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Lawmakers Highlight Supply Chain Challenges Facing Public Power In Letter To FEMA

June 20, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 20, 2022

A group of federal lawmakers from Florida on June 10 sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in which they highlight “the dangerous supply chain shortages affecting Florida’s electric cooperatives and municipalities.”

The letter, which was sent to FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, said that labor shortages and competition from other industries for steel have made equipment procurement difficult.

“As a result, critical electric grid equipment delivery times have increased 20-fold in the past 2 years. Transformers, the most integral pieces in ensuring electricity to homes, took only 3 months to be delivered in 2018. Currently, delivery delays for transformers are averaging 52 to 75 months, and some manufacturers are not even taking orders,” the letter said.

“This is particularly concerning given that the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is forecasted to produce hurricanes and tropical storms of above-average strength,” the lawmakers said.

“As the onset of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season approaches, we urge FEMA to mitigate this issue before a severe hurricane or tropical storm devastates our Floridian communities.”

The letter noted that each year, Florida electric cooperatives and municipalities prepare for the upcoming hurricane season by stockpiling supplies. “When disasters occur, destroyed equipment needs to be replaced to ensure quick power restoration. The severe delay of critical parts has made this preparation nearly impossible, leaving many electric companies without reserves. It would take only one hurricane or severe tropical storm to cause devastating damage to our constituents, and with the absence of a stockpile, power restoration for these communities would take substantially longer than previous years.” 

Local electric utilities “play a critical role in the growth and development of the communities they serve. Unfortunately, these new supply chain issues adversely affect the growth and management of these communities.  Without proper equipment, local utilities must triage parts, which delays upgrades and ‘non-essential’ repairs,” the letter said.

The weakened systems “will make them more susceptible to damage when disaster occurs. FEMA must employ mitigation efforts with the local Florida electric community to ensure that transformers, bare wire, meters, and other electric grid equipment will be available ahead of the first disaster.”

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.

Ditto Urges Deliberative Process Tied To Implementation of Cyber Incident Reporting Law

June 17, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 17, 2022

American Public Power Association (APPA) President and CEO Joy Ditto on June 9 sent a letter to Jennifer Easterly, Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) regarding implementation of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022.

In the letter, Ditto asks for a commitment from Easterly “to take a careful and deliberative process that takes into account existing reporting mandates and to appropriately tailor reporting mandates commensurate with risk to national security.”  

Signed into law by President Biden in March, the law requires critical infrastructure entities to report cyber incidents to CISA within 72 hours and ransomware payments within 24 hours. CISA is directed to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking to implement the reporting requirements within 24 months.

Ditto noted in her letter that the electric sector has mandatory and enforceable federal regulatory standards in place for cyber and physical security. These standards include mandatory reporting of specific cyber incidents to the Department of Energy (DOE) via an Electric Emergency Incident and Disturbance Report and to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). 

Outside of these mandatory reporting standards, public power utilities participate in robust voluntary information sharing systems such as the Electric Subsector Coordinating Council and the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, as well as the Multi-State Information and Sharing Analysis Center.

Moreover, electric utilities worked closely with the National Security Council, DOE, and DHS on the “100 Day Electric Sector Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Sprint” to encourage and support utilities’ visibility and monitoring of their industrial control system and operational technology networks, as well as automated sharing into government, Ditto pointed out.

The electric sector “is unique among critical infrastructure sectors in the extent and maturity of existing information sharing regulations and programs,” she wrote. Public power utilities, as units of state and local governments and varying so widely in size and risk profiles, are still more unique.

“Given these complexities, and pursuant to Congress’ expressed intent, it is critical that CISA work directly with our industry’s sector risk management agency, DOE, as well as FERC and NERC, and industry itself, to harmonize, to the maximum extent possible, new reporting mandates and processes with those that already exist.”

In addition, Ditto strongly urged CISA to use “the considerable discretion given to it by Congress in the law to define covered entities for the purposes of mandated reporting of cybersecurity incidents in a risk-based manner.”

As Congress explicitly stated in the law, CISA must define the types of entities that constitute covered entities based on the “consequences that disruption to or compromise of such an entity could cause to national security, economic security, or public health and safety,” she said.

“This is of particular importance to public power utilities, as APPA’s members have widely different risk profiles ranging from an electric utility with transmission assets that serves millions of customers to a very small distribution electric utility without an industrial control system serving 200 customers,” wrote Ditto.

She requested a meeting with Easterly and her team leading implementation to discuss the matters raised in the letter in detail.

Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Google Unveil 24/7 Renewable Energy Service Agreement

June 16, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 16, 2022

California community choice aggregator (CCA) Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) and Google on June 15 unveiled a new 24/7 renewable energy service that features hourly renewable energy matching, integrated demand management, and a commitment to ongoing community investments in local building and transportation electrification.

Under the ten-year agreement, SVCE will serve Google’s offices in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, Calif., matching carbon-free electricity with Google’s local demand for at least 92% of all hours in the year.

The agreement utilizes a Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) measure – a 24/7 “CFE Score.” SVCE has incorporated this measure into a commercial energy service for Google, to build and manage an optimized portfolio of complementary clean resources designed to match Google’s local energy demand across all hours of the year, including wind, solar, geothermal, battery energy storage systems and other resources.

In addition, SVCE said that the service supports dynamic management of demand from Google’s growing all-electric building and transportation infrastructure.

SVCE said its new energy service with Google represents a model that can be replicated and scaled in other communities, by other energy providers, and commercial energy customers.

Click here for a case study related to SVCE’s energy service agreement with Google.

The American Public Power Association has initiated a new category of membership for community choice aggregation programs.

NREL Report Maps Potential For 3.5 TW Of Pumped Storage Hydropower

June 16, 2022

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 16, 2022

There is still the potential for as much as 3.5 terawatts (TW) of 10-hour energy pumped storage hydropower (PSH) in the United States, according to a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Pumped storage hydropower is “a mature and proven method of energy storage with competitive round-trip efficiency and long life spans” that will make it “crucial to bridge gaps in electricity production as variable wind and solar production continue to comprise an ever-larger portion of the United States’ energy portfolio,” according to the report, Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower Resource Assessment for the United States.

NREL said it would soon publish a second technical report that would combine the data from the first report with additional resources to “examine how hydropower’s low-cost, flexible energy could support tomorrow’s grid.” Both studies are funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office.

A DOE report last winter found hydropower can be a valuable resource in maintaining bulk power system reliability.

Pumped storage hydropower comprises 23 gigawatts (GW) of the nation’s 24 GW of energy storage capacity, nonetheless, no new large pumped storage hydropower station has been built in the United States since the 1990s, the report noted, adding that “attempts to quantify technical potential capacity from PSH project applications to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) suffer from inconsistent site and cost evaluation methodologies and likely are not representative of all PSH opportunities.”

The NREL study seeks to better under understand the technical potential for pumped storage hydropower development by developing a national-scale resource assessment for closed-loop pumped storage hydropower. The report identifies 14,846 potential sites that could technically support pumped storage hydropower. It also details how much a plant might cost and how much energy it could produce.

Excluding undevelopable lands such as national parks and critical habitat for endangered species, the report found that even with using a conservative minimum head height (the difference in elevation between the two reservoirs), technical potential for pumped storage hydropower sites can be found “broadly across the western United States, the Appalachian Mountains, and the Ozark Mountains, as well as in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.”

To create the maps in the study the NREL researchers fixed parameters like dam height and storage duration. They selected a 10-hour energy storage duration because, they said, it tends to be more cost competitive with 4-hour battery energy storage technologies. The researchers also used their geospatial algorithm to search the country for all possible sites. Users can sort and filter those sites by head height, energy capacity, and cost. NREL plans to update the map to give users more control.

“We want to build an interactive map where you can check boxes on and off to choose between 12-hour or 8-hour storage, 40-meter or 60-meter dam height. Whatever people want,” Stuart Cohen, an NREL model engineer and a co-author on both reports, said in a statement.

The study’s results demonstrate a wide cost distribution and suggest that the most cost-competitive sites could be found where the existing topography supports very high head heights, the report’s authors said. And while these results are promising for the future of PSH in the United States, continued expansion of this work will improve PSH resource characterization, and additional grid modeling will help illuminate its potential future in the U.S. energy portfolio,” they said.

Anthony Cannon Installed As Chair of APPA’s Board of Directors

June 15, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 15, 2022

Anthony Cannon, general manager and CEO of Greenville Utilities Commission in Greenville, North Carolina, on June 15 was installed as chair of the American Public Power Association Board of Directors during APPA’s National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

David Osburn, general manager of Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority in Edmond, Oklahoma, is chair-elect for 2022-2023. Nicholas Lawler, general manager of Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments in Littleton, Massachusetts, is vice chair. Colin Hansen, CEO and general manager of Kansas Power Pool in Wichita, Kansas, is immediate past chair. Layne Burningham, president and CEO of Utah Municipal Power Agency in Spanish Fork, Utah, is treasurer.   

Cannon chose five members of the board to serve with the officers on the APPA Executive Committee.

They are: Daniel Beans, electric utility director of Roseville Electric Utility in Roseville, California; John Haarlow, CEO and general manager of Snohomish County PUD in Everett, Washington; Jonathan Hand, executive director of Electric Cities of Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama; Thomas Kent, president and CEO of Nebraska Public Power District in Columbus, Nebraska; and Michael Peters, president and CEO of WPPI Energy in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.  

Newly elected to the APPA board this year are: Jason Grey, director of utilities of Danville Utilities Department in Danville, Virginia; Roy Jones, CEO of ElectriCities of North Carolina, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina; Beatrice Limtiaco, assistant general manager of administration of Guam Power Authority; Debra Smith, general manager and CEO of Seattle City Light in Seattle, Washington; and Brian Solsbee, executive director of the Tennessee Municipal Electric Power Association in Brentwood, Tennessee. 

Seven board members were re-elected to new three-year terms: Ellen Burt, general manager of Stowe Electric Department in Stowe, Vermont, John Haarlow, CEO and general manager of Snohomish County PUD in Everett, Washington; Thomas Kent, president and CEO of Nebraska Public Power District in Columbus, Nebraska; Nicholas Lawler, general manager of Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments in Littleton, Massachusetts; Russell Olson, CEO of Heartland Consumers Power District in Madison, South Dakota; Michael Peters, president and CEO of WPPI Energy in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; and David Walters, general manager of Grand Haven Board of Light and Power in Grand Haven, Michigan.

APPA board members are chosen to represent 10 regions across the country.

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.

Twenty-Three Individuals, Eight Utilities Win National Public Power Awards

June 14, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 14, 2022

Twenty-Three individuals and eight utilities were recognized for service to the American Public Power Association (APPA) and the public power industry during APPA’s National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee on June 14.

The individuals and utilities recognized at the ceremony were: 

Alex Radin Distinguished Service Award

This award is the highest award granted by the American Public Power Association. The award recognizes exceptional leadership and dedication to public power.

James D. Donovan Individual Achievement Award

This award recognizes people who have made substantial contributions to the electric utility industry, with a special commitment to public power. 

Alan H. Richardson Statesmanship Award

This award recognizes public power leaders who work to achieve consensus on national issues important to public power utilities.

Larry Hobart Seven Hats Award

This award recognizes managers of small utilities serving fewer than 2,500 meters. These managers have a very small staff and must assume multiple roles.

Harold Kramer-John Preston Personal Service Award 

This award recognizes individuals for their service to the American Public Power Association.

Spence Vanderlinden Public Official Award

This award recognizes elected or appointed local officials who have contributed to the goals of the American Public Power Association.

Robert E. Roundtree Rising Star Award

This award is a scholarship presented to future leaders in public power. The recipient receives a stipend to travel to an APPA conference or training program to advance their education and development in public power.

Mark Crisson Leadership and Managerial Excellence Award 

This award recognizes managers at a utility, joint action agency, or state or regional association who steer their organizations to new levels of excellence, lead by example, and inspire staff to do better.

E.F. Scattergood System Achievement Award

This award honors American Public Power Association member systems with outstanding accomplishments.

Sue Kelly Community Service Award

This award recognizes utilities for their “good neighbor” activities that demonstrate commitment to the local community.

Energy Innovator Award

APPA’s research program, Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments (DEED), nurtures innovation in public power. Each year, the program recognizes innovative utility projects with this award.

New Resource Adequacy Modeling Tools Needed For The Evolving Grid, NRRI Says

June 14, 2022

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
June 14, 2022

Traditional resource adequacy tools are not sufficient to ensure reliability in a rapidly changing electric power system, according to a new report from the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI), the research arm of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

Power grids are evolving rapidly from a system served by dispatchable resources to a system that relies on variable energy resources (VERs) and duration-limited storage, the report noted. Those changes are making many of the tools power system planners relied on “obsolete,” according to the report, Resource Adequacy Modeling for a High Renewable Future.

In the past, electric system planners only needed to worry about unusually high loads or high forced outages, the report said. “Now, they must worry about unusually high loads during periods of unusually low renewable output and limited storage duration” that, coupled with more extreme weather, can compound risks and require “a fundamental rethinking of planning for low probability, high impact events,” the report said.

The NRRI report, like other recent reports, highlighted that weather is emerging as a fundamental driver of power system conditions and will require changes in resource adequacy planning to account for increasing uncertainty on both the supply and demand side of the equation.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s 2022 Summer Reliability Assessment identified an “elevated or high risk” of energy shortfalls this summer because of predicted above-normal temperatures and drought conditions.

And earlier this year a paper by NARUC, the National Association of State Energy Officials and Converge Strategies recommended new approaches to estimating the value of resiliency in the face of changing grid conditions and weather patterns.

Updating reliability planning for a “new energy paradigm” will require taking into account meteorology, variable renewable energy generation, forced outages, and energy limited storage, the report said.

The report’s authors argue in favor of using a Monte Carlo simulation that is capable of factoring in multiple inputs and uncertainties while maintaining historical correlations. For example, “traditional models used average or typical time profiles of load and renewables while focusing on generator outages as the primary source of uncertainty, greatly underestimating the risk of load shedding,” they said.

The report also noted that traditional models for resource planning often fail to include weather data, climate impacts, behind-the-meter resources, transmission, or sophisticated data on energy storage availability.

The authors included another example of the failure of traditional resource adequacy modelling. They ask, “At the high end of renewable penetration, how much storage would be required to cover Dunkelflaute, the ‘dark doldrums,’ that occur in the winter when wind ceases to blow for several days?”

To ensure that resource adequacy models can provide valid risk assessments, the report recommended they should simulate random variables as weather dependent; benchmark simulations against historic data; model generator outages as weather driven; scale simulations to match future expectations, and include climate effects in simulations.

EPA Says It Will Reconsider Trump Administration’s Decision On Particulate Matter

June 14, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 14, 2022

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on June 10 announced that it will reconsider the Trump Administration’s decision to retain the particulate matter (PM) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

EPA is reconsidering the December 2020 decision “because available scientific evidence and technical information indicate that the current standards may not be adequate to protect public health and welfare, as required by the Clean Air Act,” it said in a news release.

Particulate matter includes fine particles, which are 2.5 micrometers in diameter and smaller. They can be emitted directly from a variety of sources, including vehicles, smokestacks, and fires. They also form when gases emitted by power plants, industrial processes, and gasoline and diesel engines react in the atmosphere.

Coarse particles, which have diameters between 2.5 and 10 micrometers, include road dust that is kicked up by traffic, some agricultural operations, construction and demolition operations, industrial processes, and biomass burning.

EPA has regulated particle pollution since 1971 and has revised the standards four times — in 1987, 1997, 2006 and 2012.

EPA’s 2020 policy assessment concluded that the scientific evidence and information support revising the level of the annual standard for the PM NAAQS to below the current level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter while retaining a 24-hour standard.

The agency received numerous petitions for reconsideration as well as lawsuits challenging the December 2020 final action.

EPA said that as part of its move to reconsider the decision to retain the particulate matter NAAQS, the agency will develop a supplement to a 2019 Final Integrated Science Assessment that will take into account the most up-to-date science, including new studies in the emerging area of COVID-related research.  

The supplement will be reviewed at a public meeting by the chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), supported by a particulate matter review panel of scientific experts on the health and welfare impacts of PM.

The CASAC and the PM panel will also review a revised policy assessment and formulate advice to the Administrator.

The public will have opportunities to comment on these documents during the CASAC review process, as well as to provide input during the rulemaking through the public comment process and public hearings.

EPA expects to issue a proposed rulemaking this summer and a final rule in Spring 2023.

For more information on the NAAQS review process and documents related to prior PM NAAQS reviews, visit https://www.epa.gov/naaqs/particulate-matter-pm-air-quality-standards.

In June 2020, APPA and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association submitted joint comments advocating for EPA to retain the annual PM 2.5 NAAQS.