New Participants In Western Markets Exploratory Group Include Public Power Utilities

July 22, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 22, 2022

Members of the Western Markets Exploratory Group (WMEG) announced on July 21 that they have expanded their membership by adding eleven new participants to the current roster of fourteen utilities totaling twenty-five member participants across the west. Several of the new participants are public power utilities.

WMEG, which was created in 2021, is exploring the potential for a staged approach to new market services including day-ahead energy sales, transmission system expansion, power supply and grid solutions, and existing and emerging public policies.

The eleven new members added to the group are: Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Avista Corp., Balancing Authority of Northern California, Bonneville Power Administration, Chelan County PUD No. 1, El Paso Electric Company, PUD #2 of Grant County, NorthWestern Energy, Tacoma Power, Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association, and Western Area Power Administration.

Current WMEG membership includes 14 transmission owning utilities across the Desert Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and the Mountain West and includes Xcel Energy Colorado, Arizona Public Service (APS), Black Hills Energy, Idaho Power, Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, NV Energy, PacifiCorp, Platte River Power Authority, Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy, Salt River Project, Seattle City Light, Tucson Electric Power, and Public Service New Mexico.

Many of the utilities in the group are currently participating in energy imbalance markets and the ongoing development of day-ahead markets.

WMEG is developing pathways to a Western organized market that would allow participants to develop an initial market design proposal and roadmap up to and including operating as a Regional Transmission Organization, depending upon what each state and/or utility determines is in the best interest of their customers. 

Utilicast, an energy consulting company, will assist WMEG in developing a roadmap that will identify market requirements, interdependencies, and timelines. WMEG expects these work products will be available towards the end of 2022.

Nebraska Public Power District CEO Details Proactive Approach To Supply Chain Challenges

July 15, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 15, 2022

In a recent media briefing, Tom Kent, President and CEO of Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD), detailed how NPPD has taken a proactive approach in response to ongoing supply chain challenges facing the utility sector.

“We are seeing, just like any other business, impacts in supply chain and the ability to get needed resources,” Kent said in the virtual press briefing on July 8.

“We do plan ahead and have materials set aside and reserved for emergencies,” he noted.

Kent said that spring is a very active storm season in Nebraska, “and so we typically see damage to our system from tornados, high winds, et cetera, that we have to repair, and we’ve had several cases of that this spring. We were able to get all those facilities repaired expeditiously and in service because we had stocks available and set aside what we call storm stock.”

The reserves have decreased and NPPD is “monitoring the time it’s going to take to get those supplies restocked in our system.”

Kent said that the “supply chain is congested right now, so to get resupplies right now, it’s taking longer. The costs to get materials is higher than it has been traditionally. But again, it’s part of what we manage.”

Kent said that “we saw this coming – even a year ago, as we were planning for power plant maintenance outages,” NPPD started “working very closely with our customers, put special teams together to focus on ensuring we had the materials we need with enough time so that we could do the work we” needed to do.

He went on to say that “in the case of utilities, one of the areas that we are monitoring really closely is transformers and getting transformers to support other activities in the communities.”

Kent said that part of the supply chain story involves inflationary pressures that are being seen “across the nation, quite frankly. We account for that and look at those types of issues in terms of future costs as we forecast what we need for rates in the future. Right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty about future prices, but we are in a really good position financially.”

He noted that “we’ve held our rates stable on the retail side of our business for the last nine years, on the wholesale side of our business for the last five years. We’re currently running with about a $30 million surplus this year.”

APPA Moves To Address Supply Chain Challenges

The American Public Power Association (APPA) is taking a number of actions to address ongoing supply chain challenges.

APPA recently rolled out an additional feature to its eReliability Tracker that is available to all public power utilities and allows for voluntary equipment sharing by matching systems with the same distribution voltages.

In a speech in June at APPA’s National Conference in Nashville, Tenn., Ditto urged member utilities to share their supply chain challenges with APPA so that the trade group can relay details on these challenges to federal partners and discuss how critical burdens on the sector can be alleviated.

In May, APPA convened a supply chain summit that included participation from public power utility officials who discussed their supply chain challenges and mitigation strategies.

APPA also recently finalized a new supply chain issue brief. APPA members can download the issue brief here.

TVPPA Develops New Supply Chain Toolkit to Support Its Member Utilities

July 13, 2022

by Vanessa Nikolic
APPA News
July 13, 2022

The Tennessee Valley Public Power Association (TVPPA) developed a new supply chain toolkit to provide support to its member utilities across the Tennessee Valley. The toolkit includes talking points, social media posts, and sample letters that can be used by key accounts and communications teams.

The electric utility industry continues to experience a materials shortage. In an effort to seek a deeper understanding of challenges that Tennessee Valley utilities encounter, TVPPA took steps to develop a communications-focused supply chain toolkit for its members.

Last fall, TVPPA attended a regional meeting of utility executives where one of the roundtable discussions among its members focused on supply chain concerns. The idea of developing a toolkit emerged from a subsequent internal discussion about how TVPPA could proactively provide tools and services to address its members’ needs.  

In November 2021, the need for supply chain messaging continued to grow and TVPPA started gathering information and pooling resources in order to make a toolkit available before the holidays. 

TVPPA says its Communications Advisory Group (CAG) was a beneficial component during the toolkit development phase since the group helps the association keep up with the resources that its members need most. The group, which is reflective of TVPPA’s membership, is comprised of communicators and customer service representatives from member utilities of all sizes. TVPPA’s team works closely with CAG members to create and refine content.

Launched in December, TVPPA’s Supply Chain Communications Toolkit enables it members to effectively discuss supply chain disruptions with their key audiences, particularly as they relate to transformers and other materials critical to servicing the needs of consumers and communities. The toolkit can be customized according to each utility’s unique circumstances and includes messaging that can be used by key accounts and communications teams in written and verbal communications, ideas for how and where to share the messages, and sample letters to send to developers and partners.

The toolkit also includes materials that were shared by TVPPA members that had already begun addressing supply chain challenges in their communities.

TVPPA Vice President, Communications and Marketing Nathalie Strickland was involved in the development of the toolkit and has received positive feedback from members.

“It has been well received by our members from both large and small systems,” Strickland said. “They’ve appreciated the ability to see what other power companies are using to communicate effectively with their customers and business and community leaders. The easy-to-use format enables them to focus more of their energy on managing customer expectations and creatively solving materials shortage challenges.”

TVPPA says its team is open to expanding the kit to accommodate the growing needs of utilities who may request additional resources in the future. The toolkit is free of charge and is one of the many benefits that utilities can access on the members section of TVPPA’s website. 

“We have incredibly talented power company leaders in the Tennessee Valley who offer great thought leadership, and we know that when we harness their collective wisdom and maximize the capabilities of our staff to address their pain points, we support their businesses success regardless of what our ever-changing industry brings,” Strickland said. “That’s the approach we took with the Supply Chain Communications Toolkit, and we think that’s why it has been valuable to so many power companies in our region and now to others across the country.”

TVPPA will host its annual Valley Rally in Washington, D.C. on July 18-20 and will continue to raise awareness of supply chain issues during the event with members of the Valley Congressional delegation and discuss potential solutions that could provide short-term relief with an eye towards mitigating long-term consequences.

In addition to the supply chain toolkit, TVPPA plans to release three new toolkits this year focused on the value of locally-owned power, the power restoration process, and crisis communications.

APPA Supply Chain Efforts

The American Public Power Association (APPA) is taking a number of actions to address ongoing supply chain challenges.

Joy Ditto, President and CEO of APPA, recently noted that APPA has been working with the federal government “to partner with us on getting the manufacturers in a room to really suss out what this could look like and how we could get to a point where we reduce these lead times and, secondarily, really address the pricing issue.”

She made her comments during a virtual press briefing held by the U.S. Energy Association (USEA) related to supply chain issues and the electric utility industry.

A tiger team has been formed under the auspices of the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, led by the various electricity trades and select CEOs from the industry, including several from public power.

The objective is to enable the Department of Energy (DOE) “to talk to us and to hopefully bring the manufacturers in to address the issue for the medium term.” In the short term, the industry has been speaking across sectors about equipment sharing.

APPA recently rolled out an additional feature to its eReliability Tracker that is available to all public power utilities and allows for voluntary equipment sharing by matching systems with the same distribution voltages.

In a speech in June at APPA’s National Conference in Nashville, Tenn., Ditto urged member utilities to share their supply chain challenges with APPA so that the trade group can relay details on these challenges to federal partners and discuss how critical burdens on the sector can be alleviated.

In May, APPA convened a supply chain summit that included participation from public power utility officials who discussed their supply chain challenges and mitigation strategies.

APPA also recently finalized a new supply chain issue brief. APPA members can download the issue brief here.

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.

FMPA Implementing Strategies To Mitigate Rising Fuel Costs For Florida Public Power

June 27, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 27, 2022

The Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) is taking a number of steps to mitigate rising fuel costs, including selling excess power generation to other cities, prepaying for natural gas at discounted prices, operating highly available and efficient units, and refinancing debt, said Navid Nowakhtar, Resource and Strategic Planning Manager at FMPA, in a recent presentation.

He made his remarks during a June 7 presentation to the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority (FPUA) Board. FPUA is a member of FMPA, a wholesale power agency owned by 31 municipal electric utilities in Florida.

In his presentation, Nowakhtar detailed the drivers behind some of the energy price increases seen in the U.S., including higher natural gas prices.  

He noted that in Florida, 80% of “our electric generation is from natural gas – that’s our primary fuel source.”

Across the U.S., “historically, we would have had coal resources pick up some of the slack as gas prices rose, but as a result of retirements and additional infrastructure challenges related to coal generation and transport with coal, we don’t have that substitute effect any longer to the extent we had it in prior periods,” Nowakhtar said.

He said the demand for natural gas has increased, while production remains flat, and noted that natural gas inventories remain low.  

“As we look at these price challenges, one of the opportunities” potentially in play “is to look at fixed-price natural gas,” Nowakhtar said. “Certainly, not over the course of this coming summer — gas prices already are well above the norm.”

At a later point in his presentation, he noted FMPA is doing several things to help mitigate the impact of high fuel costs on customers.

Nowakhtar noted that FMPA’s efforts have saved more than $32 million since fiscal 2021.

Those savings are as follows, FMPA noted:

• Third-party energy/capacity sales: $12.2 million savings
• High generation availability: $8 million savings
• Prepaid natural gas and other gas transactions: $8.1 million savings
• Debt refinancing: $4 million savings

He also noted that “if you look at where Fort Pierce’s rates are today through the end of last year, they’re actually lower than they were in 2008.” Residential rates are down about 23%, while U.S. rates have gone up about 22%.

He said FMPA has “done a lot of work to try to keep our costs as low as we can to you.”

Nowakhtar also pointed out that FMPA is continuing to pursue low-cost solar. “We’re in the process right now of the procurement efforts for phase three of our solar project. We already have two sites totaling 149 megawatts” that are online.

In 2022, FMPA’s percentage of solar energy stood at 2%, but that is projected to grow to 7% of its generation mix by 2027.

He said there are seven to 10 FMPA communities “or more” that could be interested in the third phase of the solar project, which will involve as much as two to three sites of additional solar.

In a recent letter to leaders of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, FMPA’s General Manager and CEO Jacob Williams said Florida is uniquely impacted by the 150% cost increase for natural gas, given the state’s dependence on natural gas for electricity generation.

He noted in the May 2 letter that residential bills in Florida were already 15-30% higher. “This is especially challenging for us since our power consumption is 25% higher than the national average and income is 10% lower than the national average. In addition, Florida residents consume half of the electricity generated in Florida, the largest share of any state in the U.S. And the skyrocketing energy prices in the U.S. very well may get worse,” Williams wrote in his letter to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Chairman of the committee, and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and ranking member on the committee.

Public Power Officials Discuss Supply Chain Challenges At MMUA Event

June 21, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 21, 2022

Officials from Minnesota public power utilities, the American Public Power Association (APPA) and a power industry manufacturer recently discussed the power sector’s response to ongoing supply chain challenges facing the sector during a virtual roundtable held by the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA).

“What we’re facing right now truly is a perfect storm,” said Alex Hofmann, Vice President, Technical and Operations Services, at APPA.

He noted that when it comes to supply chain priorities, transformers are the highest-ranking priority for APPA’s members, “but there are many other concerns.”

APPA has been meeting with federal agencies to discuss supply chain issues, as well as with manufacturers.

“We’ve developed a simple voltage matching and sharing tool” through APPA’s eReliability Tracker. APPA is offering free access to the tracker for all public power utilities, he noted, because “to us, this is an emergency.”

Hofmann said that public power utilities, cooperatives and investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are all working together at the federal level.

“We plan to share, so if you reach out to your fellow public power utilities using this tool, you find that you’re not getting the response you need and we don’t have anything, we’re going to give that to the cooperatives and the IOUs and us their networks as well,” he said.

“Be creative. Pursue every measure you can. Your fellow utilities are in the same situation,” he said.

“I’m not here trying to bring you a doom and gloom story. I think that as infrastructure providers, we’re naturally very conservative, so we’re alarmed now that our stocks are getting low, but we still have stock and there are still people with units, it’s just those lead times are making our warehouses order larger amounts.”

Chad Backes, District Manager for Irby Utilities, a manufacturer for the electric utility sector, addressed the question of lead times in the context of supply chain issues.

“It depends upon the product line. It depends upon how much technology is involved and, of course,” how much copper and aluminum is involved, among other things.

“No manufacturer really has an ample supply of finished goods. They’re really struggling to get all their components,” Backes said.

He pointed out that “when one manufacturer goes down or isn’t taking any orders, that puts extra pressure on the other manufacturers that are still taking orders and they have to go out on the open market and buy the raw materials. Well, a lot of those purchases aren’t under contract and they’re having to pay spot prices.”

Backes also noted in core steel there is only one domestic manufacturer, AK Steel. “Everything else has to be imported and we’ve all seen pictures of the big container ships sitting in ports and nobody there to unload them or nobody there to load them.” All of the extra material “that’s being requested is driving that price up – just simply supply and demand.”

Backes also said that most of the core steel that needs to be used for transformers is also being used for batteries in electric vehicles and manufacturers are “making more money selling into the EV market than they are the transformers.”

Other participants in the roundtable included Mike Willetts, Director of Training & Safety at MMUA.

EIA Forecasts ‘Significant’ Increases In Wholesale Power Prices This Summer

June 21, 2022

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 21, 2022

Wholesale electric prices will rise significantly this summer over last summer’s prices, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).

The Northeast and New York will be hardest hit with expectations of $153 per megawatt hour (MWh) in ISO New England and $121/MWh in New York ISO, up from $50/MWh and $46/MWh last summer, respectively.

The EIA also expects wholesale electric prices to be over $100/MWh in the Northwest and MidAtlantic regions with the Northwest reaching $108/MWh and prices in the PJM Interconnection hitting $101/MWh, compared with $91/MWh and $45/MWh last summer, respectively.

The STEO forecasts wholesale prices for one price hub in each of the 11 market regions in the continental United States. The wholesale price data in the STEO reflect the monthly average electricity price in a region during on-peak hours between June and August.

While a variety of factors determine wholesale electricity prices, the cost of fuel for fossil-fuel generators, particularly natural gas, is an important driver in rising electric prices, the EIA said.

Natural gas-fired generation is often the most expensive source of dispatchable marginal generation, and the gas price at the Henry Hub averaged $8.14 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in May 2022, compared with $2.91/MMBtu in May 2021, the EIA noted. “We expect the price of natural gas delivered to electric generators to average $8.81/MMBtu this summer, up from $3.93/MMBtu last summer,” the STEO noted.

In the past generators could substitute coal fired generation when the cost of gas-fired generation rose, but in recent months, coal plants have responded less than in the past as an alternative source of generation, most likely as a result of continued coal capacity retirements, constraints in fuel delivery to coal plants, and lower-than-average stock piles at coal plants, the STEO said.

The EIA forecasts that the share of U.S. generation from coal-fired power plants will decline from 25% last summer to 23% this summer, and natural gas’s share will remain relatively constant at 40%.

Other factors could also push wholesale electricity prices higher this summer, the EIA said, including the extended drought in the western United States.

The EIA forecasts a slight increase in hydroelectric generation in California this summer compared with last summer, but the forecast remains relatively low.

Less hydropower output this summer will likely lead California to generate more electricity from natural gas and to import electricity from neighboring states, the EIA said.

The STEO expects wholesale power prices in the California ISO to reach $98/MWh compared with $67/MWh last summer. Prices in the Southwest will be slightly lower, $97/MWh versus $82/MWh last summer, according to the STEO.

The Midcontinent ISO and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) will also reach the $90 mark with MISO hitting $92/MWh versus $45/MWh last summer, and ERCOT hitting $90/MWh versus $54/MWh last summer, according to STEO forecasts.

The STEO puts Southwest Power Pool (SPP) prices at $82/MWh compared with $45/MWh last summer,

The STEO sees wholesale prices in the Southeast (SERC) hitting $76/MWh versus $45/MWh last summer, and in Florida (FRCC) the STEO forecasts prices $66/MWh compared with $41/MWh last summer.

At the residential level, the STEO forecasts prices will average 14.6 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) between June and August, up 4.8 percent from last summer. Commercial prices will average 12 cents/kWh, a 4.7 percent increase, and industrial prices are expected to average 7.7 cents/kWh, 3.2 percent increase, according to the STEO.

Meanwhile, renewable generation sources are expected to contribute a growing share of electricity production, the STEO said. “We expect renewable energy will provide 22 percent of U.S. generation in 2022 and 24 percent in 2023, up from a share of 20 percent last year,” the report said.

The rise in renewable generation is coming from rising levels of new renewable capacity. Solar capacity additions in the electric power sector total 20 gigawatts (GW) for 2022 and 22 GW for 2023, the STEO reported, noting that solar photovoltaic installation delays from 2022 to 2023 account for about 1 GW of the expected installed solar capacity. The STEO also forecasts that small-scale solar systems – less than 1 GW – will grow to 39 GW by year-end 2022 and to 46 GW in 2023.

The STEO estimates that U.S. wind capacity additions will total 11 GW in 2022 and 5 GW in 2023.

FERC Acts On DER Aggregation Filings Submitted By California, N.Y. Grid Operators

June 20, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 20, 2022

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on June 16 responded to filings submitted by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).

The filings were made in compliance with FERC Order No. 2222 addressing the participation of aggregated distributed energy resources in wholesale markets administered by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs).

The action, which took place at FERC’s monthly meeting, marked the first two compliance filings that FERC has acted upon tied to Order No. 2222.

In the CAISO order (Docket No. ER21-2455), FERC accepted the grid operator’s compliance filing, subject to a further compliance filing to be submitted within 60 days of the date of issuance of the order.  

FERC directed CAISO to file a further compliance filing that either revises its distributed energy resource aggregation model or demonstrates that its existing demand response models are compliant with Order No. 2222.  

FERC also directed further compliance associated with coordination requirements of Order No. 2222, such as the distribution utility review process.

In the NYISO order (Docket No. ER21-2460), FERC accepted NYISO’s compliance filing, subject to a further compliance filing to be submitted within 60 days of the date of issuance of the order. 

Among other things, FERC directed NYISO to file a further compliance filing that allows distributed energy resources in heterogeneous aggregations to provide all of the ancillary services they are technically capable of providing through aggregation.

FERC also directed further compliance with respect to interconnection, participation, and coordination requirements of Order No. 2222, such as the distribution utility review process. 

The Commission said that it will continue reviewing the remaining compliance filings, which were filed by ISO New England, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the PJM Interconnection and Southwest Power Pool.

TVA’s Lyash Underscores Need For Public Power Utilities To Share Expertise, Best Practices

June 17, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 17, 2022

Now more than ever it is crucial for public power utilities “to share our expertise, our best practices, our best thinking as we collaborate on solutions” to solving new challenges, said Jeff Lyash, President and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority, on June 14 in a speech at the American Public Power Association’s (APPA) 2022 National Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

As an example, Lyash noted that supply chain challenges “are an immediate concern.”

APPA has taken a leadership role when it comes to addressing supply chain challenges, Lyash said, noting that APPA held a supply chain summit in May and has developed a voltage matching and sharing tool through APPA’s eReliability Tracker.

“I’m grateful to everyone who’s working with others to mitigate delays and shortages in transformers and other equipment,” Lyash said.

He noted that TVA leaders recently met “with many of our local power companies that we serve and like many of you we’re focused on how we can best leverage resources and collaborate to meet these immediate needs.”

TVA Strategic Intent And Guiding Principles Document

Meanwhile, Lyash noted that a year ago, TVA issued a Strategic Intent and Guiding Principles document, which he stressed “reinforces our commitments and sets realistic and clear targets.”

TVA’s board in May 2021 approved a resolution endorsing TVA’s Strategic Intent and Guiding Principles.

Lyash said that TVA is on a path to “reduce our carbon emissions by 80 percent against a 2005 benchmark by 2035. We’ve already reduced carbon emissions by 60 percent and we’re executing a plan to reach 80 percent.” TVA believes it can deliver on this plan without raising prices or adversely affecting reliability.

“Going further or faster will take research, development and the deployment of technologies that, frankly, we don’t have today at a competitive price,” he said.

Maintaining a balance

Electricity “is foundational to national security, quality of life, health and safety, and it will be more so in the coming decades than it is today,” Lyash said.

There is a balance “that we have to maintain,” he said, noting that his “view of this is that balance is between” affordability, reliability, resiliency, and sustainability.

“If you sacrifice one for the others, it all falls apart,” Lyash said.

“We cannot have net zero carbon if we triple the price of electricity,” he said. “Likewise, we can’t have low-cost electricity and not address greenhouse gas reduction and cleaning up our industry. We can’t sacrifice reliability for price. This is a balance among these four that is critically important.”

Transitioning To The Future

Addressing the energy industry’s transition to the future, Lyash said that “this is a generational transition. It would be nice to do this tomorrow, but it’s mandatory that we do it successfully.”

There needs to be a focus on practicality “and doing what we can do, when we can do it and staying focused on that mission,” he said.

Lyash believes that the power industry is “going to be one of the keys for the next three decades.”

Public power “has the opportunity to be at the forefront of that because the people in the room I’m looking at don’t wake up every morning” worried about things like shareholder return and earnings.

“We all wake up every morning worried about the one hundred million people that we collectively serve and what’s best for them and how can we contribute to that,” he said.

“On our path to a clean energy economy for our customers and the nation, no one technology, no one point of view will get us there. Our collaborative journey is going to require” the best science, best leadership and it’s going to have to happen across multiple fronts, he said.

“Broad perspectives on energy sources, opportunities, and innovation will be required. We need to share knowledge, we need to forge strong partnerships, we need to build effective collaboration on a wide range of issues, particularly new technology.”

Public power utilities “know those requirements well. They are some of public power’s strengths, in fact – collaboration, commitment and leadership. As with any important issue, how we achieve the clean energy economy needs to foster varying points of view and I encourage you to share your ideas, share your perspectives, share those of your customers and your communities,” Lyash said.

Grid Operators Grapple With Sizzling Temperatures, Soaring Power Demand

June 15, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 15, 2022

Grid operators in parts of the U.S. this week have been grappling with soaring power demand resulting from extreme heat.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) declared a Maximum Generation Emergency Alert effective for June 15 for the MISO Balancing Authority Area. MISO noted that the reason for the event is because of forced generation outages, above normal temperatures and high congestion.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reported having a record-breaking peak electric demand on Sunday, June 12, 2022, of 74,917 megawatts, breaking the previous all-time peak of 74,820 MW that occurred on Thursday, August 22, 2019.  

“Current weather and load forecasts predict record-setting hot weather across the state through this week. ERCOT expects sufficient generation to meet the high demand at this time,” the grid operator said on June 14.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and 153 local power companies across the region successfully met a record power demand for the month of June during an early season heat wave on Monday, June 13, TVA reported June 14.

At 6 p.m. ET, the power system was providing 31,311 MW at a region-wide average temperature of 94 degrees. The previous record for June was 31,098 MW on June 29, 2012.