As with the FERC meeting in June of this year, there was a sense of unreality at the Board meeting. The middle part of the event was a detailed, charts-and-graphs-with-tiny-letters filled presentation. They were discussing a scenario where, if you have 90% renewables powering your grid in 2040, what is the best back-up energy source for times of peak power demand. I confess, with ISO not having 10% renewables in its system right now, it really didn’t seem like a pressing problem.

The disconnect from glum reality was even more glaring during the public comment period that followed. Speaker after speaker begged, pleaded, and implored the Board to get off their ass and add renewables to the grid now. Each speaker brought up one or more ways they could change the resource mix quickly. Each speaker was eloquent about the climate crisis we are falling into.

Another theme of the speakers was that the Board needs to have more members from the public, echoing Fix the Grid’s demand that the Governor of each New England state have the authority to appoint a representative to the Board. Another theme was transparency, all ISO Board meetings should be open to the public and the press.

Here is the problem: ISO-NE is not a private club, with board members discussing tee times and types of drinks at the bar. It is a vital public institution, discussions must be deeply thought out, and all meetings should be open to the public. However, I must say that the speakers from the Consumer Liaison Group and Fix the Grid seemed much more intelligent than the individuals sitting on the Board. Board member comments made them sound like a bunch of Yes Men, (the women, too) ready to back up the boss – that well-known promoter of natural gas, ISO President Gordon van Welie.

All and all, our glimpse into the workings of the ISO-NE Board of Directors revealed that they do not think that the climate crisis is urgent; ISO excels at spending 18 months on detailed engineering reports; the Board takes its cues from the staff; and the atmosphere is likely to annually receive 30 million tons or more of carbon dioxide from our grid well into the 2030s.

Time to tip over the table and play a different game.

By Monte Pearson

The post Report on the November 1, 2023 ISO-NE Board Meeting appeared first on Fix the Grid.

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Just before noon, there is another mild kerfuffle between former allies. The Rhode Island Public Utility Commissioner says he is very worried that without the Everett Marine Facility (or EMF to all the folks in the room who want to sound like they are with it. Giving initials to the names of complex facilities seems a bit stuffy, but the panels at the FERC meeting are packed with people who also use initials for concepts as well. It is like saying the Theory of Gravity is TOG. Perhaps everyone on the panels is a bit wobbly on self-image today and needs to impress their colleagues by spouting initials.) Anyway, without the EMF there will be times when there is dangerously low-pressure in the natural gas pipelines.

What? Everyone rants about how solar and wind are not reliable, but the more you listen at these meetings, the more you wonder about natural gas. The pipelines leak, the pipelines lose pressure, the pipelines can’t always get gas from the mid-west, the pipes at the power plants break in cold weather, the valves at the power plants break in cold weather – yeesh.

Putting my concerns aside, something else pops up. The guy who led creation of the new measuring tool and who ran the study saying solar and wind power are covering for gaps in winter natural gas supply, is Vamsi Chadalavada, Chief Operating Officer at ISO-NE. He says that reports that gas companies submit to the states don’t mention anything about there being possible problems with low-pressure. He seems peeved. He says that ISO looked at gas company reports when it did the study, and the gas companies are not being honest with the states! Oops, incoming.

I notice that in these exchanges, the guy from Embridge always mentions “turning out the lights” when he talks. Clearly, he has used this line to win arguments in the past. Not surprisingly, he always mentions how gas plants will keep the lights on.

Commissioner Danley (Republican) finishes his question time by summarizing, “we need unpopular but necessary investments.” (That is, more pipelines.) On the other hand, I notice that the terms “demand-response” and “winter reliability” are getting mentioned in the same sentence at this FERC meeting. Last September, no one at the FERC meeting in Burlington, VT uttered the words “demand-response.” One of the little things that shows we just may be having an impact on this debate.

At last Donald Kreis, the official Consumer Advocate for New Hampshire ratepayers, gets to comment. He introduces himself as the “token” rate payer advocate invited to the panels and points out that NEPOOL (the governing body for ISO-NE) is controlled by the gas industry and NEPOOL is the power inside ISO-NE. He believes NEPOOL promotes “amorphous worries” about “reliability” to justify extra money being spent on reliability “gizmos.” He hails the new ISO study because it is a true risk analysis using data which shows that the risk of winter blackouts is actually very low. He hopes this means we “stop paying for the same thing twice.”

Meanwhile, I finally figured out that PFP means Pay for Performance, even the charts on the TV screen say PFP, but it isn’t a place or an organization, it’s a concept. Really? The initials of a concept as the heading on a chart? Mental osteoporosis in this industry.

In his final comments, Donald Kreis says that there ought to be more public input on the panels FERC picks because “ratepayers are the only wallet in the room.” Wow.

June Tierney, a Commissioner in the Vermont Dept. of Public Service comes out swinging at the end. She thinks “do you not get it?” Every time someone in the room talks about using more gas. A lot of people in the region think “we can’t burn fossil fuels anymore.” As a result, she believes, the public doesn’t trust FERC or ISO-NE. The Commissioner pushes for more data and analysis that allow ISO and FERC to make decisions based on information and make decisions that solve problems as we go through the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

At the event, there were also a bunch of men in black suits giving presentations that were sort of “blah, blah, jargon, blah, blah, jargon” but let’s end here, with the words of June Tierney and a note of optimism for the work we have before us.

The post The Tug of War Between Renewables and Gas, continued… appeared first on Fix the Grid.

The convention hall at DoubleTree by Hilton in Portland feels very dark as Marya Axner and I arrive late for the FERC meeting. This is not because the lights are turned off. No, instead, the 150 or so male, fossil fuel executives at the meeting are all wearing black suits, absorbing the overhead light. As they are middle-aged or older, I am guessing the black color is a comforting reminder of those days when they burned coal, and no one was trying to replace them with wind and solar power.

I have barely gotten seated when the Chairman of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission confesses that he is surprised that the ISO’s latest study of the region’s energy supply shows there is considerable solar power generated in the winter and there will be more each year. This probably demonstrates that executives in the industry have come to believe their propaganda slogan that the sun doesn’t shine in the winter and the wind doesn’t blow in the summer. Clearly, the Chairman needs to get outside more.

There is a feeling of unease in the room as people digest the latest ISO study of winter energy supply which, among other things, says that increasing amounts of wind and solar power in the region are providing new electricity that makes it unlikely there will be a power shortage and electricity crunch during winter cold snaps. This actual data about real conditions completely upends the wild talk at the FERC meeting last September in Burlington, VT that we were on the verge of rolling blackouts every winter unless we increased the supply of natural gas.

FERC Commissioner Danley, a Republican, is visibly unhappy that there is no crisis that might panic New England into building more natural gas pipelines. He tells the room that he is not convinced that the data is correct. This proves the old saying that data about the real world cannot displace ideological beliefs. He spends much of the rest of the day asking members of the several panels if they believe the data that ISO has produced.

A Vice President at Eversource eagerly announces that he is skeptical that the wind and solar power counted by ISO will come online in time to prevent the lights from going out. Of course, Eversource is in the process of selling its stake in two offshore wind projects, so they are walking away from any responsibility to ensure that barriers are being overcome. Sad that one of the largest utilities in New England is not stepping up and helping the transition to wind and solar. Perhaps the Healy administration’s new DPU commissioners can prod them into doing the right thing.

Responding to Danley’s questioning, the Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer of North American Electric Reliability Corporation refers fondly to the age when everyone burned reliable coal and agrees that we should not rush into depending on wind and solar which are “intermittent” suppliers of electricity. Unlike natural gas, where plants all over the mid-west shut down last winter during a cold snap and almost blacked out that region.

In contrast, Rebecca Tepper, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and Katie Dykes, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection are very happy about the new analytical tool created by ISO-NE and the reassuring data it has produced. Both make clear their states, which use about 75% of the electricity in New England, are moving ahead briskly by directly contracting with offshore wind and onshore solar projects. These projects will produce huge amounts of electricity that their utilities are mandated to use before they tap into electricity from the ISO system. Hanging over the room is the ISO study, which predicts that these renewable resources, over the next five years, will be gradually displacing electricity generated by natural gas plants.

The highest point of the meeting, from our point of view, is Rebecca Tepper beginning her presentation by saying that the people who signed on to the Fix the Grid letter to FERC and NESCOE ought to be at the presentation tables during the next FERC visit to New England. This is a point of unity as representatives from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont express no fear of letting the public and its advocacy groups become voices in the discussion of our energy future – Hurray!

                                                                        To be continued…

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