SPP last week offered stakeholders a deep dive into a Brattle Group analysis of the RTO’s Western regional market that projects $49 million in annual savings for current and new members.
According to the study, utilities participating as full RTO members in SPP’s Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) market, scheduled to launch in February, would receive $25 million a year in adjusted production cost (APC) savings and revenue from off-system sales. Members in the RTO’s Eastern Interconnection footprint will benefit from $24 million in savings because of the market’s expansion, transmission network and generation fleet.
Brattle said SPP’s expanded RTO footprint will allow market participants to sell power into Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and elsewhere in the Western Interconnection while only paying a single wheeling fee, “which creates opportunity for increased market sales.”
SPP’s expanded RTO footprint | SPP
The study analyzed the benefits of WEIS market utilities and the SPP RTO interacting across the DC ties in two future scenarios: an expanded RTO and the WEIS market. It looked far enough in the future to assume recently announced renewable energy projects would be energized, staff said during the Dec. 9 call.
The expanded RTO study integrated WEIS utilities into SPP RTO over the DC ties, with a unified Tariff for the entire footprint and optimized day-ahead and real-time DC ties. Brattle found extending SPP RTO to the WEIS footprint would reduce APC by $33 million/year and generate over $16 million/year of additional wheeling revenues. WEIS members would experience an APC reduction of $8.5 million/year and receive the $16 million/year of additional wheeling revenues; current SPP members would receive an APC reduction of $24.2 million/year.
An increase in market sales, mostly sold off-system to neighboring entities in the WECC, would account for much of the APC reduction, the consulting firm said.
Under the WEIS scenario, Brattle staff allowed coordinated real-time trading over the four DC ties in the WEIS footprint. Increased flows of low-cost power from SPP into the WEIS footprint would reduce APC by $16.1 million/year in the combined footprint; $9 million/year would accrue to WEIS members and $7.1 million/year to current SPP members.
The SPP WEIS market | SPP
The cheaper power would allow WEIS members to reduce production from higher-cost resources. SPP members would benefit from making more sales across the DC ties, and WEIS members would be able to substitute high-cost production for lower-cost purchases from SPP.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the Western Area Power Administration and the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency (WMPA) will participate in the WEIS contract. With the exception of the WMPA, the utilities have said they are interested in placing their Western Interconnection facilities under the terms and conditions of SPP’s Tariff and becoming RTO members. (See Western Utilities Eye RTO Membership in SPP.)
Also last week, WEIS market participants briefly discussed a list of service flow constraints (SFCs) that raised concerns with SPP’s Market Monitoring Unit.
Staff told the Western Market Working Group (WMWG) during its meeting Dec. 10 that a list of SFCs, to be posted online, will only include the constraint’s name, its rating limit and the shadow price. The data will be a direct output from the economic dispatch engine.
The Western Market Executive Committee remanded a revision request back to the WMWG when the MMU said it would be difficult to post “on-the-fly” SFCs in real time. (See “WMEC Approves 6 WRRs,” SPP WEIS Stakeholders OK Final Test.)
ISO-NE’s summer wholesale market costs totaled $1.48 billion, a 15% decrease from a year earlier because of lower energy and capacity costs, according to the quarterly markets report released by the RTO’s Internal Market Monitor.
Average day-ahead and real-time Hub LMPs were $22.50 and $22.52/MWh, respectively, coinciding with lower natural gas prices. The average natural gas price was $1.62/MMBtu (or $12.64/MWh assuming a 7,800 Btu/kWh heat rate), 25% lower than the summer 2019 price of $2.17/MMBtu (or $16.93/MWh).
Capacity market costs decreased by 19% to $603 million, down by $143 million from last summer. The first quarter of the FCA 11 capacity commitment period saw clearing prices of $5.30/kW-month for Rest-of-System, compared to the higher FCA 10 price of $7.03/kW-month.
ISO-NE’s summer wholesale market costs decreased from the previous summer because of lower energy and capacity costs. | ISO-NE
Gross real-time reserve payments totaled $4.4 million, a 67% increase from the same period a year ago, driven by redispatch to maintain reserves during tight system conditions. That led to larger 10-minute non-spinning reserve and 30-minute operating reserve payments, which respectively rose by $847,000 and $437,000. The average non-zero spinning reserve price decreased relative to summer 2019 from $9.81 to $6.96/MWh. The frequency of non-zero spinning reserve prices increased to 506 hours from 365 hours.
Total regulation payments were up 11% to $6.4 million compared to the previous summer with the increase reflecting higher regulation capacity requirements, along with an increase in service-offer costs. Net commitment period compensation (NCPC) costs totaled $7 million, up by 4% over last summer, but still represented less than 1% of the total energy costs, consistent with the historical range.
Economic payments made up 81% ($5.6 million) of the total, a 46% increase from 2019 steered by real-time commitments made because of generator trips and load forecast error. Local reliability payments fell by 60% to $900,000, with most occurring in the day-ahead market and going to generators in Maine and northeastern Massachusetts to support planned transmission outages.
DNE Wind Generator Must Offer Compliance
As a special topic, the IMM also reviewed day-ahead offers and clearing of wind generators affected by the June 2019 must-offer requirements for do-not-exceed (DNE) dispatchable capacity market resources. ISO-NE now requires DNE dispatchable generators with capacity supply obligations to offer the full hourly amount of expected real-time generation into the day-ahead market.
A rise in day-ahead offers from DNE resources has translated to increased clearing for those generators, leading to the “small impact” of virtual supply clearing at wind generator nodes as virtual offers have historically filled the gap left by under-clearing wind generators in the day-ahead market.
Overall, wind generation offer behavior is consistent with Tariff requirements, the Monitor found. DNE wind generators increased the quantity of energy offered in the day-ahead market and offers reasonably reflected the expected level of peak real-time production but overestimate potential output in off-peak hours.
Since June 2019, cleared offers have averaged 70% of real-time production compared with 41% previously. Cleared virtual supply at wind nodes has decreased from 25% to 18% of real-time wind production, the Monitor said.
Order 2222 Compliance Discussion Begins
In September, FERC issued a long-awaited order requiring RTOs and ISOs to open their markets to distributed energy resource aggregations. (See FERC Open RTO Markets to DER Aggregation.) ISO-NE has now started the discussion on compliance with Order 2222.
The RTO’s Henry Yoshimura presented the 11 key compliance directives outlined in the order and the process schedule that concludes with a FERC filing on July 19, 2021.
The first order of business is collecting perspectives and feedback from stakeholders by Dec. 22, which ISO-NE will review and discuss early next year with interested entities directly affected by compliance requirements. The RTO will then develop a high-level proposed approach vetted through the NEPOOL process, including drafting and discussing Tariff changes and conceptual amendments and concluding with votes in various committees starting in June.
MC Actions
The committee voted to adopt changes to the NEPOOL Generation Information System (GIS) and GIS Operating Rules related to improvements to third-party meter reader uploads and reflect the addition of “Clean Existing Generation” to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Standard.
At its October meeting, the MC agreed to direct the GIS Operating Rules Working Group to consider changes requested by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, which revised its regulations to include a requirement that retail load-serving entities subject to the standard have a certain percentage of energy from “clean existing generation units.” (See “GIS Working Group to Consider Massachusetts ‘Clean Generation’ Changes” in NEPOOL Markets Committee Briefs: Oct. 6-8, 2020.)
The committee also re-elected Vice Chair Bill Fowler, president of Sigma Consultants, to continue his role in 2021.
Below is a summary of the issues scheduled to be brought to a vote at the PJM Markets and Reliability and Members committees on Thursday. Each item is listed by agenda number, description and projected time of discussion, followed by a summary of the issue and links to prior coverage in RTO Insider.
RTO Insider will be covering the discussions and votes. See next Tuesday’s newsletter for a full report.
A. The MC will elect members of the Finance Committee, the sector whips and its vice chair for 2021.
The Finance Committee members to be voted on include: Adrien Ford of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (Electric Distributors); Greg Poulos of the Consumer Advocates of the PJM States (End-Use Customers); George Kogut of the New York Power Authority (Other Suppliers); and Jim Benchek of FirstEnergy (Transmission Owners).
The sector whips include: Steve Lieberman of American Municipal Power (Electric Distributors); Susan Bruce of the PJM Industrial Customer Coalition (End-Use Customers); Michael Borgatti of Gabel Associates (Generation Owners); Brian Kauffman of Enel North America (Other Suppliers); and Sharon Midgley of Exelon (Transmission Owners).
Erik Heinle of the D.C. Office of the People’s Counsel is the nominee for vice chair.
2. Risk Management Committee Charter (1:45-1:55)
The committee will be asked to endorse the charter establishing the Risk Management Committee (RMC) as a new standing committee. Stakeholders unanimously endorsed the charter at the MRC meeting in August, but PJM later determined the charter also needed the MC’s approval. (See “Risk Management Committee Charter,” PJM MRC Briefs: Aug. 20, 2020.)
MISO executives last week said an evolving energy industry heralds big spending on transmission projects in the RTO’s footprint.
Vice President of System Planning Jennifer Curran borrowed a line from CEO John Bear when she told the MISO Board of Directors, “If you love renewables, you better love transmission.”
“And that’s very true,” she said during the board’s System Planning Committee on Dec. 7, noting that transmission is key to linking renewable sources with load centers.
The grid operator announced in July that it will begin a long-term transmission planning effort, driven by an accelerating fleet transition as customer preferences, decarbonization goals and economics converge. MISO has said its members’ decarbonization and renewable goals are dependent on it “addressing rapidly worsening deliverability.”
Curran said an increase in renewables and a waning reliance on coal Is driving the long-term planning effort.
“When we see fossil plants retire, they’re often replaced with resources such as wind and solar,” she said.
MISO’s most conservative 20-year planning future now calls for three times as many renewable resources than planned by the grid operator’s last long-term effort, the 2011 Multi-Value Project (MVP) portfolio. Even then, stakeholders said the future’s projection of 60 GW of additional renewable resources is too conservative.
MISO executives repeatedly warned during December’s Board Week that a long-term transmission buildout could reach several billion dollars.
“We have a big challenge in front of us,” Curran said, noting that the price tag for all the transmission “will be significant.”
But she said many landowners still don’t want new transmission towers erected near their property.
“There’s a lot of resistance to new right-of-way,” she added.
Curran said MISO is looking for ways to best leverage its existing transmission right-of-way to help “speed things up.”
Clean energy goals in MISO footprint | MISO
She also said that cost-allocation decisions loom as a potential stumbling block.
“We’re going to be talking about different drivers for transmission than we have in the past,” she said, adding that while the footprint’s jurisdictions and utilities are moving toward clean energy, it’s not being done at the same pace. That leads to a variable value placed on transmission accessing renewable generation.
Curran said MISO’s order of business in 2021 is to use its most conservative 20-year future planning scenario to create an early transmission map of possible projects. She said some project ideas may have stronger business cases and will be able to proceed as early as the RTO’s 2021 expansion plan (MTEP 21).
MISO already has “corridors of need” in mind, Curran said. She added that the interconnection queue’s “heavy activity” in MISO West can identify areas of potential transmission build-out.
Director Mark Johnson asked if FERC’s push for dynamic transmission line ratings would diminish the scope or number of necessary projects.
“Ambient-adjusted ratings would only have a very little — if minimal — impact on the long-range transmission perspective,” Curran said. She said while dynamic ratings would be useful in real-time, it wouldn’t replace the need for transmission projects.
MISO Director of Operations Planning J.T. Smith said planners predict a 5 or 6% transmission capability increase in the system with dynamic line ratings.
However, MISO Independent Market Monitor David Patton said his analysis indicated a 10% increase in capability.
“We’ve been on what can only be described as a campaign or crusade for this for the past two to three years,” Patton said, referencing his monitoring staff. “This is not something that is new. ERCOT already does this, [as do transmission owners] outside of RTOs.”
1st SATA Project Gains Approval
The board unanimously approved American Transmission Co.’s energy storage project in central Wisconsin, originally part of the MTEP 19 assessment, that is poised to fend off reliability issues.
The $8 million, 2.5 MW/5 MWh battery project, MISO’s first storage-as-transmission project, has been on hold because the RTO didn’t have FERC approval to govern the project’s operation. FERC in early August approved MISO’s ruleset, paving the way for its operation. It is expected to be in service by the end of 2021. (See FERC Greenlights MISO Storage-as-Tx Proposal.)
Aubrey Johnson, MISO’s executive director of system planning, said staff considered stakeholder concerns that their analysis didn’t go far enough in studying alternatives to the battery project.
“MISO’s analysis shows that this project is the most cost-effective solution,” he said. Johnson said in this case, a wires solution to solve the potential voltage, thermal and instability concerns would have taken longer to construct and been more expensive.
Director Phyllis Currie asked whether MISO expects to see more storage-as-transmission projects. Johnson said while the grid operator expects to see more projects, he doesn’t expect them to become commonplace.
“It really is a narrow slice of application. I don’t think we’ll see a ton of them, but we’ll see more,” he predicted.
MISO is down to one unfinished project of its last long-term transmission planning effort, 2011’s MVP portfolio.
Ameren’s last segment of the $408 million, 345-kV Pana-Faraday-Kansas-Sugar Creek line in Illinois and Indiana was energized this week, leaving only the embattled Cardinal Hickory Creek line to be built.
Conservation groups Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and Driftless Area Land Conservancy continue to fight Cardinal Hickory Creek’s construction in court, alleging Wisconsin Public Service Commission Chair Rebecca Valcq and former Commissioner Mike Huebsch had perceived conflicts of interest when they voted to permit the line.
Ameren line construction | Plocher Construction
The Conservancy argued that Valcq should have recused herself because she previously worked for WEC Energy Group, the parent company of line developer American Transmission Co., and that Huebsch, as a member of the Organization of MISO States, should have recused himself because he had communications with MISO. The group argued Huebsch also improperly applied to be CEO of Dairyland Power Cooperative, a minority owner of the line, after he left the commission in February.
MISO expects Cardinal Hickory Creek to be in service by 2023.
The 17-project MVP portfolio’s cost has grown from its originally estimated $5.6 billion to $6.6 billion.
“That just struck me as a really big number,” MISO Director Todd Raba said of the increase.
Johnson said inflation alone brings the original planning-level estimate to $5.8 billion. The remaining increases were caused by regulatory decisions, route changes, engineering and design changes, and the climbing price of materials.
“There is increased focus on making sure estimates are better,” Johnson added.
Full electrification of transportation carries a heavy price tag and long timelines, prompting New York officials to look for bridge technologies, new strategies and alternative fuels that can achieve emissions reductions right away.
“Developing complementary electrification and transportation policies are essential to achieving the state’s clean energy goals,” Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said last week while moderating a roundtable discussion on electrification and fuels hosted by the New York Climate Action Council.
Tighe pointed out that cars and heavy-duty vehicles like trucks and buses account for about 80% of the carbon emissions from the state’s transportation sector, “which is in fact the largest sector of carbon emissions in our state.”
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates that New York reduce emissions 85% from 1990 levels by mid-century, as well as consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040.
EV Kindergarten
Britta Gross, Rocky Mountain Institute | NYDPS
“We want fleets and consumers to be adopting electric vehicles, and that’s because the average car on the road today is 12 years old, and 25% of cars go beyond 16 years of life,” said Britta Gross, director of mobility at the Rocky Mountain Institute. “Take 16 years from 2050 and you get the 2035 number [target EV penetration rate], which is consistent with what California’s done and what the U.K. is doing even more aggressively.”
New York aims to have 850,000 EVs on the road by 2025 and 2 million by 2030. The state’s $35 million in rebates since 2017 resulted in over 25,000 EV purchases as of June.
Dale Hall, ICCT | NYDPS
Dale Hall of the International Council on Clean Transportation said New York already has comprehensive support for the EV market with its rebates, strict emissions standards and various infrastructure programs, but there are a couple of gaps.
“One gap is an idea that has really taken off in a couple jurisdictions this year, which is extending EV rebates or subsidies to the used car market,” Hall said. “Oregon has rebates like that, California in a few specific air districts, Quebec, just north of us, and the Netherlands just implemented the first used EV rebate in Europe.”
Ryan Wheeler, National Grid | NYDPS
Ryan Wheeler, who works with fleet electrification at National Grid, said the company is transitioning its light-duty fleet to 100% electric by 2030 and has other aggressive goals on the medium and heavy categories for its own internal operations fleet.
“In terms of getting more EVs on the road … a lot of our customers are still at the first learning stage, so a big focus of our efforts is ramping up outreach to customers about the vehicles that are available, the charging options and potentially different rate structures,” Wheeler said. “Charging access is another priority, so at National Grid we support a holistic approach that includes public access chargers, DC fast-charging options, and the multi-family dwellings are crucial when you think about equitable access.”
Fuel Standards, Alternatives
Ben Mandel, Northeast regional director at CALSTART, a national nonprofit focused on clean transportation technologies, framed the regulatory choices that could help sunset sales of internal combustion engine vehicles.
“Now with the enactment of [California’s] advanced clean trucks rule that does sunset internal combustion sales even on the medium- and heavy-duty side between 2024 and 2045, I strongly encourage New York to assume a leadership position by being the first state beyond California to really come out with a proactive signal that it will adopt those regulations in particular,” Mandel said.
The next critical element is putting in place the right operating conditions to make buyers prefer advanced high-efficiency vehicle technologies in terms of total cost of ownership, for which rate design is key, he said.
Ben Mandel, CALSTART | NYDPS
“Other measures include a low carbon fuel standard or adopting and really leaning in on the Transportation and Climate Initiative to make sure that the economics of operating charging stations … really do shift in favor of the technologies we want to promote,” Mandel said.
Floyd Vergara of the National Biodiesel Board said that electrification is fine for light-duty vehicles, but that medium-, heavy-duty and non-road sectors such as aviation have unique challenges.
“For these medium- and heavy-duty sectors I think alternative fuels have been shown to be very effective in California and Oregon, so they can and should play a crucial role in decarbonizing the transportation system while the states use that time to ramp up their electrification efforts,” Vergara said. “We’re not talking about an either/or, but really an ‘and’ scenario.”
Biodiesel and renewable diesel provide immediate reductions in carbon, up to and above 80% greenhouse gas reductions, 50% in particulate matter, 40% in carbon monoxide and up to 100% reduction in toxics such as benzene, toluene, xylene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are particularly impactful for the disadvantaged communities that are generally located around facilities that use a lot of petroleum, he said.
“No substantial changes in infrastructure or operational change is required. … Alternative fuels all get significant reductions in air pollutants and GHGs,” Vergara said.
Mike Scarpino, USDOT | NYDPS
Mike Scarpino of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center in Cambridge, Mass., agreed that renewable natural gas (RNG) is an opportunity to get immediate reductions, especially in medium- and heavy-duty vehicles such as garbage trucks and city buses.
“If you flip the fuel source from regular compressed natural gas to RNG you can get pretty significant reductions, particularly if your RNG pathways are landfills, wastewater or dairy,” Scarpino said. “Once again, you’d be leveraging assets that you already have in place, dollars that have already been spent.”
RNG can help disadvantaged communities via cleaner refuse haulers, and “since total electrification will be very expensive, finding some of these bridge technologies is very important,” he said.
It will take time to develop new technologies to help New York reach its ambitious clean energy goals, but that “is no excuse for delay in deploying solutions that are already available and ready for prime time,” Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University said last week at a state-sponsored decarbonization workshop.
More than 300 people tuned in to the workshop, held on Dec. 8 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris | NYDPS
The immediate task is to figure out what different solutions might get New York to carbon neutrality as quickly and affordably as possible, interim NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris said.
“We cannot know what will work and so must support a diverse set of technologies that can enable multiple pathways to success,” Harris said. “The issues and the needs are just too important. … To put it simply, we are running out of time to avoid the most damaging and costly impacts of global warming.”
NYSDEC Commissioner Basil Seggos | NYDPS
DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said that such workshops will help educate the general public about what is possible and how the state can discover new ways of doing business.
“We are where we hope the federal government will be a year from now, which is in the trenches and working with stakeholders across all industries looking for the best and most effective ways to hit those all-important climate targets,” Seggos said.
Focus on Finance
Saul Griffith, Otherlab | NYDPS
The most efficient way to decarbonize the U.S. economy is through electrification, and the biggest impact comes in homes and apartment buildings, said Saul Griffith, founder and chief scientist at San Francisco-based incubator Otherlab and a co-founder of Rewiring America, an advocacy organization.
But it costs about $80,000/household to retrofit for the future, he said. It also takes about a generation for new hardware to win universal adoption, but the world doesn’t have that kind of time in the fight to reduce global warming. That’s why state action is needed to make low-cost financing available, as home electrification cannot fulfill its potential if left only to those who can afford it, he said.
Together with Rewiring America partner Sam Calisch, Griffith in October published a paper on residential electrification. He reported the “big conclusions” to the workshop audience.
Saul Griffith of Otherlab and Rewiring America outlined the best electrification scenarios at New York’s decarbonization workshop Dec. 8. | Rewiring America
If the country does a “good job,” it can decarbonize more than 40% of the economy through household energy consumption, while saving more than $1,000 per year per household. In a “great job” scenario of optimal regulatory environment, low-cost financing and steady technology improvements, the U.S. can save more than $2,500 per year per household. Applying the same technologies and approaches to the commercial sector would eliminate about 65% of its emissions.
“We don’t need any miracle technologies to completely decarbonize American households,” Griffith said.
Emerging Tech
Scott Litzelman, ARPA-E | NYDPS
Scott Litzelman, program director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), said that long-duration energy storage (LDES) is going to become more important as the economy decarbonizes.
“The duty cycle and markets for LDES will be different, and the cost and performance are going to have to look different from the lithium-ion batteries that dominate today,” Litzelman said. “Energy arbitrage and ancillary services can be satisfied now with current technologies, as you don’t need more than four hours of duration to do storage applications today.”
The future is about adding new renewables to the grid, he said, and ARPA-E’s interest is in how storage complements the increasing amount. LDES can help mitigate various risks, such as intermittency, demand uncertainty and price volatility.
Sunita Satyapal, DOE | NYDPS
Sunita Satyapal, director of DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, said the fuel cell industry just passed 1 GW in terms of global shipments, “so it’s really starting to be commercially viable,” with a 25-fold increase in electrolysis and a doubling in sales of fuel-cell vehicles.
Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, stressed the importance of carbon capture and storage (CCS), noting the roughly 500 GT of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in the environment.
“There is only one way to stabilize the environment, and that is net-zero emissions everywhere. … In order to balance the global residual emissions, we’re probably going to need an industry twice the size of the oil and gas industry working in reverse,” Friedmann said.
Julio Friedmann, Columbia University | NYDPS
Anchors of a net-zero economy include hydrogen, zero-carbon electricity and CCS. “I often think of these anchors in the context of four ‘Rs’ to get to zero: reduce, reuse, recycle and remove,” Friedmann said. “These carbon-management technologies are meant to be a complement to everything else … and CCS is the Swiss Army knife of deep decarbonization.”
For example, roasting coffee produces two bags of CO2 for every bag of beans processed, “but today you can take that CO2, put it in a 3D printer and make it into a cup to drink your coffee,” he said.
Environmental Justice Roundtable
New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates that the state consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. It also requires that 40% of the benefits of state investments in clean energy reaches disadvantaged communities, which suffer disproportionate health risks by being located near the dirtiest of oil- and gas-fired peaker plants. (See New York Holds Final CLCPA Emissions Hearings.)
The decarbonization workshop closed with an environmental justice panel that included Annel Hernandez, associate director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and a member of the state’s Climate Action Council.
“One of the specific campaigns we have going right now that is most relevant to this conversation is our fight to displace the peaker plants in New York City that are disproportionately sited in the communities that we represent,” Hernandez said.
“In Astoria, Queens, right now, NRG [Energy] is in the process of trying to repower one of their peaker plants,” Hernandez said. The company says it is “in compliance with the CLCPA because of the off chance that they can convert to green hydrogen by 2040.”
Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation | NYDPS
But green hydrogen technology is still rooted in fossil fuels, she said, “so we are very concerned about what the emissions profile of that is, what the energy intensity of that is and what the impact on the local community is, and what other infrastructure would have to be put in place,” Hernandez said. “There are a lot of outstanding questions that have yet to be answered, and we cannot let them to build brand new fossil fuels in New York City after we passed the most aggressive climate policy in the country.”
Gopal Dayaneni of environmental advocacy group Movement Generation said that “understanding the climate crisis and its consequences … has everything to do with how we frame the problem. If we look only at CO2, not only do you misunderstand the problem, you don’t come up with the right solutions.”
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) on Thursday set out a vision for building electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the West that was conspicuously light on environmental imperatives but heavy on economic ones.
In fact, Brown’s keynote speech at the virtual annual meeting of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) made no mention of climate change, despite the fact that transportation electrification is a key factor in decarbonization strategies for states across the U.S., including Oregon, which is pursuing greenhouse gas reductions under Brown’s Executive Order 20-04. (See Oregon PUC Plans Take on Decarbonization.)
The omission may have been a concession to the spirit of bipartisanship touted by the WGA, an organization comprising governors from 22 states with widely divergent policies and perspectives on global warming.
As WGA’s current chair, Brown established the Electric Vehicles Roadmap Initiative as the signature effort of her one-year term, which began in July. In her speech, Brown said transportation electrification is “an issue that bolsters our current economies and creates a roadmap both literally and figuratively to the future.”
She noted that a number of Western states are working to encourage individuals and business to adopt EVs “because we recognize that a robust and efficient transportation sector is key to meeting economic goals and connecting businesses to regional and international markets.”
The governor also played to regional sympathies regarding energy independence.
“The use of electric vehicles also allows us to power our transportation system with energy produced right here in our Western states. As we all know, the wind in our plains, the sun in our deserts and the water in our rivers are less subject to the global geopolitical forces that influence oil markets,” she said.
Brown pointed to the “good news” of collaborative efforts already occurring across state — and international — lines, including the West Coast Electric Highway, an agreement among California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to build a network of fast-charging stations every 25 to 50 miles along Interstate 5 and U.S. Route 101 “to allow electric vehicles users to travel the length of the West Coast with the same certainty they would have if they were driving a gas vehicle.”
In a “shining example of bipartisan collaboration” farther inland, Brown said, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have joined up to create the Regional Electric Vehicle West Plan to foster EV travel in the Intermountain region.
“These efforts are born out of a mutual understanding that facilitating the use of electric vehicles isn’t a political imperative; it’s an economic one, making it easier for both consumers and businesses to travel and transport goods. Using electric vehicles frees up household incomes and yields increased profits,” Brown said.
The governor said she believes the region is “on the precipice of a historic transition” to be ushered in by coordinated planning and investment related to EV infrastructure.
“My chair’s initiative is working to coordinate technical aspects between existing subregional EV collaboratives and encourage participation from our Western states not yet engaged in EV network planning,” she said.
Brown’s goal: to reach an expanded regional agreement on EV charging by the next annual WGA meeting in a year.
“Fortunately, we are already well on our way,” Brown said. “We have held seven work sessions. We’ve brought together officials from the public sector with electric utilities, electric vehicle manufacturers and charging station manufacturers to chart a coordinated path forward to the expanded use of EVs. We’ve deliberated opportunities for states to support the growth of the consumer, medium-duty and heavy-duty EV sectors, [and] promote investment by utilities and their rate structures.”
Next year will see “the hard work of synthesizing the findings of these sessions” into a potential interstate agreement, Brown said. WGA will hold a series of public webinars to explore the expansion of EV use in the West.
Brown has asked her team to determine how to ensure the success of a potential agreement. “An agreement is only as successful as its implementation, and I’d like each party to be equally committed to the expansion of EV infrastructure across the entire West.”
“This work is emblematic of the spirit of the Western Governors’ Association, building on the successful efforts of individual states to create mutual benefit for all of us,” Brown said.
MISO executives last week commended outgoing director Baljit “Bal” Dail for his decade-plus influence on the RTO’s technology decisions.
CEO John Bear joked that he was “in denial” about Dail’s departure. He noted that Dail was the founder and sole chair of the Board of Directors’ Technology Committee.
“Bal, you’re the godfather of change to MISO. You challenged us and made us better,” he said. “Every time I needed you, you were available. From the center of my heart, thank you.”
“It’s amazing to think that when I joined the board, there was no technology committee,” said Dail, who presided over his final committee meeting last week.
“He’s been a wonderful influence to this organization, and he’ll be hard to replace,” Board Chair Phyllis Currie said.
MISO selected former PepsiCo Chief Information Officer Jody Davids to replace the term-limited Dail on the board. (See PepsiCo ex-CIO Makes 1st Woman Majority on MISO Board.) Dail served 12 years, three more than technically allowed through a special waiver that allowed the board to retain his technological know-how.
The outgoing director commended MISO on its work so far to gradually swap out its legacy market system for a new, modular platform. The grid operator set up a private cloud this year with non-critical infrastructure protection data and began testing its new market user interface with members.
“He certainly helped and influenced the [market platform replacement] program when we initiated it in 2017,” MISO Vice President of Market System Enhancements Todd Ramey said of Dail.
“Having been someone who has run large IT projects … As the project size increases, the likelihood of staying on-time and on-budget decreases dramatically,” Dail said during the committee’s Dec. 8 teleconference. “This is my last Technology Committee [meeting], so I will not be here when this thing lands, but I feel very comfortable with where we’re at. And anyone who knows me knows I don’t say that lightly. I’ve never seen a project of this size and this complexity land this well.”
However, he said his “passing counsel” would be for staff to look for any efficiencies that could accelerate the completion deadline, even if it does increase costs. He said “project fatigue” could set in among employees on a project with such a protracted timeline.
Virtual Environment Bleeds into 2021
Preparing for a prolonged pandemic recovery, MISO has planned a virtual format for both its March and June quarterly Board Weeks. The grid operator doesn’t anticipate a return to in-person stakeholder meetings until the beginning of July.
“We’re also showing a little bit of optimism by planning our September and December meetings in different locations,” Currie said. “But as you know, things can change, and a lot depends on what we can do as a country to control the pandemic.”
“It’s been a challenging year with external factors,” MISO General Counsel Andre Porter observed.
Currie said MISO’s virtual meeting format for 2020 wasn’t easy to manage.
“But clearly, the MISO community has risen to the challenge,” she said.
“I think anyone would say it’s been an extraordinary year … a year marked by both tragedy and gratitude,” Bear said.
He said nobody could have predicted the popularity of dress-shirts-and-sweatpants combinations, healthy sales of home gym equipment and priceless toilet paper. More seriously, Bear said MISO was rocked by “back-to-back-to-back storms, social unrest, the pandemic and working remotely.”
However, he said MISO has accomplished much throughout the year to address the seismic change in its resources and their times of availability.
MISO Budget Rises in 2021
CFO Melissa Brown said MISO will finish 2020 under budget because of reductions in travel and training expenses and a higher-than-normal employee vacancy rate, all driven by COVID-19.
MISO estimated it will spend $257.1 million in base operating expenses by year-end, almost $8 million lower than the $264.7 million it was allocated.
On the other hand, staff said they would finish 2020 slightly over its $50.2 million project investment budget, at $50.8 million. Brown said the market platform replacement and building renovations drove the overage.
In 2021, the grid operator is planning a nearly $380 million total budget, a 3.2% increase over 2020. Base operating expenses will take a $270.7 million share of the budget. The budget also calls for $50.1 million in project investments and $59 million in other operating expenses.
Brown said MISO will engage in more IT spending and will have more computer maintenance costs as its systems are upgraded. She also expects to spend more in 2022 and beyond as travel, training and in-person meetings return to pre-COVID levels and as MISO enacts more measures to maintain reliability in a renewable-rich portfolio.
Bear said it’s going to become more expensive to manage an increasingly more complex system in the coming years; however, he predicted that MISO will continue to deliver value for members.
MISO members again last week asked the RTO to facilitate less stage-managed access by stakeholders to its Board of Directors.
In the past some members have recommended MISO host technical presentations with stakeholders and board participants. Others have said the grid operator could add nonpublic meetings that allow sectors to meet with directors. (See MISO Members Back Voting Rights for New Sector.)
Speaking during the Advisory Committee’s teleconference Wednesday, Clean Grid Alliance Executive Director Beth Soholt said all 11 MISO sectors should appear before the board annually to discuss their top three priorities for the year.
DC Energy’s Bruce Bleiweis said MISO could use additional and different means for all stakeholders to interact with directors.
“Advisory Committee meetings are usually four- to five-hour affairs, and we only got to talk to them for 90 minutes on one topic at this meeting,” he said, adding that even during the 90 minutes, committee members were allowed to speak, but not stakeholders.
“It’s difficult to interact with the board during [quarterly Board Week] receptions because I feel that they’re being handled by MISO,” Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Sarah Freeman said.
Sustainable FERC Project Director John Moore said it might help if MISO held an additional annual meeting where members can discuss the RTO’s governance and concerns about the stakeholder process with directors.
“I’m not sure we have that kind of conversation with the board now. I’m not a fan of having just another large, hot-topic style discussion,” Moore. “I think governance is a big issue.”
Gabel Associates’ Travis Stewart said that the Advisory Committee’s hot-topic discussion last week on FERC Order 2222 was the first real policy-driven discussion of 2020. (See Members Counsel MISO on Order 2222 Prep.) He pointed out that the first quarterly hot-topic discussion was canceled, the second focused on the COVID-19 response and the third centered on MISO’s relationships with its neighboring systems.
“I appreciate that some of these discussions have been condensed because we’re virtual this year,” Stewart said. He added that curtailed discussion during board committee meetings seemed to be the norm long before the pandemic took hold.
Advisory Committee Liaison Bob Kuzman took notes and said staff would discuss the suggestions.
Advisory Committee Chair Audrey Penner said members proposed solid ideas for more board engagement. She suggested MISO implement one or two in 2021, keeping in mind that any new meetings or format does not have to be permanent.
“In 2021, we can implement an idea, and if it doesn’t work, we can revisit it again in 2022,” she said.
MISO members say the grid operator needs both hard work and new faces to comply with FERC’s sweeping distributed energy directive, Order 2222.
Referencing what staff have nicknamed the “two-by-four” order, MISO’s Todd Hillman, senior vice president and chief customer officer joked last week during an Advisory Committee call that he’d like to use the lumber to “hit myself in the head with when I read the order.”
The Organization of MISO States’ president-elect and North Dakota regulator Julie Fedorchak said complying with the order will require different people than the usual stakeholder suspects. She said MISO will need ideas from utility operators, many of whom will be new to the stakeholder process.
As an example, Fedorchak said she didn’t think any distributed energy resource aggregators were participating in the teleconference Dec. 9.
MISO stakeholders last month created a DER task force to navigate compliance with Order 2222. MISO hopes to have a plan drafted by March. (See MISO Says Communication Key to DER Order.)
“[A] compliance filing at the end of June is a pretty tight sprint,” Hillman said.
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Sustainable FERC Project Director John Moore called Order 2222 the commission’s “most significant” order to date and one that “reflects the dynamically changing nature of the power grid.” He said the order recognizes increasing two-way flows on the distribution system as well as the jurisdictional relationships between states, RTOs and FERC.
“This whole order seems to be a brave new world in jurisdictional questions,” MISO Director Nancy Lange said.
Moore said if compliance is well-executed, the new market participants could help MISO access more resources and assuage concern over recent maximum generation events.
He said the RTO even has a role to play in helping distribution companies develop or improve interconnection standards and get interconnection costs right.
“Interconnection costs are a huge barrier” to generation projects, Moore said.
DTE Energy’s Nick Griffin, representing the transmission-dependent utilities sector, said the order could supplant the need for some transmission investment as it could maximize the distribution system’s use and efficiency.
“It might also put pressure on the MISO interconnection queue,” he said.
“We have to make sure the distribution utility has the information necessary to plan and manage their system,” Otter Tail Power’s Stacy Hebert said.
Several members asked staff to ensure DER electrons aren’t double counted at the retail and wholesale levels.
Griffin said MISO should provide its wholesale DER transaction data to distribution companies, making the output easier to track.
“We will need a lot of input and interaction with our stakeholders,” said MISO Executive Vice President of Market and Grid Strategy Richard Doying.
MISO has about 11 GW worth of demand response resources currently participating in the capacity market, mostly through “decade-old utility programs,” Doying said. An OMS survey of DER resources last year indicated an additional 4 GW worth of capacity on distribution systems, much of it rooftop solar.
“We don’t have a good handle on the amount or types we’re going to see,” Doying said. He said that MISO is working diligently to determine how many and what kinds of DER will participate at the wholesale level.
