Secretary of Energy asks states to prioritize critical energy infrastructure workers for COVID vaccine
January 19, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 19, 2021
Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette on Jan. 15 urged the governors of 55 states and territories to prioritize critical infrastructure mission-essential workers during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the letter, Brouillette noted that the critical infrastructure workforce should be prioritized for receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine, in both the public and private sector, including: investor-owned utilities, municipal-owned utilities, cooperatives, the Department of Energy’s Power Marketing Administrations (PMAs) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites, as well as members of the oil and natural gas subsector.
The electric power industry, including the nation’s investor-owned utilities, municipal-owned utilities, cooperatives, and the PMAs, “provide 24-7/365 electricity, necessary for the health and safety of all Americans,” he wrote in the letter.
“These critical electric infrastructure utility workers support and preserve the infrastructure and operations centers critical to maintaining the backbone of the electric grid. By prioritizing their health and safety for vaccine distribution alongside other frontline workers, we assure electricity distribution to the nation’s rural and urban communities,” he said.
Brouillette noted that essential critical infrastructure workers at the PMAs and NNSA sites conduct highly specialized tasks and cannot work from home or in isolation from others on the job site. “The PMAs operate electric systems and sell the electrical output of federally-owned and -operated hydroelectric dams in 34 states; their employees operate facilities that are needed to maintain the reliability and security of the nation’s energy grid.”
Similarly, NNSA’s essential workers “handle a range of issues including nuclear weapon systems, global and potential domestic nuclear security threats, the management and disposal of hazardous nuclear materials, and the safe and secure transport of nuclear materials. These individuals continue to work every day, putting both themselves and their families’ safety at risk in service of our nation,” wrote Brouillette.
He said that prioritizing vaccination access for mission-essential workers is consistent with guidance contained in the October 2, 2020, Framework for Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 vaccine, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the October 29, 2020, COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Operational Guidance for Jurisdictions Playbook, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These reports recommend critical infrastructure workers be considered for prioritization based upon job function and exposure to risk.
“The PMAs’ and NNSA’s mission-essential workers must receive the vaccine through the states and territories, and therefore I respectfully ask that states and territories also include federal energy workers along with private energy sector workers as a high priority for voluntary access to initial inoculation. Such work is critical to public health and safety, as well as our economic and national security,” Brouillette said.
Steep U.S. GHG emissions drop in 2020 are not sustainable, says Rhodium Group
January 15, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
January 15, 2021
In 2020, the United States saw the single largest annual decline in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020 anytime since World War II, putting the country’s GHG emissions below 1990 levels for the first time, according to preliminary data from the Rhodium Group.
The research group estimates that the slowdown in activity related to steps taken to reduce the spread of COVID-19 led to a 10.3 percent drop in GHG emissions. Those restrictions reduced travel, altered demand for goods and services, and resulted in record high unemployment, the Rhodium analysts said. In 2009, GHG emissions declined 6.3 percent as a result of the Great Recession.
With GHG emissions now 21 percent below 2005 levels, the U.S. is expected to “far exceed” its 2020 Copenhagen Accord target of a 17 percent reduction below 2005 levels, according to Rhodium’s Green Stimulus and Recovery Tracker.
Nonetheless, the Rhodium analysts warned that its preliminary 2020 data should not “in any way be considered a down payment” toward the U.S. meeting its 2025 Paris Climate Agreement target of GHG declines of 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels.
The U.S. left the Paris Agreement on Nov. 4, 2020, but president-elect Joe Biden has said it will rejoin the pact early in his presidency.
“The emission reductions of 2020 have come with an enormous toll of significant economic damage and human suffering,” Rhodium said. “With coronavirus vaccines now in distribution, we expect economic activity to pick up again in 2021, but without meaningful structural changes in the carbon intensity of the US economy, emissions will likely rise again as well.”
With economic activity expected to bounce back in 2021 — most forecasts currently project GDP growth of 3 to 4 percent — Rhodium noted, “emissions will likely increase as well absent a concerted effort.”
In October, the International Monetary Fund forecasted that U.S. GDP would decline 4.3 percent in 2020, Rhodium noted, adding that year-end year estimates by Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs put that decline at around 3.5 percent. And while the COVID-10 related decline was “significantly less drastic than the IMF’s April forecast, it goes “well beyond the 2.5% contraction the U.S. experienced during the Great Recession of 2009,” Rhodium said.
Several of the hardest hit economic sectors — transportation, electric power, and industry — are also the leading sources of U.S. GHG emissions, the Rhodium analysts noted.
With the possible exception of the power sector — where coal’s decline has been driving a steady reduction in power sector emissions over the past decade — emission reductions in 2020 resulted largely from reductions in overall economic activity, Rhodium said.
Travel demand was hard hit in 2020, resulting in a 14.7 percent decline in transportation sector emissions between 2019 and 2020. Industrial emissions were down 7 percent and emissions from buildings were down 6.2 percent year-over-year, Rhodium said.
Power sector emissions dropped 10.3 percent, driven by a nearly 19 percent reduction in year-over-year emissions from coal generation, the largest year-on-year decline in recorded history. Year-over-year electricity demand declined only 2 percent.
Before the pandemic hit, Rhodium has projected that power sector emissions would drop by as much as 7 percent in 2020. But coal’s decline was “only accelerated by weakened electric power demand during the pandemic,” Rhodium said.
After decades as the predominant fuel for US electric power, in 2020 coal became only the third-largest fuel source after natural gas and nuclear, with renewables close behind.
In 2020, coal’s share of US power generation dropped from 24 percent to 20 percent, with natural gas and renewables picking up most of the slack, rising to 39 percent and 18 percent, respectively. The uptick in natural gas generation offsets more than 10 percent of the reduction in emissions from coal-fired power.
According to the recently released Energy Information Agency short-term outlook the share of U.S. electric power sector generation from natural gas will decline from 39 percent in 2020 to 36 percent in 2021 and 34 percent in 2022 in response to significantly higher natural gas fuel costs and increased generation from renewable energy sources. Coal’s forecast share of electricity generation will rise from 20 percent in 2020 to 22 percent in 2021 and 24 percent in 2022, which is close to its share in 2019.
Electricity generation from renewable energy sources will rise from 20 percent in 2020 to 21 percent in 2021 and 23 percent in 2022. The nuclear share of U.S. generation will decline from 21 percent in 2020 to 20 percent in 2021 and 19 percent in 2022.
DOE extends deadline for hydro-related opportunity for technical assistance
January 15, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 15, 2021
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) has extended the application period for a Notice of Opportunity for Technical Assistance (NOTA) for improving hydropower’s value.
Part of WPTO’s HydroWIRES (Water Innovation for a Resilient Electricity System) Initiative, “this opportunity will provide hydropower decision makers—such as utilities and system operators—with national lab expertise and capabilities to address current challenges and capture new opportunities for their systems,” the DOE noted.
Additionally, the DOE said that work under the NOTA can help to validate national lab-led modeling, analysis, and tools developed under the HydroWIRES Initiative for the benefit of the broader hydropower community, “as well as further our collective understanding of possible roles for hydropower in an evolving grid.”
WPTO in December 2020 extended the application period for the NOTA.
Interested applicants must submit initial concept papers by February 17, 2021. Applications can be made by clicking on this link.
Additional information is available here.
Snohomish County PUD makes significant progress in power restoration efforts
January 14, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 14, 2021
Washington State’s Snohomish County PUD reported making significant progress in restoring power to customers in the wake of storms that hit the PUD’s service territory this week.
Snohomish on Jan. 14 noted that crews have been working all through the night and had restored almost 80,000 customers in the last 24 hours.
“We’re down to 15,530 customers out from a high of 95k. We will keep working until power is restored to everyone,” the PUD said in a Facebook post.
In an earlier Facebook post, the PUD noted that it had “reached out to our fellow public power utilities in the region and help is on the way! Five mutual aid crews are currently working in the field, including line crews from Benton PUD, Grant PUD, Grays Harbor PUD and Okanogan PUD.”
Mutual aid contracts allow the PUD to reach out during major storms to ask for help and get the lights on faster and safer, Snohomish said.
FERC asks CDC to prioritize vaccination for energy workforce
January 14, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 14, 2021
Commissioners with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Jan. 13 sent a letter to the leaders of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) asking the CDC to prioritize a subset of the energy workforce for the COVID-19 vaccine.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recently updated its vaccine allocation guidance to place the energy workforce in Phase 1c of distribution priority.
In their letter, the FERC Commissioners asked the CDC to consider prioritizing a subset of the energy workforce to a higher level (Phase 1b).
“We recognize that developing vaccine guidance is a complex, iterative task that requires the balancing of numerous equities,” the Commissioners wrote in their letter.
“We write with a narrow request: as the Advisory Committee continues to review and update its recommendations, we urge you to consider that a subset of the energy workforce be included in Phase 1b — specifically, highly trained electrical field workers, power plant operators, transmission and distribution grid operators, and personnel who procure the energy needed to balance the grid on a moment-to-moment basis,” the letter said.
“Those workers’ duties can only be performed on-site, usually in close quarters, where full adherence to social distancing guidelines is impossible. And while these utility employees can be counted as among the most critical among the American workforce, they represent a relatively small population,” the FERC commissioners wrote.
“We understand that the number is likely to be on the order of thousands of workers in each state. As such, we urge you to consider prioritizing these workers as the CDC continues revising its vaccine guidance.”
The letter was signed by FERC Chairman James Danly and Commissioners Neil Chatterjee, Richard Glick, Allison Clements and Mark Christie.
APPA supports prioritization of COVID-19 vaccine for mission essential workers
Organizations representing state and local governments should ask their members to designate energy industry mission-essential workers as high priority for voluntary access to initial inoculation against COVID-19, a group of energy industry trade associations including the American Public Power Association and unions said in a Dec. 3 letter.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Distribution and prioritization of access to vaccinations is a state and locally-lead process.
The American Public Power Association is urging its members to contact their respective local and state health departments to articulate the need for access to vaccinations.
Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in December 2020 highlighted the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce Guidance Version 4.0. “Although this version of the guidance is unchanged from the August 2020 release, we want to reiterate our belief that it remains an important tool for COVID-19 planning, even in this new environment,” CISA said.
CISA issued the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce Guidance for COVID-19 response in collaboration with other federal agencies, State and local governments, and the private sector.
The guidance is intended to help state, local, tribal, and territorial officials and organizations protect their workers and communities and ensure the continued safe and secure operation of critical infrastructure, by identifying the universe of essential workers that may require specialized risk management strategies so that they can work safely.
It can also be used to begin planning and preparing for the allocation of scarce resources used to protect essential workers against COVID-19.
Solar and wind dominate new capacity additions this year: EIA
January 13, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
January 13, 2021
Solar and wind power installations will dominate new capacity additions in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Developers and power plant owners plan to build 39.7 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity in 2021 with solar and wind power accounting for 39 percent and 31 percent of that total, respectively, according to the EIA’s latest inventory of electricity generators. That translates to 15.4 GW of utility scale solar installations, a new record, and 12.2 GW of new wind power capacity.
EIA is tracking a total of 6.6 GW of natural gas-fired plants that are expected to come online this year. Most of those plants, 3.9 GW will be combined-cycle generators and most of the additions are planned for Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The planned solar capacity well surpasses the 12 GW installed last year. More than half of the new solar capacity is planned for Texas, Nevada, California, and North Carolina.
EIA expects another 4.1 GW of small-scale solar photovoltaic capacity to enter service in 2021.
The 12.2 GW of expected wind capacity additions, however, represents a sharp decline from the 21 GW of wind power that came online last year. This year’s expected increase in wind capacity is bolstered by two large projects, the 12-megawatt (MW) Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project sited 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, and the 999-MW Traverse wind farm in Oklahoma.
New battery energy storage capacity, however, is expected to see the largest jump in 2021, more than quadrupling to 4.3 GW, according to EIA data. The agency, part of the Department of Energy, cited the rapid growth of renewable generation as a major driver in the increase of storage capacity because the technology is increasingly bundled with renewable capacity. EIA noted that a 409-MW storage facility is under construction at the Manatee Solar Energy Center in Florida and slated to be the world’s largest solar-powered battery when it comes online later this year.
The new year is also expected to see the commissioning of the first new nuclear power station in 30 years, the 2,200-MW Vogtle plant in Georgia, which will account for 3 percent of the total capacity expected online in 2021.
California ISO, CPUC and CEC issue final report on causes of rotating outages
January 13, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 13, 2021
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and California Energy Commission (CEC) on Jan. 13 issued a final root cause analysis of the August 2020 heat wave and rotating outages in the state.
On August 14 and 15, 2020, the CAISO was forced to institute rotating electricity outages in California in the midst of a West-wide extreme heat wave. Following these emergency events, California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the CAISO, CPUC, and CEC to report on the root causes of the events leading to the August outages.
The CAISO, CPUC and CEC produced a preliminary report on October 6, 2020, and have since continued their analysis to confirm and supplement their preliminary findings.
The report released on Jan. 13 serves as the final root cause analysis and incorporates additional data analysis not available when the preliminary report was published.
The final root cause analysis confirms the preliminary report’s findings that the three major factors leading to the August outages were related to extreme weather conditions, resource adequacy and planning processes, and market practices.
“This final root cause analysis provides important insights and lessons learned about the factors that contributed to the rotating power outages of last summer,” said CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer in a statement. “As we prepare for summer 2021 and beyond, I look forward to working closely with the CPUC, CEC, policymakers and regional stakeholders to bring our planning, procurement and operational practices together into a modernized and well-integrated resource adequacy framework for California.”
In a jointly issued news release, the CAISO, CPUC and CEC said that since August, they have taken various actions “and continue focused efforts to prepare California for extreme heat waves next summer without having to resort to rotating outages.”
The CAISO, CPUC and CEC provided a number of examples related to those actions and efforts.
Among other things, the CPUC opened an emergency reliability rulemaking to procure additional resources to meet California’s electricity demand in summer 2021.
Through this proceeding, the CPUC has already directed the state’s three large investor-owned utilities to seek contracts for additional supply-side capacity and has requested proposals for additional demand-side resources that can be available during the net demand peak period (i.e., the hours past the gross peak when solar production is very low or zero) for summer 2021 and summer 2022.
The CPUC and parties to the proceeding, including the CAISO, will continue to evaluate proposals and procurement targets for both supply-side and demand-side resources.
The CPUC is also tracking progress on generation and battery storage projects that are currently under construction in California to ensure there are no CPUC-related regulatory barriers that would prevent them from being completed by their targeted online dates. The CAISO will continue to work with developers to address interconnection issues as they arise.
Meanwhile, the CAISO is continuing to perform analysis supporting an increase to the CPUC’s resource adequacy program procurement targets. Based on the analysis to date, the CAISO recommends that the targets apply to both the gross peak and the critical hour of the net demand peak period during the months of June through October 2021.
For its part, the CEC is conducting probabilistic studies that evaluate the loss of load expectation on the California system to determine the amount of capacity that needs to be installed to meet the desired service reliability targets.
In addition, the CAISO, CPUC, and CEC are planning to enhance the efficacy of Flex Alerts in the state to maximize consumer conservation and other demand side efforts during extreme heat events.
Also, preparations by the CAISO, CPUC, and CEC are underway to improve advance coordination for contingencies, including communication protocols and development of a contingency plan. “The contingency plan will draw from actions taken statewide under the leadership of the Governor’s Office to mitigate the anticipated shortfall from August 17 through 19, 2020,” they said.
“Publicly owned utilities have been leaders in achieving the California’s aggressive clean energy and carbon reduction goals, and during the August event, POUs made significant power supply contributions to help the state avoid further widespread outages,” said Barry Moline, executive director, California Municipal Utilities Association. “Our emphasis has always been on maintaining the highest reliability and controlling costs. As we move forward, we’ll be working closely with California leaders to keep these objectives front and center to protect our customers.”
The final root cause analysis is available here.
DEED project demonstrates costs and benefits of reclosers in Florida
January 12, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
January 12, 2021
Replacing fuses with reclosers can lead to a “notable” reduction in the number and duration of outages, according to the results of a Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments (DEED) project in Florida.
The project, Demonstration Project to Achieve Cost Effective Reliability Improvement Using Single Phase Reclosers, involved the demonstration of advanced reclosers at three Florida utilities: the Town of Havana, Keys Energy in Key West, and the City of Tallahassee. The Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA), an Orlando-based wholesale power agency, applied for the DEED grant and managed the project on behalf of the member utilities.
The TripSaver II Cutout Mounted Recloser manufactured by S&C Electric was selected for the project because of the low installed cost, ease of installation and reported success by some FMPA members who have installed TripSavers on their systems.
A circuit selection methodology was developed for the project and 13 reclosers were installed at each of the three utilities for a total of 39 reclosers.
FMPA’s report on the DEED project noted that legacy recloser designs are bulky, contain oil and lack communication and data recording capability while newer designs are more compact, less costly, and do not use oil making them highly desirable for single-phase applications.
Despite the advantages of more recent design reclosers, the report noted that FMPA member cities face barriers such as lack of internal staff to lead a reliability initiative, lack of engineering support to analyze their network and select recloser locations, and a perceived high cost relative to the reliability benefit.
“The TripSavers installed in two cities experienced fewer faults than what was expected given the laterals’ outage history,” according to FMPA’s report on the DEED project.
A decline in storms and wildlife activity may have resulted in reduction of outages, but further analysis will be required to determine the influence of external factors on the project’s results. Nonetheless, “it was proven that even a limited deployment of reclosers could have a significant impact for a small system” and in a “much larger system, results indicate that replacement of a small percentage of lateral fuses with TripSavers reclosers could yield “notable” improvements in both System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) and System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) metrics, according to the report.
If utilities interested in pursuing a lateral recloser deployment target their worst performing laterals regardless of the feeder they could expect results “better than those achieved in this project,” according to the DEED report.
The report also noted that many utilities, particularly the smaller ones, struggle with the same barriers to deploying advanced reclosers that some FMPA members face.
“It is FMPA’s hope that the accomplishments of this project will be helpful in assisting other members wishing to deploy single phase reclosers as a cost-effective means to improve their system reliability,” the report concluded.
Specifically, FMPA said the project could provide guidance on circuit selection criteria, actual performance data, and an indicative range of investment costs necessary to avoid a single customer interruption.
The DEED grant from the American Public Power Association awarded FMPA $64,400 to carry out the project. FMPA, the three participating cities, and S&C Electric also contributed funding for the project, bringing the total budget to $134,000.
DEED members can read more about the project, Demonstration Project to Achieve Cost Effective Reliability Improvement Using Single-Phase Reclosers, on the DEED project database.
A webinar related to the project is scheduled for Jan. 28. For additional details, click here.
American Public Power Association invites board nominations
January 12, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 12, 2021
The American Public Power Association is inviting voting members to nominate candidates for APPA’s 2021-2022 Board of Directors. Nominations are due no later than February 12, 2021.
The Nominating Committee will meet virtually on Monday, March 1, 2021, to consider nominations for new board members. The Committee’s recommendations for new board members will be presented to the association’s membership at the annual business meeting held in June during APPA’s National Conference.
The nomination form can be found here.
A chart available here lists board members who will continue on the board, those who are eligible for re-election, and those who are not eligible for re-election. It also includes one open seat due to a retirement and one newly added seat.
Directors are normally elected for three-year terms and are eligible to serve two consecutive terms. Any director who has served five or more years consecutively is not eligible for re-election until a period of one year has elapsed.
Contact Cartina Parks-Williams at: CParks-Williams@publicpower.org if you need any assistance or additional information.
Berlin, Maryland, generator expected to enhance peak shaving capabilities
January 12, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
January 12, 2021
The town of Berlin, Md., has deployed a 2 megawatt (MW) natural gas generator, replacing a diesel generator.
The Caterpillar G3520 generator is expected to enhance the town’s peak shaving capabilities and joins a fleet of three generators that operate about 100 hours a year and are used to offset the cost of energy during periods of high demand in the summer and winter.
Berlin officials estimate its upgraded generation system will save the town up to $600,000 in annual energy costs, including about $200,000 in reduced transmission congestion costs paid to the PJM Interconnection. In addition, maintenance of a gas generator is about half the cost of maintenance for a diesel generator and natural gas is cheaper than diesel gas.
“For more than a century, the Town of Berlin has managed its own power generation capabilities to minimize energy costs for local residents and businesses,” Jeff Fleetwood, town administrator for Berlin, said in a statement.
“We take tremendous pride in offering the lowest prices for electricity on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” Tim Lawrence, Berlin’s electric utility director, said in a statement. “This Cat gas generator set offers the reliability and low total owning and operating costs that will benefit the town’s finances and utility customers for years to come.”
The Caterpillar natural gas diesel also has lower emissions and is the first generator in the 2 MW to 2.5 MW range certified by the Environmental Protection Agency for use in 60 megahertz power markets.
“Cat gas generator sets are designed to deliver low-emissions, high-efficiency performance to the utilities and their customers who rely on them for the long haul,” Bart Myers, general manager in Caterpillar’s electric power division, said in a statement.
Carter Machinery installed the new generator and will provide periodic inspections and service through a planned maintenance program.
In February 2015, the Town of Berlin became a member of American Municipal Power, which provides wholesale energy and member services for 135 publicly owned electric utilities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Maryland, and Delaware.