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FERC Hydropower Licensing Dispute centers on FERC authority, Clean Water Act compliance, state water quality certifications, Federal Power Act timelines, and Army Corps dams on West Virginia's Monongahela River licenses.

Key Points

An inquiry into FERC's licensing process and state water quality authority for hydropower at Monongahela River dams.

✅ Questions on omitted state water quality conditions

✅ Debate over starting Clean Water Act certification timelines

✅ Potential impacts on states' rights and licensing schedules

As federal lawmakers, including Democrats pressing FERC, plan to consider a bill that would expand Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensing authority, questions emerged on Tuesday about the process used by FERC to issue two hydropower licenses for existing dams in West Virginia.

In a letter to FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee, Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as electricity pricing changes were being debated, raised questions about hydropower licenses issued for two dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Monongahela River in West Virginia.

U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy, Bobby Rush (D-IL), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Environment, and John Sarbanes (D-MD), amid Maryland clean energy enforcement concerns, questioned why FERC did not incorporate all conditions outlined in a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection water quality certificate into plans for the projects.

“By denying the state its allotted time to review this application and submit requirements on these licenses, FERC is undermining the state’s authority under the Clean Water Act and Federal Power Act to impose conditions that will ensure water quality standards are met,” the letter stated.

The House of Representatives was slated to consider the Hydropower Policy Modernization Act of 2017, H.R. 3043, later in the week. The measure would expand FERC authority over licensing processes, a theme mirrored in Maine's transmission line debate over interstate energy projects. Opponents of the bill argue that the changes would make it more difficult for states to protect their clean water interests.

West Virginia has announced plans to challenge FERC hydropower licenses for the dams on the Monongahela River, echoing Northern Pass opposition seen in New Hampshire.

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Ukraine-ENTSO-E Grid Synchronization links Ukraine and Moldova to the European grid via secure interconnection, matching frequency for stability, resilience, and energy security, enabling cross-border support, islanding recovery, and coordinated load balancing during wartime disruptions.

Key Points

Rapid alignment of Ukraine and Moldova into the European grid to enable secure interconnection and system stability.

✅ Matches 50 Hz frequency across interconnected systems

✅ Enables cross-border support and electricity trading

✅ Improves resilience, stability, and energy security

On February 24 Ukraine’s electric grid operator disconnected the country’s power system from the larger Russian-operated network to which it had always been linked. The long-planned disconnection was meant to be a 72-hour trial proving that Ukraine could operate on its own and to protect electricity supply before winter as contingencies were tested. The test was a requirement for eventually linking with the European grid, which Ukraine had been working toward since 2017. But four hours after the exercise started, Russia invaded.

Ukraine’s connection to Europe—which was not supposed to occur until 2023—became urgent, and engineers aimed to safely achieve it in just a matter of weeks. On March 16 they reached the key milestone of synchronizing the two systems. It was “a year’s work in two weeks,” according to a statement by Kadri Simson, the European Union commissioner for energy. That is unusual in this field. “For [power grid operators] to move this quickly and with such agility is unprecedented,” says Paul Deane, an energy policy researcher at the University College Cork in Ireland. “No power system has ever synchronized this quickly before.”

Ukraine initiated the process of joining Europe’s grid in 2005 and began working toward that goal in earnest in 2017, as did Moldova. It was part of an ongoing effort to align with Europe, as seen in the Baltic states’ disconnection from the Russian grid, and decrease reliance on Russia, which had repeatedly threatened Ukraine’s sovereignty. “Ukraine simply wanted to decouple from Russian dominance in every sense of the word, and the grid is part of that,” says Suriya Jayanti, an Eastern European policy expert and former U.S. diplomat who served as energy chief at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv from 2018 to 2020.

After the late February trial period, Ukrenergo, the Ukrainian grid operator, had intended to temporarily rejoin the system that powers Russia and Belarus. But the Russian invasion made that untenable. “That left Ukraine in isolation mode, which would be incredibly dangerous from a power supply perspective,” Jayanti says. “It means that there’s nowhere for Ukraine to import electricity from. It’s an orphan.” That was a particularly precarious situation given Russian attacks on key energy infrastructure such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and ongoing strikes on Ukraine’s power grid that posed continuing risks. (According to Jayanti, Ukraine’s grid was ultimately able to run alone for as long as it did because power demand dropped by about a third as Ukrainians fled the country.)

Three days after the invasion, Ukrenergo sent a letter to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) requesting authorization to connect to the European grid early. Moldelectrica, the Moldovan operator, made the same request the following day. While European operators wanted to support Ukraine, they had to protect their own grids, amid renewed focus on protecting the U.S. power grid from Russian hacking, so the emergency connection process had to be done carefully. “Utilities and system operators are notoriously risk-averse because the job is to keep the lights on, to keep everyone safe,” says Laura Mehigan, an energy researcher at University College Cork.

An electric grid is a network of power-generating sources and transmission infrastructure that produces electricity and carries it from places such as power plants, wind farms and solar arrays to houses, hospitals and public transit systems. “You can’t just experiment with a power system and hope that it works,” Deane says. Getting power where it is it needed when it is needed is an intricate process, and there is little room for error, as incidents involving Russian hackers targeting U.S. utilities have highlighted for operators worldwide.

Crucial to this mission is grid interconnection. Linked systems can share electricity across vast areas, often using HVDC technology, so that a surplus of energy generated in one location can meet demand in another. “More interconnection means we can move power around more quickly, more efficiently, more cost effectively and take advantage of low-carbon or zero-carbon power sources,” says James Glynn, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. But connecting these massive networks with many moving parts is no small order.

One of the primary challenges of interconnecting grids is synchronizing them, which is what Ukrenergo, Moldelectrica and ENTSO-E accomplished last week. Synchronization is essential for sharing electricity. The task involves aligning the frequencies of every energy-generation facility in the connecting systems. Frequency is like the heartbeat of the electric grid. Across Europe, energy-generating turbines spin 50 times per second in near-perfect unison, and when disputes disrupt that balance, slow clocks across Europe can result, reminding operators of the stakes. For Ukraine and Moldova to join in, their systems had to be adjusted to match that rhythm. “We can’t stop the power system for an hour and then try to synchronize,” Deane says. “This has to be done while the system is operating.” It is like jumping onto a moving train or a spinning ride at the playground: the train or ride is not stopping, so you had better time the jump perfectly.

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COVID-19 Impact on US Electric Grid: utilities, ERCOT, PJM, and MISO brace for load shifts as remote work rises, industrial demand falls, and nuclear plants enforce pandemic planning to maintain reliability and resilience.

Key Points

Pandemic-driven changes in electricity demand and operations as utilities shift to remote work and reduced industrial use.

✅ Utilities enact remote work and suspend disconnections

✅ Grid operators model load shifts and maintain reliability

✅ Nuclear plants sustain operations with pandemic protocols

Operators of the nation's electric grid and energy companies are bracing for the spread of a virus that is undercutting power demand in countries across Asia and Europe as daily activities grind to a halt.

Owners of U.S. utilities and nuclear plants are canceling events, halting travel, pushing remote work and testing ill workers to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

So far, grid operators in the United States say no substantial effect on the electricity demand has emerged, but that could change, even though some reports indicate the U.S. grid is safe for now amid COVID-19. Texas' main grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), expressed uncertainty when asked whether it will see changes in demand patterns for power due to the virus.

"It's too early to tell," Leslie Sopko, a spokeswoman for ERCOT, said in an email.

The virus has already taken a toll on power demand overseas. The chairman of Japan's federation of electric utilities and president of Chubu Electric Power Co., Satoru Katsuno, told reporters Friday the country's power demand has weakened as industrial activity slows due to the outbreak, according to Reuters.

The news outlet similarly reported China's industrial power demand this year may decline as the virus curtailed factory output and prevented some employees from returning to work. And, according to Bloomberg, power use in Italy slumped 7.4% last week after the government there shut down schools and told workers to remain home, while Ontario electricity demand also declined as people stayed home.

U.S. utility executives said the sector is well prepared and has faced the threat of spreading infections before. More than a decade ago, global virus scares like SARS pushed companies to hammer out extensive disaster planning, and those have stuck.

"A lot of the foundational work on contingency planning is actually rooted in pandemic planning because of those experiences in the mid-2000s," Scott Aaronson, the Edison Electric Institute's vice president of security and preparedness, told E&E News. "There is a good body of work and a lot of planning and exercises that have gone into being able to operate through these challenges."

Keeping the nation's electric grid running is a top priority at the Department of Energy, said Chris Fall, the agency's point person for COVID-19, which the new coronavirus causes. "Our responsibility is to make sure the electrical grid is resilient and working," said Fall, who directs the department's Office of Science.

He told an agency podcast, called "Direct Current," that the department is working with the private sector and other elements of the energy system. "Obviously we are connected with other agencies like Homeland Security or [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] on things like the electrical grid and making sure we have power, and if those people get sick or impacted, we have backups for all of that," he said.

According to a bulletin EEI released on the issue, 40% of a company's employees could be out sick, be quarantined or stay home to care for sick family members. And pandemics may prevent "traditional mutual assistance programs that help companies restore service after natural disasters and weather events," EEI said, such as restoring power in Florida after major storms.

The utility sector is also juggling the needs of its customers. Many major utilities across the nation have vowed to suspend shut-offs and keep power, heat and water on for all customers — a particular concern for people who may be out of work and cannot afford to pay their bills. Companies are also suspending disconnections for nonpayment, some under direction from officials and regulators in states like Ohio and Connecticut, while in Canada Hydro One's peak rate policy has drawn attention among self-isolating customers.

Like other businesses preparing for pandemics, utilities focus on keeping the workforce healthy and operations running. But EEI's Aaronson noted that a key difference with keeping critical infrastructure humming is the possible requirement for the sheltering in place of essential employees who are unable to do their jobs from home, as some operators contemplate locking down key staff at work sites to ensure continuity.

Grid operators are also well-equipped to handle shifts in power demand, and he acknowledged the sector could see changes as more offices and businesses move to remote working. He compared it to the load demand shifts between weekdays and weekends.

"So on the weekends, you're going to have a lot of people at home," Aaronson said. "During the week, it's people in offices. But generally speaking, the ability to have that resiliency and redundancy, the ability to shift resources and the way the grid balances, that is not going to change."

Electricity demand from high-intensity industries like manufacturing or theme parks like Disneyland could also wane, he added, even as electricity inequality in California influences who is most affected.

"It's not just a load shift to the residential, but it's also the load drop in some cases," Aaronson said. "Some of the commercial and industrial customers are going to be working a little bit less than they are presently."

Nuclear plants
Work is continuing at the Plant Vogtle nuclear construction project after Georgia Power Co. announced that one of the site workers is being tested for the coronavirus. The utility does not have the results of that test, a Georgia Power spokesman said late yesterday afternoon. The person works primarily in an office setting and is not on the construction site where two nuclear reactors are being built.

A second worker was tested Saturday, and those results were negative, spokesman John Kraft told E&E News.

Vogtle boasts a high worker count of 9,000 across the entire construction site, which includes office buildings. This is mostly craft laborers, but there are also administrators, executives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety inspectors.

A number of contractors and vendors are also on site given the complexity of the project.

Employees who were near the office worker being tested have been sent home until the company receives results. If the test is positive, then those workers will stay home for 14 days, Georgia Power said.

"The company is taking every action to prepare for impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic," Kraft said in a statement. This includes using advice from medical professionals and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Georgia Power, owned by Atlanta-based Southern Co., informed regulators at the NRC that a worker was being tested. The federal commission itself has pandemic plans in place to ensure continued oversight, including robust work-from-home capabilities and "social distancing" practices to limit close contact among employees at headquarters.

NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said in an email that telework is not unusual for the agency, and about 75% of its workforce is already equipped to work remotely. The commission tested its telework readiness Friday. Some positions require workers to stay on-site to ensure safe reactor operations, Burnell added.

The nuclear industry has maintained pandemic preparedness plans and procedures since 2006, which have been shared with federal agencies, according to Mary Love, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. "NEI members are participating in weekly calls to facilitate communications, coordination and best practices," she said.

According to NEI statistics, each plant averages 500 to 1,000 workers. While not every position is essential to operations, some areas like the control room cannot be conducted remotely.

"We know that nuclear power plant operations and the availability of electric service will be tremendously important in minimizing the impact of the situation on the general public," Love added. "We are confident, based on extensive planning, that the industry will continue to operate nuclear plants safely as this event unfolds."

Grid operators
Hundreds of workers responsible for overseeing critical operations of the U.S. electric grid are being encouraged to work from home, their offices are being sanitized, and in-person meetings are being moved online.

PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest grid operator covering some 65 million people across Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, said Friday a forecast on load changes was not yet available.

PJM has moved all stakeholder meetings online. Employee travel has been suspended, as have external visits to its headquarters in Valley Forge, Pa.

Employees "are equipped to work remotely, if necessary, to maintain business continuity," and PJM "is prepared and able to run and support all market applications from its campus or remotely, as needed," the operator said.

"PJM recognizes that these measures have significant impacts to our staff, members and stakeholders," PJM said on its coronavirus response webpage. "We are dedicated to striking a balance between those impacts and our number one priority — the reliability of the grid."

Still pending at the operator is a decision about its annual meeting in Chicago at the beginning of May. That decision will be made by April 3, PJM said.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which runs the bulk power grid across 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba, is also holding meetings via conference call or online and restricting all business travel.

MISO has encouraged "nonessential" employees to work remotely, leaving only those who actively monitor and manage the operation of the grid working on-site.

The grid operator employs nearly 1,000 people, including 780 at its headquarters in Carmel, Ind.

A board meeting set for the last week of March in New Orleans hasn't yet been canceled, with a final decision on whether to move forward with the meeting expected today.

MISO said it hasn't encountered other changes in normal operations and has not seen significant shifts in electricity demand.

In Texas, ERCOT has about 750 employees, mostly at its campus in the city of Taylor. ERCOT's Sopko said the grid operator is encouraging employees who are not required to be on-site to work from home. The policy is voluntary at this time, but that could change quickly, she said Friday.

ERCOT is also taking extra steps to keep workers safe, including alternating use of facilities, encouraging social distancing and imposing control room measures as part of its pandemic planning, she added.

Energy companies
In the Midwest, utilities including DTE Energy Co., Commonwealth Edison, Consumers Energy and Ameren Corp. said they're following CDC guidance and working with state and local officials to help slow the spread of the virus. That means asking employees who can do their jobs at home to do so, restricting visitors to company offices, canceling large assemblies and nonessential business travel, and holding meetings by phone or online.

Chicago-based ComEd, which serves 4 million customers, is imposing a moratorium on service disconnections and waiving new late payment charges through at least May 1, in addition to working with customers who are facing financial hardships on a case-by-case basis to establish payment arrangements and identify energy assistance options, spokesman Paul Elsberg said.

Many of the Southeast's major energy companies are also curbing travel and encouraging telework, among other steps, in response to the coronavirus.

For Southern Co., this includes its Georgia Power unit; Southern Power; and employees of Southern Company Gas, who are in Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia. Southern has not extended the policies to its Alabama and Mississippi electric companies, spokesman Schuyler Baehman said.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp. has suspended all business travel unless workers are traveling by car. The energy giant also is encouraging its employees to rethink their own vacations if upcoming trips take them out of the country.

"Circumstances are changing rapidly around the world," the company said in a statement.

For workers who must come to the office, or work at power plants or on the lines, utilities are doubling down on disinfectant in those areas.

"We're also reminding our employees that we provide a very critical service; we need you well, we need you able," said Le-Ha Anderson, a spokeswoman for Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Energy Inc.

Dominion started asking employees a few weeks ago to take mobile devices home and make sure they have what they need to work remotely. Anyone who has traveled to one of the CDC-identified hot spots is asked to stay home for 14 days with no questions asked, Anderson said.

The federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority has reviewed and updated its plans on how it will operate during a pandemic but has not yet reached the point to have employees telework if they are able to do so.

"We come at this at a very phased approach," TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said. "We can't just shut the doors."

State utility commissions, too, have begun taking steps. In response to a state of emergency declared by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on Thursday directed utilities to act where possible to avoid suspending service to customers.

Will Seuffert, executive secretary of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, said in an email that the regulator has canceled all public hearings and agenda meetings for the next two weeks and has been supporting telework "throughout the agency" in response to the virus.

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Germany's Coal Reliance reflects an energy crisis, soaring natural gas prices, and a nuclear phase-out, as Destatis data show higher coal-fired electricity despite growing wind and solar generation, impacting grid stability and emissions.

Key Points

Germany's coal reliance is more coal power due to gas spikes and a nuclear phase-out, despite wind and solar growth.

✅ Coal share near one-third of electricity, per Destatis

✅ Gas-fired output falls as prices soar after Russia's invasion

✅ Wind and solar rise; grid stability and recession risks persist

Germany is relying on highly-polluting coal for almost a third of its electricity, as the impact of government policies, reflecting an energy balancing act for the power sector, and the war in Ukraine leads producers in Europe’s largest economy to use less gas and nuclear energy.

In the first six months of the year, Germany generated 82.6 kWh of electricity from coal, up 17 per cent from the same period last year, according to data from Destatis, the national statistics office, published on Wednesday. The leap means almost one-third of German electricity generation now comes from coal-fired plants, up from 27 per cent last year. Production from natural gas, which has tripled in price to €235 per megawatt hour since Russia’s invasion in late February, fell 18 per cent to only 11.7 per cent of total generation.

Destatis said that the shift from gas to coal was sharper in the second quarter. Coal-fired electricity increased by an annual rate of 23 per cent in the three months to June, while electricity generation from natural gas fell 19 per cent.

The figures highlight the challenge facing European governments in meeting clean energy goals after the Kremlin announced this week that the Nordstream 1 pipeline that takes Russian gas to Germany would remain closed until Europe removed sanctions on the country’s oil.

Germany has been trying to reduce its reliance on coal, which releases almost twice as many emissions as gas and more than 60 times those of nuclear energy, according to estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though grid expansion challenges have slowed renewable build-out in recent years.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the opposition CDU bore “complete responsibility” for the exit from coal and nuclear power that formed part of his predecessor Angela Merkel’s Energiewende policies, amid a continuing nuclear option debate in climate policy, which in turn raised reliance on Russian gas. At the beginning of this year, more than 50 per cent of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia, a figure that fell slightly over the opening half of 2022.

But CDU leader Friedrich Merz accused the government of “madness” over its decision to idle the country’s three remaining nuclear power stations from the end of this year, though officials have argued that nuclear would do little to solve the gas issue in the short term.

Electricity generation from nuclear energy has already halved after three of the six nuclear power plants that were still in operation at the end of 2021 were closed during the first half of this year. Berlin said on Monday it would keep on standby two of its remaining three nuclear power stations, a move to extend nuclear power during the energy crisis, which were all due to close at the end of the year.

The German government has warned of the risk of electricity shortages this winter. “We cannot be sure that, in the event of grid bottlenecks in neighbouring countries, there will be enough power plants available to help stabilise our electricity grid in the short term,” said German economy minister Robert Habeck on Monday.

However Scholz said that, after raising gas storage levels to 86 per cent of capacity, Germany would “probably get through this winter, despite all the tension”.

One bright spot from the data was the increase in use of renewable energy, highlighting a recent renewables milestone in Germany. The proportion of electricity generated from wind power generation rose by 18 per cent to 25 per cent of all electricity generation, while solar energy production increased 20 per cent.

Ángel Talavera, head of Europe economics at the consultancy Oxford Economics, said that the success in moving away from gas towards other energy sources “means that the risks of hard energy rationing over the winter are less severe now, even with little to no Russian gas flows”.

However, economists still expect a recession in the eurozone’s largest economy, amid a deteriorating German economy outlook over the near term, as a large part of the impact comes via higher prices and because industries and households still rely on gas for heating.

Separate official data also published on Wednesday showed that German industrial production slid 0.3 per cent between June and July. Production at Germany’s most energy intensive industries fell almost 7 per cent in the five months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The demand destruction caused by the surge in prices will still send the German economy into recession over the winter,” said Talavera.

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Maryland Renewable Energy Violations highlight RPS compliance gaps as facilities selling renewable energy certificates, including waste-to-energy, biomass, and paper mills, face emissions and permit issues, prompting PSC and Attorney General scrutiny of environmental standards.

Key Points

Alleged RPS noncompliance by REC-eligible plants, prompting PSC review and potential decertification under Maryland law.

✅ Complaint targets waste-to-energy, biomass plants, and paper mills

✅ Facilities risk loss of REC certification for environmental violations

✅ PSC may investigate nonreporting; AG reviewing evidence

Many facilities that supply Maryland with renewable energy have exceeded pollution limits or otherwise broken environmental rules, violating a state law, according to a complaint sent by environmental groups to state energy and law enforcement officials.

Maryland law says that any company that contributes to a state renewable energy goal — half the state’s energy portfolio must come from renewable sources by 2030 — must “substantially comply” with rules on air and water quality and waste management. The complaint says more than two dozen power generators, including paper mills and trash incinerators, have records of formal or informal enforcement actions by environmental authorities.

For years, environmental groups have criticized Maryland policy that counts power plants that produce planet-warming carbon dioxide and health-threatening pollution as “renewable” energy generation, and similar tensions have emerged in California’s reliance on fossil fuels despite ambitious targets, but lawmakers concerned about protecting industrial jobs have resisted reforms. The renewable label qualifies the companies for subsidies drawn from energy bills across the state.

In a complaint filed this week, the groups asked the attorney general and Public Service Commission to step in.

“We’re subsidizing companies to produce dirty energy, but we’re also using ratepayer money to support companies that in many instances are paying environmental fines or just flouting the law,” said Timothy Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “There’s no one to hold them to account in Maryland.”

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian Frosh said his office would review the complaint, which was signed by Whitehouse and Mike Ewall, executive director of the Energy Justice Network.

Public Service Commission officials said the facilities must notify them if found out of compliance with environmental rules, while at the federal level FERC action on aggregated DERs is shaping market participation, and the commission can then revoke certification under the state renewable energy program. In a statement, commission officials said they would launch an investigation if any facility had failed to notify them of any environmental violations, and encouraged anyone with evidence of such a transgression to file a complaint.

Companies named in the document accused the groups of painting an inaccurate picture.

“This complaint is based on misleading arguments designed to halt waste-to-energy practices that have clear environmental benefits recognized by the global scientific community,” said Jim Connolly, vice president of environment, health and safety for Wheelabrator, which owns a Baltimore trash incinerator.

Maryland launched its renewable energy program in 2004, diversifying the state’s energy portfolio with more environmentally friendly sources of power, even as regional debates over a Maine-Québec transmission line highlight cross-border impacts. Under the program, separate from the electricity they generate and sell to the grid, renewable power facilities can sell what are known as renewable energy certificates. Utilities such as Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. are required to buy a growing number of the certificates each year, essentially subsidizing the renewable energy facilities with money from ratepayer bills.

A dozen types of power generation qualify to sell the certificates: Solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric plants, as well as “biomass” facilities that burn wood and other organic matter, waste-to-energy plants that burn household trash and paper mills that burn a byproduct known as black liquor.

The complaint focuses on waste incinerators, biomass plants and paper mills, all of which environmental groups have cast as counter to the renewable energy program’s environmental goals, even as ACORE criticized a coal and nuclear subsidy proposal in federal proceedings.

“By subsidizing these corporations, Maryland is diverting the hard-earned income of Maryland ratepayers to wealthy corporations with poor environmental compliance records and undermining the state’s transition to clean renewable energy,” Whitehouse and Ewall wrote.

For example, they note that the Wheelabrator plant in Southwest Baltimore has been fined for exceeding mercury limits in the past. That occurred in 2011, when the plant settled with state regulators for violations in 2010 and 2009.

Connolly said there is “no question” the facility complies with Maryland’s renewable energy law.

Incinerators in Montgomery County and in Fairfax County, Virginia, that are owned by Covanta and sell the energy certificates in Maryland have been cited for accidental fires inside both facilities. The Maryland incinerator violated emissions rules in 2014, the same year that New Jersey forbade the Virginia facility from selling energy certificates into that state’s renewable energy program over concerns it wasn’t following ash testing regulations.

James Regan, a spokesman for Covanta, said both facilities “have excellent compliance records and they operate well below their permitted limits.” He said the Virginia facility is complying with ash testing requirements, and that both facilities emit far lower levels of pollutants such as particulate matter than vehicles do.

“It’s clear to us there’s a lot of misleading and wrong information in this document," Regan said.

The Environmental Protection Agency endorsed waste-to-energy facilities under former President Barack Obama because, while burning household trash emits carbon dioxide, scientists said that still had a smaller impact on global warming than sending trash to landfills, even as industry groups have backed the EPA in a legal challenge to the ACE rule as regulatory approaches shifted.

Environmentalists and community groups say the facilities still are harmful because they emit high levels of pollutants such as mercury, nitrogen oxides and lead. The concerns prompted Baltimore City Council to pass an ordinance in February that tightened emissions limits on the Wheelabrator facility, even as the new EPA pollution limits for coal and gas plants are being proposed, so dramatically that the company said it would no longer be able to operate once the rules go into effect in 2022.

The complaint does not mention the century-old Luke paper mill in Western Maryland that long faced criticism for its participation in the renewable energy program, but which owner Verso Co. closed this year.

It does say several of paper company WestRock’s mills in North Carolina and Virginia have faced both formal and informal EPA enforcement actions for violation of the Clean Water Act, including evolving EPA wastewater limits for power plants and other facilities, and the Clean Air Act. A WestRock spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

The complaint also says a large biomass facility in South Boston, Virginia, owned by the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative has a record of noncompliance with the Clean Air Act over three years.

John Rainey, the plant’s operations director, said it “experienced some small exceedances to its permit limits,” but that it addressed the issues with Virginia environmental officials and has installed new technology.

All those plants have sold credits in Maryland.

Whitehouse said the environmental groups’ goal is to clean up Maryland’s renewable energy program. They did not file a lawsuit because he said there was no clear cause of action to take the state to court, but said he hopes the complaint nonetheless spurs action.

“It’s not acceptable in a clean energy program that we’re subsidizing some of the most dirty sources of energy,” he said. “Those sources aren’t even in compliance with the law, and no one seems to care.”

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Virtual Power Plants orchestrate distributed energy resources like rooftop solar, home batteries, and EVs to deliver grid services, demand response, peak shaving, and resilience, lowering costs while enhancing reliability across wholesale markets and local networks.

Key Points

Virtual Power Plants aggregate solar and batteries to provide grid services, cut peak costs, and boost reliability.

✅ Aggregates DERs via cloud to bid into wholesale markets

✅ Reduces peak demand, defers costly grid upgrades

✅ Enhances resilience vs outages, cyber risks, and wildfires

If “virtual” meetings can allow companies to gather without anyone being in the office, then remotely distributed solar panels and batteries can harness energy and act as “virtual power plants.” It is simply the orchestration of millions of dispersed assets within a smarter electricity infrastructure to manage the supply of electricity — power that can be redirected back to the grid and distributed to homes and businesses. 

The ultimate goal is to revamp the energy landscape, making it cleaner and more reliable. By using onsite generation such as rooftop solar and smart solar inverters in combination with battery storage, those services can reduce the network’s overall cost by deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades and by reducing the need to purchase cost-prohibitive peak power. 

“We expect virtual power plants, including aggregated home solar and batteries, to become more common and more impactful for energy consumers throughout the country in the coming years,” says Michael Sachdev, chief product officer for Sunrun Inc., a rooftop solar company, in an interview. “The growth of home solar and batteries will be most apparent in places where households have an immediate need for backup power, as they do in California, where grid reliability pressures have led utilities to turn off the electricity to reduce wildfire risk.”

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Home battery adoption, such as Tesla Powerwall systems, is becoming commonplace in Hawaii and in New England, he adds, because those distributed assets are improving the efficiency of the electrical network. It is a trend that is reshaping the country’s energy generation and delivery system by relying more on clean onsite generation and less on fossil fuels.

Sunrun has recently formed a business partnership with AutoGrid, which will manage Sunrun’s fleet of rechargeable batteries. It is a cloud-based system that allows Sunrun to work with utilities to dispatch its “storage fleet” to optimize the economic results. AutoGrid compiles the data and makes AI-driven forecasts that enable it to pinpoint potential trouble spots. 

But a distributed energy system, or a virtual power plant, would have 200,000 subsystems. Or, 200,000 5 kilowatt batteries would be the equivalent of one power plant that has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. 

“A virtual power plant acts as a generator,” says Amit Narayan, chief executive officer of AutoGrid, in an interview. “It is one of the top five innovations of the decade. If you look at Sunrun, 60% of every solar system it sells in the Bay Area is getting attached to a battery. The value proposition comes when you can aggregate these batteries and market them as a generation unit. The pool of individual assets may improve over time. But when you add these up, it is better than a large-scale plant. It is like going from mainframe computers to laptops.”

The AutoGrid executive goes on to say that centralized systems are less reliable than distributed resources. While one battery could falter, 200,000 of them that operate from remote locations will prove to be more durable — able to withstand cyber attacks and wildfires. Sunrun’s Sachdev adds that the ability to store energy in batteries, as seen in California’s expanding grid-scale battery use supporting reliability, and to move it to the grid on demand creates value not just for homes and businesses but also for the network as a whole.

The good news is that the trend worldwide is to make it easier for smaller distributed assets, including energy storage for microgrids that support local resilience, to get the same regulatory treatment as power plants. System operators have been obligated to call up those power supplies that are the most cost-effective and that can be easily dispatched. But now regulators are giving virtual power plants comprised of solar and batteries the same treatment. 

In the United States, for example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order in 2018 that allows storage resources to participate in wholesale markets — where electricity is bought directly from generators before selling that power to homes and businesses. Under the ruling, virtual power plants are paid the same as traditional power suppliers. A federal appeals court this month upheld the commission’s order, saying that it had the right to ensure “technological advances in energy storage are fully realized in the marketplace.” 

“In the past, we have used back-up generators,” notes AutoGrid’s Narayan. “As we move toward more automation, we are opening up the market to small assets such as battery storage and electric vehicles. As we deploy more of these assets, there will be increasing opportunities for virtual power plants.” 

Virtual power plants have the potential to change the energy horizon by harnessing locally-produced solar power and redistributing that to where it is most needed — all facilitated by cloud-based software that has a full panoramic view. At the same time, those smaller distributed assets can add more reliability and give consumers greater peace-of-mind — a dynamic that does, indeed, beef-up America’s generation and delivery network.

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