By Rory D. Sweeney
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM capped a busy week Friday with a 90th birthday celebration that attracted utility CEOs and government officials.
CEO Andy Ott described that “beautiful September day” when PJM — which is also celebrating 20 years as an RTO — was formed.
“We could never have imagined in ’27, or even in 1997, what we’d grow into,” Ott said. Yet, he added, “Our mission remains the same: to keep the lights on.”
Senior executives of the three utilities that founded PJM — Exelon’s PECO Energy (formerly Philadelphia Electric Co.), PPL and Public Service Electric and Gas — were among more than 100 in attendance.
“Today, PJM represents the largest energy-transaction marketplace in the world,” said Exelon Utilities CEO Denis O’Brien, noting that his company now owns almost half of the dozen companies that were PJM members when he began his career 35 years ago. He presented Ott with a photograph of the lighted signs at the top of PECO’s landmark building in Philadelphia displaying a message of congratulations to PJM.
PPL CEO William Spence congratulated the many people who transformed PJM into the world’s first continuing power pool.
“Today, nearly a century after PJM’s founding, it’s hard to imagine life without the electricity that we provide,” he said, noting its importance to medicine, education and the economy. “It was these people who transformed that 1920s patchwork of power lines and power plants into the robust interconnected system that we have today.”
Ralph Izzo, CEO of PSE&G parent Public Service Enterprise Group, noted that PJM was originally named PNJ, but changed its name as it expanded. The idea for the interconnection came when a company engineer realized that if every electrical device was turned out simultaneously, it would demand 3.5 times more power than the company owned, Izzo said. Only through “a fortunate lack of coincidence … this nightmare never materialized,” Izzo said.
The power pool allowed resources that were going unused in one company’s territory to be used in another area where demand was outstripping supply. “At the outset, transmission was the great enabler of the founders’ vision,” Izzo said.
The mood at the celebration was light, and many speakers found opportunities for humor.
PJM has “lasted through the Great Depression, through war and economic troubles, through FERC Order 1000,” Izzo joked. “Oh, that wasn’t in the script.”
Commissioner Robert Powelson came to FERC’s defense.
“I think it’s fair to say that if Thomas Edison were here today he would say, ‘Job well done, Andy and team,’” he said. “And he would say, ‘Job well done, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.’”
Powelson, a former member and chair of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, also singled out Mike Bryson, PJM’s vice president of operations, for “doing the boring good” to ensure the reliability of the RTO’s $30 billion in annual electron sales.
“Not a lot of people know who you are; I know who you are,” he said. The PJM staff “make Federal Energy Regulatory Commission commissioners look good in spite of ourselves.”
Current PUC Chair Gladys Brown noted that PJM is 10 years older than her commission. She thanked the RTO for being the “backbone” of wholesale energy transactions that enables her state’s competitive retail sales program.
She also voiced appreciation for the “tightrope and tug-of-war” that PJM staff administer in the stakeholder process, referencing the current efforts to accommodate state generation subsidies without allowing them to impact competitive prices. (See related story, PJM Pressed on Plans to File Capacity Changes.)
Pennsylvania is “proud” to be PJM’s home and birthplace, she said.
Richard Mroz, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, brought congratulations from a long list of industry stakeholders, including the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello, who represents the district that is home to PJM headquarters, said “a secure, safe, reliable, efficient grid is critical for the future of our country.”
“It is a particular source of pride for me when we have a power subcommittee roundtable and we’re talking about the challenges facing RTOs moving forward, and who’s really running the show? Who does everybody listen to?” he said. “It’s the folks at PJM, because you are out front in terms of innovation, and you are out front in terms of wrestling with the complexities and the challenges that RTOs face.”