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JEA Becomes 33rd Public Power Utility to Join Florida Municipal Power Agency

May 11, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 11, 2023

Florida public power utility JEA has joined the Florida Municipal Power Agency, making it the 33rd municipal electric utility to become a member of the Orlando-based wholesale power.

“The partnership will enable the utilities to maximize its efforts in providing customers affordable, reliable and clean power. This includes bringing cost-effective solar power to the sunshine state, something the utilities are doing through the Florida Municipal Solar Project,” FMPA said in a news release.

The Florida Municipal Solar Project is a partnership between the Florida Municipal Power Agency and 16 public power utilities. The first two solar sites came online in June 2020. Two additional solar farms are scheduled to come online by the end of 2024. When complete, the project will be one of the largest municipal-backed solar projects in the country, providing nearly 300 megawatts of energy.

“JEA is committed to providing energy that balances reliability, affordability and sustainability to serve our Northeast Florida customers, said JEA Managing Director & CEO Jay Stowe. “We look forward to working with FMPA to achieve those goals.”

JEA is the largest municipal electric utility in Florida and among the largest in the U.S., serving more than 500,000 electric customers across four Northeast Florida counties.

“Municipal utilities work together through FMPA to enhance their operations for the benefit of their customers,” said FMPA General Manager and CEO Jacob Williams. “JEA is a well-run utility with great resources, so we look forward to the many ways we can collaborate.”

Maryland Governor Signs Energy Storage Bill into Law, Sets 3,000 MW Target

May 11, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 11, 2023

Maryland Governor Wes Moore on May 8 signed into law a bill that establishes a 3,000-megawatt target for energy storage and requires the Maryland Public Service Commission to develop a cost-effective procurement program.

The measure, H.B. 910, calls for the PSC to establish targets for the cost-effective deployment of new energy storage devices in the state with a goal of achieving:

ApprenticeOhio Approves AMP as Registered Apprenticeship Sponsor

May 11, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 11, 2023

American Municipal Power on May 4 announced that its lineworker training program has been approved as a registered apprenticeship Sponsor by ApprenticeOhio.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship recognizes ApprenticeOhio as a registered apprenticeship program serving to advise, consult and register programs that meet specific criterial for quality and safety resulting in nationally portable credentials.

“We have worked for four years to bring this approval to fruition, and we are pleased that ApprenticeOhio recognizes the safe and high-quality training services that AMP provides to its members’ lineworkers in their apprentice journey,” said Michelle Palmer, PE, vice president of technical services and compliance at AMP. “Thank you to the AMP training team for their work in continuing to build upon the lineworker training program that we offer our members.”

The approval will allow AMP members, regardless of state, to register their apprentices for certification through AMP’s registered apprenticeship program with AMP serving as the group sponsor. A registered apprenticeship program combines on-the-job training and related instruction under the program standards as approved by the U.S. DOL and the Ohio State Apprenticeship Council.

Those apprentices who complete all steps of the apprenticeship program will be eligible to receive certification from the U.S. DOL.

More information about AMP’s technical services, including lineworker apprentice training, can be found here.

Midwestern Coalition Submits Bid for Clean Hydrogen Hub Funding

May 10, 2023

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
May 10, 2023

The Great Lakes Clean Hydrogen Hub coalition is the latest regional group to submit a proposal for a share of the $8 billion in federal funds from the Department of Energy’s regional clean hydrogen hub program.

In April, seven Northeast states submitted a bid to compete for a $1.25 billion share of the clean hydrogen hub funding made available under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Also in April, the Southeast Hydrogen Hub, comprised of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities, Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Battelle Memorial Institute, submitted a bid for clean hydrogen hub funding.

The Great Lakes Clean Hydrogen Hub’s application details a $2 billion plan to create a clean hydrogen hub to serve Ohio, Michigan, and portions of Pennsylvania and Indiana. The coalition said its proposed project would use carbon dioxide-free nuclear power to produce clean hydrogen at a competitive cost and, because it would use proven production technologies, would minimize the time required to achieve full production of 100-plus metric tonnes of hydrogen per day.

The Great Lakes Clean Hydrogen is led by Linde, a global industrial gases and engineering company, and includes Energy Harbor, a power generation company that owns nuclear plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia; steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs; GE Aerospace; the University of Toledo, and the Glass Manufacturing Industry Council.

The coalition said its composition offers shovel ready opportunities to replace fossil fuels with clean hydrogen and it has been working with the states of Ohio and Michigan, technology suppliers, hydrogen consumers, state and regional academic institutions, national laboratories, and nonprofit organizations.

The group said it aims to help major industries across the Midwest to decarbonize and also plans to serve the hydrogen needs of the mobility market, including trucking, transit buses, rail, aviation, and marine.

In November 2022, Salt River Project, along with other members of the Center for an Arizona Carbon-Neutral Economy, submitted a concept paper for federal funding of clean hydrogen initiatives.

And in March 2022, the governors of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming signed a memorandum of understanding for the development of a regional clean hydrogen hub that would be funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

California Community Choice Aggregator MCE Enters Contracts for Geothermal Energy

May 10, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 10, 2023

California community choice aggregator MCE has entered into new contracts for 134 megawatts of geothermal energy.

“Due to the 24/7 nature of geothermal energy, these contracts fill critical evening hours when power costs are high and emissions are the highest, helping reduce long-term costs for customers and reducing system emissions,” MCE noted.

The geothermal projects include:

MCE is a not-for-profit public agency and the preferred electricity provider for more than 580,000 customer accounts and 1.5 million residents and businesses across Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, and Solano counties.

Ind. Utilities Should Reassess Plans for Gas-Fired Plants in Light of Energy Storage Benefits: Consultant

May 9, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 9, 2023

An analysis completed by Strategen Consulting concludes that Indiana investor-owned utilities should reconsider plans to construct new natural gas-fired combustion turbine plants given the confluence of factors that now make energy storage a competitive alternative.

In 2020 and 2021, three of Indiana’s investor-owned utilities, Northern Indiana Public Service Company, Indiana Michigan Power Company and CenterPoint Energy Indiana proposed to build new natural gas-fired combustion turbine plants in their integrated resource plans.

Strategen said that “much has changed since then, justifying a reassessment of each of the utilities’ plans,” including:

Prepared for Advanced Energy United, the report finds that the IRA enables significant savings and makes battery storage with equivalent capacity more economical than each utility’s proposed CT.

In the year of deployment, battery storage would provide savings of $3.4 million for NIPSCO, $66.2 million in savings for I&M, and $3.5 million in savings for CenterPoint, before taking into account additional factors such as stranded assets and fuel price volatility risk, the consulting firm said. Savings in subsequent years are anticipated to be even greater.

The full report is available for download.

Ind. Utilities Should Reassess Plans for Gas-Fired Plants in Light of Energy Storage Benefits: Consultant

May 9, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 9, 2023

An analysis completed by Strategen Consulting concludes that Indiana investor-owned utilities should reconsider plans to construct new natural gas-fired combustion turbine plants given the confluence of factors that now make energy storage a competitive alternative.

In 2020 and 2021, three of Indiana’s investor-owned utilities, Northern Indiana Public Service Company, Indiana Michigan Power Company and CenterPoint Energy Indiana proposed to build new natural gas-fired combustion turbine plants in their integrated resource plans.

Strategen said that “much has changed since then, justifying a reassessment of each of the utilities’ plans,” including:

Prepared for Advanced Energy United, the report finds that the IRA enables significant savings and makes battery storage with equivalent capacity more economical than each utility’s proposed CT.

In the year of deployment, battery storage would provide savings of $3.4 million for NIPSCO, $66.2 million in savings for I&M, and $3.5 million in savings for CenterPoint, before taking into account additional factors such as stranded assets and fuel price volatility risk, the consulting firm said. Savings in subsequent years are anticipated to be even greater.

The full report is available for download.

Researchers Use Machine Learning To Better Understand Urban Energy Use

May 9, 2023

by APPA News
May 9, 2023

Researchers in Drexel University in Philadelphia have developed a way to use machine learning to aid energy reduction strategies in an urban setting.

In a study, Performance evaluation of deep learning architectures for load and temperature forecasting under dataset size constraints and seasonality, the researchers at the university’s College of Engineering detailed the machine learning model they developed to help predict how energy consumption will change as urban neighborhoods evolve.

“For Philadelphia in particular, neighborhoods vary so much from place to place in prevalence of certain housing features and zoning types that it’s important to customize energy programs for each neighborhood, rather than trying to enact blanket policies for carbon reduction across the entire city or county,” Simi Hoque, a professor in the College of Engineering who led machine learning research for granular energy-use modeling, said in a statement.

In 2017, Philadelphia set a goal of becoming carbon dioxide neutral by 2050, led in large part by a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from building energy use, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of Philadelphia’s carbon dioxide footprint at the time.

Existing machine learning programs, properly deployed, can provide some clarity on how zoning decisions could affect future greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, Hoque said. “Right now there is a huge volume of energy use data, but it’s often just too inconsistent and messy to be reasonably put to use,” he said. For example, he said, a dataset corresponding to certain housing characteristics may have usable energy estimates, but another dataset corresponding to socioeconomic features could be missing too many values to be usable. “Machine learning is well equipped to handle this challenge,” he said.

Hoque and his team developed a process using two machine learning programs, one that can tease out patterns from massive data sets and use them to make projections about future energy and a second that can pinpoint the details in the model that likely had the greatest effect on changing the projections.

In addition to establishing sustainable energy use practices for current buildings, the researchers said the model can also be used to incorporate energy use projections into zoning decisions that can inform future development.

The researchers tested the model by providing input data from a hypothetical scenario proposed by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission that estimated continuing economic development in Philadelphia through the year 2045.

Looking at residential energy use for the 2045 scenario, the program suggested that six of the 11 areas would decrease their energy use – mostly lower-income regions. While mixed-income regions would likely see an increase in energy use.

“Overall, the residential energy prediction model finds that features related to lower building intensity relate to lower energy consumption estimates in the model, for example lower lot acreage, lower number of rooms per unit,” they wrote. “These results give reason to reinvestigate the effects of upzoning policies, commonly present as an affordable housing solution in Philadelphia and other cities across the U.S., and subsequent changes in energy use for these areas.”

“With respect to the commercial sector, the study suggests that commercial buildings in the top quantiles of square footage and employee count should be the primary targets for energy reduction programs,” the authors said. “The research posits an approximate threshold of 10,000 square feet of total building area, with buildings over that marker being prioritized due to their disproportionate influence on the energy prediction of the model.”

The researchers said more testing is necessary and the program will improve as more data becomes available. The next step for the research would be to analyze areas of Philadelphia with known high energy use to better understand the factors contributing to that high use.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Proposes Consumer Protection Rule for PACE Loans

May 9, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 9, 2023

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a rule to establish consumer protections for residential Property Assessed Clean Energy loans.

PACE loans, secured by a property tax lien on a borrower’s home, are often promoted as a way to finance clean energy improvements such as solar panels.

The proposed rule would require lenders to assess a borrower’s ability to repay a PACE loan and would provide a framework for how these loans will be treated under the Truth in Lending Act.

The CFPB also published a report on residential PACE loans, which found that the loans cause an increase in borrowers falling behind on their mortgage payments, along with other negative credit outcomes.

Residential PACE loans finance home improvements for borrowers, who pay back the loans through increased property tax payments over time. Eligible upgrades can include energy and water efficiency projects, or projects to prepare homes for natural disasters. From 2014-2020, a majority of PACE loans were for home improvements for natural disaster preparedness. The obligation of paying the loan back through higher property tax payments remains with the property even if the borrower sells the property.

Although PACE lending is authorized by local governments, private companies typically administer the programs, which can include marketing of the loans, managing originations, and making the lending decisions.

In October 2022, the FTC and State of California sued one of these private PACE administrators , Ygrene Energy Fund Inc., to force it to stop deceptive, coercive, and fraudulent sales practices.

If finalized, the proposed rule would require PACE creditors and PACE companies to consider a consumer’s ability to repay when issuing a new PACE loan, and it would amend a regulation to address how the Truth in Lending Act applies to PACE transactions.

Among other amendments, the proposed rule would adjust disclosure requirements to better fit PACE loans and to help consumers understand the loans’ impact on their property tax payments.

Public comments on the proposal are due by July 26, 2023, or 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, whichever is later.

APPA’s DEED Program Details Funding for R&D, Scholarships, and Internships

May 9, 2023

by Jackson Bedbury
APPA News
May 9, 2023

In its first round of funding for the year, the American Public Power Association’s Demonstration of Energy Efficiency and Development program awarded $457,425 to support five projects, in addition to $42,000 for scholarships and internships. The awards span 16 public power utilities across 13 states.

In Alabama, Huntsville Utilities will receive $125,000 for its Battery Energy Storage System to enhance grid resiliency during extreme weather conditions. The DEED program also approved $120,000 in funding to support Energy Northwest’s (Washington) efforts to equitably deploy advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies.

Snohomish County PUD (Washington) will receive $75,000 to combat increasing temperatures and reduce summertime loads by designing and piloting a community tree planting program, and $75,000 will also go toward the City of Palo Alto Utilities’ project to create an Electrification Funding Model to estimate the California city’s “community cost to electrify.” Finally, $62,425 in funding was awarded for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities to create a toolkit to help utilities plan for increased electrification demanded by the transportation sector.

In addition to these utility grants, DEED approved five Lineworker & Technical Educational Scholarships totaling $10,000 and eight student internships totaling $32,000.

When reviewing proposals, the DEED program considers criteria including a project’s applicability to other public power utilities, the development of new equipment or methodologies, the timeliness and transferability of results, and overall benefit to utility operations.

For more information on the DEED program, to become a DEED member, or to apply for a DEED grant, see the APPA website.