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Darrin Gordon named new general manager of Missouri’s Hannibal Board of Public Works

June 13, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 13, 2021

Missouri’s Hannibal Board of Public Works (HBPW) recently announced that Darrin Gordon has been selected as the new HBPW general manager, effective Aug. 2, 2021.

The HBPW Board of Directors conducted a nationwide search to fill the position of the general manager vacancy.

Gordon is currently the general manager at Lewes Board of Public Works (BPW), which serves the Lewes, Delaware community. In this role, he manages all facets of the Lewes BPW including electric, water, wastewater, and stormwater systems.

In February 2021, the HBPW Board of Directors announced that Ken Reasoner had tendered his resignation as general manager effective June 1, 2021.

Wide variety of public power utilities participate in community solar working group

June 11, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 11, 2021

A wide variety of public power utilities are participating in a working group that will help them develop a business case for an exploratory or site-specific community solar project.

The American Public Power Association (APPA) is a partner in the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP), an initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  

As a leader in the NCSP Municipal Utility Collaborative, APPA works with stakeholders to identify and address common barriers to community-based solar. Technical assistance is provided by DOE and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as participants seek to create and demonstrate practical, effective, and scalable community solar models.

Public power entities participating in the working group are: Columbia Water & Light (Columbia, Mo.), Longmont Power & Communications (Longmont, Colo.), Village of Minster (Minster, Ohio), Northern California Power Agency (a joint action agency representing 16 members based in Roseville, CA), Riverside Public Utilities (Riverside, Calif.), Seattle City Light (Washington State) and Vernon County Energy District (Readstown, Wis.).

The public power utilities vary widely in terms of customers served, experience with solar energy projects and motivations for pursuing community solar.

“Vernon County Energy District’s mission is to help communities and individuals transition to locally owned and operated renewable energy sources. Instead of sending energy dollars out of the county and out of the state, community solar will help make economic rejuvenation more likely in our rural communities,” said Samantha Laskowski, Vice-President of Vernon County Energy District.

Community solar is one way to “retain energy dollars in our local communities and to support local ownership when folks can’t afford or can’t install renewables on their own. It is also a good way for low and middle income folks to get access to renewable energy,” she said.

“We have been pursuing the idea of community solar for a number of years and we believe we have many pieces of the puzzle in place. However, there are still barriers that need to be overcome and we hope that participating in the Municipal Utility Working Group will help us develop concrete and achievable ways to overcome those barriers,” Laskowski said. “Financing remains a tough nut to crack. Also, weatherization and improving energy efficiency are critical to reduce the rural household energy burden and ultimately make community solar more affordable.”

“Renewable energy plays a significant role in our long-term utility planning,” said Brandon Renaud, Utility Services Manager at Columbia Water & Light. “As part of that plan, we are working to expand direct access to renewable energy throughout the community,” he said.

“We are participating in the community solar Municipal Utility Working Group to gain insights into best practices, lessons learned, and exploring how other municipal utilities are expanding access to solar energy to benefit their communities,” he said.

The Village of Minster has installed two utility scale solar arrays within the last year “and this has put us at the forefront of utilizing renewables in west central Ohio.  These utility size solar arrays were installed to help the village keep energy costs low for our customers,” said Donald Harrod, Village Administrator.

He said that community solar “is the next logical step to continue our push to offer various options to our customers, so they can better control their monthly energy costs. In addition, many customers cannot afford or choose not to put rooftop solar on their homes, community solar gives those customers the opportunity to participate in a solar project at a more personalized level.”

Harrod was also asked to detail the key objectives that the Village of Minster hopes to meet through its participation in the Municipal Utility Working Group.

The key objective that the village hopes to achieve is the development of a program “that will allow our customers to participate in a solar program and give them better control over energy costs. We believe that by participating in the Working Group,  the village will be able to garner knowledge from others in the group to help us customize a program that will enable the village to implement a successful community solar program for our customers,” he said. 

Working sessions for the working group kicked off with the first meeting on April 28. The working sessions will occur monthly through the end of 2021.

Additional details on the NCSP and community solar resources offered by APPA are available here.

BPA, WAPA and Trinity Public Utilities District take steps to help mitigate wildfire threat

June 9, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 9, 2021

According to Wood Mackenzie and the U.S. Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor report, 910 megawatt-hours (MWh) of new energy storage systems were brought online in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 252% over the first quarter of last year, making it the biggest first quarter so far for the U.S. storage market.

After a record-setting quarter for deployments in the final quarter of 2020, the pace of storage deployments slowed in the first quarter, but despite the dip this quarter, the storage market still notched its third-highest megawatt total for one quarter.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, deployments are expected to accelerate dramatically, according to the report. Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting group, forecasts that nearly 12,000 MWh of new storage will be added in 2021, which is three times the amount of new storage added in 2020.

Wood Mackenzie and the ESA said that one of the most significant storage market developments in the first quarter was the introduction of a stand-alone storage investment tax credit (ITC) in Congress. If passed this year, a stand-alone storage ITC would result in a 20-25% upgrade to Wood Mackenzie’s five-year market outlook in megawatt terms.

“An extra 20 to 25% growth for the US market over the next five years would supercharge an already fast-growing energy storage market,” said Chloe Holden, Wood Mackenzie Energy Storage Analyst, in a statement. “The front-of-the-meter (FTM) segment would see the largest incremental growth, with an extra 6 GW of capacity expected through 2025, which is 25% of our base case market forecast. Without the stand-alone storage ITC, we forecast that the FTM segment will add 3,674 MW in 2021 and 6,915 MW in 2026.”

As noted in the report, the U.S. residential storage market set yet another quarterly record in the first quarter of 2021. The market has grown for nine quarters in a row and broke 100 MW deployed in a single quarter for the first time in the first quarter.

Holden said that backup power to complement rooftop solar systems has become the key selling point for residential battery systems in all U.S. markets. Although other states also have growing markets, California will continue to lead the residential segment by a significant margin through 2026, she said.

The non-residential market (commercial and community-scale) is not seeing the same growth as other sectors, with between 25 and 35 MW of new projects installed in each of the last five quarters.

The report also notes that the FTM interconnection queue now sits at over 200 gigawatts.

BPA, WAPA and Trinity Public Utilities District take steps to help mitigate wildfire threat

June 9, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 9, 2021

With the onset of wildfire season in the western United States, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) and California’s Trinity Public Utilities District (PUD) recently detailed steps they are taking to help mitigate the potential of significant wildfires.

BPA earlier this month added a public safety power shutoff (PSPS) procedure to its wildfire mitigation plan, and Trinity Public Utilities District is partnering with staff at the Sierra Nevada region office of the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) to make its transmission rights of way less vulnerable to wildfires.

While the number of acres burned year-to-date is below the 10-year average, historically low precipitation levels have raised the risk of significant wildfires to above normal, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 87 percent of the western U.S. is now categorized in drought and over half the West is in the highest two categories of drought.

BPA began considering a PSPS procedure in the fall of 2020 after last summer’s Northwest wildfire season.

“This procedure is another preventative measure layered on top of world-class vegetation management, strategic asset management and risk-based planning – the cornerstones of our mitigation efforts,” BPA Administrator John Hairston said in a statement.

BPA said customer feedback helped inform the PSPS process it has put in place for the 2021 fire season. The utility also noted that taking a BPA transmission line out of service does not necessarily mean Northwest residents and businesses will lose power.

“BPA is committed to providing as much prior notification as possible to customer utilities, generators and state emergency managers, particularly when PSPS will result in service interruptions,” Tina Ko, BPA vice president of transmission marketing and sales, said in a statement.

“Because weather is one of the variables involved, our notification windows may be compressed at times,” Ko said, “however, we will do everything we can to help customers and emergency management officials plan for the lack of electricity these events can cause.”

For Trinity PUD, wildfire mitigation is taking the form of expanding power line rights of way.

The PUD is expanding the right of way of its 60-kilovolt (kV) Trinity-to-Weaverville line from 80 feet to up to 130 feet. It is also expanding its Lewiston 60-kV tap line right of way from 80 feet to up to 130 feet, and expanding the rights of way for its distribution lines from 20 feet to up to 130 feet. The expansions aim to reduce fuel loads and to create potential firebreaks.

Recent wildfires have shown that the current minimum buffer clearances are not sufficient to prevent destructive wildfires, Trinity PUD said.

Trinity PUD’s aim is to protect its transmission and distribution system through “proactive vegetation management,” which the PUD said would also “enhance the reliability of power distribution, improve WAPA transmission line access and protect the health and safety of nearby communities and biological and natural resources.”

Trinity PUD and WAPA’s systems run through areas with dense vegetation and steep terrain. CalFire has classified the area a “very high fire hazard.”

California law, specifically Senate Bill 901, requires publicly owned electric utilities to prepare wildfire mitigation measures if the utilities’ overhead electrical lines and equipment are located in an area that has a significant wildfire risk.

California PUC seeks comments on new PSPS guidelines

Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is seeking public comment on a proposal that would enhance and update existing guidelines and rules for utility PSPS events in advance of the 2021 wildfire season.

 The proposed decision, which is on the agenda for the CPUC’s June 24 meeting, states that when utilities de-energize transmission lines as a wildfire mitigation strategy of last resort they must balance the risk of harm from utility-ignited wildfires against the public harm of shutting off power.

 The proposal recommends guidelines and rules intended to augment existing directives to address some of the issues that arose during the utilities’ execution of PSPS events in 2020.

If adopted, the guidelines and rules would go into immediate effect and require annual reporting to increase transparency into electric investor-owned utilities’ (IOUs) planning and execution of PSPS events by requiring them to submit an annual pre-season report detailing actions taken to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of future PSPS events and to submit an annual post-season report providing data on customer-focused outcomes during prior year PSPS events.

To improve planning and preparation, the proposal would require IOUs to conduct annual PSPS exercises using the same procedures they would use in an actual PSPS event. The proposal would also include additional entities under the definition of “critical facilities and infrastructure” to ensure that entities essential to public safety receive advance notification of PSPS events and additional assistance in assessing the need for backup generation to ensure resiliency.

NYPA, EPRI awarded $200,000 to research long-duration storage

June 9, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 9, 2021

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is launching a project with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to explore the use of crushed rock thermal energy storage to provide energy storage in a market with significant renewable energy resources.

The project, led by EPRI and funded by a $200,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant, will investigate the feasibility of a thermal energy storage (TES) technology developed by Brenmiller Energy. Another $50,000 will be funded by the project participants.

If determined to be feasible, the investigation team will pilot the technology and evaluate its ability to provide energy storage at NYPA’s Eugene W. Zeltmann Power Project in Astoria, N.Y.

Brenmiller, an Israeli developer and manufacturer of thermal energy storage systems, has patented a high-temperature crushed-rock TES system, which is being tested in three generations of demonstration units at separate sites globally.

The first phase of the project will be a feasibility study on the integration of the crushed-rock thermal energy storage into a range of fossil generation assets, which is expected to be complete in early 2022. 

A project plan would be developed for a second phase that would evaluate real world operating conditions and demonstrate the technology’s ability to provide effective and economical energy storage at a natural gas combined cycle plant.

The plan is to evaluate the cost and performance of Brenmiller’s TES technology, to support commercial-scale deployment by 2030.

As part of its Vision2030 strategic plan, NYPA is investigating the potential for low- to zero-carbon technologies at several of its facilities to help transition New York State from fossil fuel generation and stabilize the grid as it integrates cleaner sources of energy.

NYPA is also partnering with Brenmiller on a separate project to develop and demonstrate a TES-based combined heat and power (CHP) system at Purchase College (State University of New York) in Harrison, N.Y., to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That unit is expected to be operational later in the summer of 2021.

Additional information about Brenmiller is available here.

Artificial intelligence project looks to improve energy storage dispatch

June 8, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 8, 2021

Independent power producer Vistra is using artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by a team at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) to help it better predict wholesale power market prices in California.

Vistra is using the software to project electricity prices for its soon-to-be 400-megawatt (MW) Moss Landing energy storage facility in Monterey County, Calif.

Vistra’s Moss Landing project is one of four energy storage projects awarded power purchase agreements with Pacific Gas and Electric in 2018 through a solicitation designed to find alternatives to renewing reliability-must-run contracts for gas-fired projects owned by Calpine that serve the South Bay area in California.

The software was developed by researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas who applied statistical and machine-learning methods to build models that Vistra is now using to predict near real-time bid and sell prices in California’s wholesale power market to enable it to buy electricity to charge the Moss Landing batteries at the lowest price and sell the stored energy at the most economically opportune time.

The joint project, which was funded by Vistra, was “crucial to optimizing electricity pricing at the Moss Landing battery farm that came online in early 2021, Rachit Gupta, vice president at Vistra and lead sponsor of the project, said in a statement. “The project was a tremendous success, and we are extremely happy that we availed ourselves of a great source of expertise that is present locally.” The software helps Irving, Texas, based Vistra make more precise pricing projections, Gupta said.

Its work for Vistra was the inaugural project for the Center for Applied AI and Machine Learning (CAIML) at UT Dallas’ Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. The center was established in 2019 to work with industry partners to apply advanced research in AI and machine learning to solve practical problems.

The UT Dallas researchers completed work on the AI project in August 2020 and held classes from December through February to train Vistra employees in the background technologies.

“AI can help a company like Vistra forecast future generation and demand on load, wind and solar energy, and optimize bidding, scheduling and deployment of energy to improve profitability and market participation,” Feng Chen, associate professor of computer science at UT Dallas and the project’s principal investigator, said in a statement.

Power sector increasingly looking at AI

The electric power industry is increasingly looking at AI for ways to solve difficult problems or improve the performance of complex systems. In March, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) held a roundtable on AI in the power sector.

The roundtable was one of several EPRI hosted in its effort to foster collaboration between the power and AI industries through its AI.EPRI project.

Public power utilities, such as CPS Energy, are among the utilities exploring the uses of AI and machine learning. The San Antonio, Texas, utility is machine learning to improve its demand management and is starting to use the technology to improve its vegetation management programs.

In 2019, Salt River Project in Arizona signed a deal to use AI to improve its information technology operations. And in New York, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) is working with software vendor C3 IoT to use AI to help meet its energy efficiency targets.

In April, APPA received its third patent related to its efforts to help ensure that public power utilities have long-term access to advanced analytical technologies for business-related decision making.

TVA issues solicitation for solar, battery storage proposals

June 8, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 8, 2021

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is interested in procuring up to 200 megawatts (MW) of new stand-alone renewable energy resources or renewable energy plus battery energy storage systems (BESS), including all the associated environmental attributes, TVA said in a request for proposals issued on June 8.

TVA is also interested in procuring BESS for existing utility scale solar projects signed as a result of 2017, 2019 or 2020 renewable energy RFPs with power purchase agreements (PPA) that do not have BESS currently.

All resources must be located in the TVA service territory or delivered to TVA’s interface with neighboring transmission systems. If any proposal is delivered to the TVA interface, it must have all of the cost components included for an all-in energy price.

TVA said it reserves the right to vary from this target energy quantity based on evaluation of bids that are received. Any transaction resulting from the RFP will be in the form of a PPA.

Proposals must be submitted by July 20, 2021 and TVA will announce the selected projects this winter.

TVA said the RFP supports TVA’s Green Invest program, which has secured solar farms to meet the renewable energy goals of auto manufacturers, data centers, local power companies, cities, and universities. Since 2018, Green Invest has attracted nearly $2.7 billion in solar investment and procured about 2,100 megawatts of solar.

Jeff Lyash, President and CEO of TVA, discussed the Green Invest program in a recent episode of the American Public Power Association’s Public Power Now podcast.

The RFP is available here.

Department of Energy seeks to cut cost of hydrogen by 80%

June 8, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 8, 2021

The Department of Energy (DOE) on June 7 launched an effort to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per kilogram in one decade.

The initiative is part of the newly launched DOE Energy “Earthshots Initiative,” which DOE said aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade.

DOE noted that currently hydrogen from renewable energy costs about $5 per kilogram. By achieving the 80% cost reduction goal, “we can unlock a five-fold increase in demand by increasing clean hydrogen production from pathways such as renewables, nuclear, and thermal conversion,” DOE said.

The announcement followed Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s commitment, made during President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, to propel next-generation technologies in key clean energy sectors. The Energy Earthshots effort will drive integrated program development across DOE’s science, applied energy offices, and ARPA-E to address tough technological challenges and cost hurdles, and rapidly advance solutions to help achieve climate and economic competitiveness goal, according to DOE.  

As part of the launch, at the DOE’s Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting, DOE’s hydrogen program issued a request for information (RFI) on viable hydrogen demonstrations. 

Topics in the RFI include: 

Responses are due July 7, 2021, by 5 p.m. ET.

For more information about the RFI, visit EERE Exchange. 

Additional information on DOE’s efforts to enable at-scale clean hydrogen is available here.

APPA issues new report on hydrogen

The American Public Power Association this week released a report on hydrogen that offers a perspective on where the emerging hydrogen market is in the U.S. and globally, what is driving the growing interest in hydrogen and what obstacles are preventing hydrogen technology from being able to scale-up.

Topics covered in the report include:

The report is available for free to members of APPA.

White House memorandum outlines best practices to protect against ransomware

June 7, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 7, 2021

The Biden Administration on June 2 issued a memorandum to corporate executives and business leaders that outlines the U.S. government’s recommended best practices to guard against the threat of ransomware.

The memo was sent by Anne Neuberger, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology.

“The most important takeaway from the recent spate of ransomware attacks on U.S., Irish, German and other organizations around the world is that companies that view ransomware as a threat to their core business operations rather than a simple risk of data theft will react and recover more effectively,” she wrote. “To understand your risk, business executives should immediately convene their leadership teams to discuss the ransomware threat and review corporate security posture and business continuity plans to ensure you have the ability to continue or quickly restore operations.”

The memo outlines several steps that should be taken now to address the threat of ransomware.

First, it recommends implementing the five best practices from President Biden’s Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity Executive Order.

Second, the memo recommends backing up data, system images, and configurations, regularly testing them, and keeping the backups offline. “Ensure that backups are regularly tested and that they are not connected to the business network, as many ransomware variants try to find and encrypt or delete accessible backups. Maintaining current backups offline is critical because if your network data is encrypted with ransomware, your organization can restore systems.”

It also recommends updating and patching systems promptly. This includes maintaining the security of operating systems, applications, and firmware, in a timely manner. “Consider using a centralized patch management system; use a risk-based assessment strategy to drive your patch management program.”

Testing of incident response plans should also occur. “There’s nothing that shows the gaps in plans more than testing them. Run through some core questions and use those to build an incident response plan: Are you able to sustain business operations without access to certain systems? For how long? Would you turn off your manufacturing operations if business systems such as billing were offline?”

In addition, the memo highlights the need to check a security team’s work and recommends using a third party to test the security of systems and the ability to defend against a sophisticated attack. Many ransomware criminals are aggressive and sophisticated and will find the equivalent of unlocked doors, the memo notes.

The memo also recommends segmenting networks. “There’s been a recent shift in ransomware attacks – from stealing data to disrupting operations. It’s critically important that your corporate business functions and manufacturing/production operations are separated and that you carefully filter and limit internet access to operational networks, identify links between these networks and develop workarounds or manual controls to ensure Industrial Control System (ICS) networks can be isolated and continue operating if your corporate network is compromised. Regularly test contingency plans such as manual controls so that safety critical functions can be maintained during a cyber incident.” 

Ransomware is a very familiar threat to the public power segment of the industry and APPA held a webinar on April 21 of this year, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The slide deck and the recording can be accessed here. Additionally, the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) in February of this year released a report labeled Ransomware Trends for Utilities and APPA encourages public power utilities to review this resource.

APPA continues to stress the importance of public power utilities joining the E-ISAC for timely and actionable sharing of threats to the electricity subsector. Currently, the E-ISAC is specifically designing a portal and report for small and medium sized public power and cooperative utilities.  To learn more about the E-ISAC and how to join, visit the E-ISAC website or contact E-ISAC Member Services or the public power address below.

Any questions can be directed to: cybersecurity@publicpower.org.

FERC staff releases white paper on hybrid resources, seeks feedback

June 5, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 5, 2021

Staff at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on May 26 issued a notice inviting comments on hybrid resources, such as solar power combined with energy storage, and, at the same time, released a white paper on the subject.

The deadline for submitting comments to FERC is Aug. 18, 2021.

The white paper discusses the hybrid resources technical conference FERC held in July 2020, as well as the information garnered from comments.

Interest in hybrid resources has accelerated in recent years, in part because of recent growth in electric storage resources, the white paper noted.

Hybrid resource deployment has increased in both Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) and Independent System Operator (ISO) and non-RTO/ISO regions, with growth concentrated in certain areas, most notably in the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) region, according to the white paper.

As recently as two years ago, there were virtually no hybrid resources in interconnection queues, and there are now 102 gigawatts (GW) of solar paired with storage, and 11 GW of wind paired with storage in interconnection queues across the country, including both RTO/ISO regions and non-RTO/ISO regions, the FERC paper said.

The white paper cited comments from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) stating that 10 percent of resources in RTO/ISO interconnection queues nationwide are hybrid projects.

In California, CAISO reports that 47.6 percent of active interconnection requests are for hybrid resources. For requests submitted to CAISO in 2020, the number rises to 58 percent.

The vast majority of announced hybrid projects are solar photovoltaic (PV) combined with battery electric storage, but project developers have also announced wind combined with electric storage, natural gas-fired generation combined with electric storage, and solar power combined with wind and electric storage projects, the white paper said.

Citing data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the white paper noted that solar combined with energy storage made up about 85 percent of the capacity of hybrid resources in the interconnection queues nationwide at the beginning of 2020.

In its definition of “hybrid,” the white paper included co-located resources that are modeled and dispatched as two or more separate resources that share a single point of interconnection and integrated hybrid resources that share a single point of interconnection and are modeled and dispatched as a single resource.

One driver of the increase in hybrid resources is that some configurations allow the electric storage component to qualify for increased financial incentives, including the federal Investment Tax Credit and certain state incentives for electric storage resources that charge from renewable resources, the white paper said.

Those incentives, combined with the potential for wholesale market revenues could attract further investment in hybrid technologies and projects, potentially leading to increased competition and market efficiency, the white paper said, noting that at the beginning of 2020, the six RTOs and ISOs under FERC jurisdiction had more than 62 GW of hybrid projects in their interconnection queues.

FERC noted that in comments several participants emphasized the need for flexibility at all stages of the co-located hybrid and integrated hybrid project lifecycle, including with respect to whether a hybrid project will operate as a single or multiple resource type, changes during the interconnection process, and assessing how the resource can operate in the market most economically.

FERC also noted that some commenters stressed the need for hybrid resources to be able to provide all services that they are capable of providing and said that market power mitigation approaches may need to be modified.

In its analysis in the white paper, FERC said the record in its hearings to date demonstrate “co-located hybrid and integrated hybrid resources can add value to the electric grid” by allowing intermittent or duration-limited resources to achieve a higher combined capacity factor, facilitate more efficient transmission system operation by reducing congestion and curtailment in areas with high penetrations of intermittent resources, and provide transmission providers with more controllable ancillary services than standalone intermittent resources. Combining resource types also allows for the sharing of permitting, siting, equipment, and interconnection costs.

Nonetheless, FERC noted that the rapid growth of hybrid resources presents challenges to RTOs and ISOs and other FERC-jurisdictional transmission providers and federal and state regulators to keep up with the pace of technological change. And while RTOs and ISOs have begun to make changes to their wholesale electric markets, much remains to be addressed, FERC said in the white paper.

With additional experience RTOs, ISOs and transmission providers “will be better able to address issues including a potential need to modify interconnection rules, modeling approaches in interconnection and reliability models, market participation rules such as bidding and modeling, and capacity valuation methods,” FERC said.

The notice seeking comments is available here.