Infocast’s three-day virtual Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Summit featured discussions on state clean energy procurements, the development of offshore wind (OSW), energy efficiency and the decarbonization of the transportation and generation sectors. Recent debates in PJM and FERC were also at the forefront of panel discussions.

Here are some highlights of discussions we heard.

D.C.’s Decarbonization Plan

Tommy Wells, director of the District of Columbia Department of Energy & Environment gave a presentation on the city’s efforts to comply with the D.C. Public Service Commission’s January order calling for 50% renewable resources by 2032 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

Clean energy advocates have warned the order didn’t adequately create a path to achieve the goals, while city officials said the groundwork is there to carry out a successful plan.

Wells said comprehensive energy plans typically quantify how much energy is being used, where the energy comes from and how much capacity is necessary to retain reliability of the grid.

Wells said D.C.’s plan, Clean Energy DC, is different because it starts with the goals and leaves the path to reach the goals up to interpretation. He said quantifying the goals remains the challenge.

“For a lot of us, the future is somewhat uncertain,” Wells said. “But there are some basic things we do know. We know we’ve made the commitment to do it. We know that there are new technologies that are adding renewable energy. The comprehensive energy plan is the roadmap, and along that roadmap there’s going to be some new routes and changes along the way.”

Wells said the milestones along the way include cutting energy usage in the city by 50% and using 100% renewable electricity by 2032.

D.C. officials are working in partnership with the city’s distribution utility, Potomac Electric Power Co. (Pepco), to add new technologies like battery storage to modernize the grid and give it the flexibility to incorporate intermittent generation, he said.

Although the grid was one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century, Wells said, it needs updating. “Now we need the grid for the 21st century. And the 21st century grid is going to have to do a lot more and be a lot smarter,” he said.

D.C. is looking to wind power to help achieve its renewable goals. Wells said D.C. government facilities get a third of their power from a wind farm in Pennsylvania.

It signed a 20-year agreement with the wind farm, Wells said, which helped pay for the capital costs of construction. He said the deal was a way to use D.C.’s position as a large consumer to put additional renewable resources on the grid.

Wells said one of D.C.’s mandates is to generate 10% of its power needs from solar power contained within the city limits. He said the mandate will be very difficult and expensive to achieve, but it was a requirement laid down by city officials.

Because the city is largely developed and has expensive real estate, Wells said D.C. has had to incentivize the construction of solar projects. He said whenever an electricity purchase is made in the city, there is a “carve out” for a portion of that electricity that is required to be generated from solar. If the carve out can’t be met, the generator must provide an alternative compliance payment to D.C. as a penalty.

Wells said one of the biggest disadvantages against D.C. achieving its renewable goals right now is that electricity is inexpensive throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

“When power is cheap, it is difficult to get people to really pay attention to the things we want them to do, which is use less power and use more renewables,” Wells said. “But we’re going to get there.”

Delaware’s Renewable Future

Thomas Noyes, principal planner for utility policy at the Delaware Division of Climate, Coastal and Energy, gave a presentation on the First State’s energy landscape.

The state’s Climate Action Plan,  which is set to be finalized by early 2021, is expected to propose reducing greenhouse gas emissions through renewables, energy efficiency and electrifying the transportation and building sectors. Gov. John Carney earlier this year proposed updating the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 40% by 2035.

Noyes said Delaware’s energy landscape is shaped by its geography of being located on a peninsula, with most of the power flowing north to south and the heaviest concentration of industrial and residential customers located in the northern section of the state.

Delaware does not generate all the electricity it uses, Noyes said, leading to a large portion of its energy imported from out of state. Noyes said most of the power generated in state comes from natural gas plants.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say most of the energy we use is imported through power lines and pipelines,” Noyes said.

The Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards Act, the state law passed in 2005, set Delaware’s RPS at 25% renewables with 3.5% of the renewables coming from solar by 2025. Noyes said the current resource mix stands at 20% renewables and 2.25% from solar.

Noyes said Delmarva Power, which provides power to a large portion of the state, meets its RPS requirements through long- and medium-term contracts and the spot market. Noyes said long-term contracts of at least 20 years are a key part of the state’s strategy of reaching the renewable goals by allowing solar projects of all scales to compete for the right to sell SRECs through 20-year contracts.

Long-term contracts help promote investment in the small- and medium-size solar projects by making it more appealing to investors who know they will have a sure 20-year revenue stream, Noyes said.

“These contracts help us reduce the boom-and-bust cycles that we’ve seen in some other states,” he said. “In a short period, a state may see several large projects built that crowd out the market for small- and medium-size solar installations. We’ve worked very hard to avoid that.”

Most of Delaware’s renewable energy credits (RECs) come from out-of-state wind generation, Noyes said, while most of the solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) come from inside the state. Delaware has more than 6,000 solar PV installations, mostly distributed rooftop sources. Its 130 MW of solar capacity has grown 15-fold in the last decade, he added.

The next big step for renewable energy in Delaware is offshore wind, Noyes said. Gov. Carney formed a working group in 2017 to study opportunities for the development of OSW off the state’s coast.  Noyes said Delaware must take into account the transmission of OSW projects slated for development off the Maryland coast, with lines expected to bring power ashore at the Indian River Substation. (See Md. PSC Oks 368 MW in Offshore Wind Projects.)

Noyes said Delaware officials are engaged in discussions with FERC and PJM on how the grid is going to handle the transmission impacts. He said with more connection points along East Coast shorelines, other states are going to have to make adjustments to how they do grid planning because most transmission infrastructure is not found along the coastlines.

As more power comes ashore from OSW, it could partly reverse the geography of the grid in Delaware with electricity primarily flowing from the south to the north, Noyes said.

“If we have more power coming ashore in southern Delaware, we’re going to have to see what we have to do to make adjustments to the grid,” he said.

Maryland Renewables

Maryland officials discussed their efforts to comply with the 2019 Clean Energy Jobs Act (SB 516), which raised the state’s RPS to 50% by 2030, from 25% by 2020. Gov. Larry Hogan’s proposed Clean and Renewable Energy Standard (CARES) would require 100% renewables by 2040.

Ben Grumbles, secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, said Hogan created the Governor’s Task Force on Renewable Energy Development and Siting by executive order in 2019 because “good ideas” weren’t making their way through the general assembly, and there was an immediate need to find ways bring stakeholders together.

The task force looked for ways to reduce unacceptable tradeoffs of having to choose between the environment and the economy, Grumbles said, and officials helped to streamline permitting and come up with innovative ideas for promoting renewable resources.

Maryland is one of 30 states with a renewable portfolio standard to increase electricity production from renewable sources. The state currently requires that 50% of electricity sold by utilities come from renewable sources by 2030, including 14.5% from solar as mandated by the Clean Energy Jobs Act.

Grumbles cited an October report, released by Chesapeake Conservancy’s Conservation Innovation Center (CIC), which lays out large-scale opportunities for solar placement on degraded land and underutilized industrial sites; the rooftops of commercial, industrial and residential buildings; and parking lots. (See Report: Urban Land Use Key for Md. Solar Goals.)

The task force estimated that meeting the state’s RPS will require between 7,000 and 35,000 acres of land across the state, Grumbles said. Solar siting is just one of the strategies Maryland is using to ensure that it meets its GHG reduction goals through a push for “homegrown” renewable energy.

“This relentless march towards clean and renewable energy to meet our very ambitious environmental and climate goals is a priority,” Grumbles said. “The need is even greater to couple those ambitious environmental goals with common sense solutions and partnerships for innovation and real collaboration.”

Mary Beth Tung, director of the Maryland Energy Administration, was asked about her agency’s efforts to spur battery storage development.

Tung said battery storage is an interesting subject on the policy side and through its practical attributes and is becoming a more significant part of the grid. Aside from their obvious uses, she said batteries can be used in transmission and stabilizing power supplies in substations.

Maryland has been developing its Solar Canopy Grant Program for installing solar PV over parking lots with electric vehicle charging stations, Tung said, and some of those projects include battery storage.

Tung said her agency is currently working with the state Public Service Commission to determine what storage regulations should be developed to promote their use in the state.

“Storage is one way we’ll be able to even out the renewable curve,” she said. “Renewable resources are intermittent for the most part, and it is a way to get over that hurdle.”