ISO-NE expects to have adequate resources to meet its projected 24,553-MW peak load this summer, the RTO announced as part of its summer outlook, released June 3.
The ultimate outcome will be highly dependent on weather, ISO-NE said, estimating there is a 10% chance the peak load exceeds 26,383 MW. The RTO anticipates having about 30,000 MW of capacity available.
“While the ISO expects the region to have adequate supplies of electricity this summer, abnormal conditions could force system operators to take action to maintain system reliability,” ISO-NE wrote in a press release. “Climate change has caused weather to become more volatile and less predictable, increasing the potential for system operators to resort to these actions.”
Weather is the region’s “largest driver of energy use,” ISO-NE noted, adding that hot and humid conditions coupled with unexpected generator outages would be especially difficult to manage.
ISO-NE’s demand forecasts are based on weather data from the prior 30 years, but they do not consider climate forecasts or more granular climate trends.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate average and maximum summer temperatures have been trending up in the Northeast over the past 30 years. Average temperatures for summer months have increased by about 0.4 degrees per decade since 1993, while maximum temperatures have increased by about 0.3 degrees per decade.
Average summer temperatures in the Northeast, 1993-2023 | NOAA
“Just a 1-degree change in temperature can impact the load and demand in New England significantly — by half a gigawatt or more,” Mike Fontaine, supervisor of operations forecasting for ISO-NE, said in a video released in May.
The RTO also highlighted the role behind-the-meter (BTM) solar has played in reducing peak demand, noting that it is responsible for approximately a 1,000-MW reduction in the summer peak. The roughly 7,000 MW of BTM solar capacity in the region has pushed the timing of the peak from midafternoon to early evening, ISO-NE added.
The forecast also includes just over 2,000 MW of energy efficiency, ISO-NE said, while dispatchable active demand response is counted as a supply-side capacity resource.
This summer will be the first following the retirement of the Mystic Generating Station, which was once New England’s largest fossil power plant. ISO-NE said it is “not projecting any capacity issues during the summer based on this retirement.”
The 24,553-MW peak projection would be an increase over the 2023 peak load of 24,043 MW, which occurred Sept. 7.
FERC on May 31 accepted SPP tariff revisions that will allow certain transmission facilities’ costs to be entirely allocated on a regional postage-stamp and cost-by-cost basis, effective June 1, 2024 (ER24-1583).
The commission found SPP’s capacity, flow and benefit analyses of the Sunflower Electric Power transmission facilities at the center of the proceeding provided benefits to the region as a whole. It said the grid operator demonstrated that its proposal will allocate the facilities’ costs in a manner “at least roughly commensurate with estimated benefits, consistent with the cost-causation principle.”
SPP’s analysis demonstrated that Sunflower’s “wind-rich” transmission zone had generation capacity that greatly exceeded its load. Flow analyses demonstrate that more than 70% of the power flows over the utility’s byway facilities are from generation unaffiliated with the zone’s load.
“We find that SPP’s capacity and flow analyses demonstrate that electricity generated from resources inside the Sunflower zone is being used by load outside of the Sunflower zone and that the Sunflower byway facilities are being used to deliver this electricity,” FERC said.
“The entire SPP region benefits economically,” from Sunflower’s facilities, the commission said. “We find that the proposed 100% regional, postage-stamp cost allocation will allocate the remaining costs of the transmission facilities in a manner that is at least roughly commensurate with benefits received and, therefore, is just and reasonable.”
SPP allocates one-third of the cost of byway projects — on lines rated at 100 to 300 kV — to the RTO’s full footprint, with customers in the transmission pricing zone where the project is built being allocated the rest. “Highway” projects — those larger than 300 kV — are allocated RTO-wide.
FERC rejected protests that the proposed allocation for the byway facilities’ remaining costs is inappropriate because those facilities were built to address zonal reliability issues or forecast load growth that never was realized, rather than regional needs. It said other arguments were that SPP’s analysis was “insufficiently granular” to determine whether the entire region would receive benefits at least roughly commensurate with costs.
“We emphasize that cost-allocation precedent does not require such ‘exacting precision’ in the commission’s cost-allocation decisions,” FERC said. “We find that a granular zone-by-zone benefits analysis is not necessary to find that SPP’s proposal to allocate the remaining costs of the Sunflower byway facilities on a 100% regional, postage-stamp basis is just and reasonable.”
The commission rejected SPP’s initial 2021 proposal to establish a process allowing entities to petition the RTO’s Board of Directors for exceptions from the highway-byway cost-allocation methodology. FERC accepted a revised proposal in 2022 in a 3-2 decision, only to reverse course in 2023 after several rehearing requests. (See FERC Reverse Course on SPP Byway Cost Plan.)
Sunflower has advocated for relief from the highway/byway process since 2017. Transmission owners largely have opposed the proposal as it wound its way through the stakeholder process, saying it would shift byway cost responsibility from wind-rich areas to others.
DALLAS — Attendees at a recent NERC and EPRI workshop on a draft standard addressing extreme weather’s effects on transmission planning now have a more personal understanding of those impacts.
Violent thunderstorms ravaged North Texas on May 28, the day before the workshop began, knocking out power to about 1 million Texans and leaving destruction in its wake. Several speakers and attendees were unable to fly into the Dallas area’s two airports after numerous flights were canceled. Those who did arrive found restaurants and entertainment options closed, thanks to the outages.
It didn’t get any better as the workshop adjourned May 30: Another line of storms rolled through the DFW Metroplex, forcing the cancellation or delay of flights out of the airports.
“It’s very ominous to begin a workshop focused on extreme weather with extreme weather,” Eknath Vittal, a senior principal technical leader in EPRI’s transmission operations and planning department and the workshop’s moderator, said May 29 in opening the workshop.
Vittal guided the diverse group of climate experts from national labs, research and development organizations, and other entities through a discussion of extreme weather and its implications for FERC Order 896 and NERC’s upcoming TPL-008 draft standard regarding extreme weather’s effect on transmission planning.
The commission’s 2023 order directed NERC to update TPL-001-5.1 (transmission system planning performance requirements) or draft a new standard by December 2024 that addresses a lack of long-term planning requirement for extreme weather events. (See FERC Approves More Extreme Weather Rules.)
developing benchmark planning cases based on major prior extreme weather events and/or meteorological projections.
planning for extreme weather events using steady state and transient stability analyses expanded to cover a range of extreme weather scenarios, including the expected resource mix’s availability during extreme conditions.
using corrective action plans that mitigate any instances where performance requirements are not met.
The NERC drafting team’s initial work product “failed miserably,” as PJM team member Michael Herman said, on its first ballot. The team is reviewing the comments it received before determining next steps, he said.
“We’ve been reading the comments that everyone has submitted about this,” Herman told his audience. “We’re taking that information and we’re working internally to process that information, and to determine what changes we need to make to the standard in order to address the concerns that all of you brought up.”
Herman says the drafting team will work to improve the standard’s language to better consider wide-area — entire reliability coordinator areas and critical flow and status information from adjacent RC areas — impacts and setting study area boundaries based on the benchmark events’ planning coordinator or planning coordinator requirements.
“In general, we see a lot of need here to bring online nuances to these studies, not just with respect to the defining the benchmark events, but actually the assumptions that go into the analysis itself,” he said.
A second draft is expected to be released for a second ballot in July. The drafting team will consider the need to define wide-area studies, bounding coordination requirements within a single interconnection and whether additional details are needed to specify addressing impacts on/from adjacent systems.
Vittal said the TPL-008 process won’t take as long as the original standard, which took five years to approve.
“Well, there’s the FERC directive behind it, so that kind of dictates the timeline in a way that might not apply to other standard-development processes,” he said. “That’s driving things at a little more pace.”
“This conference raises a lot of questions about how much data and how much analysis should be put into [the standard] because there’s a lot of assumptions and a lot of uncertainties that still require a lot of engineering and regulatory judgment,” said SPP’s Charles Yeung, executive director of interregional affairs.
He said the standard still will need a lot of work but that the workshop laid out a set of questions that will be tackled in the development process.
“I think it’s very valuable to do that upfront, rather than having to go through this iteration of postings and Q&A,” Yeung said. “This is definitely helpful because this is clearly something that’s not done in the planning horizon. So how do you translate all that analysis into a planning horizon? That’s going to be the challenge because the conditions and risks are very different going out far in the future than they are a week in the future.”
Creating the benchmark planning cases will require exchanging information on who develops the case, the weather variables that will affect inputs and assumptions, and how planning coordinators will coordinate case development with other PCs.
The standard drafting team envisions coordination among adjacent affected PCs to include sharing all applicable modeling and contingency data and understanding the benchmark event being studied by adjacent impacted PCs.
“Every time I talk to anyone in industry about what we’re trying to do … they’re so impressed because we’re trying to take on something that has not been done before,” said Soo Jin Kim, NERC’s vice president of engineering and standards. “When NERC first came into existence … it was in whether or not we had enough capacity on the system. That’s no longer the case anymore. Now with our changing resources, with almost all of the generation projects coming into the interconnection queues being renewable resources, we have to run our system very differently.”
Kim said other planning projects are on the horizon once TPL-008 is completed. She acknowledged the industry is “a little tired” of all the standards projects in play and asked for patience as NERC works to address severe weather effects.
“We do think it’s important that we continue to grow, and we continue to make sure that the momentum moves forward,” she said. “We’re now at a point where we have to keep up. I think it’s very important that we get ahead of the issue, and then we’re not playing catch-up for the next two years.”
RTO Insider co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Meredith (“Merry”) Eisner-Heidorn, whose passion for children, public education and Philadelphia sports left a mark on all who knew her, died in Baltimore on May 28, just two months after learning she had lung cancer. She was 66.
Among Merry’s survivors are her husband and RTO Insider co-founder Rich Heidorn Jr., her twin sons, Zach and Ben, 25, and her beloved dog, Daisy.
Rich and Merry got married in their living room in February 2013, a month after Rich got laid off from Bloomberg Government. Merry had been laid off from a job months before. “We figured we’d get the ‘for poorer’ part taken care of upfront,” Rich said.
Merry, who had a background in marketing and database design, and Rich, a former FERC staffer and journalist, published the first issue of what was originally called PJM Insider in March 2013. The pair grew the company without any outside funding, expanding from PJM to the six other RTOs and ISOs in the U.S. and adding two new publications, ERO Insider in 2019 and NetZero Insider in 2021.
Merry never considered herself a salesperson, but she filled that role for the first three years of the company. “I always said that without her, I’d have only two subscribers — and one of them would be my mother!” Rich said.
Merry “raised two amazing sons, helped create and grow a successful business, and shared a special union with her husband, Rich Heidorn,” said Merry’s younger brother, Randy. “Merry was tenacious and passionate, and her passing leaves a giant void for all those whose lives she touched.”
Early Years
Meredith Baer Goldner was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 9, 1957, learning to walk in Rittenhouse Square. Her father was an architect, and her mother was a homemaker.
Merry had a rebellious streak, the product of a tumultuous home life after her parents divorced.
In 1969, not yet 12, she and a friend conspired to travel from Philadelphia to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, each telling their mother that she was staying the weekend at the other’s house. She recalled dodging photographers to avoid leaving any evidence of her presence.
She loved live music and spent many evenings at the famed Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pa., a small coffeehouse venue where she saw numerous acts who later went on to great fame. One night, she said, singer Jackson Browne tried to pick her up on her way to the restroom.
Merry graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 with a degree in nonprofit marketing and moved to Chicago, where she worked with the famed Steppenwolf Theater Co.
Later, she joined the media department of the large Chicago advertising firm now known as D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. She moved later to a small, boutique ad firm in Baltimore, and then on to New York City, where she conducted marketing and media research for outdoor media at TDI Winston.
She devoted the next stage of her career to evangelizing about the most efficient and effective ways to reach customers, developing metrics used to purchase and validate media audiences and advertising.
In 1990, she became senior vice president in the MicroMarket Strategies Division of advertising agency Earle Palmer Brown Co., based in Bethesda, Md. In that role she launched the frequent traveler program for USAir.
From 1992 to 2000, she was a co-owner of Strategic Insights Inc., a marketing consulting company that built relationship marketing programs. Its clients included Carnation, Heinz, Mobil Oil and Western Union.
Education Advocacy
After giving birth to Zach and Ben in 1998, Merry was a stay-at-home mom, active in the parent-teacher association at her sons’ school in Potomac, Md.
She served as vice president of legislation for the Maryland PTA in 2009-2010, and in 2012 as policy chair of the Montgomery County chapter of Start School Later Inc., an organization dedicated to increasing public awareness about the relationship between sleep and school hours. She also was a member of steering groups dealing with math education in Montgomery County schools.
She provided story tips to Washington Post education reporter Donna St. George, who remembered her as “so spirited and funny and caring.”
Politics
As her sons grew, she went to work in the Maryland legislature, serving as legislative director to Del. Saqib Ali and later Del. Sam Arora, from 2008 to 2011. She also managed Del. Al Carr’s 2012 campaign.
In 2014, she ran unsuccessfully for the Montgomery County Board of Education on a campaign to increase the district’s transparency and teachers’ planning time.
“She was a force of nature and someone who left an indelible mark on the lives of everyone who was lucky enough to be in her orbit,” said Arora.
Former Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, Merry’s neighbor in Potomac, called her “an extraordinary person — smart, focused, but never too busy to be kind and friendly.” He lamented her death, saying, “Who will I call now to know how to vote in down-ballot races?”
Marriages
In 1983, at age 25, she had what she would later term a “starter” marriage to Hugh M. Jones. She said she knew within a month of the wedding that it was a mistake. They divorced in 1985.
Her marriage to Oren D. Eisner, the father of her sons, also ended in divorce.
She met Rich in Maryland in the fall of 2009, the two bonding as parents of twins and as Philadelphia sports fans commiserating over the Phillies’ loss to the Yankees in the World Series. Merry treated Rich’s three children as her own, creating the “blended family” she promised at their wedding. She loved introducing herself and her husband with a mnemonic device: “We’re Rich and Merry!”
Merry’s love for her sons was apparent to all who worked at RTO Insider, and she was delighted by her employees’ children. With workers scattered around the U.S., RTO Insider staffers meet regularly on video calls, bringing employees into each other’s’ homes, where their pets and children often appear in the background.
Deputy Editor Robert Mullin recalled that when Rich and Merry visited his home in Portland, Ore., in 2017, Merry asked if Robert’s 5-year-old son, Henry, would sit in her lap for a moment “so she could remember what it was like to hold a little boy.” Her own sons had graduated high school the previous year, and Merry was feeling some empty-nest pangs.
Robert’s wife, Christina, asked Merry for thoughts on raising Henry.
“I remember Merry offering a few pieces of advice, then pausing and saying, ‘Just enjoy him,’” Robert recalled. “Henry’s now an adolescent, and as parents we’ve been navigating the sometimes-tumultuous transition into the middle school period alongside him. During some of the more difficult moments, when I feel myself ready to dig in on my position, I’ve found myself thinking about what Merry said, letting go a little and approaching a situation with a sense of lightness and humor. It has really helped me — and Henry — through some challenges. I know I will always carry that part of her with me.”
Merry was always eager to see the drawings that NERC correspondent Holden Mann’s son, Robin, displayed at RTO Insider’s weekly staff meetings.
“My wife loved the sound of Merry’s voice in our meetings, and I know Robin will remember her kindness and interest in him,” Holden said.
Nicole Hopson, a recent addition to the RTO Insider marketing team, said her job interview with Merry was what made her say, “I want to work here.” They talked for 45 minutes about having sons, “and you could tell that her life is her kids. She’s so relatable, and I’ve never felt more understood by someone I just met for the first time.”
Merry was both den mother and disciplinarian at RTO Insider, telling staffers she expected strict adherence to deadlines.
Merry “was one of the main reasons I decided to join the company,” said CAISO correspondent Ayla Burnett. “I remember when her and I first spoke, I was struck by how strong, direct and badass she was, and I felt safe.”
“It seems so cliche to say this environment is like our extended family, but in this case, I truly feel like it couldn’t be more appropriate,” said Creative Director Mitchell Parizer. “But because of it, it’s making it that much harder to digest this news” of her death.
“She has taught me much, and has easily been one of the most influential people in my life, as well as put food on my young family’s table. All this without ever meeting in person,” said Dan Ingold, director of sales and customer engagement. “Someone like Merry can’t help but leave a mark far and wide in this world.”
“I’ll also never forget the Yiddish word she taught me the first time we spoke [on video]: ‘bashert,’” he added. “She was describing our meeting and the prospect of my hiring, but the thing that sparked it was my dog, Louie, in the background yapping and sounding just like Daisy. I took it as her way of saying the relationship appears meant to be.”
Jobs for Journalists
In a time of widespread layoffs in the media industry, trade publications like RTO Insider have provided jobs that helped journalists preserve their careers. At the beginning, Rich and Merry were the only employees of the company, which would grow to a staff of 26. Even though Rich oversaw the reporters and editors, Merry insisted she interview and approve every hire.
Merry was “hands down the kindest, most generous, best boss I’ve ever had,” said MISO correspondent Amanda Durish Cook. “She is the primary reason I believed a writing career was still in the cards for me. She put all her faith in me from the first day, and I can’t put a price on that. It is an honor, and she is my role model. I can’t overstate this: She is a jewel, and I’ve never, never had a boss like her.”
Michael Brooks, now deputy editor, was one of the first staffers Rich and Merry hired. A University of Maryland College Park journalism graduate, he was then working as a waiter at Dave & Buster’s in North Bethesda, Md. — ironically, the spot where Rich and Merry had their third date to watch an Eagles game.
Michael took over the layout of the weekly newsletter for Merry, working from Rich and Merry’s home.
“Merry not only paid me for my work but also fed me lovely dinners, gave me a place to sleep during snowstorms and let me take Daisy for walks. I will never forget that,” Michael said.
Shawn McFarland — a production editor who also writes the sometimes snarky, sometimes heartwarming stories that top the daily RTO Insider email — was hired in late 2018. He had left a sports writing job in Pennsylvania after eight years to be with his eventual wife in Maryland.
After working for two weekly papers that closed, he was sweeping the floors of a beer distributor at 11 p.m. “It was a pretty low moment in my life,” he said. “Luck finally fell on my side when I got the job. It felt like [it] saved my pride, my sanity — maybe my marriage and family if I’d have continued to struggle financially.”
“I will always be grateful to Merry for giving me my first job,” said Tri Bui, sales coordinator. “Her infectious energy never failed to put a smile on my face.”
“Merry’s indomitable spirit has been the heart and soul of the company and her family. She has been a terrific friend and colleague to everyone,” said Ken Sands, senior vice president for editorial. “Her spirit will live on with all of us.”
“As she helped recruit and onboard me, Merry told me what to expect — basically, ‘You will do your best work to maintain the standards this company is known for, and I will give whatever tools you need to make that happen,” said John Cropley, NetZero Insider’s New York/New England bureau chief. “I think it was her sheer competence, determination and confidence as much as her irrepressible good nature that made us all like, love, respect and appreciate her.”
As news of Merry’s passing spread, tributes rolled in from the industry. “Those of us who follow ISO/RTO goings-on subscribe to RTO Insider for Rich and his team’s invaluable insights — but also got to interact with the lovely Merry Eisner-Heidorn, who brought sunshine and light to every chat, no matter how brief,” said attorney Ruta Kalvaitis Skučas, a partner at Crowell & Moring.
A Move, then Illness
Last September, Merry and Rich moved from the Potomac home where she raised her sons to a waterfront townhouse in the Canton section of Baltimore, a walkable neighborhood with a wealth of restaurants. Merry reveled in totaling 10,000 steps daily with her dog.
She began doing strength training at a gym across the street from her house. Expecting to live into her 90s, like her mother and grandmothers, she reasoned she needed to build her core strength, and her tough workouts began to produce evidence of biceps.
Rich and Merry’s real estate search was recounted in The New York Times’ “The Hunt” column.
But in early March, Merry sought medical treatment for a persistent cough and shortness of breath. When the problems continued despite various treatments, she had a chest X-ray on March 26 that identified a nodule in her lung. That was followed by a CT scan that suggested cancer and a PET scan that confirmed the diagnosis. Testing also found that the cancer had spread to her liver, several lymph nodes and at least nine small spots in her brain.
On April 25, she cut her hair short, in preparation for treatment she expected would cause her to lose it all.
Three days later, she was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore with a blood clot in her lung. Based on what they heard from the ambulance, the ER personnel thought they would have to intubate Merry. But she was stabilized on the ride and came into the hospital on a stretcher cracking jokes with the EMTs.
She would need to be connected to oxygen 24/7 for the rest of her life. But during her 10-day hospitalization, she remained upbeat, querying the nurses about what led to their career choices and collecting restaurant recommendations in her new city.
Almost a week later, she met with her oncologist, who said she had stage IV lung cancer. They agreed on a 12-week treatment plan including chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiation.
She remained upbeat, continuing to promise her sons she would dance at their weddings and her husband that — even if 2024 sucked — 2025 would be better.
On May 23, however, two days after her first chemo and immunotherapy treatment, she was admitted to Mercy again with severe nausea and increased difficulty breathing. Tests showed that her cancer had spread. Weary from the pain and nausea, she said she no longer wanted to fight. She met with her oncologist the next day and agreed to transition to hospice.
Although she would sleep for most of the following two days, she was able to say goodbye to her children and other family members. The day before her death, she smiled in recognition as her older brother, Harold, told a story from their childhood. Then, she spontaneously began singing the Herman’s Hermits’ hit 1965 version of “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am.”
She was also cheered when her children brought Daisy onto her hospital bed, where she would remain until Merry’s death. After not eating for days, Merry devoured two Krispy Kreme donuts.
She awakened for the last time about 11 p.m. on May 27 to tell her sons, “Love you guys.”
She stopped breathing and was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m. on May 28. Her corneas were later harvested for transplant.
Reaction
News of Merry’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes from those whose lives she crossed.
“With her boundless energy and a larger-than-life personality, it’s difficult to imagine her passing,” said Ed Tatum, now retired, who represented Old Dominion Electric Cooperative and American Municipal Power at PJM.
“Merry was an amazing force of positivity, incredible kindness and genuine warmth,” said former New York Public Service Commissioner Diane Burman, now assistant counsel in the state comptroller’s office. “She was someone I always looked for when I went to a conference that RTO Insider was at.”
“She is such a force of nature, and such a special person, that it is almost impossible to understand” her steep decline, said Piers Bearne, founder of Collingwood Group, a U.K.-based publishing consultant that has worked with RTO Insider to increase its sales.
“She was a gem to work with, and we will miss her kind and friendly disposition,” said PJM spokesman Jeff Shields.
“I don’t really have any words that measure up to the moment,” wrote CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer. “But I just wanted you to know that you are in our hearts, and I really appreciate your contribution to our industry.”
Journalist Tony Gnoffo, who worked with Rich at The Philadelphia Inquirer before moving to the D.C. area, remembered her “generosity.”
“Your advice on pursuing romance in the capital of the free world, and your bribery with homemade baked goods of the nurses at Sibley Memorial Hospital when I broke my hip, went far beyond any reasonable expectation,” he said. “We will always be in awe of what you and Rich built together. It’s really hard to blend two families, but you did it. It’s really hard to build a successful business, but you hit that out of the park. It’s really hard to find and make perfect your dream house, and you did it so well that The New York Times had to tell the world about it.”
Survivors
Merry’s father, Steven M. Goldner, died in 2017.
In addition to her husband, she is succeeded by her mother, Roberta (Bobbi) Schimmel, of Haverford; brothers Harold (Shelly) Goldner, Esq., of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Randy (Wendy) Goldner, of Portland, Ore., and Dr. Dan Goldner, of Philadelphia; sisters Meg Goldner Rabinowitz, of D.C., and Dr. Elizabeth (Eric) Godfrey, of Bala Cynwyd; sons Zachary, of Baltimore, and Benjamin, of Seattle; and step-children Benjamin (Rachel) Heidorn, of Phoenixville, Pa.; Dr. Elise Heidorn, of Reading, Pa., and Molly Heidorn, Esq., of Easton, Pa.
A memorial service will be held in Baltimore on June 29.
Tribute
Before becoming ill, Merry had agreed to be a speaker in early June at the 2024 summit of Renewd, an organization of niche business-to-business and business-to-consumer publications.
Summit Chair David Foster said last week that the gathering will be dedicated to Merry’s memory.
The burgeoning power demand from data centers and artificial intelligence can be met by other means than new natural gas-fired power plants that could hinder state and local emission-reduction goals, according to a new report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
The centers’ insatiable appetite for electricity could more than double by 2030, the report says; so, tech developers and utilities should work together to turn the passive demand of these megawatt-guzzling facilities into grid assets, by using their backup generators to provide system reliability and flexibility.
“The data centers all have 100% backup generation on site” — usually diesel generators — “to prevent catastrophic failures,” said David Porter, EPRI’s vice president for electrification and sustainable energy strategy. “The backup generation has the ability to function as a grid resource in times of need; it doesn’t have to be long term.”
But creating these “shared energy” systems first will mean gaining data center willingness to set them up by addressing industry fears about how any use of their backup power might affect the reliability of their own operations, Porter said. In addition, utilities also will have to offer “the right incentives financially to the data centers to make it worth their while to participate in a program like that,” he said.
EPRI’s other options for keeping data center demand growth at lower levels include improved energy efficiency and better forecasting for new centers and the power they will need.
“Forecasts need to make better projections describing new point load locations, magnitudes and timing alongside better techniques for making decisions ― to build or not build long-lead-time infrastructure ― while facing the economic, regulatory and political uncertainty associated with siting these large [centers],” the report says.
EPRI’s research and recommendations stand in contrast to those recommending pushing back the closure of some fossil fuel-fired plants and adding new gas generation to deal with the load.
The prime example is Virginia, which boasts of having the largest concentration of data centers in the world in its northern, D.C.-area suburbs — the so-called “Data Center Alley” in Loudoun County. Local concerns center on the environmental impacts of the thousands of diesel backup generators already located at the centers and a new 500-kV transmission line being planned by PJM, as well as likely increases on residential utility bills.
The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act requires Dominion Energy, its largest investor-owned utility, to deliver 100% of its power from renewable sources by 2045.
The utility’s most recent long-term integrated resource plan sees most new generation between now and that deadline coming from solar and storage. But among the options considered in the IRP, Dominion’s preferred plan keeps some coal-fired generation online through 2030, converts a 415-MW coal plant to natural gas and builds at least three new natural gas plants with a combined capacity of 1,708 MW, with the final, 523-MW facility coming online in 2049.
The EPRI report counters with a focus on “scalable clean energy supply,” primarily solar, wind and storage. Tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft — known in the industry as “hyperscalers” — are procuring thousands of megawatts of new clean energy to cover their operational power demands, the report says.
Top data center developers ― including Iron Mountain, Digital Realty Trust, QTS Realty Trust and Switch ― similarly have increased their procurement of clean energy, according to a 2023 report by S&P Global. Google, Microsoft and Iron Mountain have led industry efforts to match their power demand with carbon-free generation hour for hour 24/7.
In the long term, many in the industry are looking toward small modular reactors as an option for the kind of clean, dispatchable power that data centers need, but Porter does not expect the technology ― now in the early stages of demonstration and deployment ― to reach broad, commercial scale until the 2030s.
The coming clash between data center and AI load growth and the clean energy transition “is not going to be easy,” he said. “Even solar and wind resources that can really help with zero-carbon electrons … are not coming online as fast as might be needed to support this and other growth.”
To keep electricity abundant, reliable and affordable, Porter said, “optionality is still our best opportunity for that, so, I think a collection of different types of resources.” Data centers might replace their backup diesel generators with a mix of renewables and energy storage, biofuels or green hydrogen.
Just How Much?
The EPRI report also provides a detailed picture of the power demand of data centers, their uneven geographic distribution and the dramatic impact AI is having on growth trends.
While a regular Google search eats up about 0.3 Wh of power, a similar search via AI takes close to 10 times as much electricity: 2.9 Wh. The appetite of generative AI, which can produce images, video or text, multiplied by millions of worldwide users, could “lead to a step change in power requirements,” the report says.
Hyperscale data centers require 100 MW or more of power ― the equivalent demand of 80,000 homes ― and can be built and brought online within two years.
Virginia’s data centers currently represent 25% of the state’s electricity consumption. But given ongoing high growth, EPRI estimates data center power demand in the state could almost double by 2030, to 46%. According to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state already has 150, or 35%, of the world’s hyperscale data centers.
On a national level, data centers accounted for 4% of electricity consumption across the U.S. in 2023. EPRI’s report models low-, moderate-, high- and higher-growth scenarios, with data center demand either edging up to 4.6% of total consumption by 2030 (low growth) or more than doubling to 9.1% (higher growth).
The EPRI study anticipates the power demand of data centers could edge up by 4.6% or more than double to 9.1% by 2030. | EPRI
Virginia and 14 other states spread across the U.S. make up 80% of that demand, the report says. Consequently, forecasts of demand growth should be looked at regionally, Porter said. Decisions about where data centers are located may depend on “several key things … like what’s the communications infrastructure, what’s the price of electricity, what’s the price of land and is there still workforce available in the area?” he said.
“Power availability is also part of that, and depending on where you are, in some parts of the country, it’s easier to get large blocks of power than others,” he said.
While not specifically mentioned in the report, grid expansion must be part of the bigger picture on meeting data center power demand, Porter said. Hyperscale centers are “not going to be distribution-served facilities; [their power] will come from transmission,” he said. “That’s part of why there’s a need for better communications, particularly with the near-, mid- and longer-term [planning] from the data centers to the utilities,” given the yearslong process for planning and permitting new transmission lines.
Grid-enhancing technologies ― such as upgrading existing lines with advanced conductors ― should be looked at as both interim and longer-term solutions for expanding transmission capacity, he said.
Energy Efficiency
Historically, data centers have been able to offset their increasing power demand through efficiency, but with the U.S. economy and data centers growing at unfamiliar and accelerated speeds, whether efficiency can keep up remains uncertain.
EPRI’s research has included “interesting conversations with hyperscalers,” Porter said. “They still firmly believe that as their capabilities to architect what happens inside data centers, coupled with continued improvements in chips … the [electricity] demand for data centers will not grow in huge leaps and bounds.”
Major efficiency gains may be made in facility cooling ― typically air conditioning ― which traditionally has accounted for 35% of data center power demand, the report says. Newer cooling technologies that use liquids to absorb and dissipate heat can cut demand by up to 50%.
Using system redundancy at data centers is another option, Porter said. Centers may have backup or redundant servers “that are running at 50% of their capability,” Porter said. “The challenge with this is that a server running at 50% of capacity uses as much energy as it would if it were running at 100% capacity.”
Other approaches include “pruning”: cutting unnecessary elements in neural networks, which reduces computational complexity — and energy demand — while “maintaining robust performance,” the report says. Power capping reduces energy use but may slightly decrease speed by 3 to 4%, Porter said.
A recent webinar sponsored by Canary Media also looked at the role of wholesale markets in responding to the increasing power demands of data centers and the potential inefficiency of non-RTO markets such as the Southeast.
“If we had an RTO that covered the whole region, you wouldn’t be building three or four gas plants for the same load,” said Maggie Shober, research director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “The flip side of that is we don’t have reserve margin sharing here in the Southeast,” so individual utilities may be predicting a need for larger reserves.
Shober and other speakers at the webinar zeroed in on the Georgia Public Service Commission’s recent approval of an updated IRP for Georgia Power after the utility predicted 17-fold growth in demand by 2030, largely from data centers. The new plan includes a power purchase agreement that would help keep a coal-fired plant in Mississippi online through at least 2028, along with three new, company-owned gas-fired plants with a total capacity of 1,400 MW.
The Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) was able to push Georgia Power to a last-minute addendum to the IRP, committing the utility to develop a new program that allows large-demand customers, like data centers, to bring their own clean power into the utility’s system, said Priya Barua, CEBA’s senior director for market and policy innovation.
The utility has agreed to work with CEBA and other customers to design the program, which will be included in its 2025 IRP, Barua said. “I think it’s an important first step for opening a new path for Georgia to have kind of expanded options for meeting load growth” in the absence of an organized market.
Shober sees the Georgia Power and Dominion IRPs as a “trial run because we know this kind of load is coming. … My worry is that this sort of panic reaction and kneejerk reactions by a number of utilities means that we don’t have the right processes in place and the right level of transparency to meet that kind of load” with proactive planning and a diverse set of options.
Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association, said such changes should include a hard look at the value different resources bring to the grid. “Historically, natural gas, coal [and] nuclear resources … would get 100% accreditation. The utilities would just assume, ‘Oh yes, they’re always going to be around because we can turn them on and off.’
“The reality is showing that’s not the case. So, we need to appropriately accredit those resources as we’re also properly accrediting wind, solar [and] batteries.”
Barua agreed that new, more holistic thinking is needed — and maybe taking some risks. “We’ve reached the stage where we’re going to need to be uncomfortable to come up with the right kinds of solutions for the challenge that the system is facing right now.”
An appeals court has toppled Wisconsin’s longstanding ban on aggregators of demand response participating in wholesale markets.
The District IV Court of Appeals for Wisconsin agreed with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) that the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s circa-2009, temporary order prohibiting customers and aggregators from selling demand response in MISO was procedurally improper (2021CV41).
The court said in a May 31 ruling that the original order in fact meets the definition of a rule according to Wisconsin law and the Wisconsin PSC should have proposed and adopted it using different procedures. Judges called the order “invalid and unenforceable” and reversed a circuit court’s decision to dismiss a challenge to it.
“There is no dispute that, in issuing the order, the commission did not comply with the pertinent rulemaking procedures set forth” in Wisconsin statute, the appeals court said.
The 15-year-old order — which bars retail customers of Wisconsin’s largest utilities, as well as third-party aggregators, from selling load reductions in wholesale markets — was considered temporary when commissioners approved it. It was to remain in effect until regulators rescinded it through another order, which to date hasn’t happened.
At the time, commissioners reasoned they needed time to analyze the financial implications of demand response aggregations on ratepayers and investigate how such aggregations would affect utility-sponsored demand response programs and resource planning.
MREA first challenged the order with the Portage County Circuit Court in 2021.
The Wisconsin PSC asked the appeals court to sustain the dismissal. It said MREA failed to challenge the order within 30 days of issuance and didn’t exhaust all administrative remedies first because it didn’t ask regulators to reopen the docket to rescind or alter the order. The commission also argued it has main jurisdiction over the issue.
But the court said the order isn’t an administrative decision according to Wisconsin law and isn’t subject to the 30-day limit. It noted Wisconsin law allows plaintiffs to petition courts “for declaratory relief without first asking the agency to rule” on claims and dismissed the commission’s contention that the PSC was exclusively equipped to handle the matter.
“[MREA’s} argument that the order is an invalid, unpromulgated rule involves only issues of law that fall squarely within the circuit court’s expertise,” the court said. It remanded the case to the circuit court with instructions for the court to deem the temporary order invalid.
The court similarly wasn’t persuaded by the Wisconsin PSC’s argument that the order didn’t amount to the “general application” of a rule. Wisconsin considers rules generally applicable when the class of constituents is “described in general terms and new members can be added to the class.”
The court agreed with MREA that since the order applied to all existing and future retail customers of Wisconsin’s four largest utilities and all existing and future third-party aggregators, it met the definition of a rule.
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO said a riskier operating environment means it needs a more nuanced approach to its regulation reserve requirements.
At its May 30 meeting, MISO’s Reliability Subcommittee agreed to take up a project to make regulation reserves more dynamic. MISO plans to design a process with stakeholders to quantify operating uncertainty and prescribe the requirement depending on anticipated risks.
Manager of Operations Risk Assessment Congcong Wang said historically, MISO’s regulating reserve relies on a static requirement “that may not be effective in managing the increasing and varying uncertainty in the 4-second to 5-minute time frame” given MISO’s changing resource portfolio. She said MISO needs a more calibrated approach that involves a requirement that varies by hour and season in either high, medium or low amounts. MISO currently carries about 400 MW of regulation reserves.
“Appropriately setting its requirement is critical for the product to work effectively,” Wang said.
MISO’s ancillary service market provides regulating reserves, which are designed to maintain frequency regulation up to 5 minutes at a time.
Wang said MISO expects to begin work in earnest on the initiative in the third quarter. She said the shift shouldn’t require completely new software or a filing with FERC to edit the MISO tariff.
The regulation reserve project likely will spawn a sister task: MISO said it also plans to update the uncertainty component of its ramping product to be more dynamic. Wang said while MISO’s ramp capability requirement’s variation component is dynamic, its uncertainty component is “hard coded as a static parameter” and has been updated only once in 2021 since the product’s inception in 2016. MISO would like to come up with a method to quantify uncertainty over the next 10 to 30 minutes and use that in its anticipated ramp-up needs.
Wang said the move would have MISO’s software more accurately predicting when it needs ramp-up capability and sending out scarcity pricing to incentivize resources. She said the goal is to have MISO more clearly signaling beforehand when it could use flexibility.
MISO last year essentially disabled its down-ramp product in an acknowledgement that it virtually never requires it.
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO said after its experience with its first long-range transmission portfolio, it no longer wants to open simple, conductor-only projects to its competitive bidding process.
MISO competitive transmission lead Alex Monn said the amount of time and effort that went into opening some straightforward, long-range transmission plan (LRTP) lines to competition wasn’t worth the outcome.
“Applying the competitive transmission process to projects that solely entail installing new conductor is costly and inefficient,” Monn said during a May 29 Planning Advisory Committee meeting.
MISO evaluated five competitive transmission projects from the first cycle of its $10 billion long-range transmission plan. It said two rounds of competitive bidding were composed solely of installing new conductor on replaced transmission structures. For those, Monn said MISO developed requests for proposals and formally selected developers when only the incumbent transmission owners applied to string the lines in both cases. (See MISO Selects Ameren, Dairyland to Build 3rd and 4th LRTP Competitive Projects.) Neither project exceeded $25 million.
MISO plans to make a FERC filing in July to designate the installations of conductor on already replaced transmission structures as upgrades, not projects eligible for bids.
Currently, the applicability of MISO’s competitive process varies based on structure design. The RTO already considers work a mere upgrade when circuit needs to be strung on existing transmission structures that have spare positions available. However, it allows competitive bidding on the conductor portion of the job when transmission structures don’t have spare positions and need to be replaced to make space for new capacity.
Monn said extending MISO’s upgrade definition to both scenarios and eliminating bidding would simplify its competitive transmission process.
MISO hopes to implement the change in September. It’s collecting stakeholder reactions on its plan through mid-June.
Vistra, Texas’ largest generator, said May 30 it plans to add nearly 2 GW of gas-fired capacity to the ERCOT grid over the next year by investing in existing power plants to increase their output.
The capacity additions will help meet ERCOT’s and the Public Utility Commission’s desire for more dispatchable (i.e., thermal) generation necessary to meet the state’s growing demand.
“Texas is in the enviable position of experiencing sustained economic growth, which includes rapidly increasing power demand as a result of population growth and electrification activities in a number of areas, including transportation, data centers, manufacturing and industrial activities,” Vistra CEO Jim Burke said in a news release.
Vistra said it was filing a notice of intent to seek disbursements from the $5 billion Texas Energy Fund (TEF)’s Generation Loan Program. The program is designed to drive more dispatchable energy to the ERCOT system.
The PUC said June 1 it had received 125 notices of intent totaling $38.9 billion in financing for 55.9 GW of proposed dispatchable projects, fulfilling the hopes of some participants that the TEF would be oversubscribed (56455).
Formal applications now can be submitted by entities that submitted a notice of intent. Completed loan applications must be filed by July 27. The first disbursements, financing up to 60% of a loan, should be issued by Dec. 31, 2025.
The commission established the TEF in March because of state legislation passed last year. Qualifying projects must add at least 100 MW of dispatchable capacity to the grid. The PUC says the program can support up to 10 GW of new or upgraded generation capacity in ERCOT. (See Texas PUC Establishes $5B Energy Fund.)
Through Luminant, its generation subsidiary, Vistra plans to:
Build up to 860 MW of advanced, simple-cycle peaker plants in West Texas, supporting the increased power demands of the state’s oil and gas industry.
Repower its coal-fired Coleto Creek Power Plant as a gas-fired unit and use the existing infrastructure to provide up to 600 MW of capacity when the coal plant retires in 2027 to comply with EPA rules.
Complete several upgrade projects at its existing gas plants, adding more than 500 MW of summer capacity and 100 MW of winter capacity.
Vistra said its quick-start gas units would help back up the grid when renewable resources are not available and battery storage resources have reached their limits. Nearly half of the capacity would come online this summer and the remainder next summer.
All three projects are based on market reforms passed during the 2023 legislative session that include new ancillary services, the performance credit mechanism and an effective reliability standard. The company said implementation could offer the regulatory framework needed to incentivize long-term investments in the grid.
“Since the market opened to competition, over $100 billion has been invested by a wide range of investors in a variety of power generation technologies to meet the growing needs of Texans,” Burke said. “The ERCOT market has a history of attracting generation owners who put their capital at risk when there are investment signals.”
The projects are contingent upon other factors, including state and federal environmental regulations and long-term wholesale trends that continue to support gas generation, Vistra said.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, AnnDyl Policy Group and Building Performance Association published a paper last week showing how states can maximize the impact of federal funds for home energy retrofits.
“Federal funding for residential energy retrofits will make a huge difference, but what’s most important now is that states put it to use effectively,” said ACEEE Buildings Program Senior Fellow Jennifer Amann, who co-authored the report. “Existing programs lay the groundwork for improved retrofit efforts and market approaches that will make it easier and more affordable to retrofit housing to enhance comfort, improve health, and cut energy costs and climate-warming emissions. With the new funding now available, states can improve on these programs and continue to innovate.”
The federal government has put up $53 billion in rebates, grants and other incentives, on top of tax credits and deductions for home energy retrofits that are not capped. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act offered billions in funding to agencies including the departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development, EPA and the IRS. The biggest chunk is $27 billion from the IRA for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund administered by EPA.
An additional $30 billion is available from nonfederal sources, including state and local programs, utility offerings and housing funds. The biggest chunk of those funds comes from banks which on average put out $24 billion in loans that can be used for upgrades, while utility programs come in at just under $2 billion across the country.
The funding can help make up for the fact that homeowners and landlords often have less access to capital than the owners of commercial buildings, which can cause them to defer efficiency investments.
Combining the federal funds with other sources can help states increase the overall impact and invigorate longer-term transformation for the home retrofit industry. States can successfully combine funding sources by reaching out to key stakeholders to identify program gaps, reviewing and expanding their own goals, and matching new and existing program objectives.
States have to ensure that funds that have separate requirements are not blended together, but combining funds can make retrofits more successful, and programs that appear as a single incentive are less confusing for consumers, the report said.
The impact of the federal programs is going to vary by state because they all have different programs themselves, for their utilities and from other sources.
“Some states have access to deep funding streams from ratepayer programs, government agencies with a wealth of capacity and history in clean energy, and access to secure energy data, whereas other states are beginning now with none of this existing infrastructure,” the report said. “However, states with less history are also less burdened by past decisions and precedents in building their future policies and innovations.”
The report suggests that states make customer utility data available in order to take full advantage of the federal funds.
“Secure access to their own energy use data provides utility customers with information they can use to change their behavior and to partner with third parties (e.g., contractors) to reduce their energy use,” the report said. “Advanced metering infrastructure facilitates data access; federal and state governments are working with utilities to develop best practices to support data access while addressing privacy concerns.”
The report also suggests incorporating grid flexibility to bridge traditional and “dynamic” efficiency, meaning smart thermostats, grid-enabled water heaters and other products that can offer flexibility for the grid.
The current federal investment can support longer-term market transformation so that eventually, the residential retrofit agency can be self-sustaining absent incentives and other market interventions.
“Key steps for market transformation include consideration of long-term goals in program design; collaboration with contractors, distributors and suppliers to build a robust industry infrastructure; and demonstration of the long-term value of retrofit investments,” the report said. “By considering opportunities to drive lasting changes in both market supply and demand, programs can generate benefits well beyond the life of the program.”
Prioritizing historically underserved communities is important, with the report noting that renters have long seen much fewer benefits from such programs. Bringing programs to multifamily and single-family rental homes while protecting renters themselves from displacement is possible, it said.
