FERC on Thursday ordered show-cause proceedings on the transmission formula rate protocols of four utilities in SPP, saying they do not appear to provide customers and regulators the ability to challenge the resulting rates.
The commission ordered Grand River Dam Authority (EL22-44), Lincoln Electric System (EL22-45), Nebraska Public Power District (EL22-46) and Omaha Public Power District (EL22-47) to either show why their protocols remain just and reasonable, or explain what changes they could make to address FERC’s concerns.
FERC said the protocols did not meet the standards it has required since a 2012 order regarding MISO’s transmission owners. Under formula rates, the commission does not require TOs to make FPA Section 205 filings to update their annual transmission revenue requirements. Instead, the utilities update the input data in the formulas.
“Safeguards need to be in place to ensure that the input data is correct; that calculations are performed consistent with the formula; that the costs to be recovered in the formula rate are reasonable and were prudently incurred; and that the resulting rates are just and reasonable,” the commission said in each of the orders.
FERC found that each of the four utilities’ protocols fell short on one or more of the following:
“the scope of participation (i.e., who can participate in the information exchange);
the transparency of the information exchange (i.e., what information is exchanged); and
the ability of customers to challenge transmission owners’ implementation of the formula rate as a result of the information exchange (i.e., how the parties may resolve their potential disputes).”
In the 2012 order, the commission ruled that MISO’s protocols inappropriately limited who could participate in the review processes and directed the RTO and its TOs to revise them to include all interested parties, including customers under the MISO tariff, state utility regulatory commissions, consumer advocacy agencies and state attorneys general.
The commission ordered each of the SPP utilities to respond within 60 days.
Achieving New York’s climate goals should not come at the cost of “cannibalizing” existing renewable resources, said Chris LaRoe, senior director of regulatory affairs at Brookfield Renewable and chair of the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY).
“We also need to make sure the transmission system is up to the challenge and that we are not bottling public policy resources,” LaRoe said Wednesday at IPPNY’s 36th annual spring conference.
Legislative, Regulatory Update
During the conference, New York Sen. Kevin Parker (D), chair of the Energy and Telecommunications Committee, drew a line from the May 14 mass shooting of Black people in Buffalo to the issue of making energy affordable for all people in the state.
“In this moment you have everyone feeling like they cannot make, not just unrepresented groups, but working class and poor whites across the country, particularly in our great state, feel like there’s no chance for them,” Parker said.
With gas prices headed toward $6/gallon, he added, it’s critical that the energy market “create the kind of economic opportunities such that people are not thinking that they have to murder other folks in order to make their way in this state.”
The pandemic disrupted both lives and livelihoods and created a dynamic in which the state put moratoriums on service cutoffs for overdue utility bills, and now utility arrears total nearly $4 billion in New York just as energy prices are spiking, he said.
Parker said he has to remind his constituents that net-zero emissions means net and that bakeries and restaurants will still be able to use gas-fired ovens for their work.
The benefits of the competitive wholesale electricity market are important, and principally they shield energy consumers from unwarranted risk, said Assemblymember Michael Cusick (D), chair of the Energy Committee.
“Competitive procurement is also an important pathway in meeting the state energy goals and the benefit of this approach is evidenced by the energy storage law (S8384) I created in the legislature along with my good friend and colleague Senator Parker,” Cusick said.
The electric system won’t be powered entirely by renewable resources and numerous reports highlight that various capabilities are needed to support a grid with significant levels of power generated by intermittent resources, said New York Public Service Commission Chair Rory Christian.
Generation assets are only effective if the transmission line is available to move power, which is why the PSC established a coordinated planning process between utilities and NYISO to align processes and procedures (20-E-0197), he said. (See NY Looks to Improve Tx Headroom Assessments.)
“Working collectively, we can set up a full spectrum of transmission needs, both bulk and local. … In the past, project needs were mainly driven by reliability, whereas today many of these projects will be needed to meet public policy and climate goals,” Christian said.
The commission has so far approved just under 200 local transmission projects, which will allow moving up to 15 GW of renewable energy, but it has approved only two large-scale transmission projects, Christian said. He noted that the PSC last September established a public policy category for transmission and distribution investments to help achieve the state’s environmental goals. (See New York Adopts Groundbreaking Tx Investment Rules.)
Fast Transition
Lawmakers, regulators and agency administrators — together with power producers — are transforming the state in a significant way over what many would say is not an extended period, said New York State Energy Research and Development Authority CEO Doreen Harris, who moderated a panel on offshore wind and energy storage.
“For many people this feels very quick, and certainly how we got here was anything but quick as to the system that we have built together,” Harris said.
IPPNY President and CEO Gavin Donohue said siting was the main challenge for both storage and renewables.
“We have developed 12,800 new megawatts over the last 20 years; we have 6,500 MW of renewable capacity installed in the state; and we’ve closed over 10,500 MW of less efficient facilities,” Donohue said. “Coal has been eliminated in New York state. It’s safe to say that upstate New York is a carbon-free area based on our electricity mix.”
The grid was not designed with points of interconnection on the coast, and because transmission is a long-term planning process, industry and policymakers must keep working on the issue, said Fred Zalcman, executive director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.
“First and foremost, we see that in order to achieve the [Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s] expectation that we have 70% renewable energy by 2030, we really need to stay laser-focused on the buildup of infrastructure, be that transmission, be that resources,” NYISO Executive Vice President Emilie Nelson said. “This will be critically important. A lot of times the focus is on some of the intangibles, some of the unknowns.”
Nelson said that the PSC proceeding on integrating 3,000 MW of OSW into Long Island and increasing the transfer capability from Long Island to New York City will help ensure that the buildout can meet the needs of customers in load centers (18-E-0071).
New York has distinct advantages in managing resource adequacy in that NYISO has sole authority, while in California the responsibility is distributed over more entities, CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer told RTO Insider.
Regarding public policy transmission needs, the ISO is between the viability and sufficiency assessment and evaluation, Nelson said.
“We’ve had 19 projects that have submitted proposals into this process and recently had to identify if they will move on, for the 16 projects that are still included, if they’ll continue into the evaluation phase,” she said. “From there we will be evaluating the projects across a set of metrics to identify the more cost-effective and efficient solution.”
The most efficient place to build OSW projects is closer to shore, and as the wind resource is very strong in the northeastern part of the U.S., farther south becomes less economic, especially as you get farther south from New Jersey, said Shane Ogren, vice president for investment banking at Macquarie Capital.
Despite a burgeoning OSW industry in the U.S., “I expect you to see cost declines that will continue to make the investment look better and better over the years,” Ogren said.
Significant global demand for OSW is making the supply chain “very strained,” said Beth Treseder, head of U.S. renewables development for Equinor. “When we talk about domestic investment supply chain, it’s not purely to generate jobs; it’s fundamentally because we need the supply chain to develop the industry effectively in this country.”
Dominion Energy’s (NYSE:D) proposed offshore wind project won support from labor and political leaders in four days of hearings before the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) last week, while commission staff called for ratepayer protections and local residents sought changes to transmission routing (PUR-2021-00142).
“There are many challenges facing mega-projects such as this,” observed Senior Assistant Attorney General C. Meade Browder Jr. of the Division of Consumer Counsel in remarks on the second day of the hearings May 16-19.
Hearings are scheduled to resume on Tuesday. The SCC is expected to reach a decision by August.
Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer (R) testified in support of the 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, saying Dominion “has kept the city well-informed every step of the way.”
In addition to the obvious benefit of generating an anticipated 9,500 GWh of carbon-free energy per year, the jobs and economic impact that go along with this project are a critical part of a game-changing environment for us,” Dyers said in written testimony. “According to Dominion, the CVOW project will bring over 1,000 jobs to our area at all skill levels [and] over $10 million annually in local and state tax revenue is expected.”
In written comments, state Del. Shelly Simonds (D) expressed “strong support” for the project, citing “the urgent need for bold action to address climate change.”
Jason Parker, of the Virginia State Building and Construction Trades Council, said the council believes “that it’s going to bring lots of good jobs to the Tidewater area and to Virginia. We believe that it’s smart economics to diversify our energy source portfolio.”
Transmission Line Routing Questioned
Residents of a neighborhood where Dominion is proposing to build transmission lines for CVOW were less excited. Although not opposing the entire project, Virginia Beach resident Jacob Gotliboski testified May 16 that when he and his wife bought their home a year ago, they checked with the city and were told there was no project pending behind their home. He requested that the power lines be placed underground instead of becoming “an eyesore in our backyard.”
Ian Brown, president of the Mayberry Homeowners’ Association in Virginia Beach, who said he was also speaking on behalf of three neighboring homeowners’ associations, testified May 17 that he was there to “plead with the SCC to require Dominion Energy to use one of their alternate routes” instead of siting the transmission lines nearby.
Protecting Ratepayers
Probably the biggest question still hanging over CVOW, however, concerns its rising cost, and how much of it ratepayers will have to absorb. In November, Dominion announced that the projected cost had increased by more than 20% to $9.8 billion, citing “commodity and general cost pressures.” (See Dominion’s OSW Project to Cost $9.8B, up from $8B.) Testifying May 17, Joshua Bennett, vice president for offshore wind at Dominion, revised that figure to $9.65 billion, a reduction of 1.5%.
In testimony filed with the SCC, commission staff and the state attorney general’s Division of Consumer Counsel questioned the cost of the project and called for a performance guarantee on the project’s capacity factor. (See Va. AG, SCC Staff Question Costs on Dominion’s OSW Project.)
Browder testified May 17 that there is a need to “avoid problems like they had in South Carolina and Georgia, where ratepayers were left holding the bag.” He was referring to two nuclear projects — Santee Cooper’s V.C. Summer, which was cancelled, and Georgia Power’s Vogtle, which is still under construction — both of which had major budget overruns.
SCC staffer Katya Kuleshova said the record “may or may not support” granting the project a presumption of reasonableness and prudence because staff identified “certain scenarios” in which it could exceed the 1.4 levelized cost of energy (LCOE) metric, or $12.4 billion in costs incurred prior to the commercial operations date.
If the commission does approve the project, staff said it should require a performance guarantee to mitigate the risks to ratepayers. It suggested protections similar to those imposed by the commission over the construction of the 610-MW coal-fired Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, in which it said Dominion would be required to prove the prudence of any cost overruns above $1.8 billion (PUE-2007-00066).
In comments filed May 16, John Warren, director of the Commonwealth’s Department of Energy, noted that the public interest declaration in state law “requires that the projected levelized cost of energy of the project does not exceed 1.4 times the comparable cost of a conventional simple cycle combustion turbine generating facility.” He said the company should be required to guarantee the 42% capacity factor it used in computing the project’s LCOE.
The White House announced Friday that President Biden will nominate FERC Chair Richard Glick for another five-year term.
If confirmed, Glick could be on the commission well into 2027 and could remain chair as long as Biden remains president or another Democrat succeeds him after 2024. If a Republican is elected, Glick would be demoted, but the commission could retain a Democratic majority until 2026, when Commissioner Willie Phillips’ term expires.
Glick was originally nominated alongside Republican Neil Chatterjee by President Donald Trump and joined FERC in November 2017, when the commission’s sole member was acting Chair Cheryl LaFleur. Glick filled the seat left open by Colette Honorable’s resignation and was the lone Democrat — and often voice of dissension — for more than a year, between when LaFleur resigned in August 2019 and Commissioner Allison Clements joined in December 2020.
Before joining the commission, Glick was general counsel for the Democratic members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee.
Glick was unavailable for comment over the weekend and had not tweeted anything as of press time.
Transmission Planning, Gas Policy Highlight First Term
His tenure has so far been marked by efforts to re-examine the commission’s policies on transmission planning, natural gas pipeline certificates and RTO capacity markets. Those efforts have been appreciated by renewable energy interests and environmentalists and criticized by the fossil fuel sector and the commission’s Republican minority, especially Commissioner James Danly.
In February, he and his fellow Democrats received more widespread criticism for a pair of policy statements on how the commission would more closely scrutinize evidence of need for pipeline projects and evaluate the impacts of their greenhouse gas emissions in environmental analyses. The statements were released without notice for comment and would have applied retroactively to all projects already pending before the commission.
The Democratic majority was later excoriated for the move by members of the ENR Committee — mostly Republicans, but also Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), whose support may prove necessary for Glick to continue in his post. (See Glick: No Regrets over Gas Policy Statements.)
A month later, FERC walked the policy statements back, labeling them as drafts and saying any new rules would apply only to future projects. (See FERC Backtracks on Gas Policy Updates.)
But he has come under criticism for proposing a reinstatement of federal rights of first refusal (ROFR) in the commission’s April 21 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on transmission planning and cost allocation. (See ANALYSIS: FERC Giving up on Transmission Competition?)
Former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff and Paul N. Cicio, chairman of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition and CEO of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, called the ROFR proposal “a costly giveaway” to incumbent utilities that have circumvented FERC Order 1000’s rules encouraging competition in transmission development, citing data that only 3% of all transmission projects are competitively bid.
In a May 15 op-ed in The Hill, Wellinghoff and Cicio said that transmission costs in RTO/ISO markets “increased by $74.9 billion or 78.7%, while electricity demand was flat” from 2014 to 2020.
“Competition brings out innovation, a solution to inflation and an American norm — but the power sector is different,” they wrote. “Utilities make money by spending money and recover it in consumer rates with a 10 to 12% annual after-tax return on investment. The more they spend the more they earn.”
Reaction
On Friday, Chatterjee — himself a former Senate adviser, on the other side of the aisle — tweeted that Glick “is a great person and dedicated public servant. He’ll have to answer some tough questions, but if he continues to strive for bipartisan consensus on the contentious issues before FERC, he’ll be in a strong position for a second term.”
Responses to the news from stakeholders ranged from celebratory to tepid.
Both Advanced Energy Economy and the American Council for Renewable Energy “applauded” the announcement, with AEE Managing Director Jeff Dennis saying Glick “has provided steady leadership at FERC” and ACORE CEO Gregory Wetstone saying he has been “exceptionally effective as chair.”
WATT Coalition Chair Ted Bloch-Rubin congratulated Glick, saying that “FERC has made great strides towards policy to improve the United States’ transmission system planning and operation” under his leadership.
Electric Power Supply Association CEO Todd Snitchler was less enthused, saying that the organization “looks forward to a robust conversation around issues critical to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s jurisdiction with the re-nomination. … [It] comes at a time when FERC’s mission to ensure reliable, safe, secure and economically efficient energy for consumers has never been more important.”
EPSA is challenging PJM’s narrowed minimum offer price rule (MOPR) in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The group contends it threatens the competitiveness of the capacity market and that FERC failed to give adequate reasoning for allowing the rules to go into effect. (See PJM MOPR Challenge May Set Legal Precedent on FERC Deadlocks.)
Glick was among four other intended nominees “to serve as key leaders” in the administration that the White House announced late Friday afternoon; none of the four other posts is related to energy policy.
LANSING, Mich. — Thirty electric vehicle chargers will be installed in 12 of Michigan’s most popular parks along the Lake Michigan shoreline beginning in June, the start of a multi-year effort to offer charging at most of the state’s more than 100 parks.
The plan is designed to take advantage of the huge Chicago-area tourist traffic to Michigan’s western shore, and to work with officials in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana to promote the Lake Michigan shoreline tour.
Currently, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has just three chargers in three of its parks in the eastern half of the state, including Belle Isle State Park in Detroit and Bay City State Park along Lake Huron.
Scott Whitcomb, DNR director of the Office of Public Lands, said the roll out of the chargers this year is an effort to make sure EV drivers from Chicago and Detroit know they will have a source to charge their vehicles.
In 2023, chargers will be added to some parks in the Upper Peninsula, including the state’s largest state park, Porcupine Mountains State, and going north along I-75 from Metro Detroit, including the popular Hardwick Pines State Park.
The chargers will be Level Two chargers, meaning a full charge could take an hour. Because the parks have campsites and most have beaches, visitors are expected to be in the parks more than long enough to accommodate a full charge, Whitcomb said.
The chargers will be free for the first two years, Whitcomb said, thanks to corporate sponsorship.
The parks run from Berrien County, at the very southwest of Michigan and the closest locale to Chicago, to Emmet County at the tip of the Lower Peninsula at the Lake Michigan side of the Mackinac Strait.
There will be two chargers each in the state parks of Warren Dunes in Berrien County, P. J. Hoffmeister in Muskego County, Charles Mears in Oceana County, Ludington in Mason County, Orchard Beach in Manistee County, Leelanau in Leelanau County, Interlochen in Grand Traverse County, Young in Charlevoix County, and Petoskey and Wilderness parks and the Oden State Fish Hatchery in Emmet County.
Holland and Grand Haven parks in Ottawa County will receive four chargers each.
FERC last week approved GridLiance High Plains’ sale of controversial Missouri transmission assets to the nonprofit Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission (MJMEUC) (EC22-24).
The commission ruled Thursday that GridLiance’s deal for a 4-mile, 161-kV line, four small 69-kV lines and terminal equipment is in the public interest. The transaction marks MJMEUC’s first foray into transmission ownership; it already owns generation in MISO and SPP.
GridLiance purchased the transmission facilities from the city of Nixa, Mo., in 2018 and placed them under SPP’s control. The transmission-only utility has been involved in an unresolved dispute with the RTO and some of its members over the facilities’ inclusion into one of SPP’s transmission pricing zones. GridLiance’s annual transmission revenue requirement for the facilities has raised costs for the zone’s other transmission customers. (See FERC Remands GridLiance ATRR Settlement.)
FERC considered ongoing disagreement as out of scope, sticking to narrow, predefined criteria to approve the sale. It said the sale will not adversely affect transmission rates, though MJMEUC said it will recover the assets’ net book value through its ATRR. The commission noted that ownership is changing hands from a for-profit business to a not-for-profit utility, which comes with a different capital structure, tax obligation and return on equity.
GridLiance estimated that MJMEUC’s ATRR is about 32% lower than its own because of the latter’s nonprofit status. The TO said the commission has lower administrative expenses and does not pay property or income taxes, thus enjoying a lower cost of debt.
FERC said the transaction won’t disturb competition, state or federal regulation, or wholesale power rates because the sale does not involve the transfer of generation facilities.
Nearby city utilities in Missouri and Arkansas involved in the SPP transmission pricing dispute — Paragould Light Water & Cable, Paragould Light Commission, Poplar Bluff Municipal Utilities, Kennett Board of Public Works, City of Piggott Municipal Light Water and Sewer, and the City of Malden — asked FERC not to presuppose that the transmission facilities will continue to be included in the zonal cost allocation.
The commission declined to address the request, explaining its order focused on the transaction and not the facilities’ rate treatment.
MISO and SPP said Friday they plan to ditch their current affected systems study process for more interregional transmission analyses like their joint targeted interconnection queue (JTIQ) transmission effort.
The RTOs announced the transition to more transmission planning at the seams to allow generation interconnections during a conference call Friday.
“Essentially, we’re proposing a framework … whereby we believe the JTIQ and subsequent studies could serve as a replacement for the affected system studies,” SPP Director of Seams and Tariff Services David Kelley told stakeholders.
Kelley said for the current $1.65 billion JTIQ portfolio and other transmission studies to replace affected system studies, the new studies should occur at least every two years. He also said the grid operators’ proposal is proactive when considering FERC’s advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to improve transmission planning, cost allocation and generator interconnections (RM21-17). (See FERC Issues 1st Proposal out of Transmission Proceeding.)
“We’ve been listening to stakeholders over the last several months,” Kelley said. “MISO and SPP have reflected on these comments and concerns. … The affected system study process (AFS) is problematic, even from our perspective of administering these studies.”
Kelley said MISO and SPP have come to regard the AFS process as “a separate layer of inefficiency.”
“We need to design a more optimized transmission system around these seams,” he said.
While conducting the JTIQ study, Kelley said, MISO and SPP have noticed several similarities to the AFS: they detect the same constraints, seek to bring more generation online through transmission construction and dole out cost assignments for system upgrades to interconnecting generation.
The RTOs are attempting to distribute JTIQ portfolio costs based on the projects’ beneficiaries, including their respective loads, and a share to interconnection customers on either side of the seam whose generation will flow between the footprints. They have also said they might assign costs based on added benefits like increased flows or more economic dispatch. (See Now, the Hard Part: MISO, SPP Tackle JTIQ Cost Allocation.)
The grid operators have kicked around using a per-megawatt charge to allocate costs based on the interconnecting generation distribution factor’s effect on the JTIQ portfolio.
MISO and SPP intend to replace the AFS’ upgrade costs with the predetermined cost per megawatt
Kelley said, “more generation can afford to interconnect” under the new flat fee because it “eliminates unknown cost exposure from other RTOs.”
SPP’s Neil Robertson said the RTOs will determine the per megawatt charge for new generation based on the first JTIQ portfolio and refresh the amount in subsequent interregional transmission planning cycles.
“I just don’t want to see a situation where the charge escalates until load ends up holding the bag,” Adam McKinnie, chief regulatory economist for the Missouri Public Service Commission, said of the fluctuating charge.
Stakeholders appeared to approve replacing the AFS, even though the RTO staffs admitted they still must work through several details.
“At a high level, I think this is a good step … and needs to happen to produce higher levels of certainty early on at the beginning of the process instead of the end,” Advanced Power Alliance’s Steve Gaw said.
“It’s a creative proposal, and I think it has the potential to introduce more timing certainty and cost certainty,” Clean Grid Alliance’s Natalie McIntire said.
But multiple stakeholders pointed out that the JTIQ study and cost-allocation design remains untested and unproven.
EDF Renewables’ Arash Ghodsian said he is worried that MISO and SPP might not be able to adhere to a biennial schedule.
“It is concerning that MISO and SPP spent two years evaluating this portfolio,” Ghodsian said.
Robertson said the RTOs envision the JTIQ becoming “a more enduring process” that’s conducted on a regular basis.
Under the proposal, the grid operators said they will likely create a “JTIQ affected system zone,” where they identify new transmission facilities near their seams that are likely to be impacted by their neighbor’s generation-interconnection requests. Nearby interconnecting generators will be assigned the per-megawatt charge based on their zonal impact. Staff said the zonal charge will be adjusted prospectively based on successive JTIQ studies.
Gaw said assigning costs to generators based on their zone seems like “rough justice.”
Kelley said the zonal method would eliminate individual developers depending on other higher-queued interconnection customers’ upgrades to get their own projects online.
Rafik Halim of National Grid Renewables asked how the RTOs will transition existing projects working their way through the respective queues to the new JTIQ charge. He said he was particularly concerned about the projects cycles that entered the MISO queue in 2018 and 2019 and have yet to receive AFS results from SPP.
“We have projects that are effectively being held hostage by an affected system study process,” he said.
Kelley said MISO and SPP have yet to work through a transition plan, but he said they will continue processing their queues until the new system can take effect.
“What MISO and SPP can’t afford to do is to put on hold any of our current study processes,” Kelley said.
The RTOs promised more meetings on the proposal beginning next month.
MISO Director of Resource Utilization Andy Witmeier asked stakeholders to provide their input on the proposal
“We want to really see if this new avenue is worthwhile,” he said.
Below is a summary of the agenda items scheduled to be brought to a vote at the PJM Markets and Reliability Committee meeting Wednesday. Each item is listed by agenda number, description and projected time of discussion, followed by a summary of the issue and links to prior coverage in RTO Insider.
RTO Insider will be covering the discussions and votes. See next Tuesday’s newsletter for a full report.
Markets and Reliability Committee
Consent Agenda (9:05-9:10)
B. Stakeholders will be asked to endorse proposed revisions to Manual 3: Transmission Operations resulting from a periodic review. The changes include updating stability limitation process language in accordance with FERC docket ER21-1802 and aligning language with the current TO/TOP matrix language.
D. Members will be asked to endorse proposed revisions to Manual 21A: Determination of Accredited UCAP Using Effective Load Carrying Capability Analysis addressing an effective load-carrying capability model run timing update. PJM rules allow voluntary submission of unit-specific wind and solar parameters for development of backcasts for newer resources, but current manual language has an expiration date of March 1 for voluntary submissions. The quick fix would remove the March 1 expiration date.
E. Stakeholders will be asked to endorse proposed revisions to Manual 36: System Restoration resulting from a periodic review. The minor changes include replacing System Restoration Coordinators Subcommittee with System Operations Subcommittee and updating the under-frequency load shed table with new data.
Endorsements (9:10-10:20)
1. Start-up Cost Offer Development (9:10-9:30)
The committee will be asked to endorse a revised PJM/Independent Market Monitor proposal addressing start-up cost offer development worked on through the Cost Development Subcommittee, including revisions to the tariff, Operating Agreement and Manual 15: Cost Development Guidelines. Stakeholders endorsed the proposal at the Market Implementation Committee’s meeting April 13. (See “Start-up Cost Offer Development Endorsed,” PJM MIC Briefs: April 13, 2022.)
3. Application of Designated Entity Agreement (9:50-10:20)
Stakeholders will be asked to endorse a proposed solution and corresponding OA revisions addressing the application of the designated entity agreement. FERC rejected a filing in February by PJM in its Order 1000 compliance docket that would have updated the definition of “designated entity,” agreeing with a coalition of stakeholders that it infringed on their due process rights. (See FERC Rejects PJM Redefinition of ‘Designated Entity’ Under Order 1000.)
FERC last week approved MISO’s separate-but-equal postage stamp rate divided between its Midwest and South footprints for some of its major transmission buildout. The Thursday order gives MISO a clear-cut cost allocation for its long-range transmission plan’s (LRTP) first two cycles of projects (ER22-995).
The 100% postage stamp-to-load rate will be used to divide costs on MISO’s $10 billion long-range transmission package, the first of four portfolios the RTO plans to recommend. (See MISO Updates Stakeholders on $10B Long-range Tx Package.)
MISO will limit cost sharing on the first half of its LRTP projects to MISO Midwest, where the projects will be physically located, thus shielding its southern states from the transmission costs. The grid operator has said the allocation design is temporary and that it will seek approval for a new cost-allocation design when it begins studying transmission needs in MISO South and increasing its Midwest-to-North transfer constraint in a few years. (See MISO Seeking New Tx Cost Allocation for Major Buildout.)
FERC said that MISO’s proposal to limit regional cost assignments is fair because it follows the commission’s cost-causation principles that benefits be roughly commensurate with allocation. The agency cited a Brattle Group analysis commissioned by MISO that showed the benefits of Midwestern transmission projects would be overwhelmingly confined to the Midwest unless the RTO secures more transfer capability between the subregions. (See MISO Finalizes Long-range Tx Cost Sharing Plan.)
The design “appropriately reflects the transfer limits between the Midwest subregion and the South subregion,” the commission said.
FERC also noted that MISO replicated its established cost allocation from its 2011 Multi-Value Projects to divvy up long-range transmission costs.
MISO’s clean energy organizations called the allocation design a “prudent interim solution to the transfer limits.” However, industrial customers argued that the RTO didn’t present enough evidence that it will allocate costs commensurate with benefits. They also derided MISO’s method of analyzing the first cycle of transmission projects as a portfolio instead of individually and said applying a uniform postage-stamp-to-load rate is clumsy because project benefits fluctuate over time.
The Mississippi Public Service Commission agreed with separating the Midwest from the South but asked that FERC not consider the postage stamp rate as the default method when MISO begins prescribing projects for its South region. The PSC said it would protest the rate as not specific enough if it were applied to Southern projects.
FERC disagreed and said the postage stamp is an appropriate allocation tool. The commission quoted itself from Order 1000 and reminded industrial customers and the PSC that a postage stamp method is “appropriate where all customers within a specified transmission planning region are found to benefit from the use or availability of a transmission facility or class or group of transmission facilities, especially if the distribution of benefits associated [therewith] is likely to vary considerably over the long depreciation life of the transmission facilities amid changing power flows, fuel prices, population patterns and local economic considerations.”
The commission also reminded Mississippi that the postage stamp rate is already the default allocation style under MISO’s past Multi-Value Projects, even though that portfolio predated MISO South’s integration and none of those project costs were ever assigned to the South. FERC said it considered the PSC’s ask a collateral attack on its past rulings.
FERC pointed out that the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that FERC “need not ‘calculate benefits to the last penny, or for that matter to the last million or ten million or perhaps hundred million dollars,’ but rather must have ‘an articulable and plausible reason to believe that the benefits are at least roughly commensurate with’ the allocation of the costs.”
The commission also blessed MISO’s portfolio approach to the LRTP and again referenced itself, this time quoting from its acceptance of the RTO’s portfolio style for its 2011 Multi-Value Projects.
“The portfolio approach will help [MISO] to prioritize its transmission expansion projects in such a way as to ensure global benefits from the projects afforded regional cost sharing and maximize the number of system users who will share in those benefits,” the commission said.
FERC also dismissed as premature some stakeholders’ concerns that MISO would design a different and more favorable cost allocation for the South, thus violating FERC’s cost allocation principle that inconsistent allocations must not be applied to the same class of projects. The commission said that was speculation because MISO has yet to develop the cost allocation it plans to apply for projects concerning MISO South.
Christie’s Cautious Concurrence
Commissioner Mark Christie wrote separately to concur with the order, hinting that MISO may not be doing enough to ensure thorough cost allocation.
“In a large, geographically sprawling transmission entity — MISO stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada — it simply makes sense to allow for more granular cost allocation arrangements that may be subregional rather than imposing an identical cost allocation framework across the entirety of MISO,” Christie wrote.
However, he expressed misgivings with the “pure socialization” of the postage stamp rate and said he hoped MISO and stakeholders could arrive at a more granular allocation for the second half of the long-range transmission effort.
“While MISO’s case for postage stamp cost allocation is weak, I do not believe there has been a showing that this method is unjust and unreasonable,” he said, adding that he was ultimately swayed by the Organization of MISO States’ support of the allocation’s design.
Christie said he is concerned that Brattle’s benefits spread analysis rested on MISO’s internal benefit evaluation of its Multi-Value Project portfolio, and not an outsider’s view of the projects’ benefits. The Brattle Group’s Johannes Pfeifenberger “apparently accept[ed] the benefit-cost ratios in MISO’s 2017 report as self-proving,” Christie said.
He added that the Brattle Group should not accept MISO’s benefit claims “on faith,” especially when billions of dollars are at stake.
“There is nothing in the record to indicate whether MISO’s 2017 analysis was ever introduced into evidence in a rate case or other formal proceeding; whether discovery by other parties ever took place to glean information about the methods, bases and benefit calculations of the 2017 analysis; whether it was ever sponsored by a witness who had to take the stand and be cross-examined on the report by lawyers who knew how to conduct cross; or whether other parties had the opportunity to put their own expert witnesses, friendly and hostile, on the stand who could testify about the MISO analysis,” Christie wrote. “Indeed, ideally, a third-party report without a witness who can authenticate it and be cross-examined on it would not even be admitted as evidence in any serious evidentiary proceeding … the evidence in support of assigning billions of dollars in new costs to consumers should certainly get the same scrutiny as in a routine rate case involving far lower amounts of costs.”
Christie urged “state regulators and all affected stakeholders throughout MISO, especially those representing both residential and industrial consumers, to scrutinize very closely the planning criteria and cost allocation for future [long-range portfolio cycles] as well as claims of projected benefits used to justify regional cost allocation proposals because billions of dollars of consumer costs will be allocated here.”
Former ERCOT CEO Bob Kahn on Wednesday said he hopes Texas regulators and lawmakers continue to focus on reliability as they move ahead with changes to the state’s power market.
Addressing the Texas Reliability Entity Board of Directors’ quarterly meeting, Kahn said the market is working well and that suggestions for a capacity market — a verboten concept in Texas — or even a capacity-light market would do little to help reliability.
“I don’t know how much it might increase reliability, but I think it would increase costs for ratepayers,” he said. “That’s a big concern for the commission and all of us who want to keep rates as low as possible. We just need to make sure there’s enough money out there for the generators.”
Kahn noted that ERCOT’s energy-only market is dependent on high prices during scarcity periods, the theory being that those prices will compensate generators that are running and incent more to be build. However, the Public Utility Commission last year dropped the $9,000/MWh cap to $5,000/MWh when prices stayed at their limit for more than four days during the winter storm. ERCOT’s conservative operations approach, in which it procures more reserves than it previously had, has also reduced scarcity.
“The more reserves you have, the more it impacts scarcity. Generators are counting on those few hours a year,” Kahn said. He also argued that operating reserves are suppressing market prices, an opinion shared by others in the market.
Kahn, who served as ERCOT’s CEO for almost two and a half years (2007-2009) and was a director on the grid operator’s early Board of Directors (2002-2006), was involved in the energy-only market’s construct from the very beginning. He recalled a market-design meeting in the 1990s that was crashed by Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock.
“He said five words: ‘This is all about money.’ He was right.” said Kahn, now general manager of Texas Municipal Power Agency, a nonprofit owned by its four-member cities of Bryan, Denton, Garland and Greenville.
Staff in ‘Shields-up’ Posture
Texas RE CEO Jim Albright said the organization is maintaining a “shields up” philosophy against cyber threats, and he encouraged the industry to do the same.
“Given what’s going on overseas and the uptick in ransomware across the world, as tensions get high, we should be on high alert,” he said. “The major alerts coming out this year are from Russian state sponsored cyber threats. So obviously, given what’s happening overseas, there’s been an uptick.”
Albright said the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s cyber alerts this year are on pace to pass last year’s. Seven of those have come out of Russia, he said.
“There’s a lot of ransomware and a lot of malware. … They’re exploiting basically vulnerabilities,” Albright said. “Some of the big ransomware, the big players, if you will … started back in 2017, and we’re still seeing these type of things in the United States.”
Registered Entities up to 289
Staff told the directors that Texas RE has added 38 registered entities since 2020. It now has 289 registered entities in 516 functions. (Entities can register in any of six functions.)
The board approved its 2023 business plan and budget and a clean audit of its financial statements. The budget, up 3.3% to $17.7 million from 2022’s $17.2 million budget, will be sent to FERC and NERC in June. Texas RE’s statutory assessment in 2023 will be $17.2 million, a 14.3% increase from the 2022 assessment of $15 million.
The RE’s 2022 workplan has five focus areas:
expand a risk-based focus in standards, compliance monitoring and enforcement programs;
assess and accelerate steps to mitigate known and emerging risk to reliability and security;
build a strong Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center-based security capability;
strengthen engagement across North America’s reliability and security ecosystem; and
promote effectiveness, efficiency and continuous improvement.
