broken down, substation work accounts for 38% of MTEP 21’s investment, line upgrades take a 36% share, and new lines account for 14%. Remaining costs are spread over transformer work, voltage devices and miscellaneous investments.

“This is very typical for the last couple of cycles,” project manager Sandy Boegeman said.

The package’s most expensive project is an $86-million rebuild of a line in southern Louisiana rated at just 115 kV. The second most expensive is a $71-million new 161-kV line and breaker stations in southern Iowa. Both projects are needed for reliability reasons.

The next eight most expensive projects range from $43 million to $33 million.

Energy consultant Kavita Maini noted that members have an incomplete picture of total MTEP spending because MISO is waiting until early next year to propose higher-voltage, long-range transmission projects that will be added after the fact. (See MISO Targets March Approval for Long-term Tx Projects.)

However, some stakeholders, primarily those from MISO South, have been casting doubt on the need for billions of dollars in long-term transmission projects. (See Tensions Boil over MISO South Attitudes on Long-range Transmission Planning.)

“Right now, we don’t know the MTEP 2021 total cost,” Maini said.

Boegeman said MISO will post an addendum to the MTEP 2021 report when long-range projects are finalized by next March.

Scott Goodwin, an expansion planning engineer, said with MTEP 21 winding down, MISO planners have shifted focus to MTEP 22.

During a Tuesday Planning Subcommittee teleconference, Goodwin said MISO’s expansion planners have already completed an initial review of transmission owners’ MTEP 22 project proposals. MISO will begin holding subregional planning meetings for the portfolio’s projects in January.

October 12, 2021February 25, 2024

Global Hydrogen Conference Reveals Plans to Ship Sunshine

The race to make hydrogen the world’s transportation and industrial fuel in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is well underway, judging from the turnout of a global hydrogen conference last week.

Nearly 5,000 people joined an interactive 24-hour virtual global hydrogen conference that began on the evening of Oct. 7 and continued non-stop through late afternoon Oct. 8. In addition to hydrogen, fuel cell development was discussed extensively — for heavy trucking, portable generation and automobiles.

One of the boldest plans unveiled was a pending deal between Australia and Germany to use Australia’s enormous amount of solar power potential to produce hydrogen either from desalinated sea water or fresh water, convert it to ammonia, and then ship it by tanker to Germany through the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The two countries have already established a feasibility study to look at the supply chain for delivering large quantities of green hydrogen from Australia to Germany, Philip Green, Australia’s ambassador to Germany, told listeners.

“We call our ambition, ‘shipping the sunshine,’ taking the very large quantities of Australian sunshine, making them available in terms of hydrogen to support the next phase of Germany’s climate change ambitions.

“If you took just 3% of Australia’s land area, and if you only use its solar energy to produce green hydrogen, that would of itself provide more than 10 times Germany’s annual needs for green hydrogen. So the fundamental equation there is that Australia has the capacity to be a big supplier of green hydrogen to Germany, and others,” he said.

Another Australian, Geoff Ward, CEO of the Hazer Group, told the audience that his company is working to commercialize a process that converts methane — in this case biogas produced at wastewater treatment plants — into hydrogen and graphite, a solid form of carbon. In other words, no carbon dioxide would be emitted in the production of the hydrogen.

The technology was developed at the University of Western Australia and is technically known as methane pyrolysis, using high temperatures in the absence of oxygen and in the presence of a catalyst (in this case powdered iron ore) to break the methane into hydrogen and graphite.

Ward said the process uses about the same amount of energy needed in steam reforming to crack methane into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, but much less energy than what is required for the electrolysis of water. Hazer began pilots in 2017, operating different configurations of project reactors in the company’s preferred “pressurized fluidized bed format.”

“We think this is a really important emerging tool in creating the hydrogen economy. It has a range of potential applications, from very large applications based on natural gas supporting industries like ammonia and petrochemicals, or decarbonization of large-scale gas systems. The other application we see is embedding it with city infrastructure with wastewater treatment plants, or with landfill gas, where we see a strong example of a circular economy,” Ward said.

The company has partnered with a municipal wastewater plant and is now building an adjacent $22 million pyrolysis plant.

‘Missing Link’

Chile is another nation distant from Europe but also interested in supplying hydrogen created with water and low-cost renewable energy. Juan Carlos Jobet, the country’s energy minister, made an effort to bring the point of the very technical conference into perspective.

“I’m convinced that our most important responsibility with future generations is reducing CO₂ emissions as fast as we can. This is … the most complex, most important intergenerational fairness issue we’re dealing with.

“Any decisions we make or we don’t make, any efforts we undertake, will impact future generations, our children and grandchildren. So it’s our responsibility to stop this problem as quickly as we can. And if you look at what is generating the emissions that produce climate change, this is very, very clear.”

Green hydrogen is the “missing link” in carbon neutrality plans, Jobet said.

“And this is true all over the world. That’s the reason why the green hydrogen economy is building momentum all over the world,” he said.

Relying on a series of global hydrogen reports from McKinsey and Co., Jobet said Chile in March released a plan proposing to build extensive solar and wind installations and produce some green hydrogen for use at home, but convert most of the output to ammonia and ship it abroad as a source of green energy.

German firms will build the equipment, he said, and the Chilean government hopes to negotiate contracts with customers in the U.S., Japan and other Asian nations.

Long-haul Trucking Opportunity

Fuel cell development and green hydrogen came together during the 24-hour marathon in the remarks of Sanjay Shrestha, energy solutions and chief strategy officer of Plug Power, the U.S. fuel cell maker based in Latham, N.Y.

Founded in 1997 as a joint venture, the company has been a manufacturer of fuel cells, particularly for warehouse forklift trucks. But since its acquisition of an electrolyzer company last year and announcements that it will build additional plants, Plug Power’s redefined mission now includes producing green hydrogen, relying on the same technology in its fuel cells. And Plug Power is seeking partners globally as it expands.

New York-based Plug Power, a long-time manufacturer of fuel cells that use hydrogen to produce emission-free power for forklifts, is aiming to become a major supplier of hydrogen while negotiating partnerships with companies internationally. | Plug Power

Speaking to those ambitions, Shrestha put it this way: “We have a very strong balance sheet … to execute on a lot of the global strategic initiatives that we have in place. So that we really go from a company that created a first viable commercial market for hydrogen fuel cell industry in forklifts to becoming a global green hydrogen solutions company.”

He said the company’s plans are to have as much as 500 tons of green hydrogen production capacity by 2025 in North America alone. It is also looking to partner with companies in Spain and Portugal.

And the company is planning to build fuel cells capable of powering vehicles. Plug Power has signed a 50-50 partnership with Renault, Shrestha said. “We are going to have a light commercial fuel cell electric vehicle for pilot application in Europe before the end of the year,” he said.

Looking ahead, Shrestha noted that its fuel cells “are very modular in nature.”

“It can … power all the way from robotic application drones and very small fuel cell units to … commercial vehicles to ground support equipment all the way to trains and aerospace as well as long haul trucking.

“And just to take a step back. If we think about the cost-reduction roadmap for green hydrogen, [and] the amount of the diesel that is consumed by long-haul trucking in North America, we really believe there is a tremendous opportunity here for green hydrogen solutions to help decarbonize the transportation industry in a very meaningful manner,” he said.

Sunita Satyapal, U.S. Department of Energy’s director of hydrogen and fuel cell research, was the first of 30 keynote speakers Thursday evening. She explained the Biden administration’s efforts to lower the cost of clean hydrogen to $1/kg within the decade and its support of efforts to manufacture fuel cells for heavy-duty trucking.

The last speaker was Thomas Stephenson, CEO of Pajarito Powder, a manufacturer of the catalysts at the heart of fuel cell technology.

The conference was organized by Mission Hydrogen, GmbH, a small company in southern Germany describing itself at “the independent partner of the worldwide community.” The event had 17 corporate sponsors. Nearly 60 companies hosted interactive exhibits during the conference.

Mission Hydrogen announced it will host a global conference in October 2022.