A New York appellate judge on Wednesday blocked the Public Service Commission from limiting energy service companies’ (ESCOs) ability to contract with low-income people in the state.
The temporary restraining order from Justice Christine Clark, of the Appellate Division’s Third Judicial Department, continues the legal see-sawing on the commission’s efforts to protect poor New Yorkers from paying excessive rates for electricity.
The restraining order will remain in effect pending the court’s ruling on a motion to stay a July 5 state Supreme Court order. Clark ordered the PSC to appear at a show cause hearing on Aug. 23. (New York’s Supreme Court is the trial-level court in the state, with the Appellate Division hearing appeals of its decisions. The state’s highest court is the Court of Appeals.)
Robert Abrams Building for Law and Justice, home of the New York Appellate Division Third Judicial Department | New York Supreme Court
Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Association, said that Wednesday’s ruling paved “the way for appellate review of the PSC’s efforts before they are implemented. We look forward to participating in the process to gather real data and analysis that can drive policy to achieve New York’s energy goals as opposed to restricting consumer choice based on unsupported claims and faulty numbers.”
“We look forward to the opportunity to be heard by the Appellate Division justices as New York continues to protect consumers and ratepayers from paying too much for their electric and gas service,” PSC spokesman James Denn responded in a statement.
On June 30, Supreme Court Justice Henry Zwack ruled that the PSC has “the very broadest of powers” to regulate ESCOs and utility rates, especially when seeking to prevent the overcharging of low-income customers, dismissing a case filed against the commission by NEMA and three ESCOs, as well as a similar suit by the Retail Energy Supply Association. (See Court Backs NYPSC on Regulating Retail Sales.)
The PSC on Aug. 2 had rebuffed a trade group seeking to head off upcoming evidentiary hearings related to the commission’s ongoing investigation of ESCOs. (See NYPSC Pushes Ahead with ESCO Investigation.)
CARMEL, Ind. — Market participants remain skeptical of a MISO plan to integrate external resource zones into its annual capacity auction, employing single clearing prices for each balancing authority, even as the RTO is introducing changes and speaking one-on-one with stakeholders about the proposal.
| MISO
MISO Executive Director of Strategy Shawn McFarlane has initiated about “20-odd” conversations with stakeholders to explain the proposal and hear suggestions after last month’s stakeholder motion to delay its implementation. Market participants instead favor a more immediate capacity transfer rights proposal that would give equal treatment to long-term supply arrangements involving both external and internal planning resources. MISO is under no obligation to honor the July motion. (See MISO Members: Court Rebuff May Reduce External Zone Chances.)
“Our reaction was, ‘Let’s go have some conversations with people one-on-one,’” McFarlane said during an Aug. 9 Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting. “We probably understand some concerns that we didn’t understand before.”
The RTO plans to make final modifications at the Sept. 13 RASC meeting and continue stakeholder outreach, he said.
“The bottom line is we’re still not where we’d like to be in terms of stakeholder alignment,” he added.
MISO has changed its original proposal in an attempt to address some stakeholder questions, including about how it will treat border external resources and how excess auction revenues will be doled out to external resources with historical capacity arrangements.
The proposal now says that an external resource bordering the RTO that qualifies in more than one local resource zone must designate its zone two years in advance of a capacity auction and keep that designation and its associated pricing for two years.
“That’s not something we expect to see a lot of. MISO doesn’t have a lot of border resources,” said Laura Rauch, MISO manager of resource adequacy coordination.
For external resource zones that connect to more than one MISO local resource zone and require a blended price, shift factors will be calculated annually and posted in the second quarter ahead of next year’s auction, Rauch said.
MISO is also proposing to scrap a pecking-order approach to distributing excess auction proceeds to historical capacity arrangements to cover generation-to-load price separation. Under the plan, agreements initiated before the impending creation of external resource zones and resources impacted by zonal boundary changes will be just as eligible for credits as older, grandfathered contracts made before the start of the MISO capacity market.
Indianapolis Power and Light’s Ted Leffler asked if essentially all external resources are eligible to receive historical supply arrangement credits as a refund for price separation, what was the point of external pricing at all?
MISO will distribute revenues only to “long-term and consistently used” agreements, Rauch answered. The goal of external zone pricing will be the same as the Planning Resource Auction overall: to minimize total system costs, she said.
Last month, stakeholders warned MISO officials that if there isn’t consensus on the proposal, a recent appellate court ruling banning FERC’s suggested changes on PJM’s 2013 minimum offer price rule could adversely impact the commission’s ability to approve the changes.
FERC staff on Wednesday accepted MISO’s pro forma pseudo-tie agreement with a warning that a full-strength commission could in the future reject the proposal.
MISO’s accepted filing fleshed out details in response to multiple questions posed by FERC staff in May regarding the original proposed agreement.
Still, FERC staff said the updated agreement could still be found to be discriminatory by the commission and is subject to refunds (ER17-1061). (See FERC Seeks More Details on MISO Pseudo-Tie Proposal.) The pro forma became retroactively effective March 15.
In answer to FERC staff’s question about the extent of MISO’s coordination with PJM in developing the agreement, the RTO said the two RTOs engaged in ongoing discussions through MISO’s Pseudo-Tie Issues Task Team “over several months in 2016 and restarted again in first quarter of 2017.”
“These discussions are continuing today,” the RTO noted.
MISO also cited the RTOs’ recent, twin filings to alter their joint operating agreement to better manage pseudo-tied resources. (See “MISO and PJM File JOA Pseudo-Tie Rules,” MISO Reliability Subcommittee Briefs: Aug. 3, 2017.)
The RTO also defended its stance on excluding PJM as a signatory on the pro forma, contending that the agreement should be strictly between MISO and the market participant.
“While the agreement is between the market participant and MISO, the relevant RTOs will coordinate to ensure that the pseudo-tie is implemented safely and reliably and in a manner consistent with applicable regulatory requirements,” the RTO said.
MISO’s filing clarified that it will pull the plug on a pseudo-tie upon termination of an agreement or a lapse in firm transmission service without identical service replacement. The RTO also vowed that it worked with PJM to arrive at a practice of terminating new and existing pseudo-ties when a market-to-market flowgate is not within a 2% generator-to-load distribution factor within either MISO or a neighboring market. The RTO said it would revisit that value with PJM as needed.
Additionally, MISO told FERC that it does not intend to retain operational responsibility of a pseudo-tied resource, saying that the attaining balancing authority is responsible for the dispatch and operational control.
The mandatory agreement requires pseudo-tie owners to provide congestion, settlement, deployment and load data to MISO and maintain firm transmission service from the source to the sink for the life of the pseudo-tie. It also makes pseudo-ties subject to the approval of transmission providers and stipulates that pseudo-tie owners must register as the RTO’s market participants and provide six months’ notice to terminate the agreement.
MISO also retains “final authority to establish and enforce protocols” for any pseudo-ties and “make all final determinations whether to implement or terminate” them, according to the agreement. Additionally, the RTO can suspend the pseudo-tie if it determines that a pseudo-tie owner has failed to provide necessary data.
FERC staff’s measured approval of the pro forma comes after MISO asked FERC to convene a pseudo-tie technical conference to clear up several lingering issues industry-wide. (See MISO Asks FERC for Pseudo-Tie Technical Conference.)
ISO-NE on Tuesday advanced the idea of excluding competitive new resources from functioning as demand in a proposed “substitution” capacity auction, which is designed to enable generators with retirement bids that cleared in a primary Forward Capacity Auction to transfer their obligations to subsidized resources that did not clear because of the must-offer price rule.
The grid operator proposed the exclusion to help keep Forward Capacity Market prices competitive and maintain its “cash for clunkers” framework for retiring aging fossil fuel generators.
Real-Time Marginal Units by Fuel Type | ISO-NE
ISO-NE economist Christopher Geissler presented the RTO’s conceptual approach to Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR) to the New England Power Pool Markets Committee, which met Aug. 8-10 at Cape Neddick, Maine.
CASPR is designed to accommodate the entry of “sponsored” resources — such as resources mandated by a renewable portfolio standard or other state policy — into the FCM over time, while maintaining competitively based capacity prices for other resources. The RTO’s latest proposal comes in response to stakeholders concerned that sponsored policy resources could unfairly reduce primary FCA prices and crowd out competitive generation. (See Public Power Skeptical of ISO-NE Two-Tier Capacity Auction.)
Share of Native Electricity Generation by Fuel Type | ISO-NE
Part of the grid operator’s Integrating Markets and Public Policy (IMAPP) initiative, the latest proposal is intended to head off stakeholder concerns about competitive resources “walking down the demand curve” of the FCA by ensuring that the substitution auction coordinates entry of sponsored resources and exit of older generators.
To limit the potential ability of public entities to reduce consumer costs by sponsoring lower-cost (e.g., combined cycle/combustion turbine) resources, stakeholders had suggested imposing additional restrictions on the types of capacity eligible to participate as supply or requiring additional documentation to show that the resource was being built to meet a public policy need.
ISO-NE said it does not plan to propose rules that would require the RTO to evaluate whether a sponsored resource meets public policy needs. The grid operator said its two-tier auction proposal “incents the continued participation of competitive new resources in the FCM, when market conditions allow.”
IMM: Spring 2017 Energy Costs up on Gas Prices
Higher natural gas prices drove ISO-NE wholesale market costs up 26% this spring compared with a year earlier, to $1.3 billion.
Wholesale Market Costs and Average Natural Gas Prices by Season ($ billions and $/MMBtu) | ISO-NE
ISO-NE Director of Market Monitoring and Compliance Robert Laurita presented the Internal Market Monitor’s Spring 2017 Quarterly Markets Report, attributing most of the gas price increase to March, when gas prices jumped 127% from the same month in 2016 because of significantly colder temperatures.
Gas prices averaged $3.59/MMBtu, up 54% compared with spring 2016, which saw unusually low prices because of increased production, above-average storage and low heating demand during the winter. Spring 2017 gas prices were 18% below 2015 levels.
Hourly electricity demand averaged 12,853 MW, comparable to last spring because of similar weather conditions, the report said. March was unseasonably cold, while April and May saw slight reductions in load compared to the same months in the previous year.
Day-ahead and real-time energy market prices at the New England Hub averaged $30.78/MWh and $31.92/MWh, respectively, up 32% and 44% from last spring. Energy prices continued to closely track underlying natural gas prices. The positive deviation in real-time prices for the period was driven by several days with high loads and unit outages during early April, as well as two days in mid-May when high temperatures resulted in higher loads than forecasted. In addition, several units experienced forced outages.
Northern Discounts
Energy prices among the load zones deviated only in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, which had lower average prices than the hub. These discounts were the largest — in both dollar and percentage terms — over the two-and-a-half-year period assessed by the Market Monitor. Discounts from the hub ranged from 6% in Vermont to 16% in Maine.
The report attributed the differentials to the prevalence of renewable generators in those export-constrained areas, as well as “various planned and unplanned line reductions or outages during the period that further reduced the transmission capability available to export power to the rest of the system.” The discounts were “less pronounced” in the day-ahead market.
Real-time reserve payments for the season totaled $8.9 million, well more than last spring’s total of $700,000 and 33% above the 2015 total of $6.7 million. This spring’s payments primarily accrued over May 18-19, which accounted for 54% ($4.8 million) of the credits. Those two days saw the grid operator frequently redispatch generation to maintain reserves. Deficiencies several times triggered the reserve constraint penalty factors for 10-minute spinning reserves and 30-minute operating reserves.
FCA Payments Stable
Spring 2017 coincided with the last three months of the commitment period associated with FCA 7, in which the NEMA-Boston zone cleared at $15/kW-month for new resources and $6.66/kW-month for existing resources, while Rest-of-Pool cleared at the floor price of $3.15/kW-month. Capacity payments for the season totaled $287 million and were within 1% of spring 2016 payments. Peak energy rent adjustments remained relatively high at $26 million because of the high real-time energy prices occurring in August 2016.
ISO-NE in April held the forward reserve auction for the summer 2017 delivery period, which saw supply offers exceed the requirements for both the 30-minute operating reserve and 10-minute non-spinning reserve, with no pivotal suppliers. The clearing prices for offline 30- and 10-minute reserves for the control area were $1,000/MW-month and $2,000/MW-month, respectively. Summer 2016 10- and 30-minute reserves cleared at $2,000/MW-month and $2,498/MW-month, respectively. Of the three local reserve zones, only NEMA/Boston had a different price than the control area. Because of inadequate supply (meaning all suppliers were pivotal suppliers), the 30-minute reserve price for NEMA/Boston was set to the auction’s offer price cap of $9,000/MW-month, the same outcome as the summer 2016 auction.
FERC staff have accepted CAISO’s implementation agreement for Canadian energy marketer Powerex to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) but cautioned that the arrangement could be subject to further scrutiny once the commission meets after restoring its quorum.
“Preliminary analysis indicates that CAISO’s proposed implementation agreement has not been shown to be just and reasonable and may be unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory or preferential, or otherwise unlawful,” FERC staff said in its delegated order (ER17-1796).
The order’s language suggests that the commission could compel the ISO to address certain EIM stakeholder concerns about the agreement. FERC’s quorum was restored Thursday with the swearing in of former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner Robert Powelson, joining former Senate Republican aide Neil Chatterjee, whom President Trump named acting chairman. (See Chatterjee Named Acting FERC Chair as Quorum is Restored.)
Powerex, which markets hydroelectric generation from parent BC Hydro, finalized the agreement with CAISO in May after announcing its intention to join the West’s only real-time energy market. (See Powerex Slated to Become First Non-US EIM Member.) The company’s membership would provide the EIM increased access to about 17,000 MW of generating capacity, about 12,000 MW of which is hydro. Powerex currently markets power across the U.S. and as far south as Mexico.
Powerex markets BC Hydro output from assets such as the Mica Dam on the Columbia River
In filings with the commission, some commenters raised concerns about “the principles set forth to guide the negotiation and implementation of additional agreements necessary for Powerex’s EIM participation,” as well as potential changes to the EIM framework that would be required to integrate the company into the market, FERC said.
CAISO said that the specifics of Powerex’s participation in the EIM will be detailed in separate filing to FERC before the company is integrated. The ISO has told FERC that concerns about the way Powerex is integrated are beyond the scope of the proceeding and can be addressed in future filings.
The footprint of CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market is growing rapidly | CAISO
“The implementation agreement does not establish binding terms for Powerex’s participation in the EIM but merely commits the CAISO and Powerex to work in good faith to reach agreement on an acceptable framework,” CAISO said in a July 14 answer to filed comments. As a Canadian entity, Powerex has unique legal and regulatory circumstances, but that does not mean that it will be subject to a different set of rules than other EIM participants, CAISO said.
EIM participants Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison did not oppose the Powerex integration and did not ask for it to be modified.
Market participants are concerned, however, about a provision in the agreement that allow it to be modified to include additional parties, which they say is unique to the Powerex integration. CAISO would be required to make additional filings to explain why the agreement should be modified to allow additional parties, which the grid operator said is not currently being contemplated.
In a joint filing with FERC, EIM participants — including PacifiCorp, Idaho Power, Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy and NV Energy — said that Powerex’s entry is a new model because it is a merchant market participant that is not located within or pseudo-tied with any EIM participant. They were concerned about provisions in the agreement that enable Powerex to enter into non-EIM transactions after submitting its base schedules to the market.
EIM entities that enter into transactions after the submission of base schedules can be subject to energy imbalance charges. The companies said CAISO should explain whether Powerex will be subject to the same bidding deadlines and charges, “or will be the only merchant participant permitted to enter modifications to base schedules as if it were an EIM entity.” They said they “look forward to the development of subsequent agreements with Powerex and BC Hydro that demonstrate uniform (not just compatible) market rules are applied to all market participants.”
The implementation agreement becomes effective Aug. 15, with Powerex slated to join the EIM in April 2018.
RENSSELAER, N.Y. — NYISO’s Business Issues Committee on Wednesday approved steps intended to improve the efficiency of the interconnection queue process while maintaining needed reliability evaluations. The committee voted to recommend that the Management Committee approve the changes at its next meeting on Aug. 30. NYISO foresees filing associated Tariff changes with FERC in late September following Board of Directors approval next month.
Thinh Nguyen, NYISO interconnection projects manager, led an Aug. 9 presentation detailing changes to increase administrative efficiency and speed up the interconnection study process. Those changes should allow developers to move through the queue more quickly, particularly the Class Year Study phase, which evaluates the cumulative impact of a group of projects that have reached similar milestones. New rules that bifurcate the class year to allow some projects to advance have the potential to shave nine months off the phase.
| NYISO
The proposed changes clarify and update existing practices and procedures, except for the transmission interconnection procedures, which have already been filed with FERC and are still pending acceptance.
NYISO proposed effective dates and transitional rules that would allow projects currently in the interconnection process to benefit from the proposed changes. Proposals requiring Tariff revisions will become effective the date of the FERC order accepting the revisions, unless otherwise specified.
Market mitigation analyst Lorenzo Seirup assisted with the presentation, as did Market Manager Gregory R. Williams and Zachary T. Smith, installed capacity (ICAP) market operations supervisor.
ICAP Manual Changes for Demand Curve Reset Updates
The BIC approved ICAP manual revisions needed to reflect the process changes stemming from the ISO’s demand curve reset.
Smith presented the proposed revisions, which reflect Tariff changes that lengthen the period between demand curve resets and implement an annual update process.
The initial updates to the manual include quadrennial reviews of both the demand curve adjustment process and the annual update process. NYISO also removed language that merely repeated what is stated in the Tariff.
Changes also indicate that the results of each annual update will be posted on or before Nov. 30 of the year prior to the start of the capability year for which updated ICAP demand curves will apply. Based on a stakeholder comment at the July 27 ICAP Working Group meeting, language was added stating that NYISO will present the results to stakeholders.
NYISO Prepares DER Pilot Program Framework
The BIC also heard about NYISO’s pilot program to test the ability of the Bulk Electric System to adapt to distributed energy resources. The two-year pilot is slated to begin in April 2018.
NYISO Market Design Specialist Brian Yung presented a DER Pilot Program framework, which aims to assess the capability of DER to provide benefits to the wholesale market, develop performance measurement standards and establish and evaluate coordination between the ISO and DER aggregators.
| NYISO
The ISO’s DER Roadmap outlines its plans for integrating DER into its ancillary services, capacity and energy markets over the next five years and also pledges the grid operator to establish pilot programs. (See NY DER Question: Deployment or Markets First?)
The framework sets a statewide enrollment limit of 50 MW at any one time, with a maximum of 10 MW in enrolled capability serving a single transmission node. The limits are intended to minimize market and operational impacts at the node. NYISO also proposes a maximum of five individual pilot projects at any one time but will consider adjusting this limit based on staffing requirements and other factors.
The program limits individual pilot projects to a minimum of 100 kW of aggregated capability for energy and reserves, 200 kW for regulation service and a maximum of 10 MW of aggregated capability — and sets a 12-month cap on project duration. NYISO can either extend or stop an individual project to meet program objectives.
Resources participating in the wholesale markets — except for demand-side resources — will not be eligible to participate in the pilot program. NYISO will review wholesale market demand-side resource participation on a case-by-case basis to ensure the resource can meet its existing wholesale market obligations while participating in the pilot.
The ISO will select proposed pilots based on how well they can demonstrate energy and/or ancillary services, blend of resource types, technology maturity, DER and aggregation deployment experience, and testing availability. Preference will be given to proposals that can meet the desired six-second telemetry scan rate. The program will focus on testing the technical capabilities of aggregations rather than price signaling, NYISO said.
One market participant recommended that the grid operator work with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to market the program. Others said that a highly public rollout would improve the success of the program, and that the ISO should make clear whether the program includes aggregated storage.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — While CAISO has in recent years made strides in incorporating demand response into its wholesale market, it was forced to recalculate its 2016 DR settlements because of missing performance data, the grid operator said Tuesday.
ISO representatives, DR companies, utilities and others industry participants met with state regulators to discuss the challenges associated with implementing more DR into grid operations and markets.
CAISO Infrastructure and Regulatory Policy Manager Jill Powers said the grid operator last year altered its market models to make DR registration and ISO modeling more efficient. But problems within the legacy DR system resulted in settlements that relied on incomplete and missing performance data.
The ISO reprocessed all 2016 DR performance data, which will be reflected on the next settlement recalculation statements for DR providers. Full resettlement is due to be completed by October. The ISO next year will replace its legacy DR process with “more robust systems,” she said.
“We have taken corrective actions for all the dates identified,” Powers said.
CAISO in 2015 implemented a program that allowed emergency-triggered DR to offer spinning reserve services into the ISO market. San Diego Gas & Electric began providing non-spin and spinning reserve market services through the program that same year.
The grid operator is currently managing a number of initiatives regarding integration of DR and distributed energy resources. The ISO’s Board of Governors last month approved a package of market rules that included new baselines to better reflect the performance of various types of DR. (See CAISO Flex Capacity Effort Targets Increased Variability.)
CAISO’s 2016 enhancements significantly reduced processing timelines and management of new DR resources. They also implemented new sub-load aggregation point boundaries and relaxed telemetry requirements, which lengthened the scan rate when providing telemetry to help lower costs for DR.
An uncertain market structure and frequent rule changes are inhibiting expansion of DR, as well as increasing complexity of integration, EnerNOC Director of Regulatory Affairs Mona Tierney-Lloyd said. There are inconsistencies between CAISO rules and Public Utilities Commission rules and frequent changes in program requirements, she said. EnerNOC supplies DR services around the world.
California Energy Commission Chair Robert Weisenmiller said that integrating DR is “a very challenging area.”
“We are moving to a system that is going to be highly decentralized, and we are going to need visibility and automation to manage it,” he said.
On Wednesday, the commission adopted new guidelines for ensuring that publicly owned utility resource plans comply with requirements from SB 350, the 2015 law that included new greenhouse gas emission reductions and increased renewables procurement for utilities.
MISO’s Advisory Committee sectors voted against a proposal to allow stakeholders to annually elect leaders of the RTO’s Steering Committee through an independent nomination and voting process.
The outcome of the email ballot will keep intact MISO’s eight-year-old practice of automatically appointing the chair and vice chair of the Advisory Committee to serve in their opposite capacities on the Steering Committee. The motion, which failed 7-11 with two abstentions, would have permitted Steering Committee leaders to be selected in a process identical to that of the Advisory Committee.
MISO’s Transmission Owners sector had requested the vote to grant the Steering Committee greater independence from the Advisory Committee, which in June decided to delay action on the proposal. (See MISO Steering Committee Elections Decision Delayed.)
“There is an interlocking nature between the Advisory Committee and the Steering Committee,” current Steering Committee Chair — and Advisory Committee Vice Chair — Tia Elliott said during a July 26 Advisory Committee conference call. She said both committees receive stakeholder committee reports and work together to select topics to discuss before the Board of Directors.
MISO Stakeholder Relations Specialist Alison Lane said the Steering Committee began as an ad hoc group to assist the Advisory Committee in “managing the many different topics and charters of the many working groups and task forces” that existed at the start of the RTO’s market.
Ameren’s Ray McCausland said MISO at that time was “a small, start-up RTO” and the “flip-flop” leadership was put in place because there weren’t many stakeholder volunteers from which to choose.
With the stakeholder redesign two years ago, the Steering Committee took on an expanded role, with more authority to update MISO’s Stakeholder Governance Guide, which provides the governing guidelines to stakeholder committees. The redesign also dictated that issues must first be submitted to the Steering Committee for committee assignment in order to be discussed in stakeholder meetings or added to the Market Roadmap list of market improvements.
“The genesis of this proposal really goes back to the stakeholder redesign effort,” said Entergy Vice President of Federal Policy Matt Brown, whose TO sector submitted the unsuccessful motion. “We think it would be more effective and an improvement to directly elect those leadership positions. It’s really just housekeeping — or routine maintenance might be a better way to put it — to improve Steering Committee leadership. It’s anomalous right now. Every other MISO stakeholder committee leadership is elected.”
Brown pointed out that under the proposal, Advisory Committee leadership would still be eligible to run for Steering Committee leadership, albeit alongside any other interested stakeholders. “There’s no reason to restrict anyone from running for the office,” he said.
FERC’s quorum was restored Thursday as former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner Robert Powelson was sworn in, joining former Senate Republican aide Neil Chatterjee, whom President Trump named acting chairman.
The filling of the third seat allows FERC to issue rulings in contested cases, which had come to a standstill when former Chairman Norman Bay resigned in February after Trump named Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur acting chair.
Chatterjee will serve as acting chair pending the confirmation of Republican attorney Kevin McIntyre, whom Trump selected to hold the gavel and direct the commission staff. McIntyre and Democratic Senate aide Richard Glick are scheduled to have confirmation hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Sept. 7.
“I want to thank Chairman LaFleur for the tremendous work she’s done in guiding the agency,” Chatterjee said in a statement. “The absence of a quorum was unprecedented, yet she rose to the challenge and created stability through her unwavering leadership.
“I look forward to working with Commissioner LaFleur and Commissioner Powelson on behalf of the American people. And I hope that we will have all five Commissioners here soon with the confirmation of Kevin McIntyre and Rich Glick.”
FERC also announced that it will resume its monthly open meeting schedule next month, with the first meeting set for Wednesday, Sept. 20.
With the quorum restored, Chatterjee said, the commission will soon begin notational votes on its backlog of dockets.
FERC staffers have been acting since Feb. 4. under limited delegated authority that allowed them to grant waivers and approve settlements in uncontested cases, as well as take interim action on rate filings, subject to refund pending further orders by the commission.
According to LaFleur, FERC has issued only a fraction of the 100 commission-authorized orders it averages a month.
The delegation period will end in two weeks following the restored quorum.
NEW YORK — Keith Powers attracted attention in energy circles last month when he wrote an op-ed in Crain’s New York Business advocating that solar panels be floated on the Central Park reservoir.
The park abuts the 4th City Council District — the “Silk Stocking District” — from which Powers is running for a seat. He faces eight rivals in a Democratic primary Sept. 12.
When he spoke to RTO Insider at Times Square early this month, Powers had just been endorsed by the New York League of Conservation Voters, a statewide environmental organization that advocates for clean water, clean air, renewable energy and open space through political action.
“I’ve had very good feedback on my idea to put solar panels in Central Park,” Powers said. “There was a discussion on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan, which he calls 80 x 50, to tackle climate change, a very ambitious plan whereby New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions will be 80% lower by 2050 than in 2005. The mayor talks about environmentalism and has big ideas and a plan, so if I’m going to be down at City Hall, I need to be working to make that plan a reality.”
Can New York City on its own create a plan and follow through to reduce its carbon footprint?
“Not only create and follow through,” Powers answers, “but also show the world that a big city can achieve it, can think outside the box, can very realistically help the world tackle climate change.”
Why Floating Solar Panels?
Powers gained government experience working for the State Senate and serving as chief of staff for a member of the State Assembly. Before running for City Council, he was a vice president at Constantinople & Vallone Consulting, a lobbying firm.
He said his point in writing the op-ed piece was to propose something that had not been spoken about so far.
“The district I’m running in includes parts of Times Square, Bryant Park and Museum Mile, all the way up to the Upper East Side, so it truly is the world’s city council district,” he said. “It’s important that the person representing it thinks bigger than just local politics. New York City on its own can be both a global leader on particular issues, but also can solve certain issues just based on the density of the population.”
Solar panels would not detract from the recreational role of the reservoir in Central Park, while their presence would send a powerful signal on the city’s commitment to renewable energy, Powers said.
California is also considering floating solar panels on reservoirs because, aside from the power generation, they also decrease water loss through evaporation and prevent the kind of algae blooms currently afflicting the Central Park reservoir. The cooling effect of the water also increases the efficiency of the panels.
Steal My Idea
“We haven’t seen floating solar in New York yet, but at this moment, when we have a federal government that’s not looking to tackle climate change — in fact doing the opposite — we have cities that are trying to do that work on their own,” Powers said. “We have a very uncertain future in terms of the planet we live on, so not to put all ideas forward would be a missed opportunity.”
Powers wants people to visit New York City and say “our city should be doing that.”
“Philadelphia has a website that features what’s going on in other cities and it’s titled ‘Ideas We Should Steal’ — and I wanted this to be an idea other people would want to steal,” he said. “And many of the ideas featured on that website are from New York City. We learn from each other. I learned of floating solar because I saw that China was doing it. Ideas adapt and migrate, just like birds.”
Huainan Solar Farm in China | Sungrow Power Supply
A lifetime resident of the city, Powers looks to young people to bring about change over the long term — especially to public schools to equip youth with the tools to generate ideas.
“One in 300 Americans are in the New York City public school system, and solving issues like poverty or creating a cure for the next disease can come directly out of our schools,” Powers said. “When we talk about environmental issues, there’s no better way than schools for getting both our students and our city better equipped to deal with the future in terms of climate change.”
Better Buildings
Powers noted that his district has some of the poorest air quality in the city, mainly because its buildings are big polluters.
“We don’t think of buildings that way; we think of vehicles and factories, but our worst polluters in this city are the buildings that we live in,” Powers said. “With new development, we have an opportunity to change the standards and make them more eco-friendly. But with our aging infrastructure, many of the buildings are polluters, so we have bad air quality in Manhattan, period, and my district ranks badly because we’re so dense and have so many big buildings. A lot of the new office buildings are LEED-certified and very progressive in terms of their standards, but old residential buildings keep burning that dirty fuel oil.”
Changing human behavior is the most difficult part, he said.
“We can build nice buildings with the newest technology, but we still have to change human perceptions of what is right,” Powers said. “There is social pressure, the ‘do-good factor.’ And I think it’s great if a company thinks it can win public favor by being a better corporate citizen. But we all go home somewhere every day, and I think a lot of homes are still five to 10 years away from the technology that can really make them energy efficient.”
