FERC last week ordered ETRACOM and its principal trader Michael Rosenberg to respond to allegations that they manipulated the CAISO energy market in a scheme that allegedly netted $315,000 in profits (IN16-2).
FERC issued an Order to Show Cause accusing the company of submitting virtual supply transactions at the New Melones intertie at the CAISO border in order to affect power prices and benefit its congestion revenue rights (CRRs) at that location.
The Office of Enforcement alleged that in May 2011, ETRACOM submitted and cleared uneconomic virtual supply transactions intended to artificially lower the day-ahead LMP and create import congestion at New Melones. ETRACOM’s virtual supply offers resulted in a $42,481 loss, while staff estimates that ETRACOM earned $315,000 in profits on its CRR positions.
FERC staff estimated that the alleged scheme resulted in the market overpaying all New Melones CRR source holders, including ETRACOM, $1.5 million. The overpayment was funded by New Melones CRR sink holders and revenue inadequacy.
FERC is seeking a $2.4 million civil penalty from the company and a $100,000 penalty from Rosenberg in addition to disgorging its profits.
ETRACOM and Rosenberg issued a statement Tuesday denying FERC’s allegation, which they said “inappropriately cherry picks evidence it asserts shows manipulation, ignores other evidence that is exculpatory, misstates facts, and reaches illogical and erroneous conclusions.”
The statement was released through attorney Robert Fleishman, of Morrison & Foerster in Washington. It said the losses the company suffered on its virtual supply offers trades were not the result of manipulation but of market flaws.
FERC enforcement staff “belittles—and in many instances outright ignores—the serious, undisclosed market design flaws and software, modeling and pricing errors plaguing the New Melones Intertie in May 2011,” they said.
“Indeed, the market was so flawed that CAISO ceased trading at New Melones soon after May 2011 and admitted that it was ‘inappropriate’ to have created that market in the first place. But for CAISO’s market design, approved by FERC, and modeling errors at New Melones, the trading outcomes alleged by FERC would not have occurred. Undoubtedly, this was not a ‘well-functioning market.’”
The company said it will prove that the company “rationally attempted to profit from a record hydro event in May 2011 that would (and, two months later, in fact did) cause congestion at the New Melones Intertie node.”
“Staff’s erroneous conclusions therefore rely exclusively on economic evidence of ETRACOM’s losses in May, without any documentary support for its theory of a manipulative scheme. Market participants everywhere should be concerned by staff’s actions in light of such scant evidence, which effectively would subject any trading losses incurred from legitimate risk-taking to baseless manipulation claims divined after the fact.”
ETRACOM said it has not had any opportunity to take formal discovery, interview witnesses, or subpoena documents and will “vigorously” defend itself.
Iberdrola USA and UIL Holdings have closed their merger and adopted “Avangrid” as the name for the U.S. operations arm of Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola. It began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol AGR.
The combined company has eight electric and natural gas utilities with a rate base of approximately $8.3 billion serving 3.1 million customers in New York and New England. Its renewable energy subsidiary is the second largest wind energy producer in the U.S. with 5.6 GW of wind generation capacity sited in 53 wind farms in 18 states.
James P. Torgerson, CEO of UIL Holdings, became CEO of Avangrid.
AES announced it is gaining access to 1 GWh worth of lithium ion batteries from Seoul-based LG Chem, which it plans to deploy in its Advancion platform, which provides large-scale grid energy storage to utility companies.
The energy storage business is “definitely moving to a new level this year,” says John Zahurancik, president of AES Energy Storage. AES says large batteries can displace peaker plants and reduce emissions.
GTM Research says AES could deploy hundreds of megawatts in Ireland and California as early as 2016. It forecasts that the U.S. will deploy a record 192 MW of energy storage in 2015.
Duke Energy Carolinas filed plans to construct a lined, on-site landfill to bury 2.2 million tons of coal ash at the W.S. Lee Station in Belton, S.C. The company plans to excavate coal ash now contained in two ash basins and a structural fill area on the property.
The new contained system will keep the coal ash from polluting the surrounding soil and groundwater, the company said.
The company already is in the process of shipping nearly 1.4 million tons of coal ash from one ash pond at the site to a landfill in Homer, Ga.
Alliant, We Energies Reach Accord on New Power Plant
Alliant Energy says it has settled a dispute with We Energies concerning a $700 million natural gas-fired power plant it plans to build in Beloit, Wis.
WE was trying to block the project, arguing that Alliant should instead purchase power from its Port Washington plant. Alliant said it wouldn’t be able to meet its long-term energy needs through that plant.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Alliant said it would create opportunities for joint ownership of power plants in the future with WE’s parent company, WEC Energy Group. Alliant said the agreement also provides for joint development of renewable energy projects.
Marvin Fertel, who helped lead the nuclear industry’s response to the Fukushima accident in Japan, will retire at the end of next year as president and chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Fertel has led the trade group since 2009.
Fertel has been with the organization since its formation in 1994 and became vice president of Nuclear Economics and Fuel Supply at that time. He was named senior vice president and chief nuclear officer in 2003. NEI is looking to hire a successor.
Mary Kipp, the first female chief executive in El Paso Electric’s 114-year history, and also its youngest, assumed leadership of the West Texas utility last week.
“It feels really good” to be CEO, the 48-year-old Kipp said a few hours after taking over the company’s top job. She has overseen several departments during her seven years at the company and said she plans no big changes.
The company’s board of directors appointed her in September 2014 as the successor to Tom Shockley, 70, who retired Dec. 15 after almost four years in the job.
ALJ says OCC Should Support OG&E’s Proposed Solar Tariff
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission should approve Oklahoma Gas and Electric’s plan to levy demand charges on customers who install rooftop solar and other distributed generation, an administrative law judge recommended Dec. 14.
Judge Jacqueline Miller also said the commission should direct OG&E to provide further evidence of the costs distributed generation customers impose on the grid in its upcoming rate case. In the meantime, Miller recommended the commission allow the utility to impose the proposed tariffs on distributed generation customers for one billing cycle, subject to refund. She faulted OG&E for not providing enough information from a checklist developed last year by the commission’s public utility division for distributed generation issues.
OG&E filed its case under Senate Bill 1456, which Gov. Mary Fallin signed last year. It allows regulated utilities to propose new tariffs if they can show distributed generation customers are being subsidized for their grid-connection costs by other customers.
PSO to Replace Smart Meters in Tulsa Area Following Recall
Public Service Company of Oklahoma said last week it is replacing “a small number” of Tulsa-area smart meters because of a manufacturer’s defect “that could cause the screen to go blank.”
PSO sent a letter to nearly 25,000 customers Dec. 14 announcing the recall. The Tulsa-based utility said only residential meters are at issue, and fewer than 10% are affected by the recall. PSO installed roughly 300,000 smart meters in the area this year, about 240,000 at residential properties. None of the General Electric meters have failed, but PSO said it wants to get ahead of any potential issues.
The smart meters have been controversial with some customers, who claim they pose a threat to health, privacy and safety. In October, an administrative law judge recommended approval of PSO’s plan to allow residential customers to opt out of smart meters. The recommendation is pending with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.
Kinder Morgan Joining with Mystery Company to Build Plant
FERC filings indicate that Kinder Morgan is partnering with a company to build a natural gas-fired generation plant in New York state, but there’s no clue as to the name of the company or the location of the proposed plant.
A Kinder Morgan spokesman said the agreement with the other company and other details are subject to a confidentiality agreement. Kinder Morgan has proposed a pipeline in New York, the Northeast Energy Direct project. The power plant would probably be a customer of the pipeline.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a unit of Kinder Morgan, is seeking FERC approval for the pipeline in the fourth quarter of 2016, with construction starting in January 2017 and an in-service date of Nov. 1, 2018. The company estimates the project will cost $5.2 billion.
NRG Energy confirmed that its Waukegan Generating Station in Illinois will continue using coal as a fuel source, despite protests by environmentalists.
The plant on Lake Michigan’s waterfront was subject to protests by environmentalists who attended a Waukegan City Council meeting last week. The protests spurred Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley to promise to arrange a meeting with the plant’s owner.
NRG spokesman David Gaier said Waukegan is included in the company’s long-term plan to invest $567 million in its Illinois assets. “We made it very clear what we are going to do [in Waukegan],” he said, adding that “we continue to operate the plant effectively and safely” using coal. “They’re welcome to express their opinions,” he said of the protesters, “but we make our plans based on the market.”
Duke Energy assured North Carolina regulators that the new solar projects it is building are competitive with those its affiliate, Duke Energy Progress, purchased through a competitive bidding process.
Duke wants to transfer to its own fleet the certificates of need that are required to build a 60-MW plant and a 15-MW project. Those projects were secured initially by a bidding process that included independent developers.
Duke argued that it can build the projects itself, providing better benefits to customers. “We have the option of really investigating the site and deciding what makes sense for us to build in each case,” a company spokesman said. “We can scale it up or drop it some, depending on what we need.”
John A. Bridges, who has held various positions with Public Service Electric & Gas since 1987, was named vice president of electric operations. Since starting with the company, Bridges has been a supervising engineer, construction manager, operations and resource manager and division manager.
“He understands what it takes to provide our 2.2 million electric customers with safe, highly reliable service during blue-sky days and in severe weather,” said Ralph LaRossa, PSE&G president and chief operating officer.
Eversource Energy says the past year was the most reliable on record.
Outages were less frequent and power was restored more quickly than in any previous year in which those events were tracked, according to statistics released by the utility.
Since 2012, the frequency of outages across Eversource’s service area has decreased by 18% and restoration times have decreased by 26%, according to a company spokesman.
FERC last week affirmed an administrative law judge’s 2014 ruling finding fault with Entergy’s accounting in in its fourth annual bandwidth filing (ER10-1350).
The commission agreed with much of the judge’s order, which found Entergy did not properly include the fuel inventory balance as an input to the bandwidth formula for the 2009 test year and failed to include accumulated deferred income tax for its Waterford 3 nuclear plant west of New Orleans. The judge also ruled Entergy made an error in its accounting for the amortization period for the sale and leaseback of Waterford 3.
FERC gave Entergy — which was joined by the Arkansas and Louisiana commissions in intervening — 60 days to make a compliance filing.
Also last week, FERC denied the Louisiana Public Service Commission and Entergy’s request for a rehearing of its December 2014 order, which set for hearing and settlement judge procedures the use of Waterford 3’s accumulated deferred income tax in the bandwidth remedy (EL10-65).
Entergy’s allocation of production costs among its half-dozen operating companies under its system agreement has been a source of continuing disagreement.
The companies essentially operate as one system, although each has different operating costs. Payments are made annually by Entergy’s low-cost operating companies to the highest-cost company in the system, using a “bandwidth” remedy that ensures no operating company has production costs more than 11% above or below the system average.
Regulators in Entergy’s states have regularly challenged the annual bandwidth filings, which began in 2007.
D.C.’s largest consumer of electricity, the federal government, is urging the Public Service Commission to reject Exelon’s proposed $6.8 billion acquisition of Pepco Holdings Inc. unless the applicants revise their settlement to provide benefits for non-residential customers.
“The terms of the settlement agreement are not consistent with the public interest because there are no direct benefits … for commercial customers, and the [customer investment fund] benefit for residential ratepayers is less than face value,” the General Services Administration said in an initial brief filed Dec. 16.
It also called for a two-year rate freeze and a cap on Pepco’s cost recovery on the development of four proposed microgrids.
“While the $25.6 million residential base rate credit is provided to cover base rate increases occurring from the merger closing through March 31, 2019, residential rates will increase during that period, and the terms of the settlement agreement anticipate that the credit may be insufficient to cover all residential increases approved during that period,” GSA said, predicting that any benefit would be offset by an ensuing “rate shock.”
To blunt a rate hike, GSA proposes a two-year freeze of distribution rate cases, through Dec. 31, 2017.
GSA noted that the effects of the settlement stretch beyond the district. Federal customers, which represent 25 to 30% of Pepco’s annual distribution and load delivery revenue, pay their utility bills with money from taxpayers in all 50 states and the district.
In response to GSA’s filing, Exelon and Pepco released a joint statement saying, “All customers, including the GSA, will benefit from merger commitments now before the commission, including improvements in service reliability, investment in sustainability and the economy of the district and synergy savings that will go back to customers through rates that are lower than they would be absent the merger.”
GSA: Comments Should Count
GSA’s comments came after the deadline for the agency to become a legal part of the case. But it asked the PSC to afford it as much weight as those from other intervenors, pointing out that it was given party status in the beginning of the proceedings and participated in settlement conferences ordered by the commission.
It also had filed a motion against re-opening the case after the applicants submitted a settlement agreement reached with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration and opposed the truncated rehearing schedule, saying it didn’t give the non-settling parties enough time to prepare an informed response.
Regardless of deadlines, comments continue to pour in to the PSC, which has said the case has received the most public input of any in the commission’s more than 100-year history.
Among them are more than 40,000 signatures of district residents that Exelon and Pepco collected in support of the merger as well as resolutions from neighborhood groups opposing the deal.
The merger, which would create the nation’s largest utility, was rejected in August by the D.C. PSC after being approved by FERC and regulators in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia.
In early October, the applicants reapplied with a settlement supported by former critics — Bowser, People’s Counsel Sandra Mattavous-Frye and Attorney General Karl Racine — that included $78 million in public benefits. (See Mayor’s Settlement Puts DC PSC on the Spot in Exelon-Pepco Deal.)
Bowser Comes Under Scrutiny
Last week, Bowser’s reversal was hit with a new volley of criticism when radio station WAMU reported that the head of a political action committee formed by her supporters had been hired by Exelon to lobby city officials to support the merger.
FreshPAC was able to skirt fundraising limits due to a loophole in D.C. law. It was disbanded in November after being accused of creating a “pay-to-play” political environment.
Horton (Source: GHA&J)
Records show that Exelon hired the committee’s chairman, Earle “Chico” Horton III, as a lobbyist on Sept. 30. The settlement was made public Oct. 6.
The Washington Post editorial board called on Bowser to release emails and other materials documenting the negotiations that went into the settlement.
“There is nothing illegal, or all that unusual, about companies hiring lobbyists with connections they think will serve their interests,” the Post wrote. “But what is legal is not always right, and the fact that someone who was raising thousands of dollars to advance the mayor’s interests was at the same time carrying water for a company that wanted something from the government is more than unseemly.”
A decision also is pending on an appeal of the Maryland Public Service Commission’s 3-2 vote approving the merger.
On Dec. 8, the Office of the People’s Counsel and the Sierra Club argued before Queen Anne’s County Circuit Judge Thomas Ross that the merger was not in the public interest. He is expected to issue an order on or around Jan. 8.
Public Service Enterprise Group and the PJM Power Providers Group (P3) asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last week to overturn two FERC orders approving PJM capacity market rules.
PSEG and P3 had disputed PJM’s use of an 8% cost of capital used in cost of new entry (CONE) calculations, saying it was too low because it relied on corporate-level data for publicly traded independent power producers and did not reflect riskier, project-level financing.
Separately, P3 appealed FERC’s refusal to rehear a 2013 order approving PJM’s revisions to a rule designed to mitigate buyer-side market power in the capacity market (ER13-535).
The ruling addressed the minimum offer price rule (MOPR), which PJM added to its auction protocols in 2006 amid concern that load could have an incentive to suppress market clearing prices by offering supply at less than a competitive level.
P3 challenged FERC’s rejection of PJM’s proposal to extend the MOPR mitigation period mitigation from one to three years. It also contended the ruling conflicted with its prior rulings on buyer-side market power mitigation regarding NYISO. (See FERC won’t Rehear PJM MOPR Ruling.)
The budget bill signed by President Obama on Friday — which appears to mark the beginning of the end for renewable energy subsidies — will accelerate the growth of solar power in the next several years, analysts say.
The bill extends the solar investment tax credit indefinitely, albeit at a reduced level after 2019.
The wind production tax credits were extended through 2019, also at reduced levels after 2016.
The Solar Energy Industries Association predicted U.S. solar power capacity will triple to 95 GW by 2022 as a result of the incentives — enough to supply 3.5% of the nation’s electricity, up from less than 1% in 2014. SEIA CEO Rhone Resch predicted solar jobs will grow from 200,000 to 340,000.
Greentech Media’s GTM Research is even more bullish, saying it expects solar capacity to quadruple to nearly 100 GW by 2021. The ITC extension will lead to $40 billion in incremental investment in solar between 2016-2020, it said.
“There’s no way to overstate this — the extension of the solar ITC is the most important policy development for U.S. solar in almost a decade,” said MJ Shiao, director of solar research for GTM Research.
By 2020, said Shayle Kann, senior vice president at GTM Research, “more solar will be installed each year than was added to the grid cumulatively through 2014.”
Wall Street agreed, with solar companies Enphase Energy, SunEdison and SolarCity each rising by 32% or more last week.
“With the extension of tax credits, solar becomes cost-effective for new customer demographics and in more states. Without it, it could take years for that to be true,” Shiao told RTO Insider. “With the ITC extension, the next five years will see 25 GW of solar that otherwise wouldn’t be installed.”
The bill extends the 30% solar investment tax credit through 2019, dropping gradually to 22% by 2021. The credit is eliminated for homeowners beginning in 2022 but continues indefinitely at 10% for commercial installations. Projects that come online by the end of 2023 will qualify for larger credits based on the year in which construction began.
Shiao said the extension provides a bridge to EPA’s Clean Power Plan, whose requirements don’t take effect until 2022. The CPP anticipates additional wind and solar energy making up for reduction in fossil fuel generation.
GTM Research said the extension will have the biggest impact on utility-scale solar, boosting deployments 73% through 2020 with utility-scale contracts dropping below $0.04/kWh.
Without the bill, the ITC would have dropped to 10% for non-residential and third-party-owned residential systems and zero for host-owned residential systems in 2017.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance said developers would have installed 11.9 GW of solar panels in the U.S. next year in a rush to beat the end of the ITC. With the extension, BNEF said, 2016 will likely see the addition of about 9.1 GW, a drop of almost one-quarter.
BNEF had predicted solar installations would drop by as much as 71% in 2017. It now predicts an increase of 5.5% over 2016.
IHS Technology said the U.S. solar installations would have dropped by 6.5 GW in 2017 from 2016 without the extension.
End Game for Wind?
The story is a bit different for the more mature and competitive wind industry.
The wind production tax credits were extended at 2.3 cents/kWh for 2015 and 2016, dropping by 20% in each of the following three years to 40% of the current level by 2019. Without additional congressional action, it would expire in January 2020.
The American Wind Energy Association said in a statement Friday that the bill ensures “stability for 73,000 American wind industry workers … and [wind] investors.”
AWEA said the PTC has helped more than quadruple U.S. wind power, with installed capacity rising from 16.7 GW at the beginning of 2008 to 69.5 GW by the third quarter of 2015. The organization credits the PTC with helping advance wind turbine technology, leading to a 66% drop in the cost of wind energy over the last six years.
Beth Soholt, executive director of the renewable energy advocacy group Wind on the Wires, issued a statement applauding Congress’ action.
“This extension gives these renewable energy industries the certainty they need to plan for the future and mitigates the boom-bust cycles that are so very detrimental,” Soholt said.
When renewable energy tax credits were allowed to briefly expire in 2013, wind farms saw a 92% drop in their installation and some 30,000 jobs were lost. After the PTC was renewed, the wind industry recovered all but 7,000 jobs by the end of 2014, according to AWEA data.
With the extension, according to BNEF, the U.S. will add 44 GW of wind capacity by the end of 2021, a 76% increase over the 25 GW it said would have been built without any subsidies.
Wall Street’s reaction to the PTC was more muted, with Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world’s largest turbine maker, finishing last week up by more than 8%, albeit at a five-year high.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Outgoing PJM CEO Terry Boston presided over his final general session last week, tearing up as he recalled how power changed his family’s life growing up in rural Tennessee.
“On Sept. 9, 1939, electricity came to the Boston family farm. That meant things like the milk was in the fridge and not in the creek or the spring,” he said. “Nothing has improved our standard of living or our productivity more.”
“Power engineering is not rocket science. It’s much more important than that,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Boston began his career in 1972 as a project engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority, joining PJM as CEO in 2008. He will serve as CEO emeritus until the end of this month. Andy Ott, previously PJM’s executive vice president for markets, took on the job of president and CEO in October. (See Retiring PJM CEO Boston Lauded for Efficiency Improvements, Management Style.)
Boston was feted by PJM stakeholders, staff and members of the Board of Managers during a reception following the general session. (See related story, From Cold War to Black Sky: PJM General Session Fetes Boston, Discusses Emerging Threats.)
Katie Guerry of EnerNOC, the incoming chair of the Members Committee, and Susan Bruce of the PJM Industrial Customer Coalition presented Boston with a solar-powered globe of the world.
Boston also was presented with a letter from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf lauding him for creating “the industry’s most successful model for an electricity market.” U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.) also sent letters of commendation.
Board Chairman Howard Schneider lauded Boston for his intelligence, dedication and humility.
Boston and his wife, Brenda, will be splitting their time in retirement between Hawaii and their custom-designed solar-powered home in Tennessee.
“The whole PJM community is in the public service business,” Boston said. “It’s been the love of my life to work here.”
The PJM Board of Managers last week approved construction of seven transmission projects proposed in response to FERC Order 1000 competitive solicitations. The projects have an estimated cost of $490 million.
One, to address reliability violations in the AEP transmission zone, was selected from among 91 proposals received in response to the competitive window PJM opened in June to fix reliability, thermal and voltage violations. The board had approved 19 other projects from that group in October.
The board also approved six projects from among 23 proposals submitted under a second competitive window, which opened in August to address potential violations not included in the first solicitation.
With the addition of the projects to the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan, PJM has authorized $28.27 billion in additions and upgrades to resolve reliability violations and reduce congestion since 2000.
“Through the competitive windows, we are seeing more alternatives than we would have otherwise,” Mike Kormos, executive vice president for operations, said in a statement. “In some cases, as in this last review, we are seeing alternative solutions that address the problem at a lesser cost than originally estimated.”
FERC last week proposed reducing the amount of ownership information that companies must provide to obtain market-based rate authority.
The commission allows companies to sell power at market-based rates if they and their affiliates lack, or have adequately mitigated, horizontal and vertical market power. Current rules require applicants to describe the activities of all upstream owners, often requiring sellers to submit multiple amendments to their filings.
The commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would require applicants to provide ownership information only for affiliates necessary for the commission’s market power analysis (RM16-3).
Sellers would be required to identify and describe two categories of affiliates:
“Ultimate affiliate owner(s),” defined as the furthest upstream affiliate owner(s) in the ownership chain; and
Affiliate owners with franchised service areas or market-based rate authority, or that directly own or control generation; transmission; intrastate natural gas transportation, storage or distribution facilities; physical coal supply sources; or access to transportation of coal supplies.
The NOPR also would clarify the types of ownership changes that must be reported to the commission.
The commission said the changes would be less burdensome for filers and more useful to FERC’s assessments.
Comments will be due 60 days from publication in the Federal Register.
WILMINGTON, Del. — When Terry Boston began working for the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1972, its bunkered control room was believed to be one of the targets near the top of the Soviet Union’s nuclear hit list.
Last week, when the retired PJM CEO said his goodbyes at a General Session on “Resiliency and Security,” the concern was not the Cold War but “black sky” risks and the need for “critical low-density engineering assets” to recover from them.
Three speakers talked about their work protecting the grid from natural and manmade threats.
Jeff Dagle spoke about the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s work using parallel processing to aid modeling of extreme events. The technology can help system operators comply with a new NERC standard requiring them to ensure that “multiple outages” don’t cause system instability.
“When you try to model these extreme events, you’re going deeper than traditional N-1 [contingencies]. You’re doing N-K type of analysis,” said Dagle, the lab’s chief electrical engineer for electricity infrastructure resilience. “So there’s many more thousands of possible events you want to simulate and try to understand. Unless you throw that on a parallel computer, you’re going to be there for a while waiting for an answer.”
The lab’s work with PJM to apply Bayesian model aggregation — the combination of multiple prediction models — to reduce forecasting errors in network interchange schedules won an R&D magazine award. “This has the potential to save big money” — tens of millions, Dagle said.
David Andrejcak said FERC has become “much more agile” since it formed the Office of Energy Infrastructure Security following the 2013 sniper attack on Pacific Gas & Electric’s Metcalf substation.
Andrejcak is deputy director of the office, which combines the agency’s expertise in electric, natural gas and oil infrastructure. The office identifies threats and examines infrastructure for potential weaknesses but has no enforcement role, unlike the Office of Electric Reliability, which oversees the development of mandatory reliability and security standards.
“By addressing these with the private sector owners, we find that we’re getting a whole lot more success,” he said. “We’re not involved in the standards process. We’re the collaborative branch of FERC.”
Andrejcak noted a Department of Homeland Security analysis that found that almost one-third of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in 2014 involved the energy industry. “We’re a big target. No doubt about it,” he said.
The session’s keynote speaker was Jonathon Monken, vice president of U.S. operations for the Electric Infrastructure Security Council. The non-governmental organization worries about “black sky” hazards such as cyberattacks or electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) capable of generating a “widespread, long duration” outage that could result in mass migration.
Monken said broadcaster Ted Koppel’s book, “Lights Out,” which highlighted threats that could knock out the Eastern Interconnection for weeks or months, was useful in publicizing the need for preparations, such as assembling critical low-density engineering assets — engineers with expertise in electrical relays.
“We have not yet experienced a power outage that … [results in a] widespread long duration outage. We’re talking about months in terms of the outage. We’re talking about tens of millions [of people] in terms of the footprint.
“We don’t have the capacity to evacuate New York City much less the Eastern Interconnection,” Monken continued. “There’s a wide deficit in terms of the capability required to respond and recover from something of that magnitude and duration.
“I’d rather have an EMP event than just about any of the other ‘black sky’ hazards that include things like earthquakes and cyber[attacks],” he added. “Cyber is difficult because it’s very unpredictable and it’s very deliberate, whereas EMP is a statistical event — it won’t necessarily hit everything everywhere. You’ll have sporadic outages based on percentages.
“Cyber is very deliberate. They’ll only hit where it hurts the most.”
Duke Energy Carolinas filed plans to construct a lined, on-site landfill to bury 2.2 million tons of coal ash at the W.S. Lee Station in Belton, S.C. The company plans to excavate coal ash now contained in two ash basins and a structural fill area on the property.
Alliant Energy says it has settled a dispute with We Energies concerning a $700 million natural gas-fired power plant it plans to build in Beloit, Wis.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission should approve Oklahoma Gas and Electric’s plan to levy demand charges on customers who install rooftop solar and other distributed generation, an administrative law judge recommended Dec. 14.
Public Service Company of Oklahoma said last week it is replacing “a small number” of Tulsa-area smart meters because of a manufacturer’s defect “that could cause the screen to go blank.”
NRG Energy confirmed that its Waukegan Generating Station in Illinois will continue using coal as a fuel source, despite protests by environmentalists.
