Largely as a result of protests lodged by Ohio business owners, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission rejected AEP's latest 40% rate increase plan, and rolled Ohio rates back to December 2011 levels.  Keryn picked up this great link in a post she did yesterday on the threat to jobs of WV's rising electric rates.

Here is the link to the Columbus Dispatch article on the PUCO rate roll back.  PUCO and AEP have been in a back and forth discussion of the company's rate increases for several months.  PUCO had given preliminary approval to AEP's 40% rate increase, but yesterday, the Utilities Commission just said no to AEP's plan.  Here's why:

Board members said they were not aware that the plan would lead to such dramatic increases for certain types of customers. Among the hardest hit were small businesses, churches, schools and all-electric houses, who say their overall electricity costs rise by 40 percent in some cases.

And:

The Dispatch reported before the rates were approved in December that small businesses were facing substantial increases. The story included internal emails from a top PUCO staff member who warned that the rates were not fair and would outrage customers.

PUCO initially approved AEP's radical rate increases until Ohio's rate payers, primarily small business owners and workers, expressed their "outrage" over AEP's arrogance and PUCO's failure to protect Ohio jobs.

Small-business owners are applauding the decision.

“We’re glad that, as a collective of small businesses, the commission has heard us,” said Chad McCoury, owner of J. Gumbo’s restaurant Downtown.

Protest over the rates was led by small business owners and workers, who were responsible for about 40 percent of the 1,018 complaints the PUCO had received as of yesterday.

PUCO initially didn't want to take this step to prevent job loss in Ohio.  Only quick and angry protests by active citizens and business people forced PUCO to stop the outrageous rate increase.  To give PUCO credit, they voted unanimously to stop AEP.

And if you don't think clear and forceful action by regulators doesn't make a difference to power companies, here is the money quote from the Dispatch story:

The company’s [AEP's] shares were down 4 percent in afternoon trading.

Ouch.

cross posted from The Power Line

by Bill

A little over a month ago, I posted a comment on Coal Tattoo in response to Ken Ward’s post here.  Ken posted about poor old Matt Wald’s whining that loss of coal plants would result in a need for New York to import large amounts of power from elsewhere.  Wald dismissed the ability of wind power to meet peak load needs, while completely ignoring what large scale deployment of rooftop solar could do.  I addressed that specific point in my comment.

Here is a recent article by John Farrell adapted from his Web site Energy Self-Reliant States.  In the article, Farrell states:

"A recently released solar map of New York City found enough room on building rooftops for solar panels to power half the city during hours of peak electricity use. Taking advantage of this solar windfall could allow New Yorkers to save millions on electricity costs and create tens of thousands of jobs."

Instead of joining Wald in supporting the FERC transmission agenda, Farrell goes on to say:

"The system has changed. The rapidly falling cost of renewable energy offers a dramatically different electricity future. Millions of Americans could become power generators instead of just consumers, sharing in the economic benefits of clean energy, but only if they can wrest back control of their electric grid.

As it stands, antiquated state and utility rules put a gridlock on the electric system. Just as the old AT&T monopoly limited which phones could connect to their network, utilities make connecting new wind and solar projects arbitrarily difficult. Renewable energy projects also face complex paperwork and long delays to get online, making it harder to get loans and finance projects. The Clean Coalition, a California-based renewable energy group, reports that as many as 97 percent of renewable energy projects seeking a contract and grid connection under California’s renewable energy law fail to do so. Millions of dollars and renewable megawatts are stranded by the rules of the electric system.

The rules are little better at the federal level, where regulators oversee regional electricity grid planning. Under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has routinely awarded bonus incentives for new transmission line development at the expense of local power generation. Although FERC has issued its Rule 890 requiring regional planning authorities to examine cost effective alternatives to new power lines (such as local solar power), FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff says that the Commission largely leaves the policing of this rule to the stakeholder process, one he admits is dominated by incumbent utilities and transmission line developers.

Ultimately, the utilities remain tied to a system that supports their business model, a guaranteed rate of return on new centralized power plants or transmission lines but few rewards for allowing third parties to replace dirty fossil fuel power with clean, local renewable energy."

Cross posted from The Power Line

by Keryn

The town of Vineland is keeping electric rates low for their customers by installing their own, local generation instead of relying on PJM's much more expensive supply of electricity.

"The utility has spent years relying on PJM, a wholesale electricity distributor, to produce energy during high-demand times because it is capacity short, but that comes at a cost, Vineland Municipal Utilities Director Joseph Isabella said.

Each of the new units, however, has the potential to save the utility between $6 and $8 million a year, Isabella said. That's money the utility now collects from customers to pay PJM, he said.

Once the new unit is in next year, a rate decrease could come by fall, marking the third rate drop since Isabella took over as director in 2008.

"My goal is to have the lowest rates in New Jersey and the cleanest utility in New Jersey," he said.

Vineland Municipal Electric Utility has spent the past four years moving toward clean, efficient energy production, Isabella said. That included adding the two turbines and 16 megawatts in solar projects that are either complete or will be by the end of the year.

Isabella also plans to seek proposals for 4 to 8 more megawatts of solar powered projects in a few weeks to further close the capacity gap.

"We want to be able to take care of our needs with our own units," Isabella said."

New Jersey is making great strides toward energy self-reliance lately.  The state has been bickering with Regional Transmission Organization PJM Interconnection and FERC over installation of two new gas-fired generation plants in the state, instead of relying on PJM and coal-dependent generators in the Ohio valley to supply the state with electricity via hugely profitable (for their coal-fired generation owning builders) new transmission lines.

New Jersey is taking real action to shape their own energy future and lower electricity prices for their citizens through self-reliance.  Bravo to New Jersey and the town of Vineland!

by Bill

The excellent Web site Energy Self-Reliant States has a new post by John Farrell comparing the effectiveness of SREC systems and feed in tariff systems for promoting new solar power development.  It's very informative.

by Keryn

The lights went out for 4 million people in Southern California this week.  FERC and NERC are launching an investigation into the cause.  Preliminary reports point to maintenance work being done at a substation in Yuma, AZ, that knocked a 500kV line that supplied power to San Diego off line.  This caused a cascading failure.  Just like the 2003 blackout in the Northeast, the fault seems to be human error, lack of maintenance, and the failure of systems that are supposed to kick in and prevent a cascading failure.  Here's a LA Times article that explains the situation.

The investor owned utilities and their industry front groups were quick to blame the problem on an outdated, antique grid that is "strained" or "fragile," in an effort to promote the building of new long distance transmission lines.  New long distance transmission lines aren't going to fix the problem, just compound it.  Building more transmission lines does nothing to improve the condition of existing lines.  These "outdated" lines will continue to operate, fail, and cause problems, however they will now be connected with new lines with a wider geographic reach, so when a problem occurs, the resulting blackout is larger.  The most reliable system is one where generation is produced close to load and doesn't rely on an interconnected transmission system vulnerable to faults and system failures hundreds of miles from where power is being used. 

Building new transmission lines diverts capital investment from maintenance of existing transmission lines.  Because new transmission is incentivized by national energy policies, it is a more lucrative investment for the utilities and that's where they invest their capital, while existing transmission lines deteriorate and fail.  New transmission lines also require new rights-of-way and that means that private property owners along the route will have their property taken through eminent domain.  The cost of new transmission projects, estimated to be at least three times the cost of rebuilding and modernizing existing transmission lines completely within existing rights-of-way, is paid for by electric consumers.  This increases the cost of electricity.

One solution would be to modernize existing infrastructure.  It's cheaper and requires no new land and therefore is not subject to a contentious permitting process.  Another solution is distributed generation, the siting of many smaller generating sources near load.  We do not need a new network of expensive, redundant high voltage transmission lines.

However, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the IOUs and their front groups were quick to use the California blackout to crank out the propaganda pushing for new transmission lines.  Perhaps the most egregious of all is this article from IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, who uses the blackout as an opportunity to push a conspiracy between FERC and industry lobbyists to usurp state authority to site transmission lines and force a bunch of new transmission projects through federal permitting and federal eminent domain powers.

There are so many things wrong in that article, I'm only going to point out a few.  I'm sure blog readers can point out even more.  Let's begin with that map of the "congestion zone" in California.  That "zone" and the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor designated by the DOE in 2009 was vacated by the 9th Circuit Court in February of 2011.  It simply doesn't exist anymore because its designation was found to be faulty. 

"“They rely on imports, and if those imports go offline they have nothing to rely on,” says John Kyei, a former APS transmission planning engineer who is now director of Transmission for Houston-based renewable power developer BP Wind Energy."  San Diego wouldn't have to rely on imports if they began developing their own distributed generation or simply sited some generation near load.  Kyei can't see the forest through the trees.  Don't blame a transmission line when the solution is so much simpler.

"Kyei calls such delay’s business as usual, thanks to the phalanx of roadblocks – from environmental approvals to funding refusals by state-level public utility commissions with parochial interest – that regularly stretch new line planning in the U.S. to a decade or longer."  Yikes, abuse of the apostrophe, but I digress!  Of course the Arizona PUC has "parochial interests" -- they are tasked with ensuring Arizona citizens are provided with a utility system that protects their interests first, not Californians.  The contention that new lines are held up "a decade or longer" is completely bogus.  There is nothing "broken" about individual state authority to site new transmission lines.  Some transmission projects simply AREN'T NEEDED!  The state review process weeds out bad projects.

"There is, however, a chance that federal authorities will step in to force transmission improvements. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 empowers the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington to override opposition from states and push through transmission upgrades within designated National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.
 
DOE is currently considering a proposal to also delegate to FERC its power to designate national interest corridors, thus streamlining the process for federal involvement. To date use of the federal power has been blocked by state challenges to the DOE’s designation process – a situation that FERC staff would like to change, according to a policy paper posted last week. As they write: “Clearly, the backstop transmission procedure established by Congress has not yet been effective."

The EPAct only empowers FERC to override "opposition" from states when they fail to act within one year.  Denial of a project at the state level does not give FERC authority.  The backstop transmission procedure has not yet been effective because it has not yet been utilized!  There is no need for federal transmission siting authority.  The system we currently have is not broken.  FERC could not provide one example of a "broken" process.  Needed transmission is being approved and is being built.  FERC's power grab is illegal and will do nothing but complicate and delay the building of new transmission.

This kind of propaganda to push a federal transmission siting coup, dreamed up and championed by industry lobbyists in order to increase corporate profits, is shameful.

by Bill

Last Friday, the Coalition filed our comments in response to FERC's Notice of Inquiry about their incentive program for transmission lines.  As readers of StopPATH WV and The Power Line will know, this federal boondoggle, created by the Cheney administration and paid for entirely by electric rate payers, is at the heart of what is wrong with US grid policy.  Needless to say, C4RP had a lot to say in its comments.

Here is a link to FERC's Notice of Inquiry, which includes specific questions to which they ask commenters to respond.  Here is a link to C4RP's comments that were filed Friday.  You will need to refer to the Notice of Inquiry to identify the questions connected with C4RP's comments.

The FERC comment process was limited to commenting on the transmission incentives themselves, but, as we pointed out in our comments, there are now much more pressing needs for our electrical grid than promoting long distance, high voltage transmission.

The highest priority right now should be small scale renewable generation into the distribution grid along with other small scale generation, including community based wind projects and community scale combined cycle natural gas plants.  The US Department of Energy has a program, Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS), which is specifically designed to promote this kind of integration.  You can find out more about what this kind of integration looks like at the DoE site here.

by Bill

Unlike whiny AEP executives, Dominion Virginia Power sees their coal plant closings as an opportunity for business growth and diversification of their sources of power.  Here is a news story about Dominion's plans.

Dominion is making a big commitment to new natural gas generation including "12 smaller natural gas-fired turbine units coming into service between 2020 and 2026 at locations to be determined."  Compare this plan with plans by AEP's WV subsidiary APCo to build no new natural gas plants in WV because they can't build a big monster plant.

Dominion's plan is not perfect.  The company appears to only be giving lip service to expanding solar and wind capacity, but they do include new initiatives in their plan.  And they are still talking about a third reactor at their North Anna plant which is built directly over an active earthquake fault.  If you don’t think this is a good idea, after the recent earthquake centered near North Anna, take a look at this report of how Virginia Power, now owned by Dominion, lied about the fault to get permits to build the first two reactors.

There is no reference in the article about any Dominion whining about the EPA.  Dominion clearly sees this as an opportunity to strengthen their electrical system through diversification and beginning a move to smaller generating units.

AEP's APCo operates in part of East Virginia, and APCo will have to present a similar plan to the VA SCC.  Here is the final sentence of the article: "Appalachian Power, the state's second-largest utility, planned to file its plan with the SCC Thursday, but officials said uncertainty in federal environmental regulations could change its plan dramatically."  Of course, more whining.

Industry propaganda is sprouting up all over the internet.  It's part of a growing movement to preempt state authority and build a coast-to-coast "national grid" to produce billions of dollars of profit for investor-owned energy corporations whose value continues to fall as our society becomes more energy efficient.  Examples are everywhere. FERC's Order No. 1000 implementing interregional planning and cost allocation was just issued in Washington, DC. FERC's new plan to preempt state authority to site transmission lines has been exposed on the internet in the past week. And even Regional Transmission Planning Organization, PJM Interconnection, gets into the act with an op-ed from their Senior Vice-President of Operations attempting to sell Maryland consumers on a "national grid" to transport midwest wind power to Maryland to meet their Renewable Portfolio Standards goals. [/end Parody]

Check out the "10 pounds in a 5 pound bag" that Kormos is attempting to sell to Marylanders here.  You know you can't trust anything this guy says when he gets the location of the new TrAIL 500-kV transmission line wrong and tells Marylanders that it traverses their state, when it actually traverses Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Northern Virginia and never even enters the State of Maryland at all.  PJM's Senior VP of Operations doesn't even know where PJM-planned transmission lines get sited.

He also gets a whole bunch of other things wrong:

1. "But the expansion of these clean and green resources — and the environmental benefits and economic growth they promise — could be stymied by existing limitations on the planning process for integrating them into the nation's electrical grid... New transmission lines will be needed to move electricity from renewable sources — many in remote locations, far from existing transmission lines — across multiple states to the urban areas where the power is needed."

• New transmission lines to move renewables across multiple states to urban areas, such as Maryland, from "remote locations," such as the midwest, are estimated to cost electric consumers over $220 billion to construct.  Offshore Atlantic wind renewables are in the works and will require NO new land-based transmission lines, just an offshore "backbone" estimated to cost ratepayers $5 billion.  That will be a savings of at least $215 billion dollars on our electric bills if the coastal load centers, such as Maryland, just say "no" to long-distance renewables.  The "national grid" advocated by PJM will also restrict the "environmental benefits and economic growth" Kormos promises to a handful of midwestern states.  Offshore wind, or the development of other in-state renewables, will bring those environmental benefits and economic growth home to Maryland.

1. "A new approach to the planning of the transmission grid is necessary to address this problem. Reforming transmission planning will enable renewable electricity sources to more fully contribute to meeting the nation's electricity needs."

• A new approach to planning is not necessary to address Maryland's renewable goals.  Maryland is willing and able to meet its own goals without PJM's strong arm tactics to forcibly build new transmission lines to supply renewables to Maryland from thousands of miles away.

1. "For PJM Interconnection and other regional transmission organizations (RTOs), which plan and manage the electric transmission system serving two-thirds of the country's population, the challenge is that rules governing the system generally restrict the transmission-planning focus to preserving grid reliability and relieving bottlenecks on the system that raise electricity prices...  FERC, which provides regulatory oversight for RTOs, recognizes the problem and recently issued an order related to what can be done to make it easier to build lines that aren't strictly for reliability and providing for those who benefit from those lines to help pay for them."

• The existing rules provide for "needed" grid additions and already cost electric customers billions of dollars a year.  Changing the rules to allow building of purely speculative, gigantic, transmission lines intended only to benefit a few companies in a handful of states at the expense of the rest of us is not economically or physically prudent.

1. "Delays related to permitting and siting have affected the industry's ability to build new transmission infrastructure for a number of years, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the nation's electric reliability watchdog."

• Those "delays" are caused by states, who have statutory authority to site transmission lines within their borders and are the only authorities who consider the needs and rights of their citizens, as well as local issues, when evaluating a transmission application.  PJM and FERC want to preempt state authority, take over siting of transmission lines and grant private, investor-owned utilities the right to eminent domain over your property.

1. "Consumers and businesses will face an unreliable electric grid and higher electricity prices — and renewable energy goals could be hindered — if not enough transmission is built. On the other hand, everyone could end up paying for unneeded transmission infrastructure if we build too much."

• If we allow PJM to plan and FERC to permit new transmission lines now to transport renewables from other regions to meet our local needs, then everyone will end up paying billions for transmission infrastructure that will quickly become obsolete once offshore wind and local renewables come online in the near future.  

1. "PJM has been working with stakeholders to improve the flexibility of the transmission planning process, which is essential to bolstering America's electric transmission system to meet the nation's economic and environmental goals.  Reforming the process for planning and building transmission now will enable power to be delivered where it's needed tomorrow."

• PJM has been working with energy corporations and the federal government to meet corporate profit goals at our expense and fool electric consumers nationwide into accepting their plan and not asking questions.  Be smart, just say no to PJM's "national grid" and industry-driven propaganda.

by BillFERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff is in the process of staging a coup.  He wants total control of the federal transmission line programs that were split between the Department of Energy and FERC in Dick Cheney's 2005 Energy Policy Act.  Mr. Wellinghoff has circulated the following outline of his plans as shown at this link.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

"An efficient, reliable electric transmission grid is critical to the economy and security of the United States.  In the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005), Congress recognized the national interest in a strong grid, and, accordingly, gave the Department of Energy (DOE) the authority to conduct studies of electric transmission congestion, and then designate as national interest electric transmission corridors (NIETCs) areas experiencing electric energy transmission constraints or congestion that adversely affected consumers.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was given authority to issue permits within NIETCs for the construction of electric transmission facilities as a backstop to state siting activities under certain circumstances.

To date, no construction permits for projects in NIETCs have been issued.  Only one applicant proposing to site a project within a NIETC began the pre-filing process at FERC, and the applicant subsequently withdrew from the process.  Clearly, the backstop transmission procedure established by Congress has not yet been effective." [emphasis mine]

Depite Mr. Wellinghoff's claim, the backstop transmission procedure has been very effective in the cases of PATH and MAPP, because it kept FERC out of the way while the state PSCs went about their job of determining that these projects were not needed.  Mr. Wellinghoff's assertion that backstop authority had anything to do with killing PATH and MAPP is crazy, because PJM Interconnection and the power companies themselves, the primary sponsors of these projects, were the parties that killed the projects.

Now, of course, what Mr. Wellinghoff really means here is that federal backstop authority was not effective in ramming through expensive transmission projects that weren't needed.  He is using the words "efficient" and "effective" only from the standpoint of the power companies that he is supposed to be regulating.  It is now clear exactly where Mr. Wellinghoff stands -- firmly with the energy conglomerates that run the US electrical system.  There is no longer any ambiguity about his position.

Mr. Wellinghoff wants mega-transmission lines strung from sea to shining sea and he wants US rate payers to foot the bill for them, and excess profits for the power companies.  He wants to streamline Cheney's Energy Policy Act allowing FERC to have sole authority over any environmental impact statement processes and to run roughshod over state regulators.  As Mr. Wellinghoff says:

"Unifying federal authority with respect to siting interstate transmission projects would allow a more efficient, directed process.  The proposal envisions a three-step process:  first, delegation by DOE to FERC authorizing FERC to conduct triennial congestion studies; second, delegation by DOE to FERC authorizing FERC to designate NIETCs; and, third, consideration by FERC of applications for both project-specific NIETC designation and permits for construction of interstate transmission projects within  project-specific NIETCs."

Mr. Wellinghoff's new permitting process would combine NEPA, NIETC and federal power line permitting processes into a combined process that would remove individuals and local communities even further from the siting process.  Citizens in communities threatened by new transmission projects would face the possibility of having to defend themselves in three or four federal and state permitting processes at the same time.

This is clearly a gambit designed by FERC and the electricity industry to handcuff local communities.  How could volunteers, many of whom have the most to lose in the process, devote the time required to be effective in such a bureaucratic labyrinth?  Wellinghoff is revving up the FERC steamroller, and it is coming for us.

Cross posted on The Power Line

by Keryn

New Jersey is tired of playing victim to out-of-state energy conglomerates who fatten their own bottom lines by keeping electricity prices high in the state.  In addition to taking on the PJM cartel by financing and building their own new in-state generation, the New Jersey Office of Clean Energy is also soliciting renewable energy storage projects to help manage new wind and solar generation.

"The proposal is part of the state’s effort to develop alternative forms of energy, particularly renewable sources and distributed generation. Distributed generation -- power plants that serve a localized need --reduce congestion on the electric grid, which drives up the cost of electricity for consumers."

Bravo, New Jersey!  There's a lesson here that needs to be quickly learned by other states as FERC's Order No. 1000 is implemented.  Encouraging localized renewable generation to meet their individual state's Renewable Portfolio Standards not only prevents new, renewable energy transmission development that is estimated to cost their consumers over $200 Billion, but it also boosts the local economy and provides good-paying, local jobs within the state.  Don't sit around and wait for others to supply your needs at an outrageous cost  -- self-reliance pays big dividends.