“In order for anyone to accomplish their sustainability goals or for Hawaiian Electric to accomplish our reliability goals, the future is all in the telecom and the technology.”
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Author Bio:
Christian Whitney is the director for pole infrastructure enterprise at Hawaiian Electric.
EPRI developed Ti, a robot capable of crawling over conductor shield wires and harvesting power from ambient energy sources to support autonomous, high-fidelity condition assessment.
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Author Bio:
Dr. Andrew Phillips is director of Transmission and Substation Research at the Electric Power Research Institute. Phillips earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
A few months back, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directed Deutsche Bank Energy Trading LLC to show cause why it shouldn’t be assessed a civil penalty of $1.5 million and be made to return some $123,000 in allegedly unjust profits from power trading in markets run by the California ISO.
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Commission Watch
Author Bio:
Bruce W. Radford is publisher of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
A no-holds-barred interview with the electric industry’s chief architect of wholesale electric market design.
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People In Power
Author Bio:
John A. Bewick is Fortnightly’s contributing editor and formerly was secretary for environmental affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He holds advanced degrees in nuclear science and business management.
With no single entity in charge, transmission planning has plagued projects that span multiple regions. A new framework offers a solution.
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Sidebar Title:
Cost Allocation Principles: An Expanded List
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FERC Order 1000 listed six principles for cost allocation for interregional transmission planning. FERC’s list, however, could be expanded as follows:
1) Commensurate with Benefits: The cost of interregional transmission projects should be allocated to regions such that they are at least roughly commensurate with total benefits identified for each of the regions based on the benefits and metrics specified. Neither region should be allocated a share of the cost of an interregional project in which it receives no benefit.
2) Transparency: The application of cost allocation methodologies and identification of benefits and beneficiaries must be transparent.
3) Different project types: Different cost allocation methods may be applied to different types (e.g., reliability, economic, or public policy requirements) or different portions of transmission facilities.
4) Quantify and Monetize: The identified benefits should be quantified and, if possible, monetized based on all internally used and additionally specified interregional benefit metrics. Non-monetized and non-quantified benefits should also be recognized in the assessment of the overall reasonableness of proposed interregional project cost allocations.
5) Benefits at Least Equal to Avoided Costs: The regions should agree that the monetized reliability, load serving, public policy, or other benefit of an interregional project will be at least equal to the avoided cost of achieving the same benefit solely through cost-effective local or regional transmission upgrades.
6) Hurdle Rate: If benefit-to-cost ratios are used to assess the desirability of an interregional project to a region or the regions as a group, the benefit-to-cost threshold must not exceed 1.25.
7) Regional Net Benefits: Benefits to each region need to be sufficiently large so that each region’s share of benefits exceeds its share of costs consistent with region-internal benefit-cost criteria.
8) Internal Cost Recovery: The costs allocated to each region must be recoverable through the existing internal—local and regional—cost allocation process of each region.–JP, JWC, and DH
Author Bio:
Johannes Pfeifenberger and Judy Chang are principals of The Brattle Group. Delphine Hou is a former Brattle associate. This article is based on work undertaken for the Southwest Power Pool’s Regional State Committee and the associated report, Seams Cost Allocation: A Flexible Framework to Support Interregional Transmission Planning, April 2012, available at www.spp.org and www.brattle.com. The authors acknowledge sole responsibility for the content of this article.
Utilities in the Midwest ISO want greater access to sell into PJM’s lucrative market. But that might require a virtual merger of the two RTOs — a move rejected seven years ago as too costly, and perhaps still impractical today.
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Commission Watch
Author Bio:
Bruce W. Radford is publisher of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
New Jersey’s bid to force prices downward in PJM’s capacity market not only raises the alarm about market manipulation. It also reveals a dilemma that’s preventing new generation from being built. Incumbent interests and political motivations make PJM less attractive to investment than it should be.
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Energy Risk & Markets
Author Bio:
Ade Dosunmu is managing director at Capacity Markets Partners. Previously he held senior management positions at Utility Risk Management Corp., Comverge, and Booz & Co., and he co-founded energy efficiency service company GreenPrimate Inc. Email him at adosunmu@capacitymarkets.com
In competitive power markets based on locational marginal pricing (LMP), the facts sometimes conflict with popular belief. Most notably: 1. When there’s congestion, the books don’t balance, and ratepayers always pay more than the generators receive. The difference is sometimes called “congestion cost.” 2. Congestion in a competitive market doesn’t necessarily increase ratepayers’ costs; and 3. Reductions in LMP are incomplete and sometimes misleading measures of economic benefits of transmission upgrades. These three facts and their implications should be considered in transmission planning, market design, tariffs, and system operations.
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Energy Risk & Markets
Author Bio:
Hyde M. Merrill (hm@merrillenergy.com) is the proprietor of Merrill Energy, LLC. Richard D. Tabors (rtabors@crai.com) is a vice president at CRA International, and previously was a faculty member at MIT. The views in this article are solely the authors.’ They acknowledge the insightful help of J. Dan Watkiss.
Asset owners in the Northwest cry foul as the Bonneville Power Administration struggles to reconcile FERC orders with its operational realities. The battle between wind and water has blown up into a regional conflict over transmission tariffs.
Category:
Commission Watch
Author Bio:
Bruce W. Radford is publisher of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
