A panel discussion Tuesday on natural gas’s role in a clean-energy grid during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ virtual Summer Policy Summit revealed a divide between single-state ISOs and multistate RTOs.
Mark Rothleder, CAISO’s vice president of market policy and performance, said his ISO is driven by California legislation to reach a 50% renewable energy target by 2026 and a 100% clean-energy system by 2045.
“We’ve had as high as 80% renewables, and almost 100% carbon-free energy, for a few hours,” he said. “Now we need to know how to do this over a longer period of time.”
“It’s interesting to listen to people running ISOs that have single state. Policy direction is clear to them. They’re much more strongly putting forward their point of view,” PJM CEO Manu Asthana said. “PJM is unique. PJM has a diverse footprint. We have some states very dedicated to decarbonizing and others that are dependent on fossil fuels. Others have done well with shale and have cheap natural gas.”
Officials from CAISO, MISO, NYISO and PJM discussed the importance of gas plants during a NARUC Summer Summit session July 21. | Panda Power Funds
Within PJM’s footprint, gas has grown to 37% of the fuel mix, Asthana said. Coal-fired resources have dropped from nearly 60% of the fuel mix 15 years ago to about 23%, resulting in a 34% drop in carbon emissions.
“Our fuel mix has been shifting to a significantly more decarbonized system. We see that just continuing,” he said.
MISO CEO John Bear said the fuel mix in the RTO’s 15-state footprint is also seeing a “significant” reduction in coal usage, nearly halved from 76% of the fuel mix in 2005 to 39% last year. It expects that to fall further to 27% by 2030, when gas will account for 28% of the mix.
That is emblematic of natural gas’s role as a transition fuel, providing reliability as intermittent renewable resources take the place of coal-fired generation. Nowhere is that more evident perhaps than in MISO, which Bear said has more than 50% of the U.S.’ gas storage resources.
“There are a lot of tools for us to use when things get challenging,” he said. “As we get to higher levels of renewable-energy penetration and have frequency- and voltage-stability needs, understanding the transmission system and how we can move those [gas-fired] attributes around is really critical to keeping reliability high and costs low.”
“We see a role in the near term for gas,” Rothleder said. “It provides local reliability in constrained areas. It provides a fuel source when we have evening peaks and the sun is going down, but we still have high load. It provides resiliency to meet those times when solar production is down. Lastly, the gas fleet has attributes that provide essential reliability service.”
Dewey said that to meet NYISO’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity system by 2040, “that’s where you start to look at the value of the attributes of the gas resources.”
“Even when we’re hitting renewable targets, there’ll still be hours when we need that dispatchable resource,” he said. “Storage will be critically important. It will offset a lot of those instances … but it’s still a long way to meet reliability needs. As a bridge mechanism, natural gas will be critical to achieve those goals.”
And the future?
“The future is finding replacement resources that can match that dispatchability,” Dewey said.
FirstEnergy spent $61 million in bribes and “dark money” campaign contributions and advertising to elect the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives and allies, who won $1.5 billion in subsidies for the company’s struggling nuclear plants, federal officials charged Tuesday.
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder | Ohio House of Representatives
House Speaker Larry Householder, FirstEnergy lobbyist Juan Cespedes, lobbyist Neil Clark, former state Republican Party Chair Matt Borges and Householder political strategist Jeff Longstreth were arrested on racketeering charges in a three-year scheme that resulted in the passage of House Bill 6, which authorized zero-emission credits for FirstEnergy Solutions’ (FES) money-losing Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants.
FirstEnergy no longer owns the nuclear plants: FES emerged from bankruptcy in February as Energy Harbor. But the utility’s CEO, Charles Jones, and others may face legal jeopardy, based on the 81-page affidavit that accompanied the complaint, which said the CEO of “Company A” — as FirstEnergy was referred to in the document — was in regular contact with Householder.
In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers of the Southern District of Ohio smiled when asked whether FirstEnergy officials might face charges. He said investigators would pursue evidence “wherever it leads, whoever they work for.”
While not naming “Company A” cited in the affidavit, DeVillers said that “everyone in this room knows who Company A is,” alluding to the main beneficiary of H.B. 6.
FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist Juan Cespedes | The Oxley Group
He said it was vital to the conspiracy that no one knew Company A’s $61 million would be used to “further the affairs of the enterprise” with Householder, so a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization called Generation Now was created to filter much of the money.
The money was used first to elect Householder and other legislators who backed him for speaker. It also funded television advertisements and mailers supporting the bill. Finally, money was used to defeat a ballot referendum that sought to overturn the law — including bribes to those working for the referendum.
Neil Clark | Grant Street Consultants
DeVillers called the case “likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated within the state of Ohio.”
FirstEnergy issued a statement Tuesday saying it had “received subpoenas in connection with the investigation surrounding Ohio House Bill 6. We are reviewing the details of the investigation, and we intend to fully cooperate.”
“We are reviewing the complaint and will cooperate fully with the government’s investigation,” said a spokesman for Energy Harbor, which was not directly implicated in the case.
Shares of FirstEnergy fell almost 18% on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. Energy Harbor, traded over the counter, dropped 14%.
“Make no mistake, these allegations are bribery, pure and simple,” DeVillers said. “This was a quid pro quo. This was pay-to-play. And I use the term ‘pay-to-play’ because that’s the term they used.”
Private Flight to Inauguration
The affidavit sets the stage at FirstEnergy’s first-quarter earnings call in 2016, when Jones told analysts the company’s “top priority is the preservation of our two nuclear plants in the state, and legislation for a zero-emission nuclear program is expected to be introduced soon.”
The government said the conspiracy began two months after Householder flew to President Trump’s inauguration on FirstEnergy’s private jet in January 2017. Beginning in March, the government said, Householder began receiving quarterly $250,000 payments through Generation Now.
Householder had served as House speaker from 2001 to 2004, leaving office because of term limits. The FBI launched an investigation in 2004 into allegations that he and his aides took kickbacks from vendors and traded legislation for campaign contributions, but the investigation ended in 2006 with no charges filed.
Perry nuclear plant | Nuclear Regulatory Commission
By 2017, Householder was plotting a comeback — with FirstEnergy’s help.
In 2017 and 2018, Generation Now received $2.9 million from FirstEnergy, which was used to support the campaigns of Householder and 14 allies in the primary election and six additional candidates in the general election. All who won voted for Householder as speaker, and all but two supported H.B. 6.
H.B. 6 was introduced three months after Householder was elected speaker in January 2019. FirstEnergy’s payments to Generation Now increased after the bill was introduced, with $9.5 million being wired into its accounts in April and May.
Generation Now used the funds in part for mailers and media ads to pressure legislators to support the bill, which passed the House on May 29, 2019, and the Senate about two months later.
But shortly after the bill was signed into law, opponents announced a petition drive to put a question on the November ballot overturning the legislation. From late July through October, FirstEnergy wired another $38 million to Generation Now to defeat the initiative.
Former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges | 17 Consulting
The affidavit said Borges used $15,000 of the cash to bribe a worker at the company conducting the petition drive to provide the Householder team inside information on the company’s efforts. Borges was unaware that the worker agreed to go along with the scheme after contacting the FBI.
Householder’s group also spent $450,000 to hire other leading signature collection companies so they would have conflicts of interest and could not take part in the referendum drive.
Generation Now also wired $23 million to a group called Ohioans for Energy Security — which the affidavit called “Front Company” — for expenses, including advertising opposing the referendum.
In addition to funding Householder’s campaign and bankrolling the efforts behind H.B. 6, FirstEnergy’s spending also personally benefited Householder, the government said, citing almost $102,000 spent on his Florida residence and $300,000 to pay off a lawsuit and legal fees.
Regular Contacts with Jones
The affidavit said Company A’s CEO had 87 phone contacts with Householder from February 2017 until July 2019, when H.B. 6 was signed into law, including 30 contacts between January to July 2019. Householder also had 188 contacts with FirstEnergy’s Ohio director of state affairs, and Longstreth was in regular phone contact with FirstEnergy’s vice president of external affairs and FES’ [identified as Company A-1] vice president of government affairs.
In May, FirstEnergy announced that Jones would be relinquishing his title as president to Steven E. Strah as part of a succession plan. Jones remained CEO and a member of the board.
As a 501(c)(4), DeVillers said, Generation Now did not have to disclose its donors. But under IRS rules, it is a “social welfare” entity that cannot financially benefit a shareholder or individual and cannot intervene in political campaigns.
U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers of the Southern District of Ohio announces bribery arrests at a press conference. | WBNS 10
“Not a dime of the money of the $61 million that was filtered to Generation Now by Company A went to any social program,” DeVillers said. “There were no members that donated to this 501(c)(4) — $61 million was completely donated by Company A. … Make no mistake, this is Larry Householder’s 501(c)(4).”
DeVillers said the investigation began more than a year ago after being brought forward by a whistleblower. He called it a “covert investigation” that was critical to fully investigate without individuals knowing what was happening.
He said it was an “extremely complicated, extremely complex” investigation that has already involved thousands of hours of manpower combing through “millions of pages” of documents, including bank records and financial transactions.
FirstEnergy CEO Charles Jones | First Energy
“It took me months to really get a grasp of what we’re dealing with,” DeVillers said. “And we’re still learning more information every day on this case.”
DeVillers wouldn’t comment on any future charges for individuals or entities involved in the case, saying only that no one from Company A has “as of yet” been charged and that there are “a lot of FBI agents knocking on a lot of doors” after Tuesday’s arrests.
“We are not done with this case,” he said. “There are things we couldn’t do before; people we couldn’t interview; people we couldn’t subpoena; documents we couldn’t subpoena; search warrants we couldn’t execute – because if it got back to the enterprise, everything would have shut down.”
Chris Hoffman, the Cincinnati-based FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, said public corruption is the top criminal priority for the bureau.
Hoffman said the case is the first time a racketeering charge has been used on a public official in the Southern District of Ohio and that RICO cases are reserved for the most “egregious” instances.
“Public corruption erodes public confidence and undermines the strength of our great democracy,” Hoffman said. “The federal complaint charging those arrested today details a shameful betrayal of public trust. … Our state deserves to have an honest system of government that isn’t hijacked by greed or corruption.”
Chris Hoffman, FBI special agent in charge, Cincinnati | WBNS 10
DeVillers was asked about the “unprecedented” nature of the case and how it has personally affected him. He said what has made him “angry” is the limited resources among investigators who could be working on other cases having to be diverted to public officials elected to be responsible to the voters.
“We have cases with real victims, and we have to take our resources away from those real victim cases and investigate and prosecute some politicians who just won’t do their damn job,” DeVillers said. “That’s what makes me angry. And everything begins and ends with rule of law. And if we have legislatures or leaders passing laws that they themselves are corrupt in, those laws themselves are corrupt.”
Former Ohio Public Utilities Commission Chair Todd Snitchler, now CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, called on the legislature to repeal H.B. 6, noting it was the second utility bribery scandal in less than a week. (See How ComEd Got its Way with Ill. Legislature.)
“When politically powerful interests can pay to have their favored policies passed into law or ensure that specific resources are preselected to profit, we undermine energy and environmental progress,” he said in a statement. “These kinds of situations have played out in multiple states just this week, and we urge voters, legislators and regulators to keep a close watch and protect transparency and competition. When policymakers do the bidding of special interests, consumers lose.”
The most abundant element in the universe could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solve the problem of storing wind and solar energy if the cost of producing it comes down, advocates told NARUC’s Summer Policy Summit Tuesday.
Hydrogen is getting a lot of attention these days for its potential to store energy from intermittent resources and generate megawatts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. But its cost remains prohibitively high.
The National Fuel Cell Research Center estimates that the expense of producing power from hydrogen fuel cells, now around $4,000/kW, needs to fall by more than 60% for it to become a competitive market player. (See Calif. Rushing Microgrids for Fire Season Shutoffs.)
Panelists said cost reduction is already underway.
Neva Espionza, generation director with the industry nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute, pointed to billions of dollars of investments in hydrogen technology in Western Europe, Saudi Arabia and Australia as developments that could spur less-expensive hydrogen production.
Kristine Wiley — director of the Hydrogen Technology Center at GTI, an Illinois-based research group founded by the natural gas industry — asked those listening to name the “top barrier to enabling the hydrogen economy.” More than half of those voting via cell phone app said “cost.” Wiley said GTI was using its well-funded research and development programs to bring costs down.
Advocates say solar-powered electrolyzers that produce hydrogen could help solve the West’s need for long-term storage of wind and solar energy. I McPhy Energy SA
Laura Nelson, executive director of the Green Hydrogen Coalition, assured listeners that costs are “falling fast” and will keep going down as production increases.
“From our perspective it’s not really a technology problem,” she said. “It’s a matter of scale and market design.”
“Green hydrogen is a super game changer,” Nelson continued. “We can attain a 100% renewable energy system that’s affordable, reliable and I would also say flexible and resilient.”
Methane Plus Hydrogen
To produce hydrogen without carbon emissions, excess wind and solar energy are used to power an electrolyzer that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolysis consumes large amounts of electricity, but the hydrogen can be stored for months — meaning ample summer solar power can make hydrogen for winter heating.
Hydrogen can also be used for storage in place of lithium-ion batteries, which currently have a maximum discharge time of about four hours. With lifespans of thousands of hours, hydrogen fuel cells can run indefinitely, important during extended outages.
Some industry advocates — including Tuesday’s panelists — are promoting a controversial plan to use green hydrogen as a partial substitute for natural gas, making use of existing gas pipelines and other infrastructure.
Nelson, who until recently served as energy advisor to the Utah governor’s office, said one big plan is already in the works.
The Intermountain Power Plant, a coal-fired facility in central Utah, is being repurposed to burn 30% green hydrogen combined with natural gas. The 1,800-MW plant, owned by the Intermountain Power Agency and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, sends electricity to Southern California.
Nelson said the plant — which is scheduled to undergo a $500 million, years-long refit — is an ideal test case for combining methane and hydrogen.
“You have a big production capacity. You’ve got big offtake, and you’ve got all of the infrastructure to deliver a clean energy resource,” she said.
The plant is “strategically located near some salt formations,” where hydrogen can be stored in caverns large enough to hold the Empire State Building, with plenty of room to spare, Nelson said. There’s enough room near the power plant for 100 salt caverns.
Opponents have repeatedly argued, however, that mixing hydrogen with methane won’t help California achieve its goal of using zero-carbon energy by 2045 and will only extend the use of natural gas as a primary energy resource in the West. Owners of gas infrastructure are pushing the plans as a way to keep their assets from becoming “stranded” and worthless, they contend.
During the Q&A session, an unnamed participant questioned the planned ratio of hydrogen and methane at the Intermountain plant. (The written query was read aloud by Minnesota PUC Commissioner Valerie Means, who co-moderated the panel with fellow Minnesota Commissioner Matt Schuerger.)
Nelson responded that the mix would lower greenhouse gas emissions from the plant by up to 75% when it comes online by 2030 and that LADWP was hoping to eventually eliminate all GHGs.
CAISO on Monday issued a proposal outlining the leading edge of its plan to bring day-ahead trading to the Western Energy Imbalance Market.
The extended day-ahead market (EDAM) straw proposal represents the culmination of an effort set out two-and-a-half years ago in CAISO’s 2018 Policy Roadmap after a second attempt to regionalize the ISO’s market failed in the California legislature and the grid operator faced new competitive efforts from other potential market providers, including CAISO Plan Extends Day-Ahead Market to EIM.)
The proposal released Monday addresses only the first “bundle” of topics in CAISO’s EDAM initiative: resource sufficiency rules; use of transmission; and the distribution of congestion and “transfer” revenues — the last being a new concept introduced in the plan to accommodate flows across balancing authority areas in the West.
CAISO says the second bundle of the EDAM initiative will deal with greenhouse gas accounting, ancillary services, implementation of phase two of the extension of the ISO’s full network model and the administration fee. The third, and final, bundle will deal with price formation, convergence bidding, external resource participation, market power mitigation improvements and “any additional topics identified through the consideration of the first two bundles.”
Monday’s proposal also offered an important assurance to potential market participants — and state regulators — still wary of enlisting in an organized market, particularly one dominated by California. (See Tx Summit Explores California’s Link to Rest of West.)
“The approach contemplated in this effort does not require full integration into the CAISO balancing authority area as participating transmission owners (PTO), nor does it require formation of or participation in [a] regional transmission organization,” CAISO said in the executive summary of the plan.
The proposal makes explicit the promise of flexibility around the EDAM for EIM members, who would still retain their own balancing authority and planning functions — unlike entities participating in an RTO/ISO.
“The EDAM will incorporate the same principles of the Western EIM: voluntary participation, low-entry cost, no exit fees and retention of balancing authorities’ operational control over their resources and transmission,” CAISO said. “Participation in EDAM will be optional for EIM entities. Therefore, the proposed design must contemplate that some EIM entities may still elect to participate only in the CAISO’s real-time market and not EDAM. However, participating in the EDAM requires participation in the EIM.”
The proposal touted the expected benefits of EDAM, including using CAISO’s existing day-ahead market capabilities “for more efficient hourly shaped economic transactions across the West,” lower renewable integration costs because of increased geographic and resource diversity and reduced renewable curtailments.
It also cited improved reliability through better coordination among Western BAs, a conclusion that aligns with the preliminary findings of a WECC study released early this year showing that the reliability benefits of EDAM will likely outweigh any risks. (See Study Gauges Reliability Benefits of EIMDay-ahead.)
No Leaning
The EDAM straw proposal makes clear that participating load-serving entities — and their state or local regulators — retain responsibility for resource adequacy. But CAISO envisions EDAM will rely on a day-ahead resource sufficiency evaluation similar to the one currently in place for the real-time EIM to ensure that no participating BA leans on other BAs to meet its RA requirements.
Western stakeholders “expressed explicit concerns that leaning can enable balancing authority areas to systematically avoid self-sufficient forward procurement practices, which would erode the regional diversity benefits that can be obtained through the EDAM,” CAISO said. “Given the potential incentive to avoid forward procurement to serve their load, several stakeholders suggested the resource sufficiency evaluation should serve in a preventative mitigation function rather than a retroactive financial penalty as it would be difficult to determine the appropriate level of financial penalty.”
CAISO’s proposed resource sufficiency evaluation timeline for the EIM extended day-ahead market | CAISO
CAISO’s proposal calls for the resource sufficiency evaluation to require that all participating BAs “offer sufficient resources to meet their bid-in demand, reliability capacity to meet forecasted net load, … ramp capability to meet their 24-hour net demand variation and their forecasted ancillary service and imbalance reserve requirements.” Any BA that fails the evaluation will not be permitted to engage in transfers within the EDAM “beyond the amount of contracted capacity and transfer capability” demonstrated by the evaluation.
The ISO plans to run the resource sufficiency evaluation at 9 a.m. of each trading day, three hours after the conclusion of the region’s bilateral trading and one hour before the deadline for receiving EDAM bids. Market results would be published at 1 p.m.
The resource sufficiency aspect of the plan could also entail implementation of a “diversity benefit” that allows EDAM participants to share obligations for flexible ramping resources needed to cover load forecast error for the EDAM footprint. Under the program, the ISO would calculate the imbalance requirement for each BAA independently, then for the EDAM footprint as a whole based on the pooling of resources, then credit back to each BAA a prorated share of the savings derived from the pooling in order to reduce its resource sufficiency requirement.
“The CAISO views the diversity benefit as foundational to the benefit of EDAM and believes, if correctly applied, it will not result in unequitable leaning by any single participant,” the ISO said.
Transmission an Open Question
The straw proposal’s plan for transmission provision under EDAM is less developed than that for resource sufficiency.
Currently in the EIM, participants make transmission available to support real-time energy transfers by donating interchange rights or available transmission capacity. The latter category represents “residual” capacity unused after the T-20 e-tagging deadline, with the EIM given the lowest priority. If any portion of that capacity is used for a bilateral trade, the EIM redispatches the real-time market to ensure its transfers stay within the unused portion.
“EDAM will require a different approach than EIM,” the proposal explains. “Transmission customers can use transmission in real time up until just prior to the operating hour; however, the EDAM design cannot assume all transmission available in the day-ahead time frame will remain unused by real time. At the same time, transmission for EDAM day-ahead schedules for energy, ancillary services, reliability capacity and imbalance reserves must [be] available with high confidence, since each balancing authority area remains responsible for meeting its balancing authority area reliability requirements.”
CAISO is proposing a system in which EDAM BAs provide the ISO with limits for the use of their transmission systems ahead of the day-ahead market process.
“The EDAM balancing authority area may elect not to release all transmission to the day-ahead market, since transmission customers can elect to use transmission, for example, to support bilateral trades, up until 20 minutes prior to the operating hour (T-20),” CAISO said. “If the transmission is used to support day-ahead schedules, and subsequently if a transmission customer elects to use transmission after the day-ahead market, the real-time market will need to redispatch EDAM participating resources.”
The cost of that redispatch would be included in the EIM’s real-time congestion offset, which is calculated individually for each BAA to avoid cost-shifting among them.
But the ISO cautioned that day-ahead congestion could occur when transmission capacity is not included in the day-ahead market but a transmission customer chooses not to use it in real time: “The cost of this inefficiency may sometimes be greater than the potential for redispatch resulting in real-time congestion offset charges.”
A New Concept
The EDAM proposal presents a new concept of “transfer revenue” — similar to congestion revenue — that CAISO plans to introduce into both the EIM day-ahead and real-time markets as part of the EDAM effort. The ISO created the concept in response to stakeholder concerns that the voluntary nature of transmission provision in the EDAM could impede procurement of transmission rights while also incentivizing participants to withhold those right to maximize their congestion revenues.
Under the ISO’s plan, a transmission provider would be allowed to make transfer capability available in the day-ahead market at a usage fee. That fee would be included in the market optimization, generating transfer revenue to be collected by the provider.
“The CAISO believes that this approach will encourage transmission providers to offer additional unsold transmission into EDAM,” the ISO said.
CAISO also envisions allowing EDAM participants to adopt the ISO’s congestion revenue rights (CRRs) approach within their own BAAs. “An EDAM balancing authority area may choose to utilize the CAISO’s congestion revenue rights design to distribute congestion revenue to its transmission customers that are participating in the EDAM, in which case the CRR holder will be compensated directly by the CAISO. Remaining congestion revenue payments to the EDAM entity scheduling coordinator will be further allocated to its transmission customer based upon its [tariff],” it wrote.
EDAM participants choosing not to adopt CRRs will need to develop another method to settle congestion costs with transmission customer, the ISO said.
CAISO has scheduled stakeholder meetings on July 27 and 29 to discuss the EDAM proposal. Stakeholder comments on the plan are due Sept. 10. It expects to seek approval from its Board of Governors and the EIM Governing Body in late 2021 or early 2022.
New York on Tuesday announced its largest-ever package of renewable energy solicitations, seeking a combined 4 GW of offshore wind, onshore wind and solar power.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority seeks up to 2,500 MW of offshore wind energy this year in a solicitation authorized three months ago but the issuance of which was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic (18-E-0071). (See NYPSC Greenlights 2,500-MW Offshore Wind RFP.)
The request for proposals includes a requirement that developers partner with any of the 11 prequalified state ports “to stage, construct, manufacture key components or coordinate operations and maintenance activities.”
The agency also is coordinating with the New York Power Authority on two separate RFPs to procure more than 1,500 MW of land-based renewable energy projects, with those selected to be fast-tracked for construction under the recently enacted Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Protection Act, which provides for expedited transmission upgrades.
NYSERDA’s solicitation calls for procuring about 1.6 million Tier 1 renewable energy certificates, while NYPA’s calls for projects that will produce an annual output of up to 2 million MWh or more. NYPA can elect to purchase a percentage of NYSERDA’s acquired RECs to fulfill its own requirements.
NYSERDA 2019 OSW contract awards, lease and project areas, and proposed points of interconnection | NYSERDA
NYSERDA also issued a request for information so that stakeholders can nominate sites for the new Build-Ready Program, initiated as part of the new siting law. The agency will prioritize areas such as dormant power plants, former industrial sites and existing or abandoned commercial sites.
Other notable provisions in the solicitations include requiring that workers be paid the applicable prevailing wage; encouraging near-term economic recovery activities in communities hosting projects; requiring that developers demonstrate a commitment to community engagement; and encouraging developers to pair renewable energy with advanced energy storage technologies to help meet the state’s commitment to deploy 3,000 MW of storage resources by 2030.
“During one of the most challenging years New York has ever faced, we remain laser-focused on implementing our nation-leading climate plan and growing our clean energy economy, not only to bring significant economic benefits and jobs to the state but to quickly attack climate change at its source by reducing our emissions,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.
“Together, taking into account the value of avoided carbon emissions, these solicitations are expected to deliver a combined $3 billion in net benefits over the 20- to 25-year life of the projects,” the governor’s office said.
Initial submissions for NYSERDA’s RFP are due Aug. 27; bids for NYPA’s solicitation are due Sept. 14; and those for the combined offshore wind and ports solicitation are due Oct. 20. Winners for all solicitations are expected to be announced in the fourth quarter.
“This enormous solicitation will not only jumpstart the state’s transition toward reducing climate pollution and meeting the goals of the nation-leading climate law passed last year, but it will also help boost the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis,” said Lisa Dix, state director of the Sierra Club. “These projects will create family-supporting jobs for New Yorkers and specifically [target] low-income communities to benefit from the investments.”
Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, said the organization “will be examining all of these RFPs in great detail in the coming days, but based on a cursory review, we note that the NYSERDA Tier 1 RFP … is the first to offer index REC contracts and has new requirements with respect to community engagement and agriculture mitigation.”
Regulators and utility experts on Monday did not shy away from discussing 2020’s pandemic and racial justice zeitgeist.
Panels and keynote addresses on marginalized communities and pandemic-related economic pressures dominated the opening day of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ virtual Summer Policy Summit.
Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn applauded NARUC for forming last month a task force on emergency preparedness, recovery and resiliency. The task force will examine mounting extreme weather events and natural disasters and share best practices, funding opportunities, resources and collaborative efforts. The group includes a special subcommittee to examine the national response to COVID-19.
“It’s going to be so very important to look at the lessons from this pandemic and apply them to the next one,” Kuhn said during the summit’s first panel on July 20.
Several panelists congratulated utilities and regulators on maintaining reliable electric service as normal use patterns were thrown out the window when people confined themselves to their homes.
“Our homes are our offices, schools, gymnasiums, everything,” said American Gas Association CEO Karen Harbert.
But four months into the pandemic, uncertainty still abounds. Multiple panelists predicted hardships ahead.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates Executive Director David Springe. Whole industries are on pause and countless consumers are already unable to pay utility bills.
“It’s a sea change, I think, in how we operate,” he said.
NASUCA Executive Director David Springe | NARUC
Springe recommended new protections for low-income customers for water and broadband services, in addition to existing electricity protections.
“I feel like we survived the initial volley, but the big battles are in the months ahead,” Springe said, noting that the weekly $600 federal boost in unemployment benefits and moratoriums on utility shutoffs will soon be expiring. ” … There are just simply going to be customers who struggle, customers who aren’t going to be there anymore.”
Springe said regulators should keep costs as low as possible to “best manage the acrimony that is surely in our future.”
“Customers are not an endless font of wealth,” he said. “It’s not in anyone’s interests to go through a period where we turn people off.” Springe said utilities must introduce new rate structures, grace periods and income-based payment programs for residential and some commercial customers.
Springe also told regulatory staff that utilities themselves may require some funding to “minimize the gap between prudently incurred costs and level of revenue.”
Above all, the focus should be on keeping people in their homes while the pandemic runs its course, Springe said. He said high unpaid utility bills in the middle of a pandemic are a psychological drain, especially on communities of color.
Despite that, NARUC President and Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley said a federal moratorium on utility shutoffs remains unnecessary and a state-by-state approach is best.
“States have been a great laboratory in this,” Presley said, adding that several states have struck a good balance between protecting consumers and keeping services reliable.
“When we look ahead to when these moratoriums end, our research indicates that the [energy bill] burdens could reach tens of billions of dollars and affect tens of millions of customers,” Melanie Santiago-Mosier, director of Vote Solar’s access and equity program, said in a separate panel on ratepayer-funded clean energy programs.
Melanie Santiago-Mosier, Vote Solar | NARUC
Santiago-Mosier said she believes it’s possible to continue into the future of clean and renewable resources while shoring up the faltering economy.
“We know we need to be responsive to the economic challenges that COVID-19 is presenting,” she said.
Nicor/Southern Co. Gas Vice President of External Affairs Lewis Binswanger said some clean energy programs are simply going to have to be subsidized by the ratepayers who can afford them.
“The wealthier customers have taken advantage of lower-cost energy for years. And the low-income customers feel like they’ve been abandoned,” he said.
NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson | NARUC
NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson, delivering a keynote address, said regulators are more important than ever in the pandemic. But he also said regulatory bodies, utilities and co-ops often lack diversity and said ratepayers need an industry that is “truly representative of constituents.”
“There is no economic development where there is no power,” Johnson said. ” … Who will speak for those that cannot speak for themselves? That’s the role of the regulators.”
He cautioned regulators to not just “carry messages” for companies whose chief purpose is maximizing profits. “Who will speak for the regular consumer who lacks the institutional knowledge?”
Officials from New England’s six states on Friday described their efforts to advance renewable energy goals despite the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re really lucky to live in this region where so many states are pushing for clean energy,” said Catherine Finneran, vice president for sustainability and environmental affairs at Eversource Energy, who introduced speakers at the webinar hosted by the Environmental Business Council of New England.
The Environmental Business Council of New England hosted a gathering of state energy officials on July 17. | EBCNE
Following is some of what we heard at the meeting.
Room to Grow on the Grid
Eric Johnson, director of external affairs at ISO-NE, focused on the changing resource mix in the region.
Eric Johnson, ISO-NE | EBCNE
“The region has room for about 6,000 MW of additional wind resources without the need for significant transmission upgrades,” Johnson said, referring to the RTO’s 2019 Economic Study Offshore Wind Transmission Interconnection Analysis, presented at last month’s Planning Advisory Committee meeting. (See ISO-NE Planning Advisory Committee Briefs: June 17, 2020.)
The analysis summarized findings from three studies requested last year by the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE), Anbaric Development Partners and RENEW Northeast. (See related story, Panel: Much More Tx Needed for New England OSW.)
“While renewables are only about 9% of our resource mix in 2019, with what the states are looking to do with the renewable portfolio standard, those numbers will grow dramatically,” Johnson said.
Small States, Big Goals
Riley Allen, deputy commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service, said his state has about 720 MW of renewable energy resources meeting a peak load approaching 900 MW.
Riley Allen, Vermont DPS | EBCNE
“In the past, the peak load used to be well above 1,000 MW, but Vermont is following the path of the region, and our loads have been declining, including peak loads,” Allen said.
Vermont’s RPS started at 55% in 2017 and will increase to 75% by 2032, Allen said. “There’s legislation that was moving forward to update that to 100% by 2030, but the COVID-19 pandemic intervened and that’s been pushed to a later session.”
The DPS is involved in a rate design initiative, an eight-month process sponsored by the Department of Energy to look at dynamic rates, flexible load management, subscription services and gaining adoption of more advanced rate designs.
“We focused on several areas of emerging technologies: the heat pump, electric vehicle load, customer-sited generation and energy storage,” Allen said. “These are broadly recognized as loads that are pretty impactful if they’re left unmanaged, but with management, there’s a great deal of potential to essentially mitigate their potential adverse effects on the system.”
He characterized Vermont as having a roughly $800 million electric system today, “and in the next 20 years, we can expect an additional bill of $500 million on top of that with the addition of these new technologies.”
Carrie Gill, Rhode Island OER | EBCNE
Carrie Gill, chief of program development in the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, highlighted her state’s push to meet 100% of electricity needs with renewables by 2030 and decarbonize the heating sector, and its continued leadership in energy efficiency.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo signed an executive order in January committing the state to be powered by 100% renewable electricity by the end of the decade and directing the OER to conduct economic and energy market analyses in order to develop workable policies and programs. (See RI Seeks to Lead with 100% Renewable Goal.)
“We recognize that we must keep energy supply and energy delivery rates affordable,” Gill said. “Fortunately, we’re seeing that many renewable energy resources are not only cost competitive, but sometimes represent the lowest-cost resources available.”
The heating sector is an important target because looking at decarbonization just in terms of electricity would be shortsighted, she said.
“We do not recommend that Rhode Island depend on one technology; [it should] look to multiple pathways. But either way, our fuel becomes decarbonized,” Gill said.
Rhode Island has been ranked among the top three states for energy efficiency for the past few years and is proud of it, she said.
Catherine Finneran, Eversource Energy | EBCNE
“We lost 3,900 of 17,000 clean energy jobs in the state since March … but even though we have challenges related to COVID, we’re not going to take our foot off the gas pedal,” Gill said. “We see this as an opportunity to move forward and to advance the clean energy industry.”
Dale Raczynski of Epsilon Associates asked how the state will meet peak demand with a 100% renewable mix during periods of low wind or solar.
“We will see storage as a critical technology … so we’re working on understanding where the market barriers are and removing them,” Gill responded.
Hank Webster of Acadia Center asked if the state would offer incentives allowing gas heating customers to transition to heat pumps. “There are many benefits to getting off gas because methane is a very harmful climate pollutant and presents a public health and safety risk,” Webster said. “Recent reports about indoor cooking show terrible health impacts.”
“We are trying to look holistically across sectors. … We don’t want to foreclose any options to us,” Gill said. She also added that improving the energy efficiency of HVAC systems reduces the risk of spreading pathogens.
Gulf of Maine
Dan Burgess, director of the Maine Governor’s Energy Office, said that growing the clean energy economy is even more important now in the pandemic.
Dan Burgess, Maine Governor Office | EBCNE
“Fortunately, the pandemic started during a shoulder season for heating … and Gov. Janet Mills has convened an Economic Recovery Council,” Burgess said. “There’s certainly some energy overlap, and we see an opportunity for clean energy and energy efficiency to play a role in the economic recovery.”
Mills signed an executive order last year setting a 2045 goal for achieving carbon neutrality and creating the state’s Climate Council to put it on a path for 45% emissions reduction by 2030 and 80% by 2050, he said.
“We’re on target to reaching those emissions goals,” Burgess said. “The electric power sector represents only 7% of emissions in the state, but we’ll have to keep working on that sector as we electrify transportation and heating in the state, where 60% of homes use heating oil.”
Burgess said heat pumps, which Efficiency Maine Trust has been promoting for 10 years, offer both environmental benefits and jobs, adding that “also there’s a huge opportunity in electric water heaters.”
He touted the first floating offshore wind turbine in the country, now under development by the University of Maine in the Gulf of Maine.
Matthew Mailloux, New Hampshire OSI | EBCNE
Matthew Mailloux, energy adviser in the New Hampshire Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI), also serves as the state’s adviser to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for the tri-state offshore wind task force.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and obviously some work has slowed down as a result, but OSI, especially in the early days of COVID, was working to understand what the landscape was for the energy sector broadly to make sure that critical infrastructure was still able to perform,” Mailloux said.
Gov. Chris Sununu declared a moratorium on evictions and utility shutoffs, which was done through the OSI, he said.
“The Gulf of Maine has some of the best offshore wind resources of anywhere in the world, not only some of the best wind speeds in the country,” Mailloux said. “New Hampshire is a relatively small piece of the pie when it comes to actual federal waters off our coast, but we also have some great transmission interconnection assets.”
One challenge is that northern New England is an export-constrained region for ISO-NE, he said.
“As we continue to inject more power into the grid at those locations, there [are challenges to] exporting that power to load centers in southern New England, such as Boston or Hartford,” Mailloux said.
New Hampshire also has seen “a contentious debate about net metering over the past year or so,” and “we won’t see much progress on net metering this year but will if Gov. Sununu is re-elected in November,” he said. (See related story, FERC Rejects Net Metering Challenge.)
Environmental Justice
Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Patrick Woodcock said 2020 is “an inflection year for” his state, which is attempting set an interim 2030 goal on the way to meeting Gov. Charlie Baker’s 2050 date for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. He referred to a decarbonization study being led by Undersecretary for Climate Change David Ismay to guide the state’s effort to meet the 2050 target. (See “Bay State Net-zero Overview,” NEPOOL Markets/Reliability Committee Briefs: July 1, 2020.)
Patrick Woodcock, Massachusetts DOER | EBCNE
Woodcock said the pandemic highlights the importance of a resilient electric system and the disparity of air quality across the state. “We are refocusing on how electrification may provide benefits for air quality and have started to contemplate either targeting incentives to environmental justice municipalities [or] targeting commercial medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, to ensure that our EV policies also have the co-benefits of improving air quality.”
The busy regulatory agenda included new regulations, which double the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target program to 3,200 MW, and mandate that any solar installation over 500 kW needs to be paired with storage, he said.
“The policy does include some limitations on eligibility for land that has been identified as priority habitat … so that our solar policy has co-benefits of managing our open space,” Woodcock said.
Massachusetts also is finalizing its Clean Peak Standard. “We’re trying to harness storage and other resources to ensure that clean energy growth starts addressing the shifting peak that has been contributing to high electricity prices,” he said.
Implemented last year, the standard mandates that a minimum percentage of retail electricity sales be met with clean generation resources or load reductions during seasonal peak periods. (See Mass. Inaugurates Clean Peak Standard.)
Susannah Hatch of the Environmental League of Massachusetts asked about regional collaboration on offshore wind and transmission.
Victoria Hackett, Connecticut DEEP | EBCNE
Woodcock said officials are working on it and referred to a technical conference his agency held in March to explore whether the state should solicit proposals for a coordinated independent transmission network for offshore wind generation. (See Mass. DOER Explores Transmission for OSW.)
Victoria Hackett, deputy commissioner for energy in the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, agreed with Woodcock that environmental justice is important to protect those people most affected by polluting energy resources.
DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes instituted a policy that all the agency’s work has to be viewed through the lens of environmental justice, Hackett said.
Last August, about 40 environmental activists marched in front of DEEP headquarters in Hartford to protest state regulators’ approval of a new 650-MW gas-fired power plant in the town of Killingly. (See Connecticut Activists Protest Gas-fired Plant.)
FERC last week approved NYISO’s revised buyer-side market (BSM) power mitigation rules, prompting a warning from Commissioner Richard Glick that the commission had threatened the future of organized capacity markets by explicitly excluding state-supported resources from mitigation exemptions.
Thursday’s 3-1 ruling followed on a February order that partly approved NYISO’s proposal for implementing renewable resource and self-supply exemptions to the BSM rules in its capacity market and directed the ISO to submit a compliance filing revising some provisions (ER16-1404). (See FERC Narrows NYISO Mitigation Exemptions.) It also denied a request for rehearing of the February order by a handful of New York state agencies and the American Public Power Association.
Glick’s dissent aimed not so much at the exemption rules but at their selective application, arguing that FERC’s approach to BSM mitigation “has degenerated into a scheme for propping up prices, protecting incumbent generators and impeding state clean energy policies.” He warned that the commission’s efforts “to ‘save’ capacity markets are more likely to hasten their eventual demise.”
The commission on Thursday accepted nearly all the revisions in NYISO’s compliance filing, effective for new resources entering the Installed Capacity Market (ICAP) starting with interconnection Class Year 2019. Approvals covered:
NYISO’s proposal to use a “renewable exemption limit” formula to calculate a megawatt cap of renewable resources exempt from BSM mitigation specific to each mitigated zone.
Inclusion of an “incremental regulatory retirement” component in the renewable exemption limit, which will adjust the megawatt cap to reflect the retirement of resources that can be attributed to “direct” regulatory actions taking place since the prior ICAP study period. The feature is intended to address NYISO’s concern that state policies can create a supply of “out-of-market” resources that depress capacity prices.
Use of an unforced capacity reserve margin (URM) impact component in the renewable exemption limit formula, which is intended “to capture the change in the URM in a mitigated capacity zone that reflects how URM market requirements are expected to increase in response to renewable resource entry.”
Implementation of a “renewable exemption bank” through which unforced capacity megawatts not used in prior interconnection studies are “carried over” into subsequent studies, ensuring “that any UCAP megawatts derived from the other three factors — change in forecasted peak load, incremental regulatory retirements and the URM impact — remain available to qualified renewable exemption applicants in future buyer-side market power mitigation determinations, thereby keeping supply and demand in the capacity market in balance even where entry and exit are lumpy over time.”
The commission conditionally accepted NYISO’s proposed role for its Market Monitoring Unit in determining what resources qualify as incremental regulatory retirements. It directed NYISO to revise the proposal by removing the commission as the arbiter in the event of a disagreement between the ISO and the MMU and instead designate that the ISO’s decision would prevail.
“Thus, absent a Section 206 complaint, the commission will not have a prescribed role in such determinations,” FERC wrote. “We find that NYISO’s proposal invites delay to a time-sensitive process. In particular, we find that if the commission fails to act on a disagreement within 60 days, suspending the Class Year process could result in unacceptable delays to an already complex process that NYISO is working to streamline and for which developers need greater certainty.”
Rehearing Rejected
Thursday’s ruling also denied a rehearing request by the New York Public Service Commission, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, New York Power Authority, Long Island Power Authority (referred to as the NY Parties) and APPA, which asked the commission to review its February finding that public power entities should not be eligible for NYISO’s self-supply exemption in the capacity market. The NY Parties also sought rehearing of FERC’s decision to reject a statewide 1,000-MW cap for the renewable resources exemption.
The commission disagreed with the contention by APPA and the NY Parties that the decision to exclude state resources from the self-supply is arbitrary and capricious and inconsistent with the 2015 complaint order that originally forced NYISO to alter its exemptions policy. It noted that the complaint order “expressed ‘concerns regarding the state’s ability to artificially suppress prices by channeling uneconomic entry through an exempted load-serving entity’ and directed NYISO to ‘consider the impacts of state decisions to subsidize resources that are owned or contracted for by a self-supplied load-serving entity.’”
The commission at the time had also required NYISO “to propose net-short and net-long thresholds ‘tight enough to prevent a load-serving entity from being able to deliberately overpay for a resource in an attempt to manipulate ICAP market prices in a way that benefits the load-serving entity’s other purchases from the ICAP market.’”
St. Lawrence-Franklin D. Roosevelt Power Project on the St. Lawrence River | NYPA
The February 2020 order found that NYISO “had failed to comply with these directives because NYISO’s proposal to allow certain instrumentalities of the state to be eligible for the self-supply exemption did not account for the state’s ability to suppress ICAP market prices through self-supplied load serving entities.”
The commission noted that its February ruling found “the net-short threshold is premised on the assumption that a load-serving entity’s incentive is to minimize the costs of serving its customers, and that this assumption does not hold true for certain state entities, such as NYPA,” whose own mission statement “supports the conclusion that NYPA’s main focus is the welfare of New York state as a whole,” including supporting businesses and nonprofits that provide jobs and services to the state.
FERC found that the incentive of “certain instrumentalities of the state to act on behalf of the whole state” was critical in determining whether the proposed net-short and net-long thresholds would fulfill their purpose.”
In denying the request to rehear its rejection of NYISO’s statewide 1,000-MW renewable resources exemption cap, the commission contended that the cap was inconsistent with a previous order to “narrowly tailor” such caps to mitigated capacity zones. The commission said it disagreed with the NY Parties’ contention that FERC’s requirements will result in a more restrictive cap than that considered in the 2015 complaint order.
“We further disagree that the February 2020 order interferes with New York state’s authority to determine the mix of generation resources in [the New York Control Area]. The commission does not improperly intrude on the states’ authority to determine its energy resource mix and the development of new generation merely by implementing wholesale rules affecting matters within the states’ jurisdiction.”
‘Misguided Belief’
In his scathing dissent, Commissioner Glick contended that Thursday’s ruling “perverts buyer-side market power mitigation into a series of unnecessary and unreasoned obstacles to New York’s efforts to shape the resource mix.”
Glick said the application of BSM power mitigation to entities “that are not buyers or buyers that lack market power is nonsensical. Moreover, even when applied to buyers who may have market power, mitigation must reasonably address their potential to exercise that market power.”
He argued that the commission has “abandoned” the intended narrow focus of BSM mitigation rules by no longer requiring “a resource to be a buyer, much less a buyer with market power, before subjecting that resource to buyer-side market power mitigation.”
“Buyer-side market power rules — often referred to as minimum offer price rules, or MOPRs — that were once intended only as a means of preventing the exercise of market power have evolved into a scheme for propping up prices, freezing in place the current resource mix and blocking states’ exercise of their authority over resource decision-making,” Glick wrote. “The result is an ever-expanding system of administrative pricing that is, ironically enough, justified on the basis that it promotes competition. But, in reality, the commission is not promoting anything remotely resembling actual competition.”
The “administrative pricing regimes” instead “create a systemic bias in favor of existing resources and curtail resources’ incentive and ability to compete across all possible dimensions,” he wrote.
Glick also warned that FERC’s actions to support capacity prices are encroaching on the authority of states to shape their resource mix and compromising the integrity of capacity markets, putting the future of those markets at risk.
“We got to this point largely because of the commission’s misguided belief that it must ‘protect’ capacity markets from the influence of state public policies. However, as explained below, the commission’s efforts to prop up prices by mitigating the effects of state public policies upset the jurisdictional balance that is the heart of the [Federal Power Act] and interfere with capacity markets’ ability to produce efficient market outcomes,” he said.
“The more the commission interferes with state public policies under the pretext of mitigating buyer-side market power, the more it will force states to choose between their public policy priorities and the benefits of the wholesale markets that the commission has spent the last two decades fostering,” Glick said. “Although that should be a false choice, the commission is increasingly making it into a real one.”
The California Energy Commission asked panelists last week if electric vehicles could help in “compound catastrophes,” such as the combination of wildfires and COVID-19 outbreaks that many fear will occur this fall.
Commissioners asked: Will EVs become an effective tool to store renewable power and to discharge it to the grid when needed? Could battery-powered cars be a backup for homeowners who lose electricity during public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), the intentional blackouts now commonly used by investor-owned utilities to prevent wildfires?
The general answer was “maybe,” but only if policymakers and car buyers can be convinced to see EVs as more than just clean transportation.
“There’s a lot that can be done with EVs,” said Ryan Harty, head of connected and environmental business development at American Honda Motor Co. “It’s a very large energy storage resource that’s frankly sitting there for most of the time. If we look at where cars are parked, about half the cars don’t even leave the home in a typical day — so it’s an incredible energy storage resource that’s just waiting to be exploited for the purpose.”
The problem is, EVs aren’t legally allowed, anywhere in the U.S., to connect and discharge to the grid. That will have to change for vehicles to reach their full potential, he said. “The bidirectional capability of EVs opens up the ecosystem of possibilities.”
Customers asked to pay a premium for EVs must understand the cars’ potential to power their homes or perhaps eventually send energy to the grid in exchange for payments or credits, he said.
The discussion of EVs’ role in grid resilience took place in the first of three CEC workshops on the electrification of the transportation sector on Wednesday and Thursday. Two other workshops dealt with topics such as the role of ride hailing and self-driving big rigs in the state’s push toward 100% clean energy by 2045.
The workshops are part of the CEC’s 2020 update to its Integrated Energy Policy Report.
As with a CEC microgrid workshop July 7-9, the EV resilience session was timely because the state’s annual wildfire season is approaching. (See Fearing Wildfires, PG&E to Cut Power to 800,000.)
Microgrids for resilience are taking hold, but the use of EVs to help in disasters and blackouts remains a more remote solution.
‘100% Energy Security’
At the University of California, Davis, Honda built an experimental “smart home” in 2014 and has been using it to test the capabilities of EVs. In 2016, it began using a vehicle to provide power to the home (vehicle to home, or V2H) and, in 2018, installed technology that allowed an EV to charge and discharge to the local grid (vehicle to grid, or V2G).
A Honda report showed cars are typically parked at home or work, serving little purpose 96% of the time. The automaker intends to change that, Harty said.
“We want to improve the value of this product, not just to the customer but to society, by taking advantage of the fact that it’s there for the purpose of doing other things,” he said.
Researchers have been testing V2H and V2G technologies at Honda’s smart home at the University of California, Davis, since 2016. | Honda Motor Co.
At the experimental house in Davis, the Honda EV stores 20 kWh of electricity from the home’s rooftop solar array to help power heating and cooling, cooking and hot water heating, he said. A stationary battery provides 10 kWh of additional storage.
“The home can completely isolate from the grid in the case of [an outage],” Harty said. It is “still able to charge the car … and balance itself as a microgrid, providing 100% energy security both for living and for transportation to the customer.”
He said the UC Davis research builds on resilience efforts in Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused three reactors to melt down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Battery Degradation
A main argument against using EVs to power homes or the grid is that repeated charging and discharging of batteries causes them to degrade more quickly. Commissioner Patty Monahan asked the resilience panel about that objection.
“Part of the reason that the automakers are not investing in this technology is … the degradation,” Monahan said. “The battery is the most expensive part of the vehicle. This is going to cause some degradation.”
Harty and others said their experiences have shown that degradation wasn’t as serious as critics suggested and could be minimized.
“We’ve studied it in depth,” Harty said. “We’ve published a couple of papers in Society of Automotive Engineers journals on the modes of battery degradation and how it relates to V2G usage.
“A couple of things the battery really hates: It really hates sitting at a very high state of charge for a long time. The battery really hates being cycled from high state of charge to low state of charge, and it hates high temperatures.”
Avoiding cycling the battery “top to bottom” repeatedly is especially important, he said.
“If you just pick a nice healthy window that you’ve established through testing of the middle of the [state-of-charge] range of the battery, and you cycle within that range, then you essentially don’t affect the long-term degradation of the battery,” Harty said.
Occasionally running a car battery to zero to power a home — for instance, to preserve food during a blackout — is OK, he said.
“It’s just like customers driving to zero range on the car,” he said. “The car’s designed to do that a certain number of times in its life.”
Panelist Bjoern Christensen, who heads Northern California advisory firm next-dimension, was formerly chief strategy officer with Nuvve, a leader in V2G technology.
Nuvve has used 10 Nissan Leaf EVs for frequency regulation in Denmark since 2016, with 240,000 hours of vehicle operation in a “very demanding application,” Christensen said. Frequency regulation in Scandinavia is relatively inflexible and must be constantly monitored and adjusted, he said.
The EV batteries have handled the task without undue damage, he said.
“We’ve been measuring the battery state of health over those four years now, and we have found no degradation that is not in line with what Nissan research has predicted,” he said. “We were very surprised that we didn’t see a lot of battery degradation. It’s something … we don’t have any problems with right now for a practical application.”
First, to thank all our front-line utility folks who have kept electricity and all other vital utility services running through the pandemic. You’ve received little recognition, but where would we be without you?
Thanking not only everyone on the lines — our front lines — but everyone working at our generating facilities and our distribution and transmission centers to keep electricity flowing continuously 24/7. True heroes.
Con Ed workers wearing face masks | Con Edison
Second, every utility (and other energy provider) has an obligation to use its standard communications to customers — covering everyone in this country — to encourage the use of face masks. This is public-purpose space that costs a utility nothing to contribute to a critical public health good. And that is to encourage everyone to wear face masks.
Let’s thank our heroes and save our customers. It’s not politics. It’s the right thing to do.
