Page 983 – RTO Insider

February 12, 2021January 29, 2024

FCA 15 Closes with Big Jumps in Clearing Prices

ISO-NE’s 15th annual Forward Capacity Auction (FCA 15) cleared with prices ranging from $2.48/kW-month to $3.98/kW-month — the high in Southeast New England (SENE) nearly doubling last year’s record-low figure, the RTO announced Thursday.

Outside of SENE, prices cleared at $2.48/kW-month in Northern New England (NNE) and Maine and $2.61/kW-month in the rest of pool (ROP), with a total cost of approximately $1.36 billion. In FCA 14, prices for all the RTO cleared at only $2.01/kW-month.

“The clearing prices in FCA 15 reveal the different values across the region based on the individual capacity needs for each zone,” said Robert Ethier, ISO-NE vice president for system planning. “In addition, new this year is a large amount of energy storage — almost 600 MW — that has cleared the market.”

Before FCA 15 took place, 199 MW of resources submitted retirement bids. An additional 43 MW of resources submitted permanent de-list bids to leave the capacity market; de-list bids of 101 MW cleared prior to the auction and 141 MW additionally during it.

ISO-NE said the FCA 15 results will be submitted to FERC by the end of the month.

The auction, conducted in up to five rounds of bidding Monday for capacity commitment period 2024/25, cleared 34,621 MW, a 1,351-MW surplus over the net installed capacity requirement of 33,270 MW. These comprised 29,243 MW of generation, with 950 MW of new resources and 630 MW battery storage resources; 3,891 MW of demand resources (170 MW new); and 1,487 MW of imports from New York, Québec and New Brunswick.

ISO-NE did not break down the storage figure, only saying that it included both new and existing resources, but it did report that more than 2,525 MW of new resources cleared. Approximately 19 MW of new renewables cleared under the renewable technology resource exemption in its final year. The exemption allowed a certain amount of new renewable capacity to clear without being subject to the minimum offer price rule, with nearly 600 MW clearing since FCA 9.

FCA 15’s capacity zones were identical to those for FCA 14: NNE, which includes Vermont, portions of Maine and New Hampshire; the rest of Maine; SENE, comprising eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island; and ROP, composed of Connecticut and western and central Massachusetts.

Reaction

Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, said FCA 15 represents “a diverse set of technologies to meet capacity requirements in the years 2024 and 2025.”

“This capacity auction delivered strategic investments at power plants to increase capabilities and provide robust, cost-effective reliability services for consumers,” Dolan said. “Those investments will help facilitate and enable a transforming electricity grid to meet the demands of electrification and integrate large-scale renewables.”

He added, however, that “the electricity market must evolve.”

“State decarbonization policies are not today adequately accounted for, and it is past time that a solution is put in place,” Dolan said. “Whether through meaningfully pricing carbon dioxide emissions, or other proposals, market solutions exist.”

Theodore Paradise, senior vice president of transmission strategy and counsel at Anbaric, said the price separation in FCA 15 shows how important it is to look at total consumer benefits when considering competitive transmission, “rather than just upfront capital costs.”

“The capacity market is long, and what raised prices in this auction were transmission transfer limitations,” Paradise said. “Anbaric took those transmission system limitations into account when it designed the Mystic Reliability Wind Link. It was clear there would be transfer limitations into the Boston area that would very likely raise prices with the loss of 1,400 MW and in the absence of energy supply being injected via new transfer capability.”

Brandon Keefe, general manager at Plus Power, said his company was “excited to open New England to large, standalone energy storage” after it won two bids for battery plants in Massachusetts and Maine that “will help decarbonize the grid while improving regional reliability.”

“If Congress were to pass a federal investment tax credit for standalone storage, it could level the playing field and bring these kinds of projects, investment and jobs benefits across the country,” Keefe said.

February 12, 2021

Duke Plans for $59 Billion in Capital Investment

Duke Energy executives said Thursday they have put the challenges of 2020 behind them, predicting a 5 to 7% annualized increase in earnings per share through 2025.

“2020 was the year for agility and transformation,” Executive Vice President and CFO Steve Young said during the company’s fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. He said the company plans $59 billion in capital spending over the five-year planning period ending in 2024, about 70% of which will be for clean energy and “green infrastructure.” Capital investments from 2025-2030 are expected to grow to $65 to $75 billion, Young said.

The company’s reported earnings were hurt by charges from the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and a $1 billion coal ash settlement in North Carolina for Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress.

CEO Lynn Good framed Duke’s coal ash settlement as an achievement, despite the $77 million loss (-$0.12/share) the utility reported for the quarter. Adjusted fourth quarter earnings were $1.03/share. A year earlier, the company posted fourth quarter net income of $660 million ($0.88/share) and adjusted earnings of $0.91/share.

For all of 2020, Duke reported net income of $3.77 billion ($1.72/share) and adjusted earnings of $5.12/share.

Good was upbeat throughout the call, expressing optimism about the utility’s 2020 integrated resource plans for North and South Carolina and its goal of reducing its carbon emissions 50% by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. She said the IRPs were developed with broad stakeholder involvement and illustrate “the trade-offs between the pace of transition and the cost implications.”

The IRPs offer six different pathways to net zero, from a base case that still includes substantial new natural gas generation, to a no-gas option that would accelerate emissions reductions to 70% by 2030.

Duke Energy’s IRPs for North and South Carolina include six possible pathways to get the utility to net zero by 2050. | *Duke Energy*

The North Carolina IRP is now before the state’s utility commission, with public comments due in April and the commission’s own comments due possibly in the fall, Good said.

Questions from analysts on the call focused on regulatory and legislative initiatives underway in North Carolina. Following a series of stakeholder meetings throughout 2020, a recent report by the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Regulatory Assistance Project included recommendations for new laws to transition the state to performance-based regulation (PBR) and help accelerate the retirement of fossil fuel generation.

PBR links utility compensation not to traditional capital investment in infrastructure, but to the achievement of specific performance metrics. Other recommendations in the report included changes to wholesale power markets and more competitive procurement processes.

Good said Duke worked with stakeholders around common objectives including “moving away from coal, carbon reduction, regulatory mechanisms that incent that move and then, of course, increase investment in renewables, all with the construct of maintaining reliability and affordability.”

But some solar and environmental groups have been strongly critical of both the North and South Carolina IRPs, in particular for the utility’s plans to continue building new natural gas plants. A recent report from the Sierra Club gave Duke’s North Carolina IRP 5 points out of a possible 100. The South Carolina Solar Business Alliance filed extensive comments on Duke’s South Carolina IRP, calling the utility’s ongoing reliance on natural gas generation risky and inconsistent with its 2050 net-zero goal.

Positive Population Migration

Other takeaways from the call included:

While the COVID-19 pandemic reduced commercial and industrial demand, Duke saw a significant increase in residential customers and demand. The customer growth was caused by “positive population migration” in Duke’s service territory, Young said.
Duke Energy Florida reached a settlement with consumer groups, committing the utility to scrapping a planned nuclear project and investing instead in solar energy, smart meters and grid modernization projects. Deployment of electric vehicle charging stations and development of an energy storage pilot project are also included in the settlement.
Duke recently announced that GIC, a Singapore-based infrastructure investor, had acquired a 19.9% interest in Duke Energy Indiana for $2.05 billion. The investment “displaces all common equity needs” in its five-year plan.

February 12, 2021March 9, 2025

FERC’s Glick Lays out Priorities in Press Conference

FERC Chairman Richard Glick on Thursday told reporters he has five broad priorities in his new role, chief among them ensuring electricity market rules do not discriminate against new technology.

Speaking to the press for the first time since President Biden appointed him chair of the commission Jan. 21, Glick also listed:

enabling “significant” transmission buildout and speeding up generator interconnection processes to facilitate the surge of renewable resources;
accommodating state energy programs;
improving the commission’s approval processes for natural gas infrastructure; and
working with NERC to strengthen cybersecurity.

He also committed to building public confidence in FERC decision-making. As part of that, he pledged to be “as transparent as possible” with reporters and announced he would reinstitute post-meeting press conferences, which Commissioner James Danly halted while he was chair.

FERC Commissioner Richard Glick | © RTO Insider

“I’m going to try my best to avoid saying, ‘The order speaks for itself,’ to avoid your questions,” Glick said.

Still, he declined to go into specifics on the many topics about which he was asked, including RTO minimum offer price rules (MOPRs); offshore transmission planning; and how he would address the commission’s languishing docket to consider how to revise its 1999 natural gas policy statement, instituted by Chair Kevin McIntyre before his death.

While Glick said he would work to gain unanimous support for orders, he also pledged not to “sit on” orders indefinitely if he did not have the full support of his colleagues, anticipating that he and follow Democratic Commissioner Allison Clements would issue some dissents before the expiration of Republican Neil Chatterjee’s term at the end of June. The Republicans will hold a 3-2 edge until Biden can fill the next vacancy on the commission.

Details to Come

Glick also announced he would create a new senior position to incorporate environmental justice into the commission’s decision-making.

The chairman did not go into specifics, such as under what office or division the official would work, saying he would have more details at FERC’s next open meeting Feb. 18. But he said the position would ensure decisions across the commission would take into account the concerns of historically marginalized communities.

“This position is not just a title,” Glick said in a statement. “I intend to do what it takes to empower this new position to ensure that environmental justice and equity concerns finally get the attention they deserve.”

He also said he would give more details about implementing FERC’s Office of Public Participation, to which Congress gave a budget under the Energy Act of 2020 — 42 years after the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act directed the commission to establish it.

On the Agenda

Later on Thursday, FERC released the preliminary agenda with a number of high-profile issues for next week’s open meeting. Included are the natural gas policy statement docket (PL18-1); the PJM MOPR docket (EL16-49-006); the NYISO buyer-side mitigation rules docket (EL16-92-004); and the ISO-NE Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources docket (ER18-619-002).

It also lists the long stalled grid resilience inquiry docket (AL18-7), opened after the commission rejected the Energy Department’s 2017 proposal to order RTOs and ISOs to compensate the full operating costs of generators with 90 days of on-site fuel, the docket for which is also on the agenda (RM18-1). (See FERC Rejects DOE Rule, Opens RTO ‘Resilience’ Inquiry.)

February 12, 2021

SPP Board to Consider Controversial Kansas Project

SPP said Wednesday it will schedule a special Board of Directors meeting to consider Evergy’s request to restudy a competitive project in southeastern Kansas that the utility said collides with its regional planning efforts.

SPP Kansas Project — SPP originally identified the Butler-Altoona-Tioga project (below) in its transmission planning process, but has since recommended a greenfield project (top). | *SPP*

The board approved the 138-kV project last month despite protests from Evergy, the incumbent transmission owner. The Kansas City utility requested staff instead re-examine the project and said it would request an immediate restudy should the project be approved. (See “Board Approves Tx Project Soon to be Re-evaluated,” SPP Board of Directors/MC Briefs: Jan. 27, 2021.)

SPP issued a request for proposal on Feb. 2 for the competitive upgrade, which would replace an aging Evergy line between the Butler and Tioga substations. Three days later, Evergy Kansas Central asked that the project be re-evaluated, saying it had originally been identified through the RTO’s planning process as a “substantial” rebuild of the existing 99-year-old facility, not a 100% greenfield project that qualified as a competitive project.

“As a result, all analysis conducted to-date was based on assumptions and cost estimates which are no longer applicable to the current project scope,” Evergy wrote in its re-evaluation request.

The utility said the restudy was necessary because the scope change in the RFP is “significant and substantive” and no longer aligns with the original assessment.

Evergy has begun work on a 35-mile rebuild of the Butler-Altoona line, which it said has been identified as a need in three SPP planning assessments since 2017. The utility expects to complete the work by the end of next year.

The competitive upgrade “is definitely a collision of local and regional planning,” said Denise Buffington, Evergy’s director of federal regulatory affairs. “We think the facilities we are putting in the area should be considered as SPP determines whether or not to move forward with the project. SPP should not be building redundant infrastructure.”

Buffington said that, based on her understanding of competitive project restudies, the upgrade could not be modified to pick up where Evergy’s work leaves off, resulting in the redundancy.

“We have been trying since 2017 to get in line with SPP on needs of this area,” she said. “We need to do what is right for our customers. It isn’t all about economics for us.”

During the board meeting, staff will recommend whether the competitive restudy should be performed. Under the tariff, SPP can also recommend whether it is necessary to suspend the project’s transmission owner selection process.

Should the board direct a restudy, staff will conduct the re-evaluation and provide a recommendation as to whether the competitive upgrade should be withdrawn. If it is, the applicable RFP would be withdrawn and the selection process terminated.

If the competitive project survives the challenge, the selection process will continue or be reinstated. The RFP response window will close on the original close date or 60 days after the selection process is reinstated, whichever is later.

February 12, 2021

NYISO Business Issues Committee Briefs: Feb. 10, 2021

NYISO’s Business Issues Committee on Wednesday approved revisions to the Transmission and Dispatch Operations Manual that relate to generator fuel and emissions reporting (GFER) and are expected to become effective approximately two weeks after the Operating Committee approval on Feb. 11.

“Based on stakeholder feedback, we have developed the functionality within the GFER application to issue surveys both weekly and as requested survey by fuel type,” said John Stevenson, senior gas and electric analyst at the ISO. “Before we were surveying all generators just like we currently do and will continue to do in the annual survey, and this functionality allows us to hone that in on fuel types we may be interested in, such as fossil fuel generators, and allows us not to overwhelm stakeholders for whom these questions may not be applicable.”

The revisions say that NYISO may only solicit responses from generators that use fossil fuels to produce electricity, and all installed capacity suppliers must submit fuel and environmental restriction data at weekly and yearly intervals and as requested by the ISO. Yearly fuel surveys must be completed within 30 days of NYISO notification of their availability; weekly surveys by 1:00 p.m. of the first business day of each week; and as-requested surveys by 1:00 p.m. the day prior to the operating day the survey covers.

Stevenson agreed with one stakeholder that the rationale for the manual and GFER changes is to make the reporting requirements more practical, recognizing, for example, that wind turbines cannot predict how much wind is available for generation in future periods. “We’ve been getting feedback for a couple years now and … implemented that change,” he said.

ICAP Manual Revisions

The BIC also approved Installed Capacity Manual revisions to update the External Import Rights Limits for the 2021/22 capability year and reflect the maximum amount of import capacity allowed from neighboring control areas.

The proposed revisions affect Section 4.9.6 of the manual.

NYISO Business Issues Committee — NYISO ICAP external import rights | *NYISO*

GE Multi-Area Reliability Simulation (MARS) simulations were performed on the locational minimum installed capacity requirements MARS database to determine capacity imports allowed without violating the loss of load expectation criterion.

The import capability for each control area will be subjected to a deliverability test, with any megawatts not deemed deliverable deducted from final values.

Deliverability results for import rights limits are scheduled for completion in mid-February, with final numbers to be released along with other summer capability period auction information on Feb. 26. That auction opens at the end of March.

February 12, 2021

EEI: Net Zero by 2035 ‘Incredibly Difficult’

The Edison Electric Institute is skeptical about the industry’s ability to meet the Biden administration’s goal of carbon-free electricity by 2035, insisting natural gas generation will be needed for the foreseeable future.

The transition to wind and solar backed by energy storage in just 15 years would be an extremely difficult goal, EEI’s President Tom Kuhn said during its annual Wall Street briefing Wednesday. “I think the 2035 date was a campaign initiative and would be an incredibly difficult situation to handle for most of the companies in the industry,” he said.

Edison Electric Institute Net Zero — Coal’s share of the U.S. generation mix has dropped by more than half since 2010, while wind has quadrupled and natural gas has almost doubled. | *Energy Information Administration*

Instead, EEI says its investor-owned utility members are “collectively … on a path” to cut their carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050 from 2005 levels.

The association’s top executives said although its members strongly advocate renewable energy, the rollout of electric vehicles and rejoining the Paris climate accords, meeting climate goals will require a massive expansion of the transmission grid, including electronic control systems still being developed and federal investments.

EEI’s presentation highlighted changes in the generation mix (“nearly 40% carbon-free”), which it said had resulted in the lowest level of CO₂ emissions in 30 years.

Even if an expanded grid eliminates bottlenecks that impede delivery of renewables to load centers, EEI said gas-fired power plants and nuclear energy must remain in the generation mix. The nation’s 94 nuclear reactors produce nearly 20% of electricity and 50% of carbon-free power it said. The group said it supports “strong and cost-effective” federal regulations to reduce methane emissions throughout the natural gas supply chain.

Brian Wolff, vice president of public policy, noted that EEI has partnered with environmental groups to figure out the mix of sophisticated technologies that will be necessary to squeeze the last 20% of carbon out of the industry. In 2018, EEI and the NRDC unveiled 21 policy recommendations and made it clear that it would be expensive. And funding continues to be an issue.

“While we did a down payment on those technologies in the energy bill that passed in the lame duck session [of Congress] last year, we are really looking now to set the stage for the budget coming up that Congress will be dealing with as well as the administration putting forth their own budget to make sure [there are] appropriate levels of investments in these technologies,” Wolff said. (See Wind, Solar, EE, CO2 Storage Win Tax Breaks.)

EEI’s “carbon-free technology initiative” is focusing on five areas:

advanced, dispatchable renewables (e.g., superhot deep geothermal) and advanced power electronics;
zero-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen or ammonia, “from a variety of sources”;
advanced nuclear energy (fission and fusion);
carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, especially for natural gas facilities; and
advanced demand efficiency and long-duration storage.

Phil Moeller, vice president for business operations, said the industry has invested more than $1 trillion since 2010 to build smarter energy infrastructure and to integrate new generation. “These investments continue to be central to our vision of a cleaner, smarter, strong energy future,” he said, noting 75% of U.S. households now have smart meters.

But the leap to the kind of integrated national grid the industry envisions will need a raft of new public policies, he said. Some of these policies are certain to encounter pushback at the local level.

“We are focused on advocating for public policies that enable us to get critical transmission and grid infrastructure built more quickly,” he said. “The transmission system is key to increasing the integration of clean energy. It enhances the resiliency of the grid, powers electric transportation and facilitates the adoption of a broad array of smart technologies.”

Richard McMahon, vice president for energy supply and finance, warned that the industry’s plans could be hurt by federal tax increases. The Biden administration has signaled it wants to raise the current 21% corporate tax rate to 28%.

February 12, 2021

FERC Fines NY Generator on Fuel Data

FERC on Monday approved a settlement agreement requiring Alliance NYGT to pay nearly $900,000 for running two small power plants on natural gas for more than three years while being reimbursed for more expensive kerosene (IN21-4).

Under the terms of the agreement with the commission’s Office of Enforcement, the company will pay NYISO $463,984 for restitution and compensating market participants and remit a $420,000 civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury.

The agreement also requires that Alliance submit two annual compliance monitoring reports, with a third annual report at the office’s option, and to conduct at least one training program relating to compliance with the commission’s regulations and the NYISO tariff.

New York fuel data — Alliance’s 40-MW Hillburn plant in Hillburn, N.Y. | *Alliance Energy Group*

Alliance bought the Hillburn and Shoemaker generators in 2007. The units are located in Orange County, and each has a 40-MW nameplate capacity. Between January 2009 and January 2012, Alliance operated the generators exclusively on kerosene while making repairs to remedy operational issues that were most pronounced when burning gas.

Alliance completed the generators’ gas equipment upgrades in 2012 and contacted NYISO to request information about updating the reference prices in advance of the repairs being completed. Alliance failed to start on gas in response to a January 2013 dispatch request, but thereafter “the generators began operating primarily on gas to fulfill their awards.” However, the units’ reference prices remained indexed to the more expensive liquid fuel, the commission said.

NYISO in September 2013 began communicating with Alliance about the type of fuel used to operate the generators, but the company’s responses were “untimely, inaccurate or incomplete,” according to FERC, and it wasn’t until March 2016 that the firm began updating its reference prices to reflect gas capabilities for both generators.

During the period that it failed to notify NYISO of the generators’ ability to operate on gas, Alliance received inflated make-whole payments.

February 12, 2021

Utilities Urged to Improve EV Charging Efficiency

Utilities need to offer electric vehicle rate designs that will encourage customers to use EVs in the most efficient ways possible, such as utility-managed charging, according to Rachel Gold, director of the utilities program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

“A lot of utilities around the country are offering rate designs [for grid services],” Gold said during a National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Winter Policy Summit panel discussion Wednesday. But “there are very few utilities that are offering managed charging programs right now.”

She also discussed utilities’ role in charging infrastructure deployment.

“Most of the investment that we’ve seen [by utilities] has been targeted at the traditional role of the utility as an infrastructure company,” Gold said, especially, she added, in Level 2 charging infrastructure.

Electric Vehicle Charging — Building and incentivizing EV charging, like the home charger shown here, is an emerging role for utilities in the coming transportation electrification. | *Enel X*

She said utilities could focus on incentivizing investments in fast charging infrastructure, specifically fast charging usage by EV fleets.

Within charging infrastructure investment strategies, utilities have been successful in targeting opportunities to address multiple market and community benefits at once.

“We’ve seen utilities targeting low-income, economically distressed or environmental justice communities,” Gold said. “We’ve also seen targeting at bus charging or medium- and heavy-duty fleet charging in places where there’s an air quality benefit and, in particular, where there’s an air quality benefit that overlaps with low-income communities.”

Colorado’s Approach

Colorado Public Utilities Commissioner John Gavan said utilities in his state were directed by law in 2019 to develop transportation electrification plans that would help the state reach its target of putting 940,000 EVs on the road by 2030.

“Today we only have 33,000 EVs on the road, with less than 4,000 charging ports across the entire state,” he said. “Growing to a 940,000-vehicle level — which would be half our cars — by 2030 represents a huge shift for the state.”

While most of the utility plans on transportation electrification in Colorado focus on building out charging infrastructure, regulators worked to ensure utility activity does not conflict with the emerging private charging economy, Gavan said.

He said that the initial charging infrastructure deployments under the transportation electrification plan from Xcel Energy Colorado focused on multifamily dwellings and lower-income neighborhoods. The utility is also focusing on Level 2 and fast charging deployments for areas that do not support a strong commercial business case.

Gavan said that the PUC has allowed Xcel to own EV charging infrastructure and promote managed charging, “but we did not support a broad EV purchase rebate.” The commission instead targeted the rebate program to income-qualified buyers.

That program investment, he said, totals $107 million over three years and carries a monthly bill impact of 68 cents per ratepayer.

February 11, 2021

Lawmakers Chase Affordability in Energy Transition in Maine

Maine legislators and officials gave a preview of their work this year in implementing the state’s energy policies while keeping costs to consumers low.

Following a surge of new climate-related legislation passed in Maine last year, state legislators are now trying to balance the need to meet mandates without burdening ratepayers.

Understanding the financial ramifications of energy-related policies “is constantly my No. 1 priority,” Sen. Trey Stewart (R) said Wednesday during a preview of the joint Energy, Utilities and Technology (EUT) Committee’s work this legislative session.

Stewart called Maine’s new climate laws “admirable,” but he said the costs of achieving them “will become a problem at some point.” Last year the Legislature passed legislation relating to, among other things, the state’s emissions and renewable portfolio standard; net metering; offshore wind; heating; electric vehicles; and transmission alternatives.

This year’s legislative session will give lawmakers a chance to adjust the bills passed last year, Dan Burgess, director of Maine’s Energy Office, said during the webinar, hosted by E2Tech.

“I think [this session] is an opportunity to continue the progress that we’ve made in order to create economic opportunities within the energy space and to ensure that we’re keeping affordability in mind,” he said.

Maine Energy Transition — Maine lawmakers are looking at ways to make the state’s climate goals, such as putting 41,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025, affordable for ratepayers. | *Chevrolet*

Rep. Nicole Grohoski (D) said that her priority for this session is to make sure that the energy transition is affordable and equitable for residents. She said the EUT Committee will consider a group of bills that deal with financing and accessing lower-cost capital.

Those bills address, for example, commercial property-assessed clean energy (C-PACE) financing, heat pump incentives and even a green bank, she said. In addition, there are legislative efforts related to creating a consumer-owned utility to unlock access to revenue bonding and low-cost capital for a large-scale grid buildout to support electrification of major sectors.

Grohoski said that she is sponsoring a bill this year to create a generation authority in the state that would also provide nontaxable low-cost capital through revenue bonds for local clean energy developers.

New Reports

Burgess said that the Energy Office will release information soon related to progress of the Maine Climate Council’s strategic initiative to create a clean transportation roadmap for the state. Initial estimates from the council show that the state needs to have 41,000 light-duty EVs on the road by 2025 to meet its emissions goal for 2030.

The roadmap, Burgess said, will help identify issues that must be addressed to advance clean transportation across all EV classes and public transportation.

The Energy Office also is preparing to release a report about the Climate Council’s call for modernizing Maine’s buildings. Burgess said the report will identify the current state of building efficiencies and opportunities for advancing home weatherization programs, appliance standards and C-PACE programs.

Commission Initiatives

The Maine Public Utilities Commission is working to overcome significant technical challenges related to clean energy mandates put in place by the Legislature, while also acknowledging the importance of minimizing costs for consumers and businesses.

Chairman Philip Bartlett said the commission currently has a working stakeholder group of industry and utility representatives to examine the interconnection of distributed energy resources. The working group issued a notice Tuesday seeking input on the review process for small DER projects. Bartlett said that some small projects are subject to a higher level of review than others, causing “significant delay and added expense.”

As part of that inquiry, he said, the group will consider penalties for utilities if they do not meet interconnection requirements.

The PUC also will be opening a proceeding to looking into Central Main Power’s (CMP) recent claim that it needs to complete upgrades at more than 100 substations to connect new DERs to the grid.

“It’s important to consider the timeline with respect to when CMP became aware of this problem … and how projects are being impacted,” Bartlett said.

To ensure that Maine can interconnect high levels of DERs in the future, the commission will open a separate proceeding to consider distribution system design changes. The proceeding also will work to improve data collection and transparency.

“It is important to assess what is needed for the grid of the future, and we cannot minimize costs without good information to help drive decision-making,” Bartlett said.

February 11, 2021February 5, 2025

Calif. Governor Fills Seats on CAISO, CPUC, CEC

Gov. Gavin Newsom named new members Tuesday to the three bodies that govern California energy policy — CAISO, the Public Utilities Commission and the Energy Commission — and reappointed a sitting member of the ISO’s Board of Governors.

Newsom appointed former NERC Trustee Jan Schori to fill a seat on the CAISO board left vacant when former Chair David Olsen decided to retire at the end of November.

In a rare move, the governor named an Energy Commission staff member, Deputy Director Siva Gunda, to the panel of five commissioners. Former Commissioner Janea Scott left in January to take a top post at the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Biden Administration.

Gov. Gavin Newsom filled vacancies on the boards of CAISO, the CPUC and the Energy Commission on Feb. 9. | © RTO Insider

Newsom selected the Energy Commission’s general counsel, Darcie Houck, to fill an open spot on the CPUC dais. In December he picked former Commissioner Liane Randolph to head the California Air Resources Board, leaving a vacancy.

And the governor reappointed Mary Leslie to a seat she has held on the CAISO board since 2019.

During Tuesday’s CEC meeting, commissioners welcomed their new colleague, Gunda, and wished Houck well in her next role. Chair David Hochschild noted that the CEC and CPUC must work together to predict energy use and procure resources. The additional connection between the two entities will be helpful, he said.

Darcie Houck, chief counsel to the California Energy Commission, will fill a vacant seat on the California Public Utilities Commission. | California Energy Commission

“The collaboration between the CPUC and the Energy Commission is so fundamental to our success, and so, knowing the strong bond the two of you have with each other is another reason we should all be excited,” he told Houck and Gunda.

Working with CAISO, the commissions are trying to head off energy shortfalls this summer and in the next few years, as the state transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. Last summer’s energy emergencies and rolling blackouts led to calls for better synchronization among the three entities. (See New CAISO CEO Vows Urgency on Resource Adequacy.)

“It’s just clear California will not succeed and will not have an effective resource adequacy framework if the ISO and the CPUC and the CEC do not have that shared sense of tremendous urgency and focus and collaboration,” CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said in an interview last year. “We have to work well together.”

Schori’s appointment followed her service as a NERC trustee for 12 years, the maximum allowed. She was termed out earlier this year.

From 1984 to 2008, Schori worked for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, one of the nation’s largest municipal utilities, including as its CEO and general manager, general counsel and staff attorney. She graduated from the University of California Davis School of Law.

Leslie, whom Newsom named to the CAISO board two years ago, was the longtime president of the Los Angeles Business Council, a one-time deputy mayor of Los Angeles and a former commissioner at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Houck, another UC Davis graduate, has been chief counsel at the CEC since 2019. She was an administrative law judge at the CPUC from 2016 to 2019 and staff counsel at the CEC from 2000 to 2005. She worked in a private law firm between her stints of government service.

Siva Gunda, a deputy director at the Energy Commission, was named a CEC commissioner. | California Energy Commission

Gunda served as deputy director of the Energy Assessments Division at the CEC since 2018 and was office manager of the commission’s Demand Analysis Office in 2017-2018. He previously worked at the UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute, including as director of research for two years and as a program manager for four years prior. Gunda holds a master’s degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering from Utah State University.

After he was sworn in Tuesday morning, Gunda — who, commissioners said, is known for giving credit to others — thanked his fellow staff members at the CEC for their “collective success” and hard work pursuing the state’s clean energy goals and helping determine the causes of last year’s rolling blackouts. (See CAISO Issues Final Report on August Blackouts.) Their joint efforts culminated in his appointment, he said.

“The staff at the Energy Commission are one of the most passionate, committed and intellectually honest group of people that I’ve ever met,” Gunda said after he was sworn in Tuesday morning. “It’s been an absolute honor and pleasure.”