CAISO launches initiative to explore market reforms tied to grid-scale storage growth
April 29, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 29, 2021
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) on April 28 launched an initiative to explore market reforms in anticipation of a surge of grid-scale energy storage on its system in the next few years.
CAISO in a news release noted that it is projecting a four-fold increase in the amount of battery storage on its system from late last year to this summer.
At the end of 2020, the ISO had about 250 megawatts (MW) of storage resources — primarily 4-hour batteries — connected to the grid. It currently has about 500 MW on its system and expects to have a total of 2,000 MW by August 1. This rapid pace of growth is expected to continue in the years ahead, the grid operator said.
“Unlocking the full value of energy storage resources requires changes to the ISO market to better align price signals and cost recovery mechanisms with the reliability and operational needs of the grid,” CAISO said.
The ISO said it intends to leverage expertise from across the storage industry and to share its findings through such initiatives as the Global Power System Transformation Consortium that was formally launched in April with the U.S. Department of Energy and utilities.
CAISO publishes issue paper
CAISO on April 28 published an issue paper on possible energy storage enhancements, outlining the current challenges and seeking input on new market mechanisms to fully integrate storage and maximize its use on California’s electricity system.
The grid operator said that the issue paper effectively launches the energy storage enhancements stakeholder initiative process, which will invite feedback from all industry sectors, particularly the storage resource community, on the market redesigns and their effects.
Deadline to register for APPA national conference fast approaching as spots fill up
April 28, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 28, 2021
The deadline to register for the American Public Power Association’s 2021 National Conference is fast approaching, with available spots filling up quickly.
This year, the National Conference will be held in Orlando, Fla., from June 20-23, followed by a virtual event on July 13-14.
Participants can choose to register for the full conference (including both the in-person event and the virtual event), or just the virtual event.
Registration for the in-person event (full access) is limited to 700 attendees to accommodate social distancing measures. Early registrations are encouraged to ensure a spot. There is no cap on virtual meeting participation.
For the in-person conference, Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.) on June 21 will share how two factors — a new emerging global security environment and the coronavirus — affect geopolitics for the U.S., China, Russia, Europe, and other areas.
Conference breakout sessions on June 21 will include current issues in federal transmission policy, what’s happening in Washington, D.C., and how small utilities navigate change.
The general session on June 21 is a CEO roundtable on resilience and response.
On June 22, breakout sessions include keeping up with climate policy in the Biden Administration, microgrids and creating value from data assets.
“APPA’s National Conference is a great way for members of the public power community to learn about the latest trends and developments in the electricity sector,” said Ursula Schryver, Vice President, Strategic Member Engagement and Education at APPA.
“Having an in-person event in Orlando also provides an excellent opportunity for public power officials at all levels of responsibility to network with their peers,” she added.
Schryver discussed the national conference in a recent APPA Public Power Now podcast.
All participants in the in-person event must agree to adhere to requirements outlined in the APPA Duty of Care Agreement.
Group discounts will be available for organizations that register five or more people, regardless of the format.
Register by May 31 to lock in savings for the in-person and virtual events. Additional details are available here.
Idaho Falls Power, with Idaho National Lab, tests small hydro’s black start capabilities
April 28, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
April 28, 2021
Idaho National Laboratory (INL), working with public power utility Idaho Falls Power, has completed a series of tests designed to assess how small hydropower plants can provide startup power during outages.
The city of Idaho Falls, Idaho, owns five, small run-of-river hydro plants on the Snake River that, combined, can provide enough power to meet about one-third of the city’s power needs.
After a December 2013 outage left 3,500 residents without power in subzero weather for hours, the public power utility began to explore options that would make the city’s power system more resilient in such an emergency.
Even though Idaho Falls has its own generating plants, they are all low head, low pressure hydro plants. “We assumed the plants would be able to start up on their own in an emergency, but assuming is not knowing,” Ben Jenkins, systems engineer at Idaho Falls Power, said.
In 2016, Idaho Falls and INL began investigating the ability of its generators to start up on their own, known as black start capability, and their ability to island or operate independently of the surrounding grid.
In December 2017, the utility tested its assumptions and found that as it started adding load to its generators, they would become unstable at about 30 or 35 percent of rated capacity. The test found the limits of the utility’s system. “There was plenty of water, but low head machines need the grid to keep them stable,” Jenkins said.
Idaho Falls Power began looking for ways to fix the problem and enlisted the aid of INL, which is based in Idaho Falls and is an Idaho Falls Power customer.
“The INL folks were looking at the larger picture, the larger grid, and we were looking at the local picture,” Jenkins said. “Our needs dovetailed nicely.”
For its part, INL tested the use of ultracapacitors, which can store and discharge large amounts of energy very quickly, to provide pseudo inertia to the generating plants.
The tests demonstrated that “small hydropower plants like Idaho Falls’, combined with integrated energy storage technologies, may prove to be as nimble as natural gas when it comes to load following,” Thomas Mosier, INL’s energy systems group lead, said in a statement.
Idaho Falls Power tested two operational changes. Working with equipment provider American Governor, the utility tested variations in the gates and blade pitch of its hydro plants to find the most efficient and stable configurations.
Idaho Falls Power also tried bringing multiple plants online simultaneously, running nine tests, each with different combinations of operating parameters. “In effect, we were simulating a large plant,” Jenkins said.
“The one big thing we learned, we didn’t even know we were looking for,” Jenkins said. “If all the load is on one plant, it is unstable, but if you bring them all up simultaneously, they overperformed. We got more out of the combined plants than out of each plant individually.”
“We were pleasantly surprised; operational control can make a huge difference,” Jenkins said. If Idaho Fall Power lost power from the grid, it could implement the operational changes and restart its generators and gradually add load and operate in islanded mode.
Operational changes can also be implemented with minimal costs.
The test results have also prompted Idaho Falls Power to look at another form of energy storage, batteries. They can provide “multiple values,” Jenkins said, citing their ability to provide services such as peak shaving in addition to providing generation stability.
Idaho Falls Power is in conversation with INL about batteries, Jenkins said, and, with battery prices coming down, they could become more attractive. “What was financially unattainable two years ago is now becoming viable,” he said. “There could be value we can look at.”
With the testing portion of the collaboration concluding, there is going to be a lot of evaluation of the next few months, Jenkins said. The data collected in the tests will be fed into INL’s digital real time simulators, which can offer insight into how grids will act and react under different conditions. Then, two reports will likely be generated, one simple and another more detailed.
“We are very happy with what we learned from this, and if the information ca be used by other small utilities, all the better,” Jenkins said. “We feel we are part of a bigger involvement. It helps Idaho Falls, but it could have a much broader impact on the national grid.”
Steve Wright to step down as GM of Chelan PUD
April 28, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 28, 2021
Steve Wright plans to step down from his position as general manager of Washington State’s Chelan County PUD, the PUD said on April 27.
“After eight years it’s time for me to move on and give someone else a chance to run this great utility. My contract with the PUD to serve as the General Manager runs through the end of this year,” he said in a statement. “I have informed the board that I do not intend to serve as the General Manager beyond that.”
He said the primary reason “is simply that it’s been long enough. I’ve spent 40 years in the industry, 20 years in leadership. I want the opportunity to try something new.”
Chelan’s board “has known of my intentions and has had time to make plans. I am announcing early so the board has plenty of time to conduct a full search. Hopefully, there will be time for overlap with a new general manager before I leave,” he said.
Wright currently serves as a member of the American Public Power Association’s Board of Directors and the board’s executive committee.
Experts see cost of wind power declining by nearly 50% by 2050
April 27, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
April 27, 2021
The cost of wind energy is expected to decline by as much as 35 percent by 2035 and by almost 50 percent by 2050, according to a survey conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The experts responding to the Berkeley Lab survey estimated median reductions in the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind power of 17 to 35 percent by 2035 and of 37 to 49 percent by 2050.
Participants in the survey focused on five core LCOE inputs: capital costs, operating expenditures, energy output (capacity factor), project life in years, and financing costs (after-tax, nominal weighted-average cost of capital).
The reductions are driven by larger and more efficient wind turbines, lower capital and operating costs, and other advancements, according to the survey findings, which were published in the journal Nature Energy.
The study summarized a global survey of 140 wind experts who considered three types of wind applications: onshore (land-based) wind, fixed-bottom offshore wind, and floating offshore wind. The anticipated future costs for all three types of wind energy were half of what experts predicted in a similar study Berkeley Lab conducted in 2015.
“Wind has experienced accelerated cost reductions in recent years, both onshore and offshore, making previous cost forecasts obsolete,” Ryan Wiser, senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, said in a statement. “The energy sector needs a current assessment.”
The Berkeley Lab survey complements other cost evaluation methods and sheds light on the uncertainties in those estimates, Wiser said. For instance, cost reductions could be relatively modest, as reflected in the lower end of the estimates, but there is also “substantial room for improvement” with reductions even greater than experts predict. There is a 10 percent chance that cost reductions will be in the 38 to 53 percent range by 2035 and in the 54 to 64 percent range by 2050, the study found.
The experts surveyed also anticipate greater absolute reductions – and more uncertainty – in the LCOE for offshore wind compared with onshore wind but see a narrowing gap between fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind.
The survey also revealed that one of the key drivers in cost reductions is improvements in wind turbine sizes. The average capacity ratings of onshore wind turbines are expected to rise to 5.5 megawatts [MW] in 2035 from 2.5 MW in 2019 as rotor diameters and hub heights also increase.
The experts said they expect offshore wind turbines to get even larger, rising to 17 MW on average in 2035, from 6 MW in 2019.
The experts also said they see floating offshore wind gaining market share, growing from its current pre-commercial state to capturing up to 25% of new offshore wind projects by 2035.
“All else being equal, these trends will enable wind to play a larger role in global energy supply than previously thought while facilitating energy-sector decarbonization,” Joachim Seel with Berkeley Lab and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.
Berkeley Lab took the lead in the study, which was conducted under the auspices of the IEA Wind Technology Collaboration Programme with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Biden Administration takes steps to boost deployment of EVs, chargers
April 27, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 27, 2021
The Biden Administration on April 22 unveiled a series of actions intended to accelerate deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) and chargers.
Department of Transportation
The Department of Transportation announced the fifth round of “Alternative Fuel Corridors” designations.
This program, created by the FAST Act in 2015, recognizes highway segments that have infrastructure plans to allow travel on alternative fuels, including electricity, a White House fact sheet noted.
The first four rounds of designations included portions of 119 Interstates and 100 U.S. highways and state roads. Round five includes nominations from 25 states for 51 interstates and 50 U.S. highways and state roads.
The cumulative designations (Rounds 1-5) for all fuel types (electric, hydrogen, propane, natural gas) include 134 Interstates and 125 U.S. highways/State roads, covering almost 166,000 miles of the national highway system in 49 States plus the District of Columbia.
Of that total, the Federal Highway Administration has designated EV corridors on approximately 59,000 miles of the NHS in 48 states plus DC.
The DOT also issued a new report clarifying how its programs can be used for EV charging infrastructure. Many existing programs have this as an eligible use and this guidance can expand how many funded entities take advantage of that, the White House noted. “This could increase the use for EV charging infrastructure of $41.9 billion in federal grant funding in 15 specific programs,” the fact sheet said.
Department of Energy
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced new research funding opportunities on three EV charging related topics:
- $10 million to research, develop, and demonstrate innovative technologies and designs to significantly reduce the cost of electric vehicle supply equipment for DC Fast Charging that will be needed in large number to support high volumes of EVs;
- $20 million to accelerate the adoption of commercially-available plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and supporting infrastructure through community-based public-private partnerships that demonstrate PEV technologies (for cars, buses, school buses, trucks) and infrastructure in various innovative applications and share resulting data, lessons learned and best practices with a broader audience; and
- $4 million to encourage strong partnerships and new programs to increase workplace charging regionally or nationally which will help increase the feasibility of PEV ownership for consumers in underserved communities
DOE and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) also announced a national EV charging technical blueprint including fast charging and grid interaction. This blueprint will assess needs in terms of connectivity, communication, protocols from utility down to vehicle, to support electrification of the full vehicle fleet.
In addition, DOE announced that the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is partnering with global and domestic automakers to analyze anonymous vehicle charging data that describe market-level trends of operation and charging behavior for a large sample of U.S. consumer EVs.
To guide this work, DOE, INL, and automakers formed a working group to provide feedback on INL analysis and modeling efforts.
Biden American Jobs Plan includes investment in EVs
In his American Jobs Plan, President Biden proposed a $174 billion investment in EVs.
Among other things, the plan calls for establishing grant and incentive programs for state and local governments and the private sector to build a national network of 500,000 EV chargers by 2030.
APPA offers resources to members on EVs
The American Public Power Association offers a wide range of resources to its members related to EVs.
For additional information, click here.
Biden unveils new target for U.S. economy-wide net GHG emissions reductions
April 26, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 26, 2021
President Joseph Biden on April 22 announced a new target for the U.S. to achieve a 50 to 52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions in 2030.
The announcement was made during the Leaders Summit on Climate that was hosted by Biden and included 40 world leaders and took place over two days with eight sessions.
“America’s 2030 target picks up the pace of emissions reductions in the United States, compared to historical levels, while supporting President Biden’s existing goals to create a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050,” a White House fact sheet related to the announcement said.
Earlier this year, Biden directed the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement. As part of re-entering the Paris Agreement, he also launched a whole-of-government process, organized through his National Climate Task Force, to establish the new 2030 emissions target – known as the “nationally determined contribution (NDC), a formal submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The April 22 announcement was the product of this government-wide assessment.
The Biden administration has not provided a detailed plan on how the overall goal will be met. It seems clear that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will pursue it using the legal authority it has under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and other statutes, but emission reductions are also premised on funding contained in previously announced infrastructure plans.
At present, there are enforceable GHG standards for new fossil fuel-fired electric generating units (EGUs), but it is unclear how the administration will proceed following the vacatur of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. While the D.C. Circuit vacated both the ACE Rule and EPA’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan, upon request, the court issued a partial mandate to stay the vacatur of the Clean Power Plan until EPA can engage in a new rulemaking.
Also unclear is what part of the contemplated 50-52 percent reduction can be achieved through existing statutes and regulation and what part is contingent upon new legislative authority and/or funding.
Additional details on the summit are available here.
CAISO board adopts final set of 2021 summer readiness initiatives
April 26, 2021
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 26, 2021
The California Independent System Operator’s (CAISO) Board of Governors on April 21 adopted a final suite of market and operational improvements intended to support grid reliability throughout the West during tight supply conditions.
The board approved the Market Enhancements for Summer 2021 Readiness-Export, Load and Wheeling Priorities initiative, which will refine the prioritization of energy imports, exports, and transfers through the ISO’s balancing authority area (BAA), CAISO noted.
The initiative, slated for implementation in July, “enhances the ISO’s ability to reliably manage intertie energy transactions during electricity shortages such as those that occurred during the August 2020 heatwave that caused rotating power outages,” the grid operator said.
The initiative was the final near-term summer readiness initiative for the Board’s consideration and, if approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), will be effective until May 31, 2022.
The ISO is scheduled to begin a regional stakeholder process on a long-term solution to wheeling priorities — energy transfers through the ISO’s BAA — in the coming months.
Because the initiative generally affects the real-time energy market, the Western EIM Governing Body last week met to consider the proposal under its advisory role to the Board of Governors and voted to advise the board to take the necessary steps to start a regional stakeholder process and engage the FERC as necessary to proactively create a durable long-term regional solution to the issues relating to export, load, and wheeling priorities.
In March, the Board of Governors and the EIM Governing Body in part, adopted the bulk of market enhancements for summer 2021 readiness to prepare for extreme heat waves that could affect California and the West this summer.
CAISO president and CEO Elliot Mainzer discussed CAISO’s preparation for this summer in a recent episode of the American Public Power Association’s Public Power Now podcast.
Maine legislators announce plan to convert state’s IOUs to consumer ownership
April 26, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
April 26, 2021
A bipartisan group of legislators in Maine last week announced plans to introduce legislation that would create a consumer owned utility that would take over the electric service now provided by Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant Power.
Together, the two investor-owned utilities serve 96.2 percent of the state’s residential load and have 963,187 residential customers, according to state regulators. The remaining residential load is served by public power utilities – or consumer-owned utilities, as they are known in Maine – and electric cooperatives.
“Our new bill, ‘An Act to Create the Pine Tree Power Company,’ will allow us to control our own money and our own energy destiny — to advance fast and fairly toward our own clean energy and connectivity future,” Democratic Rep. Seth Berry, sponsor of the bill and House Chair of the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee, said in a statement.
The bill will likely be printed in late April and have its first legislative hearing in May, Berry said via email. If the bill is passed later this year, the conversion would likely take three or four years. Unlike many successful conversions Pine Tree Power would face few legal hurdles and would bear no separation cost, Berry said.
The effort to convert Maine’s electric service to consumer ownership is supported by Our Power, a coalition of ratepayers, business leaders, energy experts, and conservationists. Proponents cite high electric rates, high outage rates, and the foreign ownership of CMP and Versant.
“Maine’s for-profit, investor-owned utilities — CMP and Versant — are charging Maine households 58% more than our consumer-owned utilities,” Democratic Rep. Nicole Grohoski, a member of the legislature’s utilities committee, said in a statement. If CMP and Versant charged the same average rate as consumer-owned utilities, Mainers would save $155 million/year, she said.
“Right now, foreign governments and foreign corporations own Maine’s major utility monopolies,” Republican Senator Rick Bennett, said in a statement. “This ownership model has been a disaster, leaving Maine with the most outages, the longest outages, the worst customer service, and among the highest rates in the country.”
Central Maine Power is a subsidiary of Avangrid, which owns eight electric and gas utilities in New York and New England. Avangrid is part of Spanish energy company Iberdrola Group.
Versant Power, formerly Emera Maine, was formed when Bangor Hydro Electric and Maine Public Service merged in 2014. Versant is owned by Enmax, based in Calgary, Alberta.
The conversion proposal, as it now stands, calls for Pine Tree Power to be governed by an elected board of directors, as well as four expert advisory members chosen by the elected officials, Berry said.
The board and management staff would solicit bids for executives to replace CMP’s and Versant’s current executive leadership and to oversee the utility’s day-to-day operations. All other CMP and Versant workers would retain their jobs and pensions. The new utility would also be subject to regulation by Maine’s regulatory commission, Berry said.
The current plan calls for Pine Tree Power to pay between net book value and 1.5 times net book value for CMP’s and Versant’s assets, “far less than the IOUs suggest,” Berry said.
Looking ahead, future costs would be lower because Pine Tree Power could use tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance its infrastructure at interest rates of 2 to 3 percent, compared with 8 to 14 percent for the IOUs, reducing future capital expenditures and saving $9 billion over 30 years, according to Our Power’s website.
The current proposal is not the first time a conversion proposal has been floated in Maine. In early 2019, Berry sponsored a bill that would have created Maine Power Delivery Authority that would have bought CMP and Versant. That bill died at the conclusion of the legislative session in November 2020.
In explaining the previous bill’s failure, Berry said, “due diligence takes time,” noting that the legislative session was adjourned early because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also noted the differences introduced in the new proposal, namely, a directly elected board of directors, added benefits to workers and communities, and a clarified mission.
Texas expected to add 10 GW of solar by 2023, according to EIA
April 25, 2021
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
April 25, 2021
Texas is on track to add 10 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar power by year-end 2022, a surge that would represent one-third of 30 GW expected to come online in the U.S. by 2023 and would put the Lone Star State within reach of California’s lead in solar power capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Texas’ solar power boom began in 2020 with the addition of 2.5 GW of capacity. The EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory now expects the state to add 4.6 GW of solar capacity in 2021 and 5.4 GW in 2022, which will bring total installed solar capacity in Texas to 14.9 GW.
The EIA expects California to have nearly 18 GW of utility-scale solar capacity online by year-end 2022.
With 30.2 GW, Texas leads the nation in wind power capacity, and 2020 was a record year for wind power installations nationwide, but solar power installations are expected to outstrip wind installations between 2020 and 2022, according to the EIA.
The EIA expects almost half of the new generation added over the next two years in Texas will be solar power plants, surpassing wind expected contribution of 35 percent of new generation and natural gas’ expected 13 percent contribution.
The growth in solar power is being spurred by the availability of the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), EIA said. Utility-scale solar projects that begin construction in 2021 or 2022 are eligible for a 26 percent tax credit. The tax credit drops to 22 percent for projects that start in 2023 and to 10 percent for projects that start in 2024 or later.
The growth in solar power is also being driven by declining costs and, particularly in the Permian Basin in West Texas, plentiful sunlight. Between 2013 and 2018, average capacity weighted construction costs for utility-scale solar generation fell 50 percent while costs for wind fell 27 percent and costs for natural gas fell 13 percent, according to the EIA.
In addition, because most solar power is generated during the middle of the day when wind generation is typically lower, Texas has available transmission capacity to handle the increase in solar output, the EIA report noted.
Despite the recent growth of solar capacity in Texas, utility-scale solar still only made up 4 percent of the state’s generating capacity in 2020 and 2 percent of in-state generation, the EIA noted. Natural gas-fired generation made up 53 percent of Texas’s capacity in 2020 and 52 percent of in-state generation. Wind power comprised 23 percent of the state’s capacity and 20 percent of in-state generation.
Last November, three Texas public power cities – Bryan, Denton and Garland – entered into agreements to buy energy from a 1,310-megawatt solar plant that is expected to be the largest solar farm in the nation when it is completed in 2023.