2009 Dept. of Energy Study Turns Away from PATH

The US Department of Energy has released its 2009 National Electric Transmission Congestion Study for public comment.  Here is a link to the study report. DoE has also issued a press release concerning the study which includes information about how you can make a comment on the study.  Here is the link to the press release.

The 2009 study is a sharp turn away from the policies developed in the Cheney White House in 2000 and confirmed by the Republican-led Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2006.  The Cheney policies pushed big transmission projects as the cure-all for East Coast “congestion” problems.

Here is a significant section of the 2009 Congestion Study’s Executive Summary:

The 2009 study identifies regions of the country that are experiencing congestion, but refrains from addressing the issue of whether transmission expansion would be the most appropriate solution. In some cases, transmission expansion might simply move a constraint from one point on the grid to another without materially changing the overall costs of congestion. In other cases, the cost of building new facilities to remedy congestion over all affected lines may exceed the cost of the congestion itself, and, therefore, remedying the congestion would not be economic. In still other cases, alternatives other than transmission, such as increased local generation (including distributed generation), energy efficiency, energy storage and demand response may be more economic than transmission expansion in relieving congestion.

Thus, a finding that a transmission path or flowgate is frequently congested should lead to further study of the costs and impacts of that congestion, and to a careful regional study of a broad range of potential remedies to larger reliability and economic problems.  Although congestion is a reflection of legitimate reliability or economic concerns, not all transmission congestion can or should be reduced or “solved.” [emphasis mine]

Ruh, roh.  The US Dept. of Energy is talking about cost.  PJM is claiming that PATH is so great that we shouldn’t be considering its cost compared to the “problems” PJM engineers claim that it solves.

The US DoE puts cost right at the heart of the issue and says that there are quite likely more effective, and more cost effective ways of solving existing problems on the East Coast than by building new transmission lines from the west, like PATH.

The Executive Summary also notes that the Mid-Atlantic region remains critically congested and that PJM’s commitment to transmission projects has been slow and ineffective.  The Summary contrasts this situation to what has happened in New England over the same three year period since 2006:

Over the past three years, however, transmission congestion within New England has fallen significantly. This is due to years of sustained effort and achievement on several fronts—new utility-scale and distributed, small-scale supply resources have come on-line, primarily in the locations where they were most needed and valuable; aggressive demand response programs have made load reduction into a geographically targeted resource that can be used to reduce peak loads and mitigate the effects of temporal transmission constraints; and energy efficiency is reducing total loads. Further, the area has a strong queue of new generation projects, as well as a diverse set of new reliability- and economics-oriented transmission projects completed or sitting in its interconnection and transmission system study queues. These developments have eased the significant reliability and economic differentials affecting the Boston metropolitan area and southwest Connecticut.

Although New England still faces a potential resource shortfall under extreme load conditions over the next few years, most of the significant transmission constraints have been eliminated by the region’s multi-faceted approach. The region has shown that it can permit, site, finance, cost-allocate and build new generation and transmission, while encouraging new demand-side resources as well.

New England faces some near-term reliability challenges, but is working aggressively to address them. For these reasons, the Department no longer identifies New England as a Congestion Area of Concern. [emphasis mine]

In other words, while PJM was single-mindedly pursuing its flawed transmission projects, New England ISO resolved most of their congestion problems with a diverse strategy targeting smaller scale local projects in areas with the most congestion.  The DoE has now taken New England off its Area of Concern list in three years.

So now ten East Coast governors agree with us.  US DoE agrees with us.  Dominion Virginia Power agrees with us. And New England ISO has proven that our solutions work.

PJM, AEP and Allegheny Energy continue to cling to their PATH project.  The MD and WV PSCs need to pull the plug on PATH and order PJM to make a real planning effort that considers all available solutions not just the ones subsidized by FERC and rate payers.