Newton, N.C., Electric Department Recognized For Safety Efforts
July 11, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 11, 2022
The Newton Electric Department in Newton, N.C., was recently honored with the North Carolina Association of Municipal Electric Systems Safety Award for 2021.
The award recognizes the staff of the Newton Electric Department for providing affordable, reliable electric service to Newton’s nearly 5,000 electric customers without sustaining any lost-time injuries in 2021. The award was presented at the association’s recent annual meeting.
Newton Electric Division Manager Doug Wesson has developed his team’s safety programs over the course of his career, and Electric Division Supervisor Jeff Cochrane has assumed a growing role in continuous improvement of safety programs in recent years.
The City of Newton is a public power community with an electric system that dates to 1896 and today serves 4,710 customers.
The Newton Electric Department staff includes one manager, one supervisor, six lineman, two tree trimmers, one generator technician, and one meter technician. The team has more than 100 years of combined experience in electric distribution.
Newton Electric Department staff were recognized for their accomplishments at the Newton City Council meeting on June 21.
Grid Operators Respond To High Temperatures, Soaring Power Demand
July 11, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 11, 2022
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the PJM Interconnection took steps to respond to hot weather this week and the expected increases in power demand.
ERCOT on July 10 asked Texas residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve electricity, Monday, July 11 between 2-8 p.m. as extreme hot weather created record power demand across Texas.
Along with the conservation appeal, ERCOT also issued a watch for a projected reserve capacity shortage from 2-8 p.m. on July 11. As of July 10, no system-wide outages were expected.
The grid operator noted that conservation is a reliability tool ERCOT has deployed more than four dozen times since 2008 to successfully manage grid operations.
The notification is issued when projected reserves may fall below 2,300 megawatts (MW) for 30 minutes or more.
In a recent episode of the American Public Power Association’s Public Power Now podcast, Woody Rickerson, Vice President of System Planning and Weatherization at ERCOT, detailed ongoing efforts by the grid operator to bolster reliability in the state.
The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) reported that it set a peak load record on July 11 as region-wide electricity use reached 51,377 MW. This surpassed SPP’s previous record of 51,090 MW set July 5, 2022.
Meanwhile, PJM on July 11 said it issued a Hot Weather Alert for its Mid-Atlantic region for July 12 in anticipation of 90-degree temperatures.
A Hot Weather Alert helps to prepare transmission and generation personnel and facilities for extreme heat and/or humidity that may cause capacity problems on the grid. Temperatures were expected to go above 90 degrees.
The Mid-Atlantic region is made up of the Atlantic City Electric, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Delmarva Power & Light, Jersey Central Power & Light, Met-Ed, Penelec, PECO Energy, Pepco, PPL Electric Utilities, PSE&G, and Orange & Rockland (Rockland Electric Company) transmission zones.
PJM said it was prepared to serve a forecasted summer peak demand for electricity of approximately 149,000 MW but has performed reliability studies at even higher loads — in excess of 157,000 MW.
PJM has approximately 185,000 MW of installed generating capacity available to meet customer needs, with sufficient resources available in reserve to cover generation that is unexpectedly unavailable or for other unanticipated changes in demand, it said.
Last year’s peak demand was approximately 149,000 MW.
New York DEC Denies Air Permit Renewal To Cryptocurrency Mining Power Plant
July 8, 2022
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
July 8, 2022
New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has denied renewal of an air permit to a 107-megawatt (MW) power plant in Yates County that is used to power computer operations for proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining.
In denying a Title V air permit renewal for Greenidge Generation in the town of Torrey, the DEC cited the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the facility since the passage of the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act driven by “the change in the primary purpose of its operations.”
The power plant originally was fired by coal. The previous owners relinquished their Title V permit in 2021. When it bought the plant and switched fuel primarily to natural gas, Greenidge obtained a five-year Title V permit in September 2016.
The DEC noted that in its original permit application, Greenidge said the generating plant would be used as a peaking plant to sell electricity on a limited basis into the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) market. “At that time, Greenidge did not indicate that it intended to utilize a significant amount of the energy generated by the Facility behind-the-meter for its own purposes,” The DEC said in its letter denying the permit renewal.
In the letter, the DEC goes on to document that between 2017 and 2018 Greenidge did not provide any energy to cryptocurrency mining operations and virtually all energy was used for NYISO peaking purposes. However, that output profile changed over the years, rising to about 10 percent of output for cryptocurrency operations in 2019 to nearly 55 percent in 2021. Meanwhile the overall energy generated by the plant also increased during that period.
In addition, the DEC said that plant’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rose “drastically” over the years to almost tripling in 2020 from its 2017-2019 emissions output.
In its denial, the DEC said the plant’s continued operation would be inconsistent with the statewide statutory limits in GHG emissions because actual GHG emissions from the facility have increased; the rise in GHG emissions is primarily the result of Greenidge’s change in the primary purpose of the plant, and renewal of the permit would allow Greenidge to continue to increase its GHG emissions.
New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, establishes economy-wide requirements to reduce statewide GHG emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
In a statement, Greenidge said it would continue to operate the plant under its existing Title V permit “for as long as it takes to successfully challenge this arbitrary and capricious decision.”
Greenidge also noted that on March 25 its proposed reducing the facility’s permitted GHG emissions by an additional 40 percent by 2025, five years before the 2030 first emissions reduction target date. Greenidge also proposed to be a zero-carbon emitting facility by 2035, five years before the statewide target.
Greenidge further said in its statement that the DEC “never once engaged Greenidge since March 25th to finalize a Permit that would dramatically reduce GHG emissions and preserve upstate jobs.”
In its letter, the DEC acknowledged that Greenidge proposed “limited GHG mitigation measures” and “vague assurances” in its March 25 submission, which was filed after the close of the public comment period, and said those measures “are also insufficient, adding, “They would only provide minimal GHG mitigation and not fully account for the substantial increase in GHG emissions due to the Facility’s change in its primary purpose of operation.”
APPA Urges EPA To Withdraw Proposed Ozone Federal Implementation Plan
July 8, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 8, 2022
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should withdraw a proposed Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) addressing regional ozone transport for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the American Public Power Association (APPA) said in recent comments.
The proposed FIP provides for ozone season NOx reductions from electric generating units and industrial stationary sources. For EGUs, EPA proposed unprecedented NOx reductions due to effective retirements due to costly selective catalytic reduction (SCR) installation requirements and timeframes in addition to reduced capacity factors. The proposed FIP also introduces stringent new concepts such as a daily NOx rate, dynamic budgeting, and routine allowance bank recalibrations.
APPA’s June 21 comments recommend EPA publish a supplemental proposed rule that would correct many of the errors and assumptions under which the proposal is basedEPA published the proposed FIP in April 2022.
In the proposed rule, EPA claims to adhere closely to the four-step Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) framework that it has used in recent interstate transport rules to address interstate transport for the 2015 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS).
At the same time, EPA outlined changes to reflect “lessons learned from the performance of regulatory programs established by previous interstate transport rulemakings” and to incorporate “recent information on the nature of ozone transport and emissions reductions opportunities.”
“This is a vast understatement of the magnitude of the Proposed Rule’s deviations from EPA’s CSAPR framework,” APPA said.
EPA’s proposed changes to the electric generating unit trading program – including “dynamic budgets” and other proposed “enhancements” — exceed EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, APPA asserted.
To the extent EPA moves forward with its proposal, APPA offered a set of recommendations to improve implementation.
It said that EPA should undertake full notice-and-comment rulemaking if the agency adjusts state emission budgets from year to year and where state emission budgets are subject to year-over-year change, EPA should conduct an overcontrol analysis in those years.
EPA should also correct its air quality modeling in urban coastal areas to account for the unique characteristics of ozone formation in those areas. EPA must also conduct a new overcontrol analysis of these coastal areas using corrected modeling, APPA said.
EPA should increase compliance flexibility in the Groups 2 and 3 trading programs, it added.
And EPA should update its Reference Case analysis, NOx control technology modeling, cost projections, and equipment installation timelines, APPA said.
Reliability Concerns
Other industry stakeholders such as regional transmission organizations (RTO) and independent system operators (ISO) commenters raised concerns with EPA’s proposed FIP, pointing to energy reliability concerns due to the forecasted and rapid loss of fossil-fuel-fired generation by 2026.
In a joint set of comments filed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc.; Midcontinental Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO); PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM); and Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (SPP) the RTOs/ISOs observe that the proposed FIP could cause reliability challenges because:
• RTOs/ISOs are currently experiencing declining reserves when higher reserve margins are needed to address “extreme weather, high load conditions and generator retirements;”
• Time is needed to construct new generation and build transmission facilities;
• Thermal generators provide essential reliability services;
• The SCR installation date in 2026 presents a potential grid reliability concern due to likely retirements; and
• The Proposed Rule may cause non-retiring assets to operate at lower levels.
The RTOs/ISOs advocated for a “Reliability Safety Valve.” The Safety Valve concept was floated as part of the Clean Power Plan, as well. Here, the specifics of a safety valve are not defined in the Joint comments, but the RTOs/ISOs stated that it would not be a “blanket exemption” from compliance. Rather, a safety valve would be “tools and processes” tailored to address reliability issues.
Now that the comment period is closed EPA will be working to review the comments and draft a final rule which is expected next March.
PNNL Creates Model For Integrating Grid-Forming Inverters Into The Grid
July 6, 2022
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
July 6, 2022
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a model for a device that could improve how well renewable power sources can be integrated into the bulk power system.
The device, a grid-forming inverter, converts direct current (DC) electricity produced by sources such as solar, wind or batteries, to alternating current (AC).
The model devised by PNNL engineers is designed to allow utility operators to test how to safely add new power sources to the grid in a way that increases power system resiliency and stability.
PNNL’s grid-forming inverter modeling work started in the development of microgrids. With support from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity Microgrid Program, PNNL led and participated in multiple grid-forming inverter modeling projects for microgrid studies. That research showed it is possible to run a 100 percent inverter-based microgrid using grid-forming inverters, which can operate on their own without the reliance on conventional synchronous power generators.
Building on that work, Wei Du, a PNNL senior researcher, and his team have been investigating how grid-forming inverters affect large-scale transmission and distribution systems.
The PNNL researchers developed the generic droop-controlled, grid-forming inverter model for transmission system studies. That model specification was recently approved by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council’s Modeling and Validation Subcommittee, making it available to be integrated into commercially available grid simulation tools used by thousands of utilities in North America and other parts of the world.
“Grid-forming inverters will become more and more important to power systems in the future,” Song Wang, who chairs the WECC Modeling and Validation Subcommittee, said in a statement. “The existing inverter models in the WECC model library are all grid-following-based and cannot represent grid-forming inverters. The new model developed by PNNL enables WECC to study how grid-forming inverters will impact power grids at the transmission level. Our preliminary simulation studies based on the model show that grid-forming inverters can impact power system stability in a very positive way. We believe the work done by PNNL will greatly help the utility industry better understand grid-forming inverters and their potential impacts on power systems.”
PNNL’s research into the grid-forming inverter model was internally funded with further support from the DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO).
SETO and WETO recently awarded $25 million to the Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) Consortium to further investigate grid-forming technologies.
UNIFI is a multi-year effort to create an ecosystem for grid-forming inverters that is led by National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Washington, and the Electric Power Research Institute.
The PNNL researchers’ goal is to work with UNIFI to unify the models of various grid-forming technologies and their diverse applications in power systems.
“To achieve the national targets of clean electricity and decarbonized economy, inverter-based renewable generation will be an essential part of the future energy mix,” Henry Huang, a PNNL fellow, said in a statement. “The inverters will fundamentally change power system dynamics and thus require new approaches to model and simulate such a system.”
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Study Recommendations To Yield Lower Bills
July 6, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 6, 2022
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) on July 5 announced the completion of a two-year independent power rates study for its renewable electricity service programs, CleanPowerSF and Hetch Hetchy Power.
The recommendations from the study “pave the way for new customer savings, including decreased monthly electricity bills for the vast majority of CleanPowerSF residential and commercial customers,” the SFPUC sad.
The study prioritizes affordable rates for both CleanPowerSF and Hetch Hetchy Power customers, it said.
Effective July 1, CleanPowerSF generation rates will decrease by about 3% for an average residential customer and about 5% for an average small commercial customer for the next year. For average Hetch Hetchy Power residential customers, their bills will be 30% cheaper compared to Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), while most municipal and commercial customers will also continue to see savings compared to the investor-owned utility.
The SFPUC said that the rate study also promotes stability for customers and greater independence from PG&E. The SFPUC said it is committed to only updating power rates once per year to promote predictable rates for customers.
In line with the other recommendations from the study, the SFPUC will also set its own rates and no longer follow PG&E. Since January 2021, PG&E has changed in generation rates four times.
The adopted rates support the city’s climate goals and electrification by offering new electric vehicle rates for Hetch Hetchy Power customers, expanding electricity rates for residential customers transitioning to all-electric buildings, and further enabling CleanPowerSF customers to transition to 100% renewable energy by lowering SuperGreen premiums for all commercial customers. At the same time, there will be funding for investments in new renewable generation and storage, and renewal of the Hetchy Water & Power power facilities.
The power rates study and subsequent recommendations were the result of a process that began in November 2020.
The study, which is the first such analysis since CleanPowerSF’s inception and is required every 5 years, prioritized several key areas: revenue sufficiency for SFPUC operations and investments, customer equity, environmental sustainability, affordability, predictability, and simplicity.
The rates study included stakeholder input from the Rate Fairness Board, customers, and other partners before it was presented to the SFPUC Commission and Board of Supervisors.
CleanPowerSF began serving customers in 2016. Today, CleanPowerSF serves about 385,000 customer accounts in San Francisco and offers 50% and 100% renewable electricity service options.
Along with CleanPowerSF, the SFPUC operates Hetch Hetchy Power, which generates and delivers energy to more than 4,000 customer accounts, including municipal buildings and facilities, such as City Hall, San Francisco International Airport, schools, libraries and the Muni transit system. Hetch Hetchy Power also provides electricity to some commercial and residential developments, including affordable housing sites.
Collectively, the two programs meet over 70 percent of the electricity demand in San Francisco.
Click here for additional details about the SFPUC.
New York Public Power Community Hosts Smart Grid Chip Pilot Project
July 5, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 5, 2022
The public power community of Lake Placid, N.Y., is hosting a smart grid chip pilot project involving Utilidata and NVIDIA.
The demonstration project in Lake Placid involves first generation meter adapters installed at customer locations along the circuit that serves the Olympic bobsled complex. The complex uses a lot of power, providing the opportunity to test out the product. Lake Placid hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics.
The smart grid chip captures and analyzes high resolution voltage and current waveform data to provide insights unique to the device’s location on the grid.
Once the meter adapter is installed, data will begin streaming immediately, a video providing details on the project notes. Devices can be moved throughout the project to various areas of interest.
The chips come preconfigured with core services for each pilot partner’s needs, leveraging waveform data, real-time communications and machine learning.
Chris Fadden, Meter Serviceman for the Village of Lake Placid, assisted with the installation of the inline units that Utilidata supplied.
“It was really just pulling the meter, installing the inline unit and then replacing the meter — about the same as installing a voltage recorder or any other piece of equipment,” he noted in an email.
Patrick Wells, Technical Coordinator for the Village of Lake Placid, said his role was to help pick out the locations for each of the devices. “Every now and then they send me some sample data that I can look at and give recommendations on what format would be best for us. The data they send is interesting and with more I am sure we could do a lot with it.”
The project remains ongoing, he said, and the devices are still operating.
In April 2022, Utilidata, a grid edge software company, announced that it was launching an advisory board with NVIDIA to guide the development and deployment of grid edge software solutions, including its recently announced smart grid chip.
Supreme Court Reverses Appeals Court’s Decision On Trump Plant Emissions Rule
July 1, 2022
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 1, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 30 reversed a U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit ruling striking down the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which repealed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) and replaced it with more limited regulations of carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
In a 6-3 opinion (West Virginia v. EPA), the majority objected to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) using the CPP to give states the option to promulgate regulations that would encourage “generation shifting,” or moving away from sources, such as coal, to cleaner sources of generation, such as natural gas or renewables.
The majority opinion, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that EPA’s use of generation-shifting as a system of emission reduction under section 111 of the Clean Air Act required clear congressional authorization under the major questions doctrine and found Congress had not given such clear authorization.
Role of Congress
On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), “Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in deciding how Americans will get their energy,” the opinion stated. “EPA decides, for instance, how much of a switch from coal to natural gas is practically feasible by 2020, 2025, and 2030 before the grid collapses, and how high energy prices can go as a result before they become unreasonably ‘exorbitant.’”
The majority argues that “there is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency,” adding that they also find it highly unlikely that Congress would leave to agency discretion the decision of how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades.
“The basic and consequential tradeoffs involved in such a choice are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself,” the majority said. “Congress certainly has not conferred a like authority upon EPA anywhere else in the Clean Air Act. The last place one would expect to find it is in the previously little-used backwater of Section 111(d).”
Carbon Emissions Caps
The Supreme Court’s precedent “counsels’ skepticism toward EPA’s claim that Section 111 empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach,” the opinion said. To overcome that skepticism, the government must “point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ to regulate in that manner.”
The government “looks to other provisions of the Clean Air Act for support. It points out that the Act elsewhere uses the word ‘system’ or ‘similar words’ to describe cap-and-trade schemes or other sector-wide mechanisms for reducing pollution.”
But the court said that “just because a cap-and-trade ‘system’ can be used to reduce emissions does not mean that it is the kind of ‘system of emission reduction’ referred to in Section 111. Indeed, the Government’s examples demonstrate why it is not.”
The majority went on to say that capping carbon dioxide emissions “at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity” may be a sensible solution,
but “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d).”
While the court noted that its decision was limited to whether the generation-shifting measures EPA identified as the “best system of emission reduction” are within the authority Congress granted under section 111. It did not discuss on what other measures EPA might take, beyond stressing the importance of EPA’s more limited, historical view of its authority under section 111.
The court said that a “decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
President Biden Directs Legal Team to Work With DOJ To Review Decision
In response to the decision, President Biden on June 30 said that he has directed his legal team to work with the Department of Justice and affected agencies “to review this decision carefully and find ways that we can, under federal law, continue protecting Americans from harmful pollution, including pollution that causes climate change.”
The court’s decision made clear that it is not saying that EPA lacks authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the CAA. In fact, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Spring Unified Agenda EPA is working to develop new rules to regulate GHG emissions from existing and new sources which will be informed by this court ruling.
Background
In 2015, the Obama Administration, through the CPP, adopted a broad view of EPA’s section 111(d) authority, requiring the electric power sector to shift generation away from fossil fuels to renewables.
The CPP was stayed by the Supreme Court in 2016 and never went into effect.
In June 2019, then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler signed the final Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule, replacing the CPP. The ACE Rule adopted a narrow view of section 111(d), seeking to curtail greenhouse gas emissions based only on pollution control measures applied at or to the source.
More recently, in January 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit moved to vacate and remand the ACE Rule.
The appeals court found that section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act does not require the best system of emission reduction to be limited to only those measures that can be applied at and to an individual source.
Because the Trump Administration’s EPA expressly based its repeal of the CPP and its promulgation of the ACE Rule on the premise that section 111(d) limits best system of emission reductionto such “behind-the-fenceline” measures, the D.C. Circuit held that the repeal of the CPP and ACE Rule must be vacated.
On October 29, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a review of the case, specifically agreeing to hear the parties’ arguments on whether EPA’s section 111(d) authority allows the agency to regulate the power generation industry in a manner as broad as the CPP.
DOE Announces RFI For Program To Site Clean Energy At Mines
July 1, 2022
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
July 1, 2022
The Department of Energy (DOE) on June 29 issued a Request for Information (RFI) for a program to fund clean energy projects on mine lands.
The Clean Energy Demonstrations on Current and Former Mine Land Program is funded with $500 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The aim of the program is to place clean energy demonstration projects on current or former mine lands across the United States.
Operated through DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the program will fund clean energy projects that demonstrate one or more of the following clean energy technologies: solar; microgrid; geothermal energy; direct air capture; fossil-fueled generation with carbon capture, utilization and sequestration; energy storage, including pumped storage hydropower and compressed air; and advanced nuclear.
Two of the clean energy demonstration projects funded under the program must include solar energy. The DOE is seeking information from respondents about opportunities to use domestically manufactured solar for those projects.
The RFI seeks feedback from a variety of stakeholders, including industry, community organizations, environmental justice organizations, labor unions, and state and local governments.
Deadlines for submissions in response to the RFI have not yet been announced.
The DOE is also soliciting public input on how to design the program to best encourage private sector investment in similar projects leading to economic development for underserved communities near current and former mine land while advancing environmental justice.
The DOE said the selected projects should chart a course to navigate federal, state, and local rules and regulations for siting and grid interconnection, mine remediation, post mining land use, environmental safety and other processes to develop and operate clean energy projects on current or former mine land.
“Developing clean energy on mine lands is an opportunity for fossil fuel communities, which have powered our nation for a generation, to receive an economic boost and play a leadership role in our clean energy transition,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “The investments in the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help America’s mining workforce apply their skills to grow and deploy cheaper, cleaner energy across the country.”
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis found approximately 17,750 mine land sites in the United States. If all those sites were redeveloped with clean energy projects, they could provide up to 89 gigawatts of clean electricity, the EPA report said.
A Multi-Pronged Approach to Meeting Infrastructure Challenges
July 1, 2022
by Joy Ditto
APPA President/CEO
July 1, 2022
The North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s Summer 2022 Reliability Assessment, issued in May, painted a sobering portrait of the ability of electric utilities in major portions of the United States to meet power needs this season. NERC identified several factors behind reliability concerns, including persistent drought, reduced generating capacity in some areas, supply chain concerns, and heightened cybersecurity threats. In addition, last summer, several solar photovoltaic resources tripped offline during grid disturbances in California and Texas, which NERC warned could happen again this year. The NERC assessment appears at a time when reliability and affordability of electricity are also challenged by rising natural gas prices and demands for new pipeline infrastructure. The Energy Information Administration recently projected that natural gas prices will remain relatively high in 2022 due to lower-than-average natural gas inventories resulting from constrained supply and increased demand. The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) projects that these high natural gas prices will contribute to higher wholesale electric prices in Summer 2022, with FERC staff reporting that, in May, “futures prices for some major U.S. electric price points are up over last year’s settled prices by between 77% to 233%.” NERC has also asserted that additional gas pipeline infrastructure is needed to serve load reliably.
NERC’s summer reliability assessment attracted national media attention. For example, a commentator from The Wall Street Journal compared the U.S. grids today to those of developing countries, where power outages are a regular occurrence. That’s not the case in reality, but, certainly, dramatic outages in recent years combined with NERC’s assessment, are warning signals of potential further degradation to our comparatively highly reliable grids.
The Washington Post also reported on the NERC assessment in a front-page article, published June 3. The industry’s move away from fossil fuels to renewable resources may be happening too quickly, industry analysts told the newspaper. Coal plants are being retired at a faster-than-expected rate because operators have concluded it would not be cost-effective to invest in upgrades, NERC CEO Jim Robb told the Post.
These challenges all point to the need to continue to invest in 24/7/365 electric system infrastructure, while continuing to integrate intermittent and new types of generation sources that can be properly balanced and backed up when they are unavailable. The need for reliable power becomes even more important as we prepare for the rapidly growing fleet of electric vehicles that automobile manufacturers are already producing. The EV market in the United States is projected to grow from $28 billion in 2021 to more than $137 billion by 2028.
The good news is that public power utilities can “walk and chew gum at the same time.” They understand that reliability and affordability are inextricably linked to sustainability, including addressing climate change goals. They are also preparing to apply for and integrate the federal dollars that have been allocated through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which could help public power utilities with their ongoing work to bring essential utility services to local homes and businesses, while also offering innovative solutions to meet their customers’ needs and ensure sustainable communities.
The IIJA allocates more than $192 billion for infrastructure projects related to electric grid, cybersecurity, electric vehicle infrastructure, and broadband expansion. Public power utilities seeking to tap into this funding should work with their state and local agencies to determine how monies will be distributed and what priorities have been set by these government authorities. We’ve set up a landing page at PublicPower.org/Infrastructure Funding that goes over the latest on IIJA and highlights places where utilities can apply for funding directly. A key part of the immediate task: identify your most important infrastructure needs and make these known to your local and state partners.
In setting priorities, it is important that public power utilities identify their cybersecurity needs and seek to strengthen cybersecurity. The article on page 10 in this issue discusses work underway at APPA, and among our members, to help meet the cybersecurity needs of public power utilities. APPA has a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER). With the funding provided through the cooperative agreement, we are working to increase deployment of operational technology cybersecurity sensors on utility distribution systems and to grow information-sharing among utilities—all with the aim of protecting our members from cyber-attacks.
Many of the infrastructure challenges facing utilities today seem new. Thirty years ago, we did not worry about sophisticated electronics on distribution equipment or give much thought to infiltration of local utility computer systems. These modern needs are important, but it is remarkable that juxtaposed with our quest to meet these modern-day needs is a project that reminds us of the earliest objectives of public power. I want to thank the volunteers from public power utilities from across the nation who traveled to the Navajo Nation to help the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority meet the most basic of needs: bringing electricity to rural homes. The Light Up Navajo project, an industry effort to bring electricity to 14,000 Navajo Nation homes, is now in its third phase. Crews from utilities in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Ohio, and Texas have worked on the 2022 phase of the project, or Light Up Navajo III. The photo essay that begins on page 20 tells a piece of that story.
The public power movement began in the 1880s. Local leaders brought electricity to Wabash, Indiana, in March 1880—28 months before Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street Station began operating in New York City in September 1882. The need for public power utilities to provide reliable and affordable power “keeping their feet on the ground” was juxtaposed with providing sustainable communities, or “reaching for the stars,” even then. Even with the added challenges we face now, 142 years later, public power has not lost sight of its primary mission.