Sector leaders commit to Ontario Smart Grid Forum

California income-based utility charges face bipartisan pushback as the PUC weighs fixed fees for PG&E, SDG&E, and Southern California Edison, reshaping rate design, electricity affordability, energy equity, and privacy amid proposed per-kWh reductions.

Key Points

PUC-approved fixed fees tied to household income for PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE, offset by lower per-kWh rates.

✅ Proposed fixed fees: $51 SCE, $73.31 SDG&E, $50.92 PG&E

✅ Critics warn admin, privacy, legal risks and higher bills for savers

✅ Backers say lower-income pay less; kWh rates cut ~33% in PG&E area

Efforts are being made across California's political landscape to derail a legislative initiative that introduced income-based utility charges for customers of Southern California Edison and other major utilities.

Legislators from both the Democratic and Republican parties have proposed bills aimed at nullifying the 2022 legislation that established a sliding scale for utility charges based on customer income, a decision made in a late-hour session and subsequently endorsed by Governor Gavin Newsom.

The plan, pending final approval from the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) — all of whose current members were appointed by Governor Newsom — would enable utilities like Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and PG&E to apply new income-based charges as early as this July.

Among the state legislators pushing back against the income-based charge scheme are Democrats Jacqui Irwin and Marc Berman, along with Republicans Janet Nguyen, Kelly Seyarto, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, Scott Wilk, Brian Dahle, Shannon Grove, and Roger Niello.

A cadre of specialists, including economist Ahmad Faruqui who has advised all three utilities implicated in the fee proposal, have outlined several concerns regarding the PUC's pending decision.

Faruqui and his colleagues argue that the proposed charges are excessively high in comparison to national standards, reflecting soaring electricity prices across the state, potentially leading to administrative challenges, legal disputes, and negative unintended outcomes, such as penalizing energy-conservative consumers.

Advocates for the income-based fee model, including The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and the National Resources Defense Council, argue it would result in higher charges for wealthier consumers and reduced fees for those with lower incomes. They also believe that the utilities plan to decrease per kilowatt-hour rates as part of a broader rate structure review to balance out the new fees.

However, even supporters like TURN and the Natural Resources Defense Council acknowledge that the income-based fee model is not a comprehensive solution to making soaring electricity bills more affordable.

If implemented, California would have the highest income-based utility fees in the country, with averages far surpassing the national average of $11.15, as reported by EQ Research:

• Southern California Edison would charge $51.
• San Diego Gas & Electric would levy $73.31.
• PG&E would set fees at $50.92.

The proposal has raised concerns among state legislators about the additional financial burden on Californians already struggling with high electricity costs.

Critics highlight several practical challenges, including the PUC's task of assessing customers' income levels, a process fraught with privacy concerns, potential errors, and constitutional questions regarding access to tax information.

Economists have pointed out further complications, such as the difficulty in accurately assessing incomes for out-of-state property owners and the variability of customers' incomes over time.

The proposed income-based charges would differ by income bracket within the PG&E service area, for example, with lower-income households facing lower fixed charges and higher-income households facing higher charges, alongside a proposed 33% reduction in electricity rates to help mitigate the fixed charge impact.

Yet, the economists warn that most customers, particularly low-usage customers, could end up paying more, essentially rewarding higher consumption and penalizing efficiency.

This legislative approach, they caution, could inadvertently increase costs for moderate users across all income brackets, a sign of major changes to electric bills that could emerge, challenging the very goals it aims to achieve by promoting energy inefficiency.

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Eastern Kings Wind Farm Expansion advances P.E.I. renewable energy with seven new wind turbines, environmental assessment, wildlife monitoring of birds and bats, and community consultation to double output to 30 MW for domestic consumption.

Key Points

A P.E.I. project adding seven turbines for 30 MW, under 17 conditions, with wildlife monitoring and community oversight.

✅ Seven new turbines, larger than existing units

✅ 17 conditions, monthly compliance reporting

✅ Two-year wildlife study for birds and bats

A proposal to expand an existing wind farm in eastern P.E.I. has been given the go-ahead, according to P.E.I.’s Department of Environment, Water and Climate Change, as related grid work like a new transmission line progresses in the region.

Minister Natalie Jameson approved the P.E.I. Energy Corporation’s Eastern Kings Wind Farm expansion project, the province announced in a release Wednesday afternoon, as Atlantic Canada advances other renewable initiatives like tidal power to diversify supply.

The project will be subject to 17 conditions, which were drawn from a review of the 80 responses the province received from the public on the proposed Eastern Kings Wind Farm expansion.

The corporation must provide a summary on the status of each condition to the department on a monthly basis.

“This decision balances the needs of people, communities, wellness and the environment,” Jameson said in the release.

“It allows this renewable energy project to proceed and reduce greenhouse [gas] emissions that cause climate change while mitigating the project’s impact to the Island’s ecosystem.”

The P.E.I. Energy Corporation wants to double the output of its Eastern Kings Wind Farm with the installation of seven wind turbines between the communities of Elmira and East Point to develop 30 megawatts of wind power for domestic consumption, according to the minister’s impact assessment, aligning with regional moves to expand wind and solar projects across Atlantic Canada.

The new turbines are expected to be larger than the existing 10 at the site, even as regional utilities study major grid changes to integrate more renewables.

Project must comply with conditions

In February, the province said it would identify any specific questions or concerns it felt needed to be addressed in the submissions, according to Greg Wilson, manager of environmental land management for the province, while some advocate for independent electricity planning to guide such decisions.

Public feedback closed in January, after an earlier extension to wait for a supplemental report on birds and bats.

The corporation needs to comply with all conditions – such as monitoring environmental impact, setting up an environmental management plan and creating a committee to address concerns – listed in the release on Wednesday, amid calls from environmental advocates to reduce biomass use in electricity generation.

A condition in the release suggests representatives from L’nuey, the Souris and Area Wildlife Branch, the Rural Municipality of Eastern Kings and local residents to make up the committee.

The corporation will also need to conduct a study over two years after construction to look at the impact on bats and birds, and implement a protocol to report deaths of birds to federal and provincial authorities.

According to Canada Energy Regulator, roughly 98 per cent of power generated on P.E.I. comes from wind farms. It also said there were 203 megawatts installed on P.E.I. as of 2018, and the majority of energy consumed on the Island comes from New Brunswick from a mix of nuclear, fossil fuels and hydroelectricity, while in Nova Scotia, the utility has increased biomass generation as part of its supply mix.

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Hybrid renewable energy projects integrate wind, solar, and battery storage to enhance grid reliability, reduce curtailment, and provide dispatchable power in markets like Alberta, leveraging photovoltaic tracking, overbuilt transformers, and improved storage economics.

Key Points

Hybrid renewable energy projects combine wind, solar, and storage to deliver reliable, dispatchable clean power.

✅ Combine wind, solar, and batteries for steady, dispatchable output

✅ Lower curtailment by using shared transformers and smart inverters

✅ Boost farm income via leases; diversify risk from oil and gas

Third-generation farmer James Praskach has been burned by the oil and gas sector and watched wicked weather pound his crops flat, but he is hoping a new kind of energy -- the renewable kind -- will pay dividends.

The 39-year-old is part of a landowner consortium that is hosting the sprawling 300-megawatt Blackspring Ridge wind power project in southeastern Alberta.

He receives regular lease payments from the $600-million project that came online in 2014, even though none of the 166 towering wind turbines that surround his land are actually on it.

His lease payments stand to rise, however, when and if the proposed 77-MW Vulcan Solar project, which won regulatory approval in 2016, is green-lighted by developer EDF Renewables Inc.

The panels would cover about 400 hectares of his family's land with nearly 300,000 photovoltaic solar panels in Alberta, installed on racks designed to follow the sun. It would stand in the way of traditional grain farming of the land, but that wouldn't have been a problem this year, Praskach says.

"This year we actually had a massive storm roll through. And we had 100 per cent hail damage on all of (the Vulcan Solar lands). We had canola, peas and barley on it this year," he said, adding the crop was covered by insurance.

Meanwhile, poor natural gas prices and a series of oilpatch financial failures mean rents aren't being paid for about half of the handful of gas wells on his land, showing how a province that is a powerhouse for both fossil and green energy can face volatility -- he's appealed to the Alberta surface Rights Board for compensation.

"(Solar power) would definitely add a level of security for our farming operations," said Praskach.

Hybrid power projects that combine energy sources are a growing trend as selling renewable energy gains traction across markets. Solar only works during the day and wind only when it is windy so combining the two -- potentially with battery storage or natural gas or biomass generation -- makes the power profile more reliable and predictable.

Globally, an oft-cited example is on El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, where wind power is used to pump water uphill to a reservoir in a volcanic crater so that it can be released to provide hydroelectric power when needed. At times, the project has provided 100 per cent of the tiny island's energy needs.

Improvements in technology such as improving solar and wind power and lower costs for storage mean it is being considered as a hybrid add-on for nearly all of its renewable power projects, said Dan Cunningham, manager of business development at Greengate Power Corp. of Calgary.

Grant Arnold, CEO of developer BluEarth Renewables, agreed.

"The barrier to date, I would say, has been cost of storage but that is changing rapidly," he said. "We feel that wind and storage or solar and storage will be a fundamental way we do business within five years. It's changing very, very rapidly and it's the product everybody wants."

Vulcan Solar was proposed after Blackspring Ridge came online, said David Warner, associate director of business development for EDF Renewables, which now co-owns the wind farm with Enbridge Inc.

"Blackspring actually had incremental capacity in the main power transformers," he said. "Essentially, it was capable of delivering more energy than Blackspring was producing. It was overbuilt."

Vulcan Solar has been sized to utilize the shortfall without producing so much energy that either will ever have to be constrained, he said. Much of the required environmental work has already been done for the wind farm.

Storage is being examined as a potential addition to the project but implementing it depends on the regulatory system. At present, Alberta's regulators are still working on how to permit and control what they call "dispatchable renewables and storage" systems.

EDF announced last spring it would proceed with the Arrow Canyon Solar Project in Nevada which is to combine 200 MW of solar with 75 MW of battery storage by 2022 -- the batteries are to soak up the sun's power in the morning and dispatch the electricity in the afternoon when Las Vegas casinos' air conditioning is most needed.

What is clear is that renewable energy will continue to grow, with Alberta renewable jobs expected to follow -- in a recent report, the International Energy Agency said global electricity capacity from renewables is set to rise by 50 per cent over the next five years, an increase equivalent to adding the current total power capacity of the United States.

The share of renewables is expected to rise from 26 per cent now to 30 per cent in 2024 but will remain well short of what is needed to meet long-term climate, air quality and energy access goals, it added.

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Nuclear Power Resilience During COVID-19 shows low-carbon electricity supporting renewables integration with grid flexibility, reliability, and inertia, sustaining decarbonization, stable baseload, and system security while prices fell and demand dropped across markets.

Key Points

It shows nuclear plants providing reliable, low-carbon power and supporting grid stability despite demand declines.

✅ Low prices challenge investment; lifetime extensions are cost-effective.

✅ Nuclear provides inertia, reliability, and dispatchable capacity.

✅ Market reforms should reward flexibility and grid services.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the operation of power systems across the globe, including European responses that many argue accelerated the transition, and offered a glimpse of a future electricity mix dominated by low carbon sources.

The performance of nuclear power, in particular, demonstrates how it can support the transition to a resilient, clean energy system well beyond the COVID-19 recovery phase, and its role in net-zero pathways is increasingly highlighted by analysts today.

Restrictions on economic and social activity during the COVID-19 outbreak have led to an unprecedented and sustained decline in demand for electricity in many countries, in the order of 10% or more relative to 2019 levels over a period of a few months, thereby creating challenging conditions for both electricity generators and system operators (Fig. 1). The recent Sustainable Recovery Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects a 5% reduction in global electricity usage for the entire year 2020, with a record 5.7% decline foreseen in the United States alone. The sustainable economic recovery will be discussed at today's IEA Clean Energy Transitions Summit, where Fatih Birol's call to keep options open will be prominent as IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi participates.

Electricity generation from fossil fuels has been hard hit, due to relatively high operating costs compared to nuclear power and renewables, as well as simple price-setting mechanisms on electricity markets. By contrast, low-carbon electricity prevailed during these extraordinary circumstances, with the contribution of renewable electricity rising in a number of countries as analyses see renewables eclipsing coal by 2025, due to an obligation on transmission system operators to schedule and dispatch renewable electricity ahead of other generators, as well as due to favourable weather conditions.

Nuclear power generation also proved to be resilient, reliable and adaptable. The nuclear industry rapidly implemented special measures to cope with the pandemic, avoiding the need to shut down plants due to the effects of COVID-19 on the workforce or supply chains. Nuclear generators also swiftly adapted to the changed market conditions. For example, EDF Energy was able to respond to the need of the UK grid operator by curtailing sporadically the generation of its Sizewell B reactor and maintain a cost-efficient and secure electricity service for consumers.

Despite the nuclear industry's performance during the pandemic, faced with significant decreases in demand, many generators have still needed to reduce their overall output appreciably, for example in France, Sweden, Ukraine, the UK and to a lesser extent Germany (Fig. 2), even as the nuclear decline debate continues in Europe. Declining demand in France up to the end of March already contributed to a 1% drop in first quarter revenues at EDF, with nuclear output more than 9% lower than in the year before. Similarly, Russia's Rosatom experienced a significant demand contraction in April and May, contributing to an 11% decline in revenues for the first five months of the year.

Overall, the competitiveness and resilience of low carbon technologies have resulted in higher market shares for nuclear, solar and wind power in many countries since the start of lockdowns (Fig. 3), and low-emissions sources to meet demand growth over the next three years. The share of nuclear generation in South Korea rose by almost 9 percentage points during the pandemic, while in the UK, nuclear played a big part in almost eliminating coal generation for a period of two months. For the whole of 2020, the US Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook sees the share of nuclear generation increasing by more than one percentage point compared to 2019. In China, power production decreased during January-February 2020 by more than 8% year on year: coal power decreased by nearly 9%, hydropower by nearly 12%. Nuclear has proved more resilient with a 2% reduction only. The benefits of these higher shares of clean energy in terms of reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants have been on full display worldwide over the past months.

Challenges for the future

Despite the demonstrated performance of a cleaner energy system through the crisis - including the capacity of existing nuclear power plants to deliver a competitive, reliable, and low carbon electricity service when needed - both short- and long-term challenges remain.

In the shorter term, the collapse in electricity demand has accelerated recent falls in electricity prices, particularly in Europe (Fig. 4), from already economically unsustainable levels. According to Standard and Poor's Midyear Update, the large price drops in Europe result from not only COVID-19 lockdown measures but also collapsing demand due to an unusually warm winter, increased supply from renewables in a context of lower gas prices and CO2 allowances . Such low prices further exacerbate the challenging environment faced by many electricity generators, including nuclear plants. These may impede the required investments in the clean energy transition, with longer term consequences on the achievement of climate goals.

For nuclear power, maintaining and extending the operation of existing plants is essential to support and accelerate the transition to low carbon energy systems. With a supportive investment environment, a 10-20 year lifetime extension can be realized at an average cost of US $30-40/MW*h, making it among the most cost-effective low-carbon options, while also maintaining dispatchable capacity and lowering the overall cost of the clean energy transition. The IEA Sustainable Recovery report indicates that without such extensions 40% of the nuclear fleet in developed economies may be retired within a decade, adding around US$ 80 billion per year to electricity bills. The IEA note the potential for nuclear plant maintenance and extension programmes to support recovery measures by generating significant economic activity and employment.

The need for flexibility

New nuclear power projects can provide similar economic and environmental benefits and applications beyond electricity, but will be all the more challenging to finance without strong policy support and more substantive power market reforms, including improved frameworks for remunerating reliability, flexibility and other services. The need for flexibility in electricity generation and system operation - a trend accelerated by the crisis - will increasingly characterize future energy systems over the medium to longer term.

Looking further ahead, while generators and system operators successfully responded to the crisis, the observed decline in fossil fuel generation draws attention to additional grid stability challenges likely to emerge further into the energy transition. Heavy rotating steam and gas turbines provide mechanical inertia to an electricity system, thereby maintaining its balance. Replacing these capacities with variable renewables may result in greater instability, poorer power quality and increased incidence of blackouts. Large nuclear power plants along with other technologies can fill this role, alleviating the risk of supply disruptions in fully decarbonized electricity systems.

The challenges created by COVID-19 have also brought into focus the need to ensure resilience is built-in to future energy systems to cope with a broader range of external shocks, including more variable and extreme weather patterns expected from climate change.

The performance of nuclear power during the crisis provides a timely reminder of its ongoing contribution and future potential in creating a more sustainable, reliable, low carbon energy system.

Data sources for electricity demand, generation and prices: European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (Europe), Ukrenergo National Power Company (Ukraine), Power System Operation Corporation (India), Korea Power Exchange (South Korea), Operador Nacional do Sistema Eletrico (Brazil), Independent Electricity System Operator (Ontario, Canada), EIA (USA). Data cover 1 January to May/June.

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Little Haiti Garbage Truck Power Outage in Miami after mechanical arms snagged power lines, snapping power poles; FPL crews, police, and businesses faced traffic delays, safety risks, and rapid restoration efforts across the neighborhood.

Key Points

A Miami incident where a garbage truck snagged power lines, toppling poles and causing outages and traffic delays.

✅ Mechanical arms caught overhead lines; three power poles snapped

✅ FPL dispatched, police directed traffic; restoration prioritized

✅ Dozens of businesses affected; afternoon rush hour congestion

On January 16, 2025, a significant incident unfolded in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood when a garbage truck collided with power lines, causing three power poles to collapse and resulting in widespread power outages and traffic disruptions.

Incident Details

Around 1:30 p.m., a garbage truck traveling west on Northeast 82nd Street toward Interstate 95 became entangled with overhead power lines. The truck's mechanical arms caught the lines, leading to the snapping of three power poles and plunging the area into darkness, a scenario echoed by urban incidents like a manhole fire that left thousands without power. Witnesses reported a loud boom followed by an immediate power outage. One local business owner described the event, stating, "There was a loud boom, and suddenly the power went out."

Impact on the Community

The incident caused significant disruptions in the Little Haiti area. At least a dozen businesses were affected by the power outage, and in wider Florida events restoration can take weeks depending on damage, leading to operational halts and potential financial losses. The timing of the crash, during the afternoon rush hour, exacerbated traffic congestion as commuters were forced to navigate through the area, and similar disruptions occur when strong winds knock out power, further complicating the situation.

Response and Recovery Efforts

In response to the incident, Miami police directed traffic to alleviate congestion and ensure public safety. Florida Power & Light (FPL) crews, known for their major outage response, were promptly dispatched to the scene to assess the damage and begin restoration efforts. The priority was to safely remove the damaged power poles and restore electricity to the affected area. FPL's swift action was crucial in minimizing the duration of the power outage and restoring normalcy to the community.

Safety Considerations

This incident underscores the importance of safety protocols for vehicles operating in areas with overhead power lines. Garbage trucks, due to their design and operational mechanisms, are particularly susceptible to such accidents, and in broader disasters some regions require a power grid rebuild to recover, highlighting the stakes. It is imperative for operators to be vigilant and adhere to safety guidelines to prevent similar occurrences.

Community Resilience

Despite the challenges posed by the incident, the Little Haiti community demonstrated resilience. Local businesses and residents cooperated with authorities, while utilities elsewhere have restored power to thousands after major events, and the prompt response from emergency services highlighted the community's strength in the face of adversity.

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New England Solar Interconnection Costs highlight distributed generation strains, transmission charges, distribution upgrades, and DAF fees as National Grid maps hosting capacity, driving queue delays and FERC disputes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Key Points

Rising upfront grid upgrade and DAF charges for distributed solar in RI and MA, including some transmission costs.

✅ Upfront grid upgrades shifted to project developers

✅ DAF and transmission charges increase per MW costs

✅ Queue delays tied to hosting capacity and cluster studies

Solar developers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts say soaring charges to interconnect with the electric grid are threatening the viability of projects. 

As more large-scale solar projects line up for connections, developers are being charged upfront for the full cost of the infrastructure upgrades required, a long-common practice that they say is now becoming untenable amid debates over a new solar customer charge in Nova Scotia. 

“It is a huge issue that reflects an under-invested grid that is not ready for the volume of distributed generation that we’re seeing and that we need, particularly solar,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, vice president for policy and government affairs at the Northeast Clean Energy Council, a nonprofit business organization. 

Connecting solar and wind systems to the grid often requires upgrades to the distribution system to prevent problems, such as voltage fluctuations and reliability risks highlighted by Australian distributors in their networks. Costs can vary considerably from place to place, depending on the amount of distributed generation coming online and the level of capacity planning by regulators, said David Feldman, a senior financial analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“Certainly the Northeast often has more distribution challenges than much of the rest of the country just because it’s more populous and often the infrastructure is older,” he said. “But it’s not unique to the Northeast — in the Midwest, for example, there’s a significant amount of wind projects in the queues and significant delays.”

In Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where strong incentive programs are driving solar development, the level of solar coming online is “exposing the under-investment in the distribution system that is causing these massive costs that National Grid is assigning to particular projects or particular groups of projects,” McDiarmid said. “It is going to be a limiting factor for how much clean energy we can develop and bring online.”

Frank Epps, chief executive officer at Energy Development Partners, has been developing solar projects in Rhode Island since 2010. In that time, he said, interconnection charges on his projects have grown from about $80,000-$120,000 per megawatt to more than $400,000 per megawatt. He attributed the increase to a lack of investment in the distribution network by National Grid over the last decade.

He and other developers say the utility is now adding further to their costs by passing along not just the cost of improving the distribution system — the equivalent of the city street of the grid that brings power directly to customers — but also costs for modifying the transmission system — the interstate highway that moves bulk power over long distances to substations. 

Solar developers who are only requesting to hook into the distribution system, and not applying for transmission service, say they should not be charged for those additional upgrades under state interconnection rules unless they are properly authorized under the federal law that governs the transmission system. 

A Rhode Island solar and wind developer filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February over transmission system improvement charges for its four proposed solar projects. Green Development said National Grid subsidiaries Narragansett Electric and New England Power Company want to charge the company more than $500,000 a year in operating and maintenance expenses assessed as so-called direct assignment facility charges. 

“This amount nearly doubles the interconnection costs associated with the projects,” which total 38.4 megawatts in North Smithfield, the company says in its complaint. “Crucially, these charges are linked to recovering costs associated with providing transmission service — even though no such transmission service is being provided to Green Development.”

But Ted Kresse, a spokesperson for National Grid, said the direct assignment facility, or DAF, construct has been in place for decades and has been applied to any customer affecting the need for transmission upgrades.

“It is the result of the high penetration and continued high volume of distributed generation interconnections that has recently prompted the need for transmission upgrades, and subsequently the pass-through of the associated DAF charges,” he said. 

Several complaints before the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission object to these DAF and other transmission charges.

One petition for dispute resolution concerns four solar projects totaling 40 MW being developed by Energy Development Partners in a former gravel pit in North Kingstown. Brown University has agreed to purchase the power. 

The developer signed interconnection service agreements with Narragansett Electric in 2019 requiring payment of $21.6 million for costs associated with connecting the projects at a new Wickford Junction substation. Last summer, Narragansett sought to replace those agreements with new ones that reclassified a portion of the costs as transmission-level costs, through New England Power, National Grid’s transmission subsidiary.

That shift would result in additional operational and maintenance charges of $835,000 per year for the estimated 35-year life of the projects, the complaint says.

“This came as a complete shock to us,” Epps said. “We’re not just paying for the maintenance of a new substation. We are paying a share of the total cost that the system owner has to own and operate the transmission system. So all of the sudden, it makes it even tougher for distributed energy resources to be viable.”

In its response to the petition, National Grid argues that the charges are justified because the solar projects will require transmission-level upgrades at the new substation. The company argues that the developer should be responsible for the costs rather than ratepayers, “who are already supporting renewable energy development through their electric rates.”

Seth Handy, one of the lawyers representing Green Development in the FERC complaint, argues that putting transmission system costs on distribution assets is unfair because the distributed resources are “actually reducing the need to move electricity long distances. We’ve been fighting these fights a long time over the underestimating of the value of distributed energy in reducing system costs.”

Handy is also representing the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island before the state Supreme Court in its appeal of an April 2020 public utilities commission order upholding similar charges for a proposed 2.2-megawatt solar project at the diocese’s conference center and camp in Glocester. 

Todd Bianco, principal policy associate at the utilities commission, said neither he nor the chairperson can comment on the pending dockets contesting these charges. But he noted that some of these issues are under discussion in another docket examining National Grid’s standards for connecting distributed generation. Among the proposals being considered is the appointment of an independent ombudsperson to resolve interconnection disputes. 

Separately, legislation pending before the Rhode Island General Assembly would remove responsibility for administering the interconnection of renewable energy from utilities, and put it under the authority of the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, a financing agency.

Handy, who recently testified in support of the bill, said he believes National Grid has too many conflicting interests to administer interconnecting charges in a timely, transparent and fair fashion, and pointed to utility moves such as changes to solar compensation in other states as examples. In particular, he noted the company’s interests in expanding natural gas infrastructure. 

“There are all kinds of economic interests that they have that conflict with our state policy to provide lower-cost renewable energy and more secure energy solutions,” Handy said.

In testimony submitted to the House Committee on Corporations opposing the legislation, National Grid said such powers are well beyond the purpose and scope of the infrastructure bank. And it cited figures showing Rhode Island is third in the country for the most installed solar per square mile (behind New Jersey and Massachusetts).

Nadav Enbar, program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization for the utility industry, said interconnection delays and higher costs are becoming more common due to “the incredible uptake” in distributed renewable energy, particularly solar.

That’s impacting hosting capacity, the room available to connect all resources to a circuit without causing adverse harm to reliability and safety. 

“As hosting capacity is being reduced, it’s causing an increasing number of situations where utilities need to study their systems to guarantee interconnection without compromising their systems,” he said. “And that is the reason why you’re starting to see some delays, and it has translated into some greater costs because of the need for upgrades to infrastructure.”

The cost depends on the age or absence of infrastructure, projected load growth, the number of renewable energy projects in the queue, and other factors, he said. As utilities come under increasing pressure to meet state renewable goals, and as some states pilot incentives like a distributed energy rebate in Illinois to drive utility innovation, some (including National Grid) are beginning to provide hosting capacity maps that provide detailed information to developers and policymakers about the amount of distributed energy that can be accommodated at various locations on the grid, he said. 

In addition, the coming availability of high-tech “smart inverters” should help ease some of these problems because they provide the grid with more flexibility when it comes to connecting and communicating with distributed energy resources, Enbar said. 

In Massachusetts, the Department of Public Utilities has opened a docket to explore ways to better plan for and share the cost of upgrading distribution infrastructure to accommodate solar and other renewable energy sources as part of a grid overhaul for renewables nationwide. National Grid has been conducting “cluster studies” there that attempt to analyze the transmission impacts of a group of solar projects and the corresponding interconnection cost to each developer.

Kresse, of National Grid, said the company favors cost-sharing methodologies under consideration that would “provide a pathway to spread cost over the total enabled capacity from the upgrade, as opposed to spreading the cost over only those customers in the queue today.” 

Solar developers want regulators to take an even broader approach that factors in how the deployment of renewables and the resulting infrastructure upgrades benefit not just the interconnecting generator, but all customers. 

“Right now, if your project is the one that causes a multimillion-dollar upgrade, you are assigned that cost even though that upgrade is going to benefit a lot of other projects, as well as make the grid stronger,” said McDiarmid, of the clean energy council. “What we’re asking for is a way of allocating those costs among a variety of developers, as well as to the grid itself, meaning ratepayers. There’s a societal benefit to increasing the modernization of the grid, and improving the resilience of the grid.”

In the meantime, BlueHub Capital, a Boston-based solar developer focused on serving affordable housing developments, recently learned from National Grid that, as a part of one of the area studies, it will be required to pay $5.8 million in transmission and distribution upgrades to interconnect a 2-megawatt solar-plus-storage project that leverages cheaper batteries to enhance resilience, approved for a brownfield site in Gardner, Massachusetts. 

According to testimony submitted to the department, the sum is supposed to be paid within the next year, even though the project will have to wait to be interconnected until April 2027, when a new transmission line is completed. In addition, BlueHub will be responsible for DAF charges totaling $3.4 million over the 20-year life of the project. 

“We’re being asked to pay a fortune to provide solar that the state wants,” said DeWitt Jones, BlueHub’s president. “It’s so expensive that the upgrades are driving everyone out of the interconnection queue. The costs stay the same, but they fall on fewer projects. We need a process of grid design and modernization to guide this.”

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