By Suzanne Herel
The PJM Board of Managers has approved more than $636 million in transmission investments, including a $320 million market efficiency project — the RTO’s largest ever — designed to ease congestion at the AP South interface.
That project alone is predicted to save customers $622 million over 15 years, PJM said.
Project 9A (without capacitors) is expected to alleviate congestion across Pennsylvania’s border with Maryland and is set to go online in 2020.
The plan, which evolved from the RTO’s Order 1000 competitive process for transmission improvements, involves substation upgrades, two new substations, two new transmission lines and improvements to current lines.
“This is PJM’s largest-ever market efficiency project, and we expect it will resolve a significant amount of the remaining transmission congestion in the eastern portion of PJM,” said CEO Andy Ott.
The principal developers are FirstEnergy’s Allegheny Power, Exelon’s Baltimore Gas and Electric and Transource Energy, an American Electric Power affiliate.
At the same meeting at which it approved AP South, the board halted another Order 1000 project, the stability fix for New Jersey’s Artificial Island. (See PJM Board Halts Artificial Island Project, Orders Staff Analysis.)
The board also approved $316.3 million in other new or amended projects to maintain reliability.
PJM’s selection of the AP South project was criticized by some stakeholders who argued that planners should further study competing proposals ranging from $72 million to $253 million. (See “Planners to Recommend $340.6M Solution to Congestion in AP South,” PJM Planning Committee and TEAC Briefs.)
Among the detractors was Linden VFT, which wrote a July 29 letter to the board saying, “Despite similar benefits per dollar of cost, PJM has chosen the larger project which purports to produce higher benefits on an absolute basis because of its size. However, PJM gave no indication that it had considered in its recommendation the value of the cost-cap guarantee proposed by” LS Power’s Northeast Transmission Development.
It warned that if cost containment is not valued, it will cease being offered.
“Linden VFT agrees that determining the relative importance of a cost cap over other factors will require PJM to make value judgments, but PJM’s role in project selection requires it to either consider all of the issues in a deliberate fashion (not just those which are easiest to compute) or punt, and effectuate the same value judgments, but by default, without thoughtful consideration.”
The board also received a letter from AEP and Transource lauding the selection process.
Since the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan began in 2000, PJM has greenlit $29 billion in new development and upgrades.