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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION
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Technical Conference
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to Discuss Climate Change,
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Extreme Weather, & Electric
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System Reliability
Docket No: AD21-13-000
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TECHNICAL CONFERENCE
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Via WebEx
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Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
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888 1st Street NE
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Washington, DC 20426
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Tuesday, June 1, 2021
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1:00 p.m.
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Welcome and Opening Remarks
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Introductory Presentation - More Frequent and Expensive
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Extreme Weather Events
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Adam Smith, Applied Climatologist, National Oceanic and
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Atmospheric Administration
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Panel 1:
Planning for a Future that Diverges from
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Historical Trends.
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Romany Webb, Associate Research Scholar/Senior Fellow at the
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Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University Law
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School
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Derek Stenclik, President, Telos Energy, Inc.
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Susanne DesRoches, Deputy Director of Infrastructure and
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Energy, New York City Mayor's Offices of Resiliency and
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Sustainability.
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Lisa Barton, Executive Vice President/Chief Operating
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Officer, American Electric Power
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Judy Chang, Undersecretary of Energy, Massachusetts
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Jessica Hogle, Federal Affairs/Chief Sustainability Officer,
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Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation
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David Easterling, Ph.D., Director, National Climate
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Assessment Technical Support Unit NOAA's National Centers
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for Environmental Information.
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Panel 2:
Best Practices for Long-Term Planning
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Assessing and Mitigating the Risk of Climate Change and
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Extreme Weather Events
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Judith Curry, President, Climate Forecast Applications
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Network
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Neal Millar, Vice President Transmission Planning and
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Infrastructure Development at the California ISO
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Mark Lauby, Senior Vice President/Chief Engineer, NERC
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Devin Hartman, Director of Energy and Environmental Police,
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R Street Institute
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Alison Silverstein, Independent Consultant, Alison
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Silverstein Consulting
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Richard Tabors, President.
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Frederick Heinle, Assistant People's Counsel, Office of the
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People's Counsel for the District of Columbia.
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Tabors Caramanis Rudkevich
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P R O C E E D I N G S
(1:00 p.m.)
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MR. AMERKHAIL:
Welcome my name is Rahim
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Amerkhail, and I'm from the Commission's Office of Energy
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Policy and Innovation.
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technical conference to discuss climate change, extreme
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weather and electric system reliability.,
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We are happy to welcome you to this
Before we begin with opening remarks I will
outline some logistics for the conference.
This conference
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will take place over two afternoons from approximately 1:00
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p.m. to 6:00 p.m. eastern time each day.
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opening presentation and two panels today, followed by three
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panels tomorrow afternoon.
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We will have an
We will also have breaks in between the panels.
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Only the Commissioners, panelists and a small group of
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Commission staff will have the ability to speak today.
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conference is being webcast and transcribed, and I believe
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the webcast will be archived for those who need to watch it
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later.
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This
The purpose of this conference is to discuss
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issues surrounding the threat to electric system reliability
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posed by climate change and extreme weather events.
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not intend to discuss specific details of any pending,
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contested proceedings before the Commission whether they're
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listed on the supplemental notice issued on May 27th or not.
We do
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And we ask that all participants similarly
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refrain from such discussion.
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kinds of discussions, my colleague Michael Haddad from the
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Office of General Counsel will interrupt the discussion to
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ask the speaker to avoid that topic.
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matters out of the way I will now turn it over to Chairman
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Glick for his opening remarks.
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Welcome and Opening Remarks
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CHAIRMAN GLICK:
If anyone engages in these
With those initial
Mr. Chairman?
Thank you very much Rahim can
you hear me?
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MR. AMERKHAIL:
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CHAIRMAN GLICK:
Yes.
Great, great, I appreciate it.
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So thank you and also thanks to the team for putting
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together this technical conference for the next two days.
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think it's going to be very interesting.
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thank the panelists for being willing to participate in the
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conference over the next two days and for taking the time to
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do so.
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helpful to us.
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I
I also want to
We really appreciate your participation, it's very
You know I think if you look at the last couple
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summer and winter reliability assessments that the
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Commission staff puts out on occasion.
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to do is look at those and all you have to do is read those,
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and you will all understand how important weather is --
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extreme weather is to grid reliability.
I think all you have
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Certainly, it's something that we pay a lot of
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attention to, but I think the courts suggest that it has
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always been important, but even more important as of late.
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Climate change is a real phenomenon and I think the extreme
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weather that we see around the country, whether it be
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drought and wildfires in the west, extreme instances of heat
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or extreme cold waves that occur, floods, hurricanes, more
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ferocious hurricanes than we've seen before and greater
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numbers as well.
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There's clearly something going on, and I think
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most scientists would suggest that certainly climate change.
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But from our perspective we need to figure out what that all
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means for the grid.
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most cases people would assume that you would have the 100
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year flood, or the 100 year this or that, and all these
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events are now taking place once ever few years, it's no
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longer once every 100 years.
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And I think you know we used to have in
And I think we need to figure out on a going
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forward basis what that means again for the grid reliability
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and act accordingly.
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Texas most recently, but we've seen it elsewhere before,
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grid reliability and access to electricity is not just the
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incident of convenience that when the lights go out you know
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we're inconvenienced for a couple hours.
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And you know as I think as we saw in
Sometimes it's a loss worse than that as we saw
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in Texas most recently.
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and death on some occasions, so we have a duty, a solemn
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duty to try to ensure reasonable power system, ensure
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reliability, and take a look at these instances and try to
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figure out what's to do next.
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days -- this afternoon and then tomorrow afternoon the
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discussion that is going to take place is very important
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from FERC's perspective.
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It literally is a matter of life
And I think that the next two
We need to figure out from our perspective is
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there anything to do from reliability rules for the ways in
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which we regulate jurisdictional utilities.
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better address the fact that utilities need to plan for
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these extreme weather conditions on a more frequent basis
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and how to play for them both in the planning perspective,
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but also an operational perspective.
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How do we
And I'm looking forward to the discussion today
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and tomorrow because I think that's going to be extremely
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helpful.
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it.
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afternoon, but other than that I'll most certainly be
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listening and participating, and again look forward to what
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I think is going to be a very helpful discussion over the
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next couple days, so thanks very much Rahim.
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I will be, and I plan to listen to almost all of
I think I might have a conflict later tomorrow
MR. AMERKHAIL:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
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believe Commissioners Clements and Christie also want to say
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a few words.
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Let's start with Commissioner Clements please.
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Thank you Rahim and thank
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you Chairman Glick.
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work you've done, along with the team to get this important
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technical conference up and going.
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Appreciate Rahim, especially all the
The Chairman just spoke to the kinds of threats
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and the seriousness of the changing threat that climate
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change is imposing in terms of increasing extreme weather.
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So to combat these threats we need to move beyond
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traditional, you know, best practice for planning from the
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past, and deliberately think about and plan for these bigger
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challenges.
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through an energy transition and a mix of resources that
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grid operator will call upon to meet these challenges.
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changing.
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And we just do so recognizing that we're going
It's
You know that economics, public policy, and
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customer preferences are causing a proliferation of wind and
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solar resources, and now more recently energy storage
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technologies and offshore wind have begun to gain a market
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foothold, and are certainly poised for significant future
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growth.
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It's important for me to remember that our job is
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not to halt progress towards a cheaper, more flexible and
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more resilient electricity system, but to protect customers
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and ensure reliability along the way.
Success requires
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smart planning operations and reliability regimes that
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embrace this reality of extreme weather risk.
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Certainly states and utilities and regions have
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started to make progress already on this front.
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the first time that the Commission has devoted a technical
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conference to examining specifically how the system must
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respond to climate change.
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hearing from all of you on these issues of planning
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operations, recovery and restoration practices, and how
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Today is
So I'm looking forward to
they can be improved to better address this threat.
And I commend you Chairman Glick, and the team
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for putting this together.
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That's it for me.
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Introductory Presentation - More Frequent and Expensive
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Extreme Weather Events
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MR. AMERKHAIL:
We appreciate all the work.
Thank you Commissioner Clements.
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Commissioner Christie are you on?
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Christie on the Webex yet, so perhaps we'll have a chance to
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hear from him later.
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Chairman and Commissioners.
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I don't see Commissioner
So at this point thank you Mr.
I will now hand it over to Adam Smith, an applied
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climatologist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
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Administration who will help us set the state with respect
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to the kinds of change and extreme weather problems our
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panels will be discussing for the next two afternoons.
Mr.
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Smith?
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MR. SMITH:
Thank you.
Thank you for having us
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today, and I think that this will be a very fruitful
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discussion.
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thank you.
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I'm going to go to a macro to micro to back to a macro
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perspective to over how the extremes have affected the
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United States over the last 41 years.
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I'm waiting for the slides.
All right.
All right great
So there's a lot to unpack here and
Try to give a better perspective over the
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disaster costs, over space and time, looking at some other
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metrics and charts and tools that you can look at yourself.
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We try to be very transparent with this information.
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slide please.
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So here's a brief outline.
Next
First I'd like to
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offer context for measuring disaster impact, then we'll get
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into the public and private sector data versus the years,
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what we're measuring, also what we're not measuring.
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third and fourth sections are really the meat of the
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presentation regarding the 2020 U.S. disaster events that
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happened across the United States, put those into historical
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context, and also finish up with different cost comparisons
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over space and time and looking at different new tools that
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we have to unpack this data, to get better context.
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slide please.
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The
Next
So NOAA's National Centers for Environmental
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Information since 1950 has really been the mission
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scorekeeper regarding trends and anomalies for various
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weather and climate events.
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different products and services.
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Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster project which
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goes from 1980 to present.
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And we have hundreds of
One of those is the U.S.
It's a quarterly project.
And so a billion dollars for an event is an
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arbitrary threshold, but it just so happens to be a useful
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threshold.
You can see at the bottom of the slide that the
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first 20 years of the period of record these billion dollar
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weather and climate events were about 75 percent of the full
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cost distribution for all weather and climate related events
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at all scales and all loss levels.
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And you can see how that has increased to in fact
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a bit more than 85 percent of the full distribution from
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1980 through 2020.
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direct losses.
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the wildfires out west and the hurricanes in the Gulf and
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the Atlantic states have further skewed this distribution,
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but we'll get into that further.
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1.9 of 2.2 trillion dollars in total
And certainly, over the last several years
Next slide please.
So certainly there are several different ways you
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can measure the disastrous impact.
First if you see the
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left part of the slide it shows many of the different
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hazards that we focus on -- tornadoes, wildfires, inland
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floods, droughts, heatwaves, winter storms, hurricanes.
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We do not currently work on geophysical events
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such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
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center in the right portion of the slide, the green box is
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really highlighting where the best public and private sector
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data for analyzing disasters currently exists.
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and blue boxes are where the data is more heterogeneous over
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space and time, and therefore we don't really bring it into
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this product because of the inconsistency of the data.
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Now in the
The purple
So I'll unpack that a bit further in the next few
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slides.
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to capture all of this data it requires a broad array of
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public and private sector data sources and partners.
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table shows the intersection from the seven different
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hazards as part of this billion dollar disaster portfolio at
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the top of the table which intersect with our primary data
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providers in the left column.
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Next slide.
And one more please.
So it's really
The
The property claim service is really a gold
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standard for property insurance in the United States.
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FEMA's presence with disaster declaration data, the national
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flood insurance program data, USCA's crop insurance data,
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also the national interagency fire center, the Energy
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Information Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of
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Engineers, and state agencies provide valuable context,
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ex-post after disasters.
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And so you can see there's a lot of variability
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on the data providers versus the hazards, but I think at the
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bottom it's really the takeaway.
What we're trying to
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capture are total direct losses.
That would be the insured
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and uninsured losses for a variety of assets you see listed,
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the damage to residential, commercial buildings, government
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buildings, the contents of those buildings.
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Time element losses such as business
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interruption, damage to vehicles, boats, offshore energy
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platforms like in the Gulf of Mexico that are challenged by
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hurricanes.
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let's see there we go.
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account for things like natural capital losses that are
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outside of the marketplace.
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Also crops, livestock, commercial timber and
But let me also highlight we do not
Also, mental and physical healthcare costs, and
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also all the downstream supply chain ripple effects outside
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of a hazard region, we don't capture those either.
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suffice to say that this is a conservative but solid
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estimate for the direct total losses that we can measure,
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but certainly there are variables that we cannot.
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slide please.
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All right one more slide please.
So
Next
So now getting
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into what happened last year.
Of course COVID certainly was
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unfortunately the story of 2020, but it wasn't for COVID I
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think we'd be more talking about the extreme weather that
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happened from coast to coast.
The wildfires out west --
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California, Oregon, Washington State, Colorado, all had
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historical wildfire seasons.
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Of course the Gulf Coast, you can see a record
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number of hurricanes.
Only 12 tropical cyclones hit the
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United States which was a record, and 7 of the 12 were
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actually billion dollar hurricane events, which was also a
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record.
Unfortunately, Louisiana was hit by 5 of those.
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But and we also can't forget the very
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historically strong duration that raped the upper Midwest.
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That was an 11 billion dollar event impacting the
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agriculture, utilities and homes, businesses, livelihoods,
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but the most-costly event of the year was Hurricane Laura,
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which was a strong category 4 that hit earlier in the
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Hurricane season.
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That was a 19 billion dollar event.
So from these 22 events which was a record
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breaking the previous annual record of 16 events set in 2011
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and 2017, so 2020 was really an outlier, but it was the
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hurricane and the wildfire seasons that I think were the
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historical takeaways from last year, next slide please.
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So this is a pretty loaded chart, and it
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essentially reflects the aggregate exposure values at risk,
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vulnerability, where we build, how we build, and of course
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the effects of climate change on some of these extremes.
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And you can see each of the last 41 years the bar represents
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the count of these billion dollar disasters somewhere in the
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United States.
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as well.
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You can also look at this at a state level
And they're collocated by hazard type which you
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can see at the top.
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is that so 2015 through 2020 was the sixth consecutive year
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that we've had at least 10 separate billion dollar disaster
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events, but last year more than doubled that recent
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standard.
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But what I would also like to highlight
But I think more telling is the costs, so the
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five year average cost which is the black line, is 120
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billion dollars in just total direct losses in the United
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States which is a record.
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that's in excess of 600 billion dollars, and from the
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impacts from these extreme events.
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So over the last five years
I'd also like to highlight that some of the
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outlier years, of course you see let's go back one slide
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please, the 2017 was the most-costly year.
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the second most-costly, followed by 2012, but last year was
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the fourth most costly year, and we'll look at that in a
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little bit more detail.
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2005 would be
Next slide please.
So here are different ways to look at the data.
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Now this is a cumulative aggregate of the frequency of these
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billion dollar disaster events, each of the last 41 years.
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The black line is again the 41 year inflation adjusted
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average number of events per year.
I should say that all
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the dollar figures in this plot today are inflationary
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adjusted to present day dollars.
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The red line would again be the outlier for the
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year 2020, you know, head and shoulders above the other
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years.
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years that have been quite high on the distribution.
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this chart right here actually is perhaps more useful.
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shows the cost distribution, the previous chart was the
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frequency, this is the cost distribution.
But as you can see we've had a number of recent
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And
It
The 41 year inflation adjusted cost averages 46.5
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billion, and the black line again you see the red line is
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2020, it was in fourth place just behind 2012, 2005 and of
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course 2017 when we had Harvey, Irma, and Maria in addition
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to western wildfires.
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billion.
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Those costs were in excessive of 300
I'd like to highlight two things.
One would be
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the distribution of the gray lines between 10 and 40
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billion, and of course the outlier years above it.
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commonality with the outlier years at the top of the
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distribution are large hurricanes hitting large metropolitan
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regions -- Harvey, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Irma, you name it.
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And the
So certainly the exposure we have on the coast
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from hurricanes is the highest cost threat for these weather
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and climate extremes for this product.
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All right one more slide.
Next slide please.
So here over the last
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41 years from January 1980 through March 2020, we've had 291
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separate billion dollar weather or climate related events.
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And so, the cumulative costs you could see at the bottom is
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1.9 trillion.
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takeaways.
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So what I have circled here are a few
One, it does not surprise people that tropical
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cyclones, which are of course hurricanes and tropical
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storms, make up the lion's share of the losses, a little bit
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more than 1 trillion dollars.
This is from 52 hurricane, or
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strong tropical storm events.
And the average cost is 19.4
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billion per event.
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It does surprise people that drought and
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heatwaves have a secondarily high cost of 261 billion, so
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one quarter of one trillion.
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being overshadowed is what's happening with wildfires.
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see wildfires is 100.3 billion dollars in total direct
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losses.
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the last four years due to catastrophic wildfires across the
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west in 2017, 2018 and 2020.
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But I think what's kind of
You
It is notable that that has effectively doubled in
Unfortunately, this year is looking like another
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challenging wildfire year.
So wildfire costs are increasing
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proportionately the fastest.
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please, yes.
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partitioned by decade.
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decade and you can see the large jump over the 2000's decade
Next slide please, back one
So this is the same data except its
What I have circled is the 2010
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from 63 billion dollar disasters to basically doubled to
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123.
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And also the cost went from 527 billion to 825
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billion.
And of course exposure, vulnerability, and climate
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change are all drivers for these increases in losses with
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you know regional variations.
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you know it comes down back to how vulnerable are we and
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that's you know, a very challenging question to examine.
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But I think the takeaway is
So these numbers continue to rise for a variety
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of reasons as I mentioned, so let's look at that a bit
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further.
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footprint of these billion dollar disasters really is
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ubiquitous.
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over the last 41 years it shows the billion dollar aggregate
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footprint of these different hazards.
Next slide please.
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So this shows that the spatial
No matter where you live in the United States
So the top left drought and heatwave is
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everywhere.
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more recently the west have really had their fair share of
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drought and heatwave impacts.
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center, you see it's more to the east, and a lot of that is
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exposure with large population centers in the northeast, and
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nor'easter events that create hail -- excuse me, snow, ice,
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wind and storm surge damage, so that's an exposure map
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right there.
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The south, the central, the southeastern, but
Winter storms in the top
Tropical cyclones really from Texas to New
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England, and even well inland as they become extra tropical
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and rain themselves out, you know the hazard is prominent
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there.
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non-tropical flooding just from urban flooding or river
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basin flooding, and you see as the water flows to the
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tributaries into the main river basins, Texas, Louisiana,
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Arkansas, the deep south really gets a lot of the flooding
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impacts.
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Bottom left flooding -- this would be non-hurricane,
Bottom center wildfires.
Again, mostly a western
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phenomenon, also Alaska and the southeast have impacts as
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well, but California, Oregon, other western states are
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really the most challenged with wildfire.
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local storms, also on the bottom right fairly ubiquitous,
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but mostly east of the Rockies due to geography and the way
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that weather patterns set up.
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And then severe
Next slide please.
So if you take all of those previous maps I just
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spoke of and put them together, this is a map you have the
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total aggregate.
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the last 41 years.
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Texas has a spatial vice being the largest state, or one of
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the large population states with a large economy, so it has
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a lot at risk.
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The total frequency of these events over
And Texas leads the way.
But of course
Let's go one more slide please.
But this slide is more telling because it's
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looking at the cumulative cost frequency over the last 41
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years.
Again, Texas leads the way about 300 billion dollars
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in total direct losses, and it gets all the hazards that we
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focus on.
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most of those are hurricane impacts that you would expect.
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Florida would be second at about 240 billion,
And finally, in Louisiana it's third at about 220
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billion, but it has a much smaller economy and population
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than either Texas or Florida, so as highest relative impacts
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to these events.
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Islands are impacted by hurricanes, which we also capture.
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But really, you can see much of the country, particularly
Also, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
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the central and eastern part plus California are really
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impacted by these events in true dollars and cents.
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more slide please.
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And we just saw this last year.
One
So 2020, this is
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a map showing the 2020 disaster costs with respect to each
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state's economy size, their GSP, or GDP.
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Louisiana led the way at about 7.5 to 10 percent of its
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state's economy, that was the size of the damages from the
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hurricanes that happened last year.
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from the ratio impacts in many central states from severe
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conductive storm impacts from tornadoes, hails and straight
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line thunderstorm wind damage.
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So you can see
Also Iowa, it pops out
But you can look at this tool in a variety of
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ways.
We're just scratching the surface with this
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presentation, but I think this is a valuable metric we look
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at.
One more slide please.
And this is just a snapshot
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showing that these extremes of course are seasonal.
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In the springtime we expect severe storm events,
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and inland flooding events in the blue and the green there,
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as opposed to the fall months where it's more tropical
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cyclone, wildfire and drought events that are causing the
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most damage as we've seen every year in the last several
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years.
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It just plays out almost like a record.
And you can go look at this for your own state.
But let's go one more slide please.
One of the more I think
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interesting areas to look at is this concept of cascading or
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compound hazards, basically when extreme events happen in a
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small space time window.
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separate billion dollar disaster events for the United
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States over the last four decades, and how -- what's the
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statistical frequency for them to happen in the same month
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in the same geography.
And so this is looking at the 291
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And again you can see how the spring and the fall
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months pop out with the highest risk for compound frequency,
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and again Louisiana is a great example.
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five tropical cyclones last year.
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important is it increases cost recovery time, and it just
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lengthens, delays the recovery process and increased demand
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surge for materials and for labor and we see that in these
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March - June disasters, or these compound disasters.
25
They were hit by
So the reason that's
And finally, I'd like to highlight what was noted
22
1
in the fourth national climate assessment a few years back,
2
"The physical and socioeconomic impacts of compound extreme
3
events such as simultaneous heat and drought, wildfires
4
associated with hot and dry conditions or flooding
5
associated with hot or high precipitation on top of a water
6
logged ground, the impacts are greater than the sum of its
7
parts."
8
9
And finally, here is the website for the maps and
the charts and tools I showed you and our core review on
10
climate.gov regarding the billion dollar disasters last
11
year, and my email and some great literature.
12
thank you.
13
MR. AMERKHAIL:
And with that
Thank you very much Mr. Smith.
14
That was very helpful and quite sobering as your teams work
15
and your presentation demonstrate the electric industry
16
faces significant weather-related challenges ahead.
17
Before I turn it over to our moderators for Panel
18
1, I see that Commissioner Christie has arrived.
19
Commissioner Christie would you like to make any opening
20
remarks?
21
COMMISSIONER CHRISTIE:
Thanks Rahim, and I would
22
just say I've been having technical issues and not fully
23
resolved yet, so I will not say much.
24
all the panelists that put a lot of work into this.
25
want to thank all the staff that put a lot of work into
But I want to thank
And I
23
1
this, and with that I will sign off and listen and hopefully
2
get my technical issues resolved before too long, so thank
3
you very much.
4
Panel 1:
5
Historical Trends.
6
Planning for a Future that Diverges from
MR. AMERKHAIL:
Thank you Commissioner.
I will
7
now turn it over to our moderators for the first panel
8
entitled, "Planning for a Future that Diverges from
9
Historical Trends," so we can start exploring potential
10
responses to the challenges that Mr. Smith and others have
11
raised.
12
Louise?
MS. NUTTER:
Hello.
I'm Louise Nutter from the
13
Office of Electric Reliability, and along with my colleague
14
Ena Agbedia, also from the Office of Electric Reliability, I
15
will be moderating this panel.
16
Our first panel today will explore the ways in
17
which planning inputs and practices, including those used in
18
resource adequacy planning, transmission planning,
19
integrated resource planning, and asset development and
20
management, should evolve to achieve outcomes that reflect
21
consumer needs for reliable electricity in the face of
22
patterns of climate change and extreme weather events that
23
diverges from historical trends.
24
We will be foregoing opening remarks for this
25
panel, and will move directly into a question and answer
24
1
session.
2
please use Webex raise hand function.
3
are having any issues with the raise hand function, please
4
turn on your microphone and indicate that you would like to
5
respond.
6
If a panelist would like to answer a question,
Alternatively, if you
I will call on panelists that indicate that they
7
would like to answer in turn.
8
microphone on and respond to the question.
9
completed your answer please turn off the microphone, lower
10
11
At that time please turn your
When you've
your virtual hand in Webex.
I'd like to start by welcoming our panelists.
We
12
have Romany Webb, Associate Research Scholar/Senior Fellow
13
at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia
14
University Law School;
15
Derek Stenclik, Founding Partner Telos Energy;
16
Susanne DesRoches, Deputy Director of Infrastructure and
17
Energy of the New York City Mayor's Office of Resiliency and
18
Sustainability;
19
Chief Operating Officer, American Electric Power;
20
Lisa Barton, Executive Vice President,
Judy Chang, Undersecretary of Energy with the
21
State of Massachusetts;
Jessica Hogle, Federal
22
Affairs/Chief Sustainability Officer at PG&E and Doctor
23
David Easterling, Director of National Climate Assessment
24
Technical Support Unit.
25
colleague Ena to introduce the first question.
And now I will turn it over to my
25
1
MR. AGBEDIA:
Thank you Louise.
So panelists,
2
the first question we are going to address today, with
3
respect to typical inputs to planning, such as expected
4
future loads, weather, temperature, et cetera, how can such
5
futures-based inputs be projected more accurately (or
6
usefully) than simply extending historical trends forward?
7
8
I'll turn this first question to Mr. Stenclik
please.
9
MR. STENCLIK:
Yeah sure, so I can take a first
10
stab at that.
11
about evaluating climate change in the electric power
12
sector, you know, the first thing is it's not adequate just
13
to introduce a warming trend, because I think normal
14
warming, or even if it's not normal, that warming trend is
15
not what's going to catch the electric power system
16
off-guard.
17
One thing I think is critical when you think
Really what the power system is going to be most
18
concerned with is the correlated events that come from that,
19
whether it's multiple days of extreme heat that occur back
20
to back to back, if it's weather events that occur outside
21
of our normal risk periods, I think that's key when we think
22
about electric power system reliability historically across
23
most of North America we've been focused predominantly on
24
hot summer afternoons.
25
And I think for all the system planners out
26
1
there, it's going to be really critical to widen that view,
2
and say it's not just that afternoon summer peak that's
3
going to be critical anymore, we need to start looking more
4
at what anomalous weather that might not be as hot or as
5
humid as the summer peak, but occurs in a time period that
6
the power system wasn't necessarily designed to meet the
7
same way it was for the summer peak period.
8
9
So I think you know it's not just about
introducing that warming trend, because really if you look
10
at the way the resource mix is moving into a lot of solar, a
11
lot of storage, I'm not convinced that summer hot period is
12
going to be the peak risk anymore.
13
periods, or shoulder periods where it's anomalous weather
14
around what the power system wasn't designed for
15
historically.
16
It's going to be winter
So I think when we think about climate data, and
17
how we introduce that in the power system planning, it's not
18
necessarily the warming trend we have to worry about, it's
19
these anomalous weather events.
20
and solar event.
21
ramifications on the gas supply and mechanical failures.
22
It's a multi-day low wind
It's the extreme cold and how that has
So it's really the correlated events that we have
23
to worry about where it can lead to cascading values across
24
the network as well as chronological hour to hour changes in
25
the way the power system operates.
27
1
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you.
2
to a great start.
3
people, three people.
4
would you like to go first please?
5
I think that got us off
Is there anyone else?
MS. HOGLE:
Oh, I see two
Jessica Hogle I saw yours first,
Sure thanks Louise.
I just want to
6
build on those last comments.
I think you know we know that
7
the impacts of climate change are going to be both kind of
8
acute and chronic over the long-term.
9
us at PG&E was really just back in 2015 identifying what are
So a first step for
10
the universal climate driven impacts that we think we are
11
going to experience.
12
wildfires, sea level rise, land subsidence, more heavy and
13
increased storms et cetera.
14
And there were six, including drought,
And then you know the next phase, and we worked
15
on you know with our CPUC and other stakeholders, a process
16
to identify what a good current vulnerability assessment
17
looks like, how do we incorporate and understand that data?
18
And in that process what we're looking at okay, what is the
19
exposure that exists, which I just discussed.
20
What is the sensitivity of our assets in the
21
exposure of those assets to those climate-driven risks, and
22
then finally what is the adaptive capacity of our
23
infrastructure to those risks?
24
that means you know how easy would it be, what are the
25
resources available, or knowledge available that we have to
And by adaptive capacity
28
1
be able to respond to these?
2
So a good way to think about that is a
3
transformer that's sensitive to heat relatively higher
4
adaptive capacity because we can change that transformer
5
relatively easily.
6
is subject to sea level rise, that you know, is less
7
adaptive capacity because we would either have to relocate
8
it or rise it.
9
However, a you know, a substation that
It would take more to be able to do that.
And so you know I think how you -- what are the
10
best practices and how you use that data is you know
11
understanding what your risks are, how that impacts your
12
assets, and then how easy it would be to address those
13
risks.
14
window of time, some risks that you're going to experience
15
today, and that we're already experiencing today in
16
California, like drought, wildfires, and heatwaves.
And then obviously, when you understand kind of the
17
You know those require kind of nearer term
18
actions, and then you have over at the long-term more
19
ability to address the sea level rise, things that are over,
20
you know, chronic over the long-term.
21
gathering the data and then incorporating and leveraging
22
that data to inform your decision-making.
23
24
25
MS. NUTTER:
So I think it's
Thank you very much.
Undersecretary
Chang I believe you were next.
MS. CHANG:
Great.
Thank you.
First all thank
29
1
you very much for inviting me and letting me speak on this
2
esteemed panel here.
3
couldn't agree more to the previous respondents to that
4
question.
5
us.
6
planning in expected load or weather and temperature.
I just want to maybe first of all
I think there is a lot that history cannot tell
Back to your question about how to conduct future
7
How do we use analyses to inform the future.
I
8
do think that the future is much, much more complex than it
9
was in history, so we cannot only rely on historical trends
10
that particularly for example load, and you mentioned load
11
in your question.
12
nice, perhaps smooth econometric trends that many load
13
forecasters have been using.
14
Many factors that are disrupting the
And you know you heard about it already in the
15
previous comments about simultaneity, and a correlation
16
across.
17
example, the pattern of electricity usage, just in general
18
will be changing.
19
electrification of transportation and buildings, and the
20
pattern of grid connected electricity usage is of course
21
affected by installed solar and wind for example.
22
And I will just give you some examples.
For
For example, we're working on
But also the simultaneous impact of changes in
23
weather related events like climate related events, and how
24
they affect both load and the usage of these renewable
25
generation was significantly will be different, much, much
30
1
more in the future than it is in the past.
2
We cannot use historical patterns to really
3
directly inform the future.
4
that new load forecast means.
5
going to change over the next decade and beyond.
6
pursue as we are in New England, but in general if
7
decarbonization is one of the aggressive goals, that means
8
that heating and cooling loads will increase because we're
9
actually transforming our building sector and trying to use
10
So we need to disaggregate what
Heating and cooling loads are
If we
more electricity in heating and cooling.
11
But of course we know heating and cooling are
12
affected by weather events, so again just to emphasize the
13
importance of what Derek said earlier about the correlation
14
between weather, and load is not as direct as it used to be.
15
We can't just ask you know what temperature we have and then
16
answer this is the assumption on load because there are now
17
behind the meter solar, and solar plus storage, which will
18
be affected by weather, just as load will be affected by
19
weather.
20
At the same time we're adding buildings and
21
electrifying building usages, and those will also be
22
affected by weather.
23
events we need to significantly change the way we think
24
about electricity load forecast, and not just load.
25
we can talk more about transmission and generation.
So I do think in extreme weather
I mean
31
1
But extreme heat in summers, extreme cold in
2
winters, and in regions where we didn't use to use
3
electricity as much for heating, that's going to change in
4
the future, so we actually not only care about summer heat
5
as that I already talked about, but also extreme cold in the
6
winter just like you saw in Texas.
7
And then extreme weather and wind conditions that
8
of course will affect our infrastructure which we'll talk
9
more about in the later questions.
10
MS. NUTTER:
11
12
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Miss Barton I
think you're next.
MS. BARTON:
Thank you.
And I certainly won't
13
repeat some of the same things that have been said by
14
previous panelists that I think are spot on.
15
do want to emphasize that the current deterministic planning
16
methodology that we have used today it works when supply is
17
highly dispatchable when weather is predictable, when peak
18
demand is reached only a few days a year.
19
But I really
Demand as Judy said, really has been a proxy for
20
the impact of weather and temperature, and reliability
21
assessments have been made through contingency analysis, and
22
that's what fundamentally needs to change.
23
how we planned the system from you know back in time.
24
gone from a utility system individual plan to a more
25
regional plan, and quite frankly, wasn't that long ago that
If you look at
We've
32
1
it was only factoring in voltage collapse and thermal
2
violations.
3
To one today post-Order 1000 that has expanded to
4
economic and new policy driven changes.
5
to say that the way we plan the system has not been static,
6
and it's important for us to continue to recognize the need
7
to evolve.
8
unacceptable, as Adam had mentioned.
9
And so it's really
The cost of failure is quite frankly
As we look towards a clean energy economy, our
10
customers, our communities are going to be more dependent on
11
the grid, and therefore our expectations on how it's
12
designed have to be different.
13
the tools that can be used is integrated form, excuse me,
14
forecast model.
15
the age of their system.
16
need to take a look at a more local level.
17
happen within a particular utility?
18
within a region?
19
with these various weather events?
20
So you know really one of
One that's really looking at facilities and
You know for example if you really
What's going to
What's going to happen
What's going to happen between regions
And certainly we can talk on some other questions
21
about how we drill down into that.
22
needs to be a layered review.
23
interregional, and that's how we make sure that it's not
24
cost-prohibitive to get through this transition.
25
MS. NUTTER:
But that fundamentally
Utility, regional,
Thank you very much.
Mrs. DesRoches
33
1
I think you're the next speaker.
2
MS. DESROCHES:
Thank you.
I again wanted to
3
thank everyone for the invitation today with such a great
4
group.
5
answer to the question is we absolutely cannot use
6
historical weather data.
7
projections and embed that into our planning process.
8
9
I won't repeat what others have said.
I think the
We need to take climate
And you know I represent the City of New York, so
my perspective here on this question is that we need a
10
consistent approach that full at the distribution level and
11
the bulk level as well as generation.
12
that's a very desperate set of operators and owners, and
13
there's no consistency that's mandated for folks to be
14
planning and designing with the same consistent set of data.
15
So in fact right now
So you know my recommendation is that we look to
16
the national climate assessment.
We look to NOAA to provide
17
a range of climate projections that are then utilized across
18
the system, and they can be done in a regional level,
19
certainly the NCA-4, national climate assessment 4 provides
20
regional assessments data as well as what those impacts are
21
going to be even on the electric sector.
22
In New York State and New York City we have a
23
number of different climate changes efforts that will be
24
ongoing, but we do benefit from having a consistent set of
25
projections.
And again those can be successfully embedded
34
1
into the distribution network planning, as well at the NYISO
2
level, and we can talk about that more later.
3
But again that consistency across the scales of
4
the system is critical so that we're not having an imbalance
5
of how that system functions depending on what that future
6
climate looks like.
7
Thank you.
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you.
It sounds like a lot of
8
interesting things to talk about today.
9
you're next.
10
MS. WEBB:
Yeah thank you.
Miss Webb I think
And thanks to you and
11
the other Commission staff for organizing today's technical
12
conference and for the invitation to participate.
13
wanted to you to know at the outset that my remarks today
14
are my opinions.
15
in collaboration with environmental defense fund, looking at
16
climate risk in the electricity sector.
17
report on the topic in December last year which we provided
18
to the Commission about climate in advance of the technical
19
conference.
I just
So like I said the Sabin Center has done
We published a
20
One of the points that we make in the report that
21
I think is worth reiterating here that others have eluded to
22
is that climate change really presents a fundamentally
23
different problem than electric utilities and other in the
24
industry have had to deal with in the past.
25
Of course utilities and system operators have a
35
1
long history of dealing with extreme weather and the
2
challenges.
3
sort of cascading compounding synergistic risks.
4
because we have this new challenge we really need to rethink
5
old planning approaches and suggest them, and also develop
6
new planning approaches.
7
previous speaker's comments that we should be integrating
8
climate projections into existing planning processes.
9
But climate change as we heard presents the
And so
So I would wholly second the
We can talk more about this in other questions,
10
but you know the quality and availability of the climate
11
projections, particularly downscale climate projections that
12
show impacts regionally and locally has improved
13
significantly, and many are already publicly available, and
14
there are more that could be developed.
15
But simply integrating to some of the previous
16
speaker points, simply integrating those forward looking
17
projections into existing planning processes is unlikely to
18
be sufficient.
19
existing processes around for example how we measure average
20
generator outage and availability, assuming a consistent
21
average across every hour of the year doesn't necessarily
22
make sense when we know that extremes, particularly extremes
23
in temperature, can affect those things.
24
25
We're going to need to rethink some of those
So integrating those adjustments into the
existing planning processes.
And also thinking about new
36
1
specialized planning processes that are more -- are better
2
suited to dealing with climate change along the lines of a
3
colleague from PG&E described.
4
climate resilience planning will be very important.
5
6
MS. NUTTER:
still raised.
That sort of more specific
Thank you.
Miss Barton your hand is
Did you want to speak again?
7
MS. BARTON:
No.
8
MS. NUTTER:
And actually I have a follow-up
9
Sorry about that.
question kind of based primarily on what you said and what
10
some other people have said.
11
example layered reviews on utilities, regional, so I was
12
wondering if you could share with us a little more detail on
13
how AEP has started down that road, and experiences you
14
might be able to share with us.
15
MS. BARTON:
Sure.
Some planners are changing for
You know one of the things
16
that we did with respect to our recent climate study is look
17
at a report that was done by Perdue University, and really
18
taking the impacts associated with climate change in terms
19
of what does it do to temperature?
20
demand?
21
What does that due to
What really needs to be done as previous
22
panelists have mentioned is that each should be really taken
23
to a different level.
24
deterministic planning, but we need to basically use
25
probabilistic and static methods to better manage those
We need to continue to use
37
1
2
risks.
And let me give you maybe an example of how this
3
can be done.
4
reviewing the system.
5
what's happening at the utility level.
6
climate, weather, demand, implications, what facilities have
7
an increased risk, of failure.
8
associated with that?
9
If you think about it from the standpoint of
And I mentioned you take the view of
So if you factor in
What is the restoration time
What will it mean from a demand perspective?
10
What other facilities will it impact?
11
give you a couple examples on the AEP system.
12
to lose a transmission tower in West Virginia which is
13
really going mountaintop to mountaintop, it can take me over
14
three months to restore that transmission tower.
15
And so let me just
So if I were
If we're in Oklahoma, and it's very flat it might
16
take me only a couple of days.
17
things that really need to be all thought through, and I
18
think at the individual utility level companies can
19
determine what's going to happen to their system.
20
example, the systems that we have are a culmination of
21
assets that we have been building for the past 100 years.
22
These are the kinds of
So for
And so, they are not all built to 2021 standards.
23
Some are billed to 2030 standards.
24
different climate scenarios?
25
probabilistic view.
How will they do in
So it's really taking a
What you would also do I think at the
38
1
next level is take a look at similar questions at a regional
2
level, again.
3
What are the changes that you can expect within
4
your region because certainly in the Midwest the answer to
5
what's going to happen from a climate perspective is going
6
to be very different than it would be for California, or
7
what it would be with respect to Florida.
8
9
So putting that all into perspective is
important, and then asking ourselves you know how do we
10
ensure resiliency?
11
necessary protections on black start generation on black
12
start paths?
13
How do we make sure that we have the
What will happen to our black start paths?
I think all of the planning that we want to do in
14
the world is wonderful, but we also have to make sure that
15
should something happen because we came awfully close in
16
Texas.
17
deviation away from losing an entire interconnect it goes to
18
show you how important we have to -- or I should say the
19
level of attention that we have to place on restarting the
20
grid.
21
When you are two one-hundredths of a frequency
And so thinking about redundant black start
22
paths, making sure that our black start generation is the
23
most resilient of our generation, while asking ourselves the
24
question is load shift an acceptable tool?
25
been an acceptable tool in the past.
It has always
Will it continue to
39
1
be?
And then thirdly as you go to the interregional view, I
2
think that it's really important to -- and we learned this
3
from Storm Uri as well.
4
The more the regions can lean on each other for
5
assistance, the better positioned they'll be.
The more we
6
can -- just think of the geographic diversity that you can
7
get if you're in a future which has a lot more variable
8
resources.
9
impacted within your region, or within that local utility,
While your variable resources may be adversely
10
but going to the next RTO all of their wind resources are
11
still spinning.
12
Having those strong interconnections, making sure
13
that you can lean on each other is going to be part of the
14
no regret solutions that I think when we think about
15
planning we need to focus on.
16
goes a long way to making sure that it's a cost-effective
17
transition as well.
18
19
20
MS. NUTTER:
And I think that that also
Thank you very much.
Mr. Stenclik
would you also like to respond to this?
MR. STENCLIK:
Yeah I'd like to add on to Lisa's
21
great kind of conclusion and comments there about
22
transmission and regional coordination because ultimately
23
transmission should be viewed as a reliability asset.
24
times we get stuck in a mindset that we need more capacity,
25
or more skin on the ground in terms of generation to meet
Often
40
1
some of these risks, the transmission is a key reliability
2
contributor.
3
And ultimately that just comes down to regional
4
coordination.
It could mean more interregional
5
transmission.
It could just mean a change to the
6
institutional way we view climate, and the way we do
7
resource adequacy analysis, the way we do reliability
8
planning.
9
The more that we can link regions together, you
10
pick up on geographic diversity, not just in the wind and
11
solar resources, you pick it up in terms of the load, and
12
ultimately on the weather themselves.
13
look at the ERCOT event MISO and SPP were also struggling
14
during that weather event, but ultimately could support one
15
another, and also receipt imports from neighboring regions.
16
Obviously, if you
If you also look at pricing data during those
17
events while the Midwest was seeing extremely high prices
18
and shortage events.
19
rather normal day, so the ability to add more transmission,
20
and more capability to share resources, again not just by
21
adding more words, but there's institutional barriers here
22
as well and climbing barriers that need to be addressed.
23
If you look further east it was a
Ultimately, when we think about reliability as an
24
industry we need to rather jog about cohesive regional
25
planning, or full interconnection planning to make sure that
41
1
we're fully leveraging that capability for reliability.
2
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Both of you
3
have given an information answer in that pocket.
4
did you also want to speak to this one?
5
MS. HOGLE:
Sure.
Miss Hogle
I want to build on what Lisa
6
and Derek said too and comments we heard earlier because I
7
don't want to underscore how important you know I think it
8
was Susanne that said that consistency of data that you're
9
using right?
In California you know we're using the RCP
10
8.5, and we're also using the California climate assessment
11
data.
12
We know that that's being applied throughout the
13
state by not only the investor and the utilities, but our
14
local communities as they do their resilience planning.
15
I think having that shared dataset is really helpful and
16
important.
17
right -- transmission, distribution, generation.
18
So
And then we are looking at the entire chain
And you know for us in California as Lisa was
19
mentioning around variable resources, we do have to think
20
about what the impacts of climate are going to be on our
21
generation and our supply because obviously, you know, if
22
you're in the middle of a heatwave it tends to be dryer, and
23
there could be less wind, so maybe you don't have as much
24
wind, or if you have really heavy storms, and you have
25
several days of that you're not going to have the same
42
1
solar output that you had.
2
So it's very complex in terms of everything that
3
you need to consider, but it is important to understand and
4
consider the entire landscape that can have an impact as
5
well as you know that consistency of data in terms of what
6
we believe the potential scenarios could be that we should
7
be planning around.
8
9
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
been talking about shared datasets.
So now we've
I was wondering if
10
Doctor Easterling you would like to talk about that since
11
you might be one of the sources for some of that data?
12
DR. EASTERLING:
Sure.
So just a little
13
background.
I'm the Director of the National Climate
14
Assessment Technical Support Unit, and so we do develop the
15
climate scenarios that are used in the national climate
16
assessment.
17
using mainly simulations from the major climate modeling
18
groups from around the world.
We develop the ones for the NCA-4 and the NCA-3
19
So when the intergovernmental panel on climate
20
change does their major reports that come out about every
21
six years or so, the major modeling groups have a set of
22
scenarios they use to produce simulations, and then put it
23
into a big database.
24
use.
25
Those are available for anybody to
For the NCA-4 we used the couple modeled with our
43
1
comparison project 5, CMIP 5.
2
to produce sort of a large scale climate scenarios of using
3
RCPA
4
we're going to be relying on CMIP 6, which is the latest
5
version of all the different climate modeling groups
6
simulations, and these total you know like many dozens of
7
climate model simulations, and then we also use what's
8
called statistical balance scaling, divert the California
9
assessment was mentioned.
10
point 5 and 4.5 mainly.
So the modeling simulations
And for the upcoming NCA-5
We're using LOCA, the localized -- I'm trying to
11
remember what the acronym stands for, but anyway it's a
12
statistical downscaling product that we have used.
13
go, so we can go to the next slide.
14
CMIP 5 and our derivatives.
15
Here we
So for NCA-4 we used
So we used LOCA, mainly RCP 4.5 and 8.5.
We did
16
include some material on 2.6
17
out a report on warming at 1.5 and 2, what the impacts would
18
be.
19
it's supposed to come out every four years.
20
little bit of delay in getting going.
21
on CMIP 6, and likely the LOCA 2 downscaling.
22
If you remember the IPCC put
For NCA-5 we're just now getting started on a report,
You have a
We're going to focus
There are a number -- somebody mentioned there
23
are a number of different methods out there for downscaling,
24
so basically if you can go to the next slide.
25
you sort of the raw GCM or global climate model output for
This shows
44
1
2
this is the annual temperature change.
At the end of this century from the climatology
3
from the end of the last century, it's very smooth.
4
don't really see a whole lot of detail except to see that
5
you have the largest warming going on at the highest
6
latitudes, in the polar regions, not quite so much warming
7
as you get down into areas like Mexico.
8
of warming through, but you don't feel a lot of the sort of
9
the regional detail that you'd like to see in scenarios.
10
You
Still quite a bit
So if you go to the next slide we used localized
11
constructed analogs.
12
product from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and it gives
13
you a much finer spatial resolution in terms of sort of
14
where you can resolve things like you know the Rocky
15
Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains, things like that that
16
are very important because they do have an impact on.
17
This is a specifically downscaled
What we use these for was basically looking at
18
scenarios of extremes and I'm going to show you one example,
19
and that's the next slide.
20
NCA-4, so we did this about three or four years ago.
21
you could see there's much more detail in terms of where
22
we're going to see these changes.
23
Okay this is from LOCA for the
But
You can actually see the Rocky Mountains, and to
24
a lesser extent the Appalachian Mountains and in the
25
mountains in Mexico where you can see this is the change of
45
1
the number of days over 90 degrees at the end of the
2
century.
3
So we produced these for the use by the authors and national
4
climate assessment, you know, we feel like they're sort of
5
state of the art, probably the best that people can use
6
right now.
7
And it's quite large in terms of the scenarios.
And we are going to make these available to the
8
general pubic on the website once we've gone through an
9
analyzed all the schematic simulations and the downscaling
10
11
and produce these kinds of products.
So and one thing I actually wanted to pick up on
12
that Judy Chang said.
13
sort of a smooth monatomic trend.
14
the global temperature Time series that shows into the end
15
of the century sort of a smooth increase in temperature.
16
You have to keep in mind that that was produced using an
17
average -- what we call a multi-bottle average, so it's an
18
average of probably 50 or 60 simulations.
19
Climate change is not going to be
You've probably all seen
And so what ends up happening is all the natural
20
variability within the temperature changes and other changes
21
within the climate system are kind of averaged out, and all
22
you do is you get the forced trend that is there from using
23
RCPA .5 or 4.5.
24
and starts in reality.
25
But climate change is going to have bits
And it's going to you know I did a paper on --
46
1
you've probably heard the so-called hiatus in global
2
temperatures.
3
sorts of slowdowns in global temperature and regional
4
temperature are going to happen in a climate system because
5
we have a forced trend, which is the increase in carbon
6
dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but we also have natural
7
variability that occurs due to things like volcanic
8
eruptions, changes in El Nino, La Nina and things like that.
9
And we did a paper that showed that those
So keep in mind it's not going to be a linear
10
trend, and also if there are thresholds that are going to be
11
passed as we have an increase in temperature and so you know
12
that's something that when you're looking at load
13
forecasting and things like that you have to keep in mind in
14
the future.
15
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
That was a lot
16
of good information.
17
there's the one from -- I mean somebody might be able to
18
respond on this.
19
sounds like that you could use, or do you have any potential
20
feedback about this.
21
would like to maybe respond?
22
Kind of as a follow-up to that in LOCA
Is what you're describing something that
Mrs. DesRoches I was wondering if you
MS. DESROCHES:
Sure thanks.
So in New York City
23
we have down sampled climate projections through an academic
24
body called the New York City Panel on Climate Change.
25
it provides very similar information to what David was just
But
47
1
showing, so days over 90 degrees, sea level rise projections
2
in a range of RCPs et cetera.
3
So we've used that data for the last over a
4
decade or so to do climate change planning in New York City
5
as well as collaborating with partners like Con-Edison, or
6
local distribution provider, and in NYISO to really take
7
that data that comes from the climate scientists, and figure
8
out how to exactly to embed it into the existing planning,
9
but I think point well taken, the existing planning is only
10
going to take us so far.
11
So again I think you know from my perspective,
12
we've been using this data for over a decade.
13
useful.
14
want?
15
decide how conservative, and I think Miss Hogle using the
16
most conservative for our electric network is critical, that
17
we you know take a conservative approach.
18
It's very
Is it as precise as our engineering community would
No.
You have to choose a direction.
You have to
We look at those high end projections and you
19
know we also look to use scenario planning which I know we
20
haven't talked about, and we may discuss a little bit later
21
to really get at those swings in what's going to happen.
22
as we saw in Texas we certainly have also seen polar vortex
23
events in the northeast.
24
25
Those really super, super cold days.
you know sometimes a week.
So
They last
We have to plan for that as well
48
1
as you know a three or four times the amount of days over 90
2
degrees, at least that's where we'll be in New York City.
3
So again, we have a long history of using this kind of data.
4
Not just in the electric sector, in transportation and
5
otherwise to do successful adaptation planning.
6
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
7
see you would also like to respond.
8
MR. STENCLIK:
Yeah thanks.
Mr. Stenclik I
I think David's
9
response for me at least highlighted the importance to
10
really link power systems planning and climatology and
11
weather modeling in general.
12
times I'm not a climate expert.
13
an expert in weather, but it's so foundational to the work
14
that I do every day.
15
I think what happens a lot of
I'm not a meteorologist, or
I rely on others to really translate, I mean the
16
work that David's doing and getting into the inputs that I
17
need for my powered system modeling and simulations, namely
18
correlated wind speeds, solar radiance data, temperature,
19
precipitation.
20
system actually operates on a chronological hour by hour
21
basis is critical.
22
Like the inputs that go into how the power
So I just think there just needs to be better
23
linking of the power system planning codes to have more of a
24
background in meteorology and climate, and vice-versa with
25
the climate community to have a little bit more background
49
1
in the power system operations.
2
critical.
3
That's going to be
I think the industry has done better in the past
4
several years.
5
for many years of chronological solar profiles and wind
6
profiles.
7
National Solar Radiation Database that can provide solar
8
power production profiles across the country.
9
I think we have more tools at our disposal
There's a couple of datasets out of NREL, the
Likewise for wind, although I'm on a much smaller
10
time scale in terms of historical weather.
11
type of weather datasets we need more of in the industry.
12
Many years of time synchronizing consistent datasets around
13
wind speeds, solar, load, and ambient conditions I think
14
ultimately that's kind of the next step.
15
And that's the
We can do better as an industry even without a
16
climate trend, and then the difficulty will be having a
17
climate trend on top of that.
18
gap is going one step further and taking that climate trend
19
data and getting it into the format namely hourly,
20
chronological wind or solar production profiles.
21
really a big gap that I see.
22
So I think for me it's the
That's
And then also on the load side I think FERC 714,
23
or FERC form 714 is kind of the go to source for the load
24
data if you're going to do a large regional or national
25
study, and I think that can also be improved, have more
50
1
insight on weather conditions and distributed generation and
2
likewise.
3
4
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Dr. Easterly I
see your hand raised.
5
DR. EASTERLY:
Yeah.
I'd just like to pick up on
6
something that Derek mentioned and that's so when we produce
7
these scenarios, we're trying to have a standard of things
8
like days over 90, heavy precipitation, things like that.
9
And it would be really useful I think for us to be able to
10
interact with people like you guys that really have a use
11
for these things, and putting them into your forecasting
12
models, as to what variables you really need.
13
We produce, you know temperature and
14
precipitation, downscaling mainly if you're looking at
15
statistical downscaling, it's mainly temperature and
16
precipitation.
17
downscaling that's basically wanting a regional climate
18
model for general climate, global climate model.
19
get a lot more of these variables like wind and things like
20
that.
If you look at what we call dynamical
You can
21
And mostly what we do is temperature.
I think
22
LOCA does humidity as well, or maybe one or two others, but
23
there may be some variables that you guys need that we could
24
pull out of the general circulation model and global climate
25
models and downscale that aren't currently being done.
51
1
2
So that's something that I think I could see you
know as a really useful sort of collaboration.
3
MS. NUTTER:
4
like a good idea.
5
is also raised.
6
Thank you very much.
That sounds
Undersecretary Chang I see that your hand
MS. CHANG:
Yeah I just want to chime in because
7
first of all you can see already from this dialogue how
8
important this kind of discussion is, and I don't think
9
we've had this kind of discussion until now.
At least not
10
at the scale that we need to at the national level, regional
11
level, and you know local level.
12
First, I'm going to just summarize a few things,
13
and one is that absolutely incorporate the best available
14
climate data in planning, system planning, electric system
15
planning.
16
that.
17
type of data do you want, and what granularity?
18
And that's very broad, okay we can talk about
And then the data as David pointed out, like what
What geospatial level?
We all need to have like
19
a sit down and really roll up our sleeves kind of dialogue
20
around that because what you know Lisa might need is very
21
different than what New York City might need for example.
22
So I think we need to view that, and then the third -- the
23
sort of several layers of how climate affects the power
24
system, and I don't want to -- I want to try to reduce the
25
complexity because when I listen to what you know Lisa was
52
1
2
saying earlier, this is very complex.
So I want to reduce the complexity a little bit.
3
One is that there is all this sort of wind, solar load which
4
is how does climate, change in climate, and weather events,
5
or weather related events affect all of those things?
6
that itself is complicated enough.
7
And
And NOAA has data on that, NREL has data on that.
8
But you know as even if we didn't have climate, we still
9
have to work on that very, very well.
And then the other --
10
all distinct and separate from that is the physical impacts
11
right, the impact of climate on the physical assets, the
12
physical generation assets and transmission distribution
13
because you know you could take wildfire as an example, or
14
any other severe storm as an example.
15
We may not in the future want to place
16
transmission lines along the same corridor.
We may need
17
more diversity in the future.
18
think to think about looking into the future as far as load
19
forecast is the assets we build today are meant to last 40,
20
50, 70 and maybe even 100 years long, so the climate
21
forecast is not just for the next year or 10 years, we have
22
to think about when we make these investments you know
23
multi-billion dollar investments, what they're going to look
24
like 70 years from now because most of them will actually
25
still be there, or parts of them will still be there.
The most important thing I
53
1
And that's a huge deal because we don't know what
2
the climate will look like.
3
later questions about scenario-based analysis or stochastic
4
and probabilistic analyses, but I think there's two separate
5
things.
6
how it affects usage power.
7
So then we can talk you know in
One is sort of load and wind and solar forecasting
And then the other one is these weather events
8
will affect our assets physically, like the investment
9
strategy will have to actually change and maybe even you
10
know Lisa eluded to this before.
11
criteria may have to change because we may not want to build
12
a whole bunch of things all subject to the same wildfire
13
risk, you know they're all too close to you know the
14
highest drought or area.
15
Even the reliability
So I think there's two separate pieces here, and
16
that shows why this kind of dialogue would you know folks
17
like David and your shop is really important because you may
18
not know exactly what form the data we want -- we meaning
19
the power sector wants, and we might not know how to
20
translate that data into something that's useful, so I think
21
this dialogue is extremely important.
22
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
23
several of you have raised your hands.
24
you're first.
25
MS. HOGLE:
Thank you.
Sure.
I see that
Miss Hogle I think
I just wanted to raise on you
54
1
know kind of the availability of data.
2
question at the end is this helpful, and I think the answer
3
is always yes right?
4
important and it's always helpful.
5
we're very fortunate that California has invested in you
6
know providing this data.
7
David asked the
Availability of data is critically
I know for us at PGE
And it's downscaled in a way so that it's
8
actionable or useable for us.
And where we you know don't
9
have what we need we have the ability to reach out and
10
obtain that because we have the resources to do so.
11
example I can give you is recently we partnered with Argon
12
National Labs to understand what the future Diablo wind
13
patterns would look like in Northern California, because
14
that helps us project what our future wildfire risk is
15
going to be, you know, out to 2050.
16
So an
But again we're very fortunate because we have
17
the resources available to us to be able to do that, but
18
that doesn't exist everywhere and I just want to raise kind
19
of the equity lens and consideration into this discussion
20
because you know we're one part of an entire kind of
21
critical infrastructure ecosystem, and water infrastructure,
22
transportation.
23
You know as I think Lisa mentioned is more and
24
more sectors become dependent on the grid it's critical that
25
we have this, but we also have to understand that we're only
55
1
as resilient as we all are together, and so I just think the
2
more we can provide data, and the more you know FERC and for
3
us in California we're seeing the CPUC do this you know kind
4
of providing a blueprint as to how we may do things, and
5
being transparent about it.
6
And you know so that folks can look at that and
7
be able to say okay, I need to be doing the same thing.
8
Perhaps I could use that as an example and leverage that as
9
I do my own adaptation planning.
I just think it's really
10
important to recognize that not everyone has the same
11
resources that we have and that you know we're only as
12
resilient as we all are together right?
13
14
15
We're only as strong as our weakest link.
Thank
you.
MS. NUTTER:
16
believe you're next.
17
MS. WEBB:
Thank you very much.
Yeah thank you.
Miss Webb I
And so Miss Hogle
18
made an excellent point about you know opportunities for
19
collaboration that utilities and system operators and others
20
in the industry should be exploring where they have the
21
opportunity.
22
in New York, Con-Edison our distribution utility when they
23
were doing their climate vulnerability assessment partnered
24
with Columbia University scientists to develop the specific
25
data that they needed to feed into that analysis.
I think there's been some great examples here
56
1
As we said that's not possible for all utilities,
2
but certainly the utilities that can do that their
3
experience offers learnings that others can take onboard and
4
move forward with.
5
something that Undersecretary Chang said about the sort of
6
physical risks to physical infrastructure, and how that
7
influences sort of long-term investment and planning and
8
decision-making around investment.
9
I also just wanted to pick up on
You know there has been I think on occasion a
10
reluctance by some in the electric industry to rely on
11
forward looking projections because they are very far out
12
into the future, you know, they're not sure of anticipated
13
climate conditions in 2050 or beyond.
14
And they are not absolutely 100 percent certain.
15
But to Undersecretary Chang's point, you know utilities and
16
system operators and others are making investments in
17
long-lived assets, many of which may still be around in
18
2050.
19
future, doesn't undermine their usefulness, and that if
20
anything it actually increases their usefulness as a sort of
21
input into the decision-making tool.
22
So the fact that these projections are far into the
And not only does factoring those forward-looking
23
projections into those investment decisions sort of help to
24
design more resilient infrastructure and sort of build in
25
resilience so that we can avoid the need for future
57
1
retrofits or hardening, it also has other financial benefits
2
you know we're seeing increasing concern within the
3
financial and the insurance communities about future climate
4
risk.
5
And so utilities and others that fail to
6
integrate those climate considerations into their investment
7
and design decisions are likely to face higher insurance and
8
burrowing costs going forward.
9
to take this forward looking future focused approach,
10
thanks.
11
12
So there's a lot of reasons
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Miss DesRoches
I believe that you're next.
13
MS. DESROCHES:
Thank you.
I wanted to follow-up
14
with Undersecretary Chang's comment there on the two paths
15
right -- the existing vulnerability as well as the
16
forecasting into the future and just point at a couple of
17
examples that we have here in New York State, New York City.
18
The NYISO who I think is on as an attendee did a
19
climate change forecasting effort where they did both.
20
looked at what is the future climate going to be like, and
21
how are we decarbonizing?
22
look like?
23
by you know anyone in the NYISO region and beyond that looks
24
out about 20 years with both of those pieces in there.
25
They
And what is that future energy
And they have produced demand forecasts for use
Now it doesn't have the vulnerability of the
58
1
existing system, and I think that that is something that we
2
really have very little understanding of when those towers
3
were built, when those underground cables were installed,
4
how vulnerable are they now to climate change?
5
does that vulnerability increase over time?
6
And how much
But from a forecasting perspective, the NYISO has
7
been for the last few years at the urging of several
8
stakeholders, including the City of New York, produced these
9
forward looking projections of our demand.
So to Derek's
10
question of like we need these you know solar and wind load
11
curves, we actually in New York State coupled that with what
12
are the impacts of climate change, how is the temperature
13
changing, and what are we seeing in the future.
14
Which I think is something that should be done
15
again -- my point earlier consistently, across the nation
16
where we have interdependencies.
17
wanted to point out, and I believe Miss Webb brought this
18
up.
19
same for the last since Sandy, Hurricane Sandy, so that was
20
in 2012.
The other thing that I
The city has been working very closely with kind of the
21
So we're coming up on a decade, really to look at
22
what are these two questions.
What is that vulnerability
23
today of these assets?
24
like?
25
own assets and with their own systems understanding
What does the future climate look
And how do we base our implementing plan within their
59
1
vulnerabilities today, and as they project out in the
2
future.
3
All that information is public and will be
4
updated on a regular basis which leads me to my other point.
5
This is all iterative right?
6
when we -- I think that we shouldn't be looking for the
7
perfect planning process.
8
processes we have today, and we can't wait for that to
9
happen because that could take a really long time to come up
10
And so you know, I think that
We have to adapt the planning
with the next planning type of planning process.
11
So New York City has produced climate resiliency
12
design guidelines where we take the climate projections.
We
13
actually issue them as data over time for engineers and
14
architects to use in all planning processes and capital
15
expenditures.
16
perspective, from a precipitation perspective, and sea level
17
rise.
And we say you must build to this from a heat
18
And so is it the perfect tool?
19
but it really says okay, as of today we're no longer
20
building with those historical trends, and you can actually
21
take that projection data and translate it into a more
22
static points in time -- datapoints in time that will make
23
those assets more robust.
24
25
Absolutely not,
I think this needs to happen at least at a
regional level, which I know is very complicated and
60
1
difficult to do.
Certainly across the different regulatory
2
entities that construct that we have, but there needs to be
3
that kind of guidance so that people can start today and not
4
you know wait until that planning process is perfected in
5
order to start integrating climate change thank you.
6
MS. NUTTER:
7
Easterling I believe you're next.
8
you're speaking I believe you're on mute.
9
Thank you very much.
DR. EASTERLING:
Doctor
Doctor Easterling if
I was muted.
So I want to
10
follow-up on a couple of things.
11
there are a lot of users in small municipalities, probably
12
small utilities that can't afford to pay you know somebody
13
to develop the scenario for them to use in their planning
14
purposes.
15
One of those was you know
And one of the things that we're looking at in
16
NOAA, I know we started looking at in the past six months or
17
so is trying to take some of our climate model out, because
18
we do have a number of state of the art climate models
19
within NOAA, and actually develop a tool that users can come
20
in and take a look at climate scenarios for RCPA .5 or 4.5,
21
and use those in planning.
22
You know sort of you know it's not the sort of
23
thing you would get if you went out and paid $500,000.00 to
24
some company to give you a scenario, but it gives you a
25
basic tool to be able to get some idea of what might happen.
61
1
So you know one example is looking at let's say Wilmington,
2
North Carolina.
3
They're a small city.
They can't afford
4
necessarily to pay somebody for sea level rise scenarios,
5
but we do produce sea level rise scenarios.
6
the coast and it's you know developed as sort of a website
7
and web-based tool they can use, so you know that's
8
something that we're looking at now within NOAA is to be
9
able to produce that sort of thing, so that smaller users,
Wilmington's on
10
people that can't afford to go out and pay somebody, at
11
least they have somewhere to turn to be able to use more
12
planning processes.
13
14
Thank you.
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Miss Barton
your hand is raised.
15
MS. BARTON:
Yeah.
So I think she addressed the
16
cost and the difficulty associated with individual companies
17
looking at this.
18
this.
19
develop just a number of scenarios, as I think was mentioned
20
earlier by someone.
21
everything.
22
be perfect 30 years from now.
23
The RTOs are very well-positioned to do
We can use the RTO planning process to quite frankly
We cannot sit there and harden
The grid is not perfect today in that will not
But we can get better in terms of how are we
24
making decisions, where do we route lines?
These can be
25
important bits of information for state regulators as well.
62
1
Maybe you don't want to be on the top of the mountain for
2
having your transmission assets.
3
Maybe you want to take a different path.
These
4
are all the kinds of things that are really important, but I
5
think starting with the RTOs, and using downscaling to get
6
the RTOs to focus on it, and getting the larger utilities to
7
focus on it you will get significant coverage, and
8
significant attention to these probabilistic views.
9
10
MS. NUTTER:
Miss DesRoches
do you have anything that you wanted to say?
11
12
Thank you very much.
MS. DESROCHES:
last time.
13
Sorry my hand was still up from
Thanks.
MS. NUTTER:
Is there anyone who would like to
14
respond further on any of the topics we've been discussing
15
here?
16
question.
17
next question.
18
Okay.
I think we're ready to move to the next
I'm going to turn it over to Ena to introduce the
MR. AGBEDIA:
Thank you Louise.
The next
19
question we've already discussed a lot of it, so just a
20
little segue into it.
21
practices for developing probabilistic and stochastic
22
methods for estimating these typical planning inputs,
23
including through the use of expert developed climate
24
scenarios such as the Representative Concentration Pathway
25
scenarios for baseline CO2 projects developed by the
The question is Are there best
63
1
intergovernmental panel on climate change?
2
question to Doctor Easterling.
3
DR. EASTERLING:
I'll direct this
Yeah we worry in fact a lot
4
about it.
5
these downscaled simulations, we realize the larger is you
6
know these are made up of a number of like 50, 75
7
simulations.
8
start with slightly different initial conditions, and when
9
it runs out through the end of the 21st Century you get a
10
11
You know one thing that we do to obtain within
So when you run a climate model you know you
slightly different result.
So you begin to bound sort of get an idea of the
12
uncertainty, so if you're looking at you know how the
13
climate is going to evolve in the 21st Century, you know
14
there is two major sources of uncertainty.
15
the model of uncertainty, and then there's the pathway is it
16
going to be RCP 4.5, you know where we have emissions,
17
continued in the middle of the 20th century, continuing to
18
increase and then kind of level off.
19
You know there's
Or is it going to be sort of the business as
20
usual which is the 8.5 where we have emissions just
21
continuing out to the end of the 21st Century which is very
22
sort of risk-based planning, but is that realistic you know?
23
My expectation or hope is that we're going to be closer to
24
4.5, but I may be wrong.
25
know an idea of uncertainty by using the fact that even LOCA
But what you do is you can get you
64
1
has you know you don't get just one time series of
2
temperature.
3
series because you used a number of different models in
4
there.
5
You know you get a number of like 30 times
So you can use that to run your whatever model
6
your impact model is and get an idea of the uncertainty of
7
it as well.
8
if the uncertainty is really small you can have a lot more
9
confidence in that output that final result and that you
10
So which is really important you know, because
have a very wide uncertainty.
11
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Does anyone
12
else want to respond to this question?
13
about it a lot.
14
Ena would you like to introduce the next question?
15
Okay.
I know we've talked
I think we've got that one covered.
MR. AGBEDIA:
Sure.
So the next question is are
16
there expert-developed climate change scenarios, including
17
downscaled ones for smaller regions, that can be
18
incorporated into the planning process at all relevant
19
levels?
20
need from government, academic, or other entities with
21
expertise in climate change and meteorology to develop
22
effective vulnerability assessments?
23
question to Miss Hogle.
24
25
What additional information if any do utilities
MS. HOGLE:
Thanks.
I'll direct this
I mean I think that one
thing is a kind of shared understanding and discussion
65
1
around risk tolerance, and I think I mentioned that earlier.
2
The California Public Utilities Commission has directed us
3
to use the RCP 8.5 pathway, and so in our analysis and so
4
you know we have that kind of benchmark, and that's the data
5
that we're incorporating into our decision-making.
6
And then you know what you do with that data you
7
know, that's kind of another set of decisions that need to
8
be made right, and planning that you need to do.
9
example, you know if we want to update our design standard
So for
10
for heatwaves to be one that's updated for you know,
11
heatwaves that we might experience in 2050, or a heatwave
12
that we might experience in 2030.
13
You know that's where you get into that risk
14
tolerance, what it is that you want to plan for.
And then
15
also on an annual basis incorporating the results of your
16
current vulnerability assessment into your -- you know the
17
annual asset management plans that we do, and then of course
18
before you put something in the ground you're going to want
19
to make sure that it's going to be built to withstand the
20
40, 50, 60 year lifespan, but utility assets typically
21
enjoy.
22
And then we also you know seek to incorporate the
23
results of our analysis in our risk models, so we understand
24
what kind of the overall vulnerability is but then we need
25
to incorporate this into the risk models to then understand
66
1
what the impacts and the consequences are, you know what's
2
the impact to the risks in terms of frequency, and then what
3
are the consequences from a customer perspective if these
4
were to materialize?
5
And then finally I'll just note you know we use
6
it for decision-making in terms of our extreme weather
7
planning right?
8
all utilities, you know, very robust emergency response
9
function that is prepared not just to respond to
So we conduct drills, and we have just like
10
emergencies, but also in advance kind of drill through
11
those.
12
And so we're going to use this data to inform
13
different scenarios to plan for kind of that cascading
14
compounding event.
15
I think more broadly, you know, it will be helpful at a
16
regional level to start kind of doing that together and
17
aligning upon what we think our shared risk tolerances, how
18
these things would play out.
19
So those are things that we can do, but
You know, kind of the way that we do resource
20
adequacy today for example, you know doesn't take into
21
account kind of the different guidelines in the states and
22
you know what regional or compounding effects of a broad
23
swarth of the country could look like.
24
So I think that's something that needs to be done
25
you know beyond we're already doing these in California, but
67
1
it will be helpful to expand upon that on the regional level
2
which I think a lot of my colleagues have already kind of
3
mentioned.
4
5
6
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Is there
anyone else who would like to speak to this question?
MR. STENCLIK:
I guess I can jump in on that very
7
quickly here.
8
information.
9
to David's comments, but just the ability to translate that
10
climate trend data into the raw inputs into that are used by
11
power systems, planners, for resource adequacy analysis, for
12
higher peak planning, all that type of work.
13
I think one thing in terms of additional
I've brought it up once before when responding
I think there's a gap there, and I can't tell you
14
how valuable tools like the national solar radiation
15
database, like you know, can use no matter where I go to do
16
a study for a client.
17
I can go into a consistent tool to download the data in a
18
very consistent way across many years of chronological data,
19
and it's not just again the weather data, it's the weather
20
data coupled in a way to translate that to production
21
profiles that ultimately you use on the power sector.
22
If I'm in California or in New York,
So I think David, you've brought up the tool that
23
you all are working on that would let you go in and kind of
24
develop a scenario using the larger dataset, the larger
25
modeling tools that you already have available.
I think
68
1
tools like that are critical because you know somebody
2
brought up before, and David maybe it's you, about how a
3
small utility, or a small entity or developer might not have
4
the funding to go do a full climate study.
5
I can't tell you how many times we've gone out to
6
partner with somebody to do something like that and it's
7
like well it's great, but it's three -- the total budget of
8
the power system side on the weather.
9
So having these national datasets are really
10
important, and are a way to not only allow practitioners to
11
implement this data, and implement these trends, but do so
12
in a way that's consistent from region to region, and
13
especially when you start to go not just to do a study for a
14
utility in New York, but say well how does New York look
15
using the same data in ISO New England and PJM and Ontario,
16
and making sure that you're not just making generic
17
assumptions outside of the region of focus, but you're
18
using consistent time synchronized weather data across all
19
those regions.
20
I think it's important for just weather data
21
generally, you know, so it's certainly obviously the climate
22
change issue it's important, but it becomes increasingly
23
important with the resource mix change and climate change as
24
well.
25
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Undersecretary
69
1
2
Chang I see you raised your hand.
MS. CHANG:
Yes.
I just wanted to echo how
3
important that is to have a consistent set of national and
4
regional and detailed data.
5
know we already talked about how wind and solar and load are
6
all related to climate and weather, but also hydro, and for
7
all the regions that rely on hydroelectric supplies, you
8
know severe drought is going to affect that, severe snowfall
9
in the winter is going to affect that.
10
Just to give you an example you
And all of those things I think will be
11
significantly important.
12
the past, but now I think with more dynamic changes in the
13
future it will become even more important.
14
Massachusetts has engaged -- I just want to ask because some
15
of the previous questions that were raised by other
16
panelists, we have been engaged in research teams to
17
downscale climate projections, temperature and precipitation
18
for two of the RCP scenarios, 4.5 and 8.5 based on global
19
climate circulation models.
20
It has always been important in
Now
I do think probabilistic methods for estimating
21
certain parameters will be important but it's really it's
22
more important to actually understand when do we need it and
23
how are we going to use that information?
24
can imagine using probabilistic approaches you can just get
25
stuck in never-ending analyses.
Otherwise as you
70
1
So I do think it's important to think
2
probabilistically just like many panelists have said before.
3
It's not only the average that we're planning against, its
4
actually some of the extremes.
5
how extreme shall we go out?
6
or 1 in 10 years?
7
to 1 in 10 years in the power sector, but what does that
8
actually mean given the climate uncertainties going forward
9
I think is really important.
10
And even in that question
Is it like a 1 in 100 years,
You know we have a tradition of planning
And just as the insurance industry will tell us,
11
you know the more uncertainty there is the more valuable
12
insurance is.
13
infrastructure investments are like insurance products for
14
this industry.
15
before transmission can be seen as an insurance against
16
severe events.
17
different parts of the country can be seen as insurance
18
against severe events.
19
So then we have to think about what kind of
And I would say you know Lisa had mentioned
Storage, or different types of storage in
So I think that will definitely affect the way we
20
plan into the future.
And then I want to share a few things
21
with you if you don't mind pulling up the slide, and if we
22
can go to slide 4.
23
in the other slides, but I prepared three slides which I
24
think will be interesting because and as you know as staff
25
pulled that up.
I don't need to get into all the details
71
1
2
Will I be able to see it if you pull it up?
I
don't know.
3
MS. NUTTER:
4
MS. CHANG:
Yes you will one second.
Okay.
No problem.
I just want to
5
say that we have a resilient mass action team in
6
Massachusetts.
7
implement the state hazard mitigation adaptation plan led by
8
my office and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency,
9
which is a state level like FEMA but MEMA.
10
It's an interagency team working to
And staff by climate change coordinators from
11
each executive office, and they've been working for the last
12
year and a half on this effort, and through agency working
13
groups they hold advisory groups and public comments.
14
RMAT, we call it the RMAT, the resilient MA action team has
15
developed an easy to use interactive web-based tool that
16
utilizes the best available climate data that we have, and
17
some of that came from NOAA.
The
18
And provide immediate results and recommendations
19
to inform the second piece that I talked about earlier which
20
is the physical infrastructure that we build.
21
actually being proposed -- it just got launched as a data
22
model from data tool just a couple of months ago.
23
is one of the very first of its kind.
24
25
And this is
This tool
It's of course using site specific questions and
location information and provides specific projects, a
72
1
preliminary climate risk rating and recommendation, and how
2
to increase the resiliency of project design through
3
targeted planning horizon return periods, design criteria
4
and methodologies for utilizing state-wide climate data.
5
With this information we can better inform
6
climate smart capital planning so it's not just the utility
7
industry, but it's all capital planning, particular
8
infrastructure, and ensure our investments are you know
9
assessed not only with dollars, but also all the investments
10
made by states or states that have funded certain projects,
11
or were thinking even with ratepayers money so they're
12
regulated assets, to increase our climate resiliency and to
13
better understand the vulnerability, and to serve to enhance
14
the local resilience that all of our infrastructure will
15
face.
16
You know next slide please.
I just want to share
17
with you a few slides here.
18
This is the input page where a user would input specific
19
project information.
20
kind of a thing.
21
is, where the project is located, and a whole bunch of
22
parameters about the project.
23
It kind of looks like this.
It has kind of a question and answer
You know you get to say what the project
And then the next slide please.
It will give you
24
-- I know it's very hard to see, and I don't mean for you to
25
read everything, but the idea here is it gives an output
73
1
about the climate related risks associated with certain
2
infrastructure investment, or it could be a building, it
3
could be a bridge, it could be anything that's you know
4
comparable investments.
5
And they will give the user not only the risks.
6
You see sort of the yellow and the red, you might not have
7
an easy time reading the words, but the level of risks
8
associated with climate.
9
about how to mitigate that exposure which is on the
10
11
And then it gives some suggestions
right-hand side.
I just want to share this with you.
It's a whole
12
bunch of very exciting new features were added.
13
doing a stakeholder sort of beta testing process with people
14
who will be using this tool.
15
permitting of certain projects in the state, and business
16
you know above and beyond energy projects.
17
We're now
We may also be using this in
But we are also thinking about potentially using
18
this type of tool for siting purposes for energy projects.
19
So I just want to pause there.
20
down the slide, thank you.
Thank you and you can pull
21
MS. NUTTER:
22
Easterling I believe you're next.
23
Thank you very much.
DR. EASTERLING:
Sure.
Doctor
So I just want to mention
24
so how to arrive at the extremes came up a little bit
25
earlier, and so we've heard in NOAA atlas 14, that's the
74
1
atlas that we produce that is used by civil engineers to
2
look at okay, a design to the 100 year 24 hour landfall
3
amount, or something like that.
4
So if you get a location that says you know based
5
on current data the 24 hour 100 year landfall amount is X.
6
It may be six inches or something like that.
7
more robust signals that we see in climate models for the
8
future is an increase of atmospheric water vapor because as
9
temperatures go up, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere
10
will go up, and that moisture is then available to rain out
11
as heavy rainfall events.
12
So we've seen an increase in that.
But one of the
Especially
13
the northeast has been probably the hardest hit in terms of
14
an increase in the landfall amounts.
15
know for each location has a sort of a okay what's the 10
16
year, 24 hour rainfall amount.
17
the 100 year and so forth.
18
NOAA atlas 14 has you
What's the 24, the 20 year,
And these are used by several engineers for
19
design.
Well DOD, Department of Defense was very interested
20
in how these threshold amounts might change in the future
21
and so a colleague of mine and I had a project to basically
22
take the atlas 14 and then use climate models to provide an
23
estimate for what we think those rainfall amounts will be in
24
the future, or 20 years in the future, 50 years in the
25
future, 75 years in the future and so forth.
75
1
So you know our current 24 hour 100 year rainfall
2
event in the future it may be six inches now, it may be 8
3
1/2 or 9 inches in the future for a given location.
4
actually have produced this, and we now are about to put out
5
where you could actually go in and it will bring up you know
6
our map, and it says okay, I want to look at New York City.
7
Okay what's the 24 hour 100 year rainfall amount
So we
8
going to be in 2050 or 2075?
So we use climate models,
9
basically the increased atmosphere of water vapor to try to
10
estimate how those amounts will change, plus you get an
11
uncertainty based on the fact that we use multiple climate
12
models.
13
So it may be what's now 6 inches may be 8 inches
14
plus or minus a half an inch.
15
mention that.
16
probably not as much for the power industry, but I guess
17
with hydropower because some of those amounts are actually
18
PMP, probable maximum precipitation which are used in dam
19
design.
20
21
22
23
24
25
So I just wanted to kind of
That's another tool that we are developing,
You have to have a spillway to be able to account
for that actual amount of rainfall you might get.
MS. NUTTER:
your hand is raised.
Thank you very much.
Do you have a follow-up statement?
MR. STENCLIK:
taken that down.
Mr. Stenclik
My apologies.
I must have not
76
1
MS. NUTTER:
That's fine.
In that case I'll go
2
to my colleague for a question you wish to ask Rahim would
3
you like to speak?
4
MR. AMERKHAIL:
Yes thank you.
So this question
5
regards the downscaling.
6
couple of panelists now is that their state took a very
7
proactive role in taking raw data from where it's generated
8
and translating it into data that's useful to the utility,
9
and I heard Doctor Easterling offer for those utilities that
10
maybe don't have it, a state that has the wherewithal to do
11
that perhaps, or the interest that they could step up.
12
What I think I've heard from a
So I just had a quick question.
Is there a way
13
for Doctor Easterling, is there a way for utilities who may
14
be watching this webcast to contact NOAA and explore the
15
options for getting this type of data directly from NOAA?
16
Thank you.
17
DR. EASTERLING:
Yeah.
I mean I guess I would be
18
the first person to start with and I can certainly direct
19
people to the right place.
20
me here in Ashville, North Carolina, at NCI, so that would
21
be another connection into NOAA is Adam as well.
22
And Adam Smith, Adam works with
So I don't know if you can put my email address
23
up there, or something like that and I'll be glad to if I
24
can't answer it or provide that information, I can certainly
25
point you to the right person.
77
1
2
3
MR. AMERKHAIL:
Thank you.
That's helpful thank
you.
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
And I believe
4
we might have some questions from some of our Commissioners.
5
Do you want to let Commissioners have questions that they
6
would like to ask?
7
8
9
10
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
if it's appropriate to pop in.
MS. NUTTER:
I have a couple questions
Can you hear me Louise?
Yes.
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Great.
Well thank you.
11
This is really interesting, and I want to underscore
12
Undersecretary Chang's comment that I haven't heard this
13
conversation in this manner, and it's really an important
14
starting point, or continuing point, at least in the FERC
15
policy context.
16
I'm hearing about two kinds of planning. One is
17
kind of physical vulnerability planning, and then one is the
18
more traditional electrical system planning that we have
19
thought more about in the FERC context.
20
And at the beginning several of you have
21
mentioned this, and at the beginning talked about the
22
relationship between the two, or the lack therefore as well
23
as any changes I think Miss Webb referred to changes on the
24
system planning side that it's not just putting the right
25
inputs in, but it's that some of those processes need to be
78
1
changed.
2
So the first part of my question is can you the
3
panelists who are interested speak to the appropriateness of
4
the existing regional -- let's start with regional and we
5
can go up to interregional, or down to local way that we do
6
transmission system planning, and then I'll ask a question
7
about the data we use after that.
8
MS. NUTTER:
9
to respond please raise your hand.
10
And the panelists if you would like
Mr. Stenclik I see that
your hand has been raised.
11
MR. STENCLIK:
Sure.
I'll take a first stab at
12
this.
13
contacts.
14
change there's a lot that needs to be done on resource
15
adequacy topics and the methodology given the change in the
16
resource mix, and the reliance on the weather.
17
I think there's a few things I'll touch on the system
One is regardless, again regardless of climate
So as you can tell from a lot of my comments I've
18
taken the approach of kind of a resource adequacy analysis
19
perspective and how climate change interacts with that in
20
terms of reliability.
21
so and my comments are stemming from a task force I lead
22
with the energy systems integration group.
23
Obviously, reliability is very broad,
Specifically around how methodologies should be
24
rethought around resource adequacy planning.
A lot of that
25
is you know certainly better accounting of the underlying
79
1
weather, needing to evaluate a full year of the operation,
2
not just our conventional peak load periods, so I think
3
that's a really big takeaway that is also very applicable in
4
the climate context.
5
Looking across an entire year is not just the
6
historical you know peak risk periods, or peak load periods
7
that are going to be the most challenging, but another thing
8
that you brought up Commissioner Clements about the
9
vulnerability planning and how those aren't linked together.
10
I think you know I still view the resource adequacy, the
11
probability assessment using the weather observations is
12
very important and should continue.
13
We should incorporate a climate trend to that,
14
but we also have to go one step further I think and just do
15
a vulnerability assessment to say what -- to evaluate what
16
if scenarios, you know what if a four day low wind and solar
17
event were to occur on the system, does that impact system
18
reliability?
19
So as opposed to the conventional approach of
20
just doing the probabilistic inputs at the model and seeing
21
what the expectation of reliability out of is kind going the
22
inverse and saying you know evaluate a few what if scenarios
23
explicitly, and if they have a material impact on
24
reliability, then going back to the climate folks and the
25
meteorological folks and saying is this plausible in the
80
1
future?
2
Is it plausible for me to lost 30 percent of my
3
gas fleet because temperatures dropped to X, or is it
4
plausible for there to be a four day sustained low solar and
5
wind output?
6
that type of event occurring.
7
after the Texas event in February is how do you ask me to do
8
a resource adequacy analysis in Texas ahead of that?
9
Then you can almost assign a probability of
I think a big takeaway for me
There's no way I would have caught the magnitude
10
of that event.
11
step away from and say you know we have to go one step
12
further than just conventional resource adequacy planning,
13
and do these what if scenarios, and then work backwards to
14
say what's the likelihood of that occurring.
15
And I think that's an important thing to
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Commissioner
16
Clements, if you will work through the panelists who wish to
17
respond if that's all right.
18
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
19
MS. NUTTER:
20
hands raised.
21
Barton?
22
Okay.
Great.
So I believe we have several
I believe the next person to speak is Ms.
MS. BARTON:
Thank you.
So first and foremost I
23
do want to say I agree with everything that Derek just said.
24
Getting resource adequacy right, looking at it differently,
25
looking at how resource adequacy can be bolstered by
81
1
companies with generation at the other side of the scenes is
2
really, really important for us to start to consider.
3
We also have to make sure that we're not throwing
4
away the deterministic planning methodologies that we have
5
in play right now.
6
know looking at it from a peak demand standpoint.
7
at it by taking different assets out, and doing N Minus 1,
8
Minus 1 type planning.
9
So we designed the system based on you
We look
That's all well and good, but now what you're
10
hearing is that we have to complement that, so we have to
11
layer on probabilistic planning.
12
endless host of scenarios, but a couple of scenarios, and I
13
think it can be achieved when we take that downscaling of
14
some of these climate views, and I will say this -- we'll
15
need to be using the same one, or similar ones because what
16
we don't want to do is have all of the different utilities
17
out there, all of the different RTOs arguing about what's
18
the right study that we should be using.
19
By not looking at an
It's important for us to use the same study
20
because then you're going to have at least similar views,
21
similar analyses.
22
transmission for example constructive, is we have to go to
23
our state regulators.
24
need.
25
As you know, how we actually get
We have to show determination of
If my determination of need is different a
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1
neighboring utilities determination of need, it just
2
introduces unnecessary confusion and that's why I think that
3
it's a fairly systematic methodology that we can use.
4
mean every utility can sit there and say you know given a
5
particular downscaling scenario, what's going to happen to
6
my assets?
7
I
And one example might be I've got a 100 mile line
8
that's 70 years old.
It's going to come down.
What are the
9
ramifications of that being out for an extended period of
10
time because it would take me several months to restore.
11
You can answer it again at that utility level,
12
and then you look at it from an RTO level, and again just
13
looking to see how can we get some no regret solutions or no
14
regret support at the seams, which really can be done is you
15
say we want to have a certain minimum transfer capability so
16
that resource adequacy we can lean on each other.
17
So for generation diversity we can lean on each
18
other.
19
each other and that becomes the insurance model that Judy
20
was talking about.
21
For system reliability and resiliency we can lean on
MS. NUTTER:
22
believe you're next.
23
MS. WEBB:
Thank you so much.
Yeah thank you.
Miss Webb I
I agree with the
24
previous two panelists in that we need to supplement the
25
existing sort of planning approach, particularly the
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1
resource adequacy planning approach with this more climate
2
specific form of planning.
3
And the Department of Energy has referred to that
4
as climate resilience planning which includes a
5
vulnerability component, looking at to the previous
6
panelist's point, looking at how specific assets and
7
operations will be impacted by specific climate variables.
8
And we do that using all of the things that we
9
talked about, the downscale, the probabilistic models, but
10
it needs to be a very sort of location specific, and asset
11
specific analysis.
12
level.
13
was mentioned earlier in the work that NYISO has done.
And that needs to happen at the utility
It can also happen at the system operator level that
14
But at the RTO/ISO level, to inform those other
15
planning processes, so that we have a better understanding
16
of how these multiple climate impacts which could occur
17
simultaneously and affect multiple parts of the system,
18
where those risks are and how they actually manifest.
19
So it's really sort of supplementing those
20
existing planning processes with a more specific planning
21
process that some utilities and some system operators have
22
staff to do, but certainly relatively few have done that
23
sort of analysis.
24
operators that have done that sort of analysis -- the
25
analysis has been very limited, or has had real flaws.
And a lot of the utilities and system
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1
For example, relying on historic weather data,
2
which as we've talked about a lot isn't a good indicator of
3
future conditions.
4
climate variables and so missing those sort of compounding
5
cascading impacts that we talked about earlier.
6
Only looking at one climate, or two
And so it needs to be a very comprehensive
7
review, a specific review, and relying on that forward
8
looking localized data.
9
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
10
Chang would you like to go next?
11
MS. CHANG:
Yeah.
Undersecretary
I couldn't articulate it
12
better than the previous two panelists.
13
everything they've said, but I want to bring it back to the
14
you know Commissioner your question about at the regional
15
level.
16
regions that have an RTO/ISO could play.
17
of all just having this dialogue already shows that we're
18
planning you know proactively.
19
I'll just echo
I do think there's a significant role that those
For example, first
We're thinking about planning in a proactive way.
20
I can't emphasize the importance of that.
I think we have
21
to plan in a proactive way.
22
done that yet, so we do need to look at scenarios, even
23
without climate risks, we need to take a scenario-based
24
proactive way to plan the system, whether it's resource
25
adequacy or transmission planning, and I do agree with
I don't think New England has
85
1
previous panelists it will be best if we can use consistent
2
set of data, internally consistent set of data, so that
3
we're not using you know a summer in a different year with a
4
different winter and the hydro is not consistent with the
5
solar and the wind.
6
I think we need all of that in a consistent
7
manner and ideally we would love to be able to do that on a
8
national level, and then each region RTO/ISOs can use that
9
data at the regional stage, or the regional granularity.
10
And then I think in addition to scenario-based
11
which is the deterministic approach, we also do need to
12
think about the tail end of that distribution, or sort of
13
that 1 in 10, 1 in 100 risk, and really ask ourselves how --
14
this is not just like billed to that 100, 1 in 10 or 1 in
15
100, but really ask ourselves the potential costs of those
16
extreme events and compare to what kind of investments we
17
might need to prevent or at least mitigate, those extreme
18
events.
19
I don't think we do that today.
I don't think we
20
do that adequately.
I think we do need to think about those
21
extreme events, and maybe there are some insurance products
22
which means really certain smaller investments, or
23
investments in either grid or storage, or interregional
24
connections that will immediately help mitigate severe
25
weather dependent events in the future.
86
1
So I think it's a combination of this scenario
2
deterministic approach, but also think about the outliers,
3
the outer edges of those risks and buy our insurance now so
4
that we don't experience those ERCOT-like experiences every
5
two to three years.
6
think these severe events will occur more and more
7
frequently.
8
9
I mean with the climate forecast I
Thank you.
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Miss Hogle I
believe you're next.
10
MS. HOGLE:
Yeah I agree with what everyone else
11
has said.
12
on the transmission side, you know obviously resource
13
planning and transmission are inextricably linked, and so
14
you know kind of the typical outlook or planning process of
15
10 years could be constraining.
16
I think the only thing I would just add here is
And you know at least for us in California CAISO
17
has recently begun an initiative to look at a 20 year
18
transmission outlook that you know can help inform and
19
facilitate consideration of like larger lead time projects
20
that can accommodate investments and support greater system
21
diversity and resilience in a high penetration renewable
22
future as well as have the climate related benefits, getting
23
back to the insurance point that my colleagues have raised.
24
25
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
your hand is still raised.
Miss Barton
Do you wish to speak again?
87
1
Miss Barton?
2
MS. BARTON:
Okay sorry.
3
MS. NUTTER:
Commissioner Clements did you have
4
any follow-up questions you wish to ask?
5
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Yes.
I have one
6
follow-up and then I'll save in case others want to ask
7
questions.
8
Barton you mentioned interregional transmission, the
9
availability to lean on your neighbors.
10
There was a lot of good input there.
Miss
And I'm wondering if you can say a little bit
11
more about how interregional planning frameworks can be
12
adjusted to better aim at improving system reliability and
13
resilience to extreme weather, and I think the most recent
14
example that people keep talking about is the fact that in
15
the worst part of the Texas mid-central extreme cold in
16
February, MISO was importing 13,000 megawatts of resources,
17
of supply and also exporting another 3 or 5, I don't
18
remember the exact number, the SPP and that was an important
19
part of their reliability approach.
20
In particular, you mentioned interregional
21
transfer capability and I'm wondering if you could speak to
22
that you know, potential reliability standards related to
23
that, or other thinking around ensuring sufficient transfer
24
capability across regions.
25
MS. BARTON:
Sure.
I mean one of the ways that
88
1
you can do it is you can sit there and say that you want to
2
from a resource adequacy standpoint, be able to rely on X
3
percent from a neighboring region.
4
would actually be building less you would be saving more
5
money.
6
I mean in the end you
If we actually did lean on each other more.
We
7
actually have the utilities who are on both sides of that
8
border, both we have two in SPP and one in ERCOT, Texas, and
9
if we had a better ability within Texas to import generation
10
from SPP and other regions, we would have been in a better
11
situation.
12
We would not have been that dire.
We saw, if you really look at a snapshot in time
13
what was PJM's generation portfolio looking like, everything
14
was running as normal.
15
SPP's wind production was actually outperforming what they
16
expected it to be.
17
that we have more variable resources.
18
MISO was able to help SPP a bit, and
But it's really just getting at the fact
When you have more variable resources you have
19
less control.
20
your quiver to be able to address that.
21
diversity of renewable generation would help that, and
22
that's how you do it, is basically increasing those --
23
strengthening those seams.
24
25
It means you need to have something else in
And having greater
Because right now you know I've been in this
industry for decades upon decades it seems.
And I've been
89
1
talking a lot about transmission planning, and I've been
2
talking a lot about interregional planning, and yet there
3
really has never been interregional planning.
4
And that's something that with the changing needs
5
of the system we have to fundamentally change that because
6
customers and community's expectations of the grid are
7
changing.
8
ever happen again.
9
out what are those no regret solutions, and I think that
10
11
We can't afford what happened in ERCOT, Texas to
We really have to sit there and figure
that's one of them.
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
And do you have a
12
distinction in between how those teams worked in an RTO to
13
RTO function versus an RTO to non-RTO setting?
14
MS. BARTON:
I really haven't, but you can really
15
just implement it from you know I think if FERC were to
16
desire to issue an order you could do it a couple of
17
different ways right?
18
whether it's an RTO or a non-RTO utility for those you know
19
two to get together, and to determine what is the
20
appropriate transfer capability between those regions.
21
You could basically sit there and say
And then certainly it does get complicated, it's
22
a little bit easier when we're talking RTO to RTO, but at
23
least what I've found in the past is if there's a timeframe
24
that folks need to get back, if there's a solution set that
25
needs to be solved for, then you'll set some movement there.
90
1
2
But I think absent FERC pushing on that, I think
it won't happen to be honest.
3
4
5
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Thank you.
Thanks
Louise.
MS. NUTTER:
Thanks very much and is there anyone
6
else who would like to speak on this topic?
7
your hand if you would like to do so.
8
will turn it over to my colleague Ena who will introduce the
9
next question.
10
MS. CHANG:
Okay.
Please raise
Seeing none I
Actually I just want to add one note
11
to what Miss Barton just said.
12
thing really.
13
planning and actual building interconnectors, even for the
14
regions that are already interconnected -- ERCOT to the rest
15
of the country.
16
It just amplifies the same
It is extremely important for interregional
But while we in Massachusetts looked at the
17
decarbonization pathways in every future scenario we need
18
more interconnections with our neighbors, and that's -- it's
19
just a capture of that diverse, even if nothing else we want
20
to be able to capture that diverse resource portfolio that
21
Ms. Barton talked about.
22
23
24
25
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Stenclik
do you also wish to respond?
MR. STENCLIK:
on the transmission.
Yeah I have one last thing to add
It's really thinking about
91
1
transmission more as a reliability resource or as a capacity
2
resource.
3
often fall into the trough of just evaluating a transmission
4
project based on the production cost benefits or to relieve
5
the congestion, and we fall short of really looking at other
6
value stacking, predominantly probably the largest one there
7
being the ability to look at transmission as a capacity
8
resource in bringing in the reliability benefits.
9
I think traditional transmission planning, we
So I think very similar to how we've all become
10
accustomed to value stacking storage across a lot of
11
different services, you can take that same approach and
12
people do take that same approach on transmission.
13
really valuable to look at transmission not just as a way to
14
lower operating costs which it does, but and access
15
renewables, but also as a capacity resource.
16
I think
And in some of that is building new lines.
17
of it is just the institutional friction between these
18
different authorities.
19
and each ISO wants to make sure they can maintain
20
reliability kind of by themselves, or domestically.
21
Some
I completely understand each utility
But using the reliance of neighboring systems and
22
making sure that when you do the resource adequacy analysis
23
you do a full system, or full interregional analysis that
24
doesn't simplify the assumption of okay, how much can we
25
lean on our neighbors, but look at the neighboring utilities
92
1
and neighboring ISOs in the same probabilistic manner that
2
you're evaluating your own system with.
3
critical as well.
4
MS. NUTTER:
I think that's
Thank you very much.
Was there
5
anyone else who wishes to speak on this topic?
6
any additional hands raised, so Ena if you would like to?
7
MR AGBEDIA:
Sure thanks Louise.
I don't see
So the next
8
question is How should climate vulnerability assessments be
9
translated into actions that promote least-cost outcomes for
10
consumers?
11
lead from identification of a climate vulnerability to least
12
cost solution that address that vulnerability?
13
this question to Miss DesRoches.
14
What are specific steps and considerations that
MS. DESROCHES:
Great thanks.
I'll direct
So clearly you
15
have to look at the cost of multiple solutions and I think
16
this has been brought up a few times.
17
we look at the wide array of what the client projections
18
might be saying mid-century and in particular, in the end of
19
century.
20
That's important as
To just put that in context in New York City sea
21
level rise, if you look at the full spectrum of the RCP's
22
goes from about 10 inches to 72 inches.
23
range.
24
be, what are we buying down?
25
down and how conservative do we need to be for each set of
That's a pretty big
And so you know as we look at what the costs will
How much risk are we buying
93
1
solutions -- both at the asset level, but also at the
2
systems level.
3
I think this can't be decoupled from the
4
investments we're going to make for decarbonization right?
5
So you know we can very simply think everything on the
6
coastline needs to be elevated or moved, or we can think
7
about when we move to a system that's powered by offshore
8
winds, solar and storage, how do we locate and build out
9
over time those assets to actually be more resilient to
10
climate change?
11
and what's unfortunately what ends up happening is you have
12
some of the clean energy movement and it's fantastic and
13
we're moving as aggressively as possible, but we aren't at
14
the same time integrating those future weather conditions
15
and that resiliency that needs to happen.
16
It needs to be thought of at the same time,
So you know I would say that as we're costing and
17
looking at investments in the clean energy, we have to
18
couple those with the resiliency investments, and really
19
look at what that range of investments is going to cost,
20
both to integrate the clean energy into the existing system,
21
and improve that system while we're doing it.
22
And to what level?
So that makes it complicated,
23
but then can that be upgraded over time?
24
build today for 2100 projections that are at the very high
25
end, or is there a way to do sort of interim level
Do we have to
94
1
adaptation that are flexible enough, or technologies that we
2
assume will come that we can install in the second half of
3
the century to make those assets stronger.
4
I don't have easy examples of how to do that, but
5
if we don't start thinking about it that way today, we're
6
going to transition the energy system in a renewable system
7
without having properly accounted for the cost of the
8
resiliency investments that need to happen.
9
10
11
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
Miss Webb I
believe you're next.
MS.
WEBB:
Yeah thank you.
I fully agree with
12
everything that was just said.
13
looking for opportunities to build in resilience at the
14
outset to avoid costly retrofits and hardening in the
15
future, and also looking at sort of flexible resilience
16
measures that are adaptable in the future.
17
We should be absolutely
I would just add a couple of points which I think
18
sort of build on that and resonate with that.
19
the evaluation of resilience measures really needs to take
20
into account the full suite of those measures.
21
One is that
Often when we focus on sort of traditional or
22
legacy approaches like investments in the capacity or asset
23
hardening, but there's a whole load of other things that can
24
be done as was said building in that resilience up front,
25
looking at customer oriented, or customer focused resilience
95
1
measures, the distributed storage, demand response et
2
cetera.
3
And when we're comparing those different measures
4
looking across those different measures we need to take into
5
account their relative climate benefits and costs, so
6
evaluating those resilience measures through really a
7
climate change lens.
8
point, but it's worth restating that entities really should
9
not be responding to the risks posed by climate change by
You know it's perhaps an obvious
10
engaging in activities that themselves contribute to
11
climate change.
12
So we want to avoid these sorts of now-adapted
13
outcomes, now adaptation outcomes where responding to the
14
symptom of a particular risk in a way that exacerbates its
15
underlying cause.
16
measures we should be thinking about them in terms of their
17
contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, those that
18
increase greenhouse gas emissions really shouldn't be
19
pursued, they're really not climate resilience measures.
20
So when we're thinking about resilience
And related to that I would just say that I think
21
we need to explore new tools for comparing and evaluating
22
the resilience measures.
23
cost benefit analysis which can be used, but has some
24
difficulties in evaluating resilience measures specifically.
25
We tend to rely very heavily on
It can be difficult to identify and accurately
96
1
quantify some of the benefits of those measures in part
2
because they depend on future outcomes, future climate
3
outcomes which aren't 100 percent certain.
4
So again that doesn't mean that entities can't or
5
shouldn't respond to the risks of climate change, or
6
shouldn't be taking measures to improve climate resilience,
7
but it does mean that we need to think about new approaches
8
for evaluating those different measures.
9
So there's been various proposals put forward.
10
One that's often referred to as the robust decision-making,
11
or RDM framework, which evaluates resilience investments, or
12
resilience measures under a range of possible future
13
scenarios to look at what perform best across a range of
14
outcomes.
15
incorporating flexible pathways where we take these sort of
16
no or low regrets measures now and then look at other
17
measures in the future when we have greater certainty about
18
what future impacts will be.
19
Also those mentioned earlier of sort of
But there really needs to be this wide-ranging
20
review of all of the available options through that climate
21
change lens, and with that flexibility built in thanks.
22
23
24
25
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
I think Miss
Hogle you're next.
MS. HOGLE:
Thanks.
I just wanted to provide an
example of you know utilizing new tools and ways to evaluate
97
1
these investments, but before I do so I just want to say you
2
know the question in and of itself in some ways has a bit of
3
a false premise because we know that you know planning and
4
making these investments early is less expensive for our
5
customers, than having the event occur and then having to
6
rebuild and respond after the fact.
7
We heard about the trillion dollars of investment
8
that we've had to make in climate driven events at the
9
beginning part of this conference.
But that being said, I
10
completely agree and I can provide an example where you know
11
in California in our service territory, especially in the
12
remote areas that we serve that are very prone to wildfires,
13
we've been able to evaluate you know the costs of
14
maintaining let's say a line that you know could be a
15
couple miles long, but is serving just a few customers on
16
the other end of it, and you know looking at what are the
17
insurance costs, what are the costs associated with you know
18
maintaining that line and doing the budget clearances, the
19
labor costs and everything else.
20
And we've actually found that it's a better
21
option, it's more resilient -- climate resilient, because
22
you reduce the risk of wildfires by removing that line, and
23
it penciled out from a cost perspective to just serve those
24
four or five customers with the remote grid that has a
25
combination of you know solar and battery and backup natural
98
1
gas or diesel when necessary.
2
So I think that you can kind of use all the tools
3
available like definitely do a comprehensive cost benefit
4
analysis of these investments and then find that you know at
5
least in this case serving these customers in an entirely
6
different way than we typically would was the right thing to
7
do, and we plan to do more of those.
8
9
So I just wanted to provide that example to
follow-up on my colleague's comments.
10
11
MS. NUTTER:
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Stenclik I
believe you're next.
12
MR. STENCLIK:
Yeah thanks.
I think I'll come at
13
this again not surprisingly from our resource adequacy
14
angle.
15
need to change with increased, or with the changing resource
16
mix and climate change, but so do the metrics, and right now
17
in most places across North America we rely on a 1 day in 10
18
year loss of load expectation as the primary, or the not
19
often cases the sole resource adequacy or reliability
20
metric, and that's how we design our capacity markets.
21
And really I've talked a lot today about how methods
That's how we design our primary serve margin,
22
and fundamentally how we procure resources to meet our
23
reliability requirements.
24
changing resource mix with climate change, a loss of load
25
expectation is not going to cut it in the future because it
And fundamentally with the
99
1
only measures the frequency of events occurring, it does not
2
measure the size or magnitude, or duration of the events.
3
And so we need to go further with our resource
4
adequacy metrics, metrics like expected unserved energy, or
5
EUE captures some of that.
6
direction.
7
know when we have a shortfall event, or when a shortfall
8
event is likely.
9
When does it occur?
So it's a step in the right
We need to have metrics that can capture you
How big is it?
How long does it last for?
10
Really drilling into those metrics is critical
11
because that allows the system planners to right size the
12
mitigation right?
13
that's selected fits the need, and we're not just
14
over-procuring resources just to provide reliability all
15
hours of the year when in fact it's you know it could be
16
short duration, it could be long duration.
17
It's to make sure that the mitigation
We really need to understand what the driving
18
factor is to make sure for the ratepayer, the consumer we're
19
fitting the mitigation to that need.
20
And then another thing that came up previously I
21
think Judy mentioned it, is all of our resource adequacy
22
metrics today really focus on expected values, or just the
23
average value.
24
25
We rarely look at the tail end risk.
And really making sure that we go beyond just
looking at average values, or average risk assessments, and
100
1
looking at a full distribution of potential outcomes so that
2
we can take into account how bad with that worst case about
3
being and is it worth addressing some of the larger outlier
4
events, especially if there's a low cost solution for them.
5
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
And I believe
6
Miss Barton is next, and then I believe we have another
7
question from Commissioner Clements.
8
9
MS. BARTON:
And I do think that this is a very
difficult question to answer.
You know I think when we look
10
at least cost outcomes we have to do a couple of things.
11
have to start with where this discussion started, which is
12
what is the cost of these outages?
13
climate change?
14
is the cost associated with that mitigation?
15
We
What is the cost of
And how do we then mitigate that and what
So for me it's two camps.
There's the insurance
16
related no regret changes that we can make.
17
that is making sure that our black start generation is well
18
secured, that our black start crank past our redundant.
19
example, it's worth asking probably folks in the industry
20
what is your black start path?
21
assets?
22
So in my view
For
And how old are those
What might happen if you were to have you know a
23
severe event that's going on in the system?
You want to
24
make sure that you have that ability to restart the grid if
25
you ever need it.
We've never been as close quite frankly,
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1
to losing an interconnect as we were with Texas just a few
2
short months ago, and despite the weatherization you know, a
3
lot of the things that the state is actually working on.
4
That still remains a significant risk.
5
And making sure that if the worst happens, that
6
we can actually restart the grid in a timely fashion.
7
That's important.
8
adequacy again.
9
insurance mechanism by which we're leaning on other regions,
As Derek mentioned on the resource
That's just a no regrets.
Having that
10
these are quick and easy hits that we can move forward on
11
that's going to give us a little bit more time to tackle
12
some of the complexities associated with really doing that
13
deep dive that's necessary to get this right.
14
When you take a look at a downscale of what
15
happens, this is going to take some time.
It's going to be
16
complicated, and we need to sit there and figure out how do
17
we simplify it, how do we make it less complicated?
18
we make it less costly?
How do
19
Which means we're going to need to do a lot of
20
studies, and that's why the no regrets solutions allow us
21
more time.
22
the other things that you can do, and I think it falls into
23
the you know insurance category, is you maintain a
24
controllable amount of generation that's there in reserve
25
should you need it.
And while this isn't a planning comment, one of
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1
I think the biggest challenge we're going to have
2
with this transition is just that very fast move to all
3
variable resources.
4
some controllable resources again on the emergency
5
situation, only to deal with preventing these kinds of
6
things I think you can make sure it's a lot less costly than
7
it otherwise would be.
8
MS. NUTTER:
9
10
If you have the ability to bring on
Thank you very much.
Commissioner
Clements would you like to ask a final question?
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Thanks Louise.
I know
11
we're running out of time.
12
your last comment.
13
spectrum of types of overlapping resource adequacy authority
14
in states, and FERC, and the regions.
15
should start getting at these issues you're identifying in
16
terms of insuring improved planning relative to these
17
evolving extreme weather risks?
18
Mr. Stenclik just a follow-up on
Appreciating that there's a broad
MR. STENCLIK:
How do you think FERC
Yeah I guess the first thing is
19
just to start pushing forward best practices and ways and
20
methods that should be included.
21
approaches that we're taking with redefining resource
22
adequacy is setting up a set of first principles that we're
23
then trying to disseminate, and when we work with
24
stakeholders in different regions, different ISOs,
25
different utilities, it is trying to develop a framework
I think one of the
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1
recognizing that each region is going to have its own
2
regulatory structure, it's own resource mix, its own unique
3
approach that they need to take for resource adequacy, but
4
what are some of the first principles that apply really
5
across the board and set up the best practices that could be
6
applied.
7
I think on the metric side there's ways to well
8
you know it's fuzzy who has jurisdiction and to saying what
9
the reliability criteria should be.
I think a low-hanging
10
fruit is just to make sure that when resource adequacy
11
results are shared that all the metrics are provided.
12
You don't necessarily have to change the
13
criteria, but you can at least report the data more
14
holistically, so you're not just showing an expected value
15
loss of load number, you're showing a broad suite of
16
metrics.
17
can still at least report some of that.
18
Even though one of them might be a criteria, you
And I think on the regional coordination maybe
19
that's an opportunity for FERC as well to really look at
20
regional coordination between different jurisdictions on how
21
they can make consistent assumptions on how to rely on one
22
another for reliability and resource adequacy.
23
24
25
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
of time.
Thank you and we're out
I appreciate it.
MS. NUTTER:
Miss Chang your hand is raised. Did
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1
you have something?
2
MS. CHANG:
Yeah I just want to say one thing in
3
a very simple way if there's something that FERC can do I
4
think is to in addition to the metrics, I think just saying
5
to each region for utilities for the non-RTO regions, say
6
you know pay attention to climate related risks, which we
7
haven't even had in this industry, and then if we you know,
8
if we could take that one step further to say you know I
9
looked at this before a year ago.
10
Italy is doing this, which is have them come up
11
with a plan, whether it's resource adequacy, or transmission
12
planning, come up with a plan that incorporates the best
13
climate data that you can get your hands on.
14
first time around is not perfect, but I think having FERC to
15
say you know come up with a plan that incorporates climate
16
data is a huge step forward that we haven't had in this
17
industry.
18
19
20
And I think that would be an important starting
point.
MS. NUTTER:
Thank you very much.
21
everyone for a great discussion today.
22
this to my colleague Ena to close our panel.
23
And maybe the
MR. AGBEDIA:
Thanks Louise.
24
everyone for that discussion.
25
time for this panel.
And thank you
I'm going to pass
Thank you very much
We've reached the end of our
So I'll conclude by thanking our
105
1
panelists again.
2
now take a 20 minute break and we'll reconvene at 3:45 p.m.
3
Panel 1 speakers you may sign out of the Webex, and if you
4
would like to continue the conference you can use the public
5
web link that was sent to you, or you can visit at ferc.gov.
6
We appreciate your participation.
We will
Panel 2 panelists please stay with us over the
7
break and Commissioners stay signed into the Webex for the
8
break as well.
9
your cameras until we resume.
10
(Break)
Please mute your microphones and turn off
Thank you.
11
Panel 2:
Best Practices for Long-Term Planning
12
Assessing and Mitigating the Risk of Climate Change and
13
Extreme Weather Events
14
MR. VANDERBERG:
15
everybody.
16
Deputy Director of the Office of Energy Policy and
17
Innovation at FERC.
18
co-moderator Lena -- from the Office of General Counsel and
19
we will be moderating our second panel.
20
Welcome back.
Thank you Rahim and thank you
I am Eric Vanderberg.
I am the
Along with me today I have my
So this second panel will explore how existing
21
planning processes address climate change and extreme
22
weather events and possible improvements to those planning
23
processes.
24
discussion of relevant best practices throughout the
25
industry for assessing the risk posed by climate change and
This panel will engage in a broad ranging
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1
extreme weather and developing cost effective mitigation.
2
We will be foregoing opening remarks for this
3
panel, and we're going to move directly into a question and
4
answer session.
5
the day and resume tomorrow afternoon.
6
like to start by introducing our panel 2 panelists.
7
Following this panel we will adjourn for
First we have Judith Curry.
So with that I'd
She is President of
8
the Climate Forecast Applications Network.
Joining us today
9
we also have Neal Millar, Vice President, Transmission
10
Planning and Infrastructure Development at the California
11
ISO.
12
Mark Lauby, Senior Vice President and Chief
13
Engineer at the North American Electric Reliability
14
Corporation or NERC.
15
We also have Devin Hartman, Director of Energy
16
and Environmental Policy at the R Street Institute.
17
have Alison Silverstein, Independent Consultant with Alison
18
Silverstein Consulting;
19
Caramanis Rudkevich and last but not least we have Frederick
20
Heinle who is the Assistant People's Counsel, Office of the
21
People's Counsel for the District of Columbia.
22
Also
Richard Tabors, President, Tabors
Welcome to this esteemed set of panelists.
We
23
really appreciate you joining us today.
Before we get into
24
our question and answer session I'd like to remind everybody
25
again to refrain from discussion of any pending contested
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1
proceedings.
2
discussion, my colleague, Michael Haddad from the Office of
3
General Counsel will interrupt the discussion with a gentle
4
reminder to avoid that topic.
5
If anyone does engage in those kinds of
So we'll now begin the question and answer.
6
Panelists who would like to answer a question please use the
7
Webex raise hand function.
8
issues with the raise hand function please turn on our
9
microphone and indicate that you would like to respond.
10
Alternatively, if you're having
I will call on panelists that indicate they would
11
like to answer in turn.
12
your microphone and respond to the question.
13
completed your answer please turn off your microphone, and
14
just a reminder to also lower your virtual hand in Webex.
15
Once I call on you please turn on
Once you've
With those preliminaries out of the way we can go
16
ahead and get started and first of all I would just like to
17
start by saying thank you again to everybody to help
18
organize this panel and all of our panelists today.
19
a really excellent group here and so I want to go ahead and
20
dive right in.
21
We have
Where I'd like to dive in is a little bit where
22
the last panel left off.
I thought there was a lot of
23
really good discussion on the last panel about you know the
24
distinction between some of the climate change impacts like
25
sea level rise, rising temperatures, and extreme weather
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1
events, you know the things in the former category, those
2
are things that will occur more gradually over time.
3
Things of the latter category, particularly at
4
the outer edges of those risk distributions, those 1 and 10
5
year events, those 1 in 20 years events, those 1 in 30 year
6
events, can really have devastating effects, so in lieu of
7
opening statements what I would like to do is start with a
8
question, and I'd like to hear from all of our panelists,
9
and that question is are current approaches to long-term
10
resource adequacy and transmission planning adequate to
11
address these type of tail risks such as extreme weather
12
events?
13
Yes or no, and if not in your opinion what needs
14
to change about the way the industry assesses and mitigates
15
risks.
16
So I'd like to go ahead and start with Judith.
MS. CURRY:
Thank you.
I appreciate the
17
opportunity to participate in this conference.
18
of climate (audio glitch) -- to help them anticipate and
19
respond to extreme weather events.
20
to weeks we provide probabilistic forecasts of extreme
21
events.
22
wildfire risk and severe convective weather.
23
As President
On time scales of days
These include heat and cold outbreaks, hurricanes,
(Audio glitch) we provide regional scenarios of
24
future extreme weather events including event frequency and
25
the severity of the worst case.
These scenarios are based
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1
on natural multi-decadal climate variability, as well as
2
manmade global warming.
3
since the climate models provide a range of weather outcomes
4
that is too narrow.
5
I don't rely on (audio glitch)
To help avoid big surprises we provide catalogues
6
of historical extreme weather events impacting the region.
7
If it's happened before it can happen again.
8
and I'll answer the question how bad could it get -- in
9
other words what if scenarios.
10
(audio glitch)
It's too expensive to harden the infrastructure
11
and maintain reserve capacity for any conceivable extreme
12
weather event.
13
resiliency can you afford.
14
expectations used in designing the infrastructure.
15
often the response is to passively watch a cascading
16
disaster unfold, and then clean up afterwards.
17
The question then becomes how much
The (audio glitch)
the
Too
The impact of an extreme weather event can be
18
mitigated to some extent by making better operational
19
decisions (audio glitch).
20
be developed from considering plausible worst case scenarios
21
associated with that particular type of event.
22
Tactical adaption strategies can
Response protocols are developed, and then
23
deployed operationally in a (audio glitch).
Such
24
strategies support robust decision-making and can result in
25
better outcomes with less damage and more rapid restoration
110
1
of services.
2
has been (audio glitch).
3
Reconstructive landfalling winds from historical hurricanes
4
are used to draw their outage models to produce a range of
5
possible outage scenarios.
6
Here's an example. Since 2013 my company CFAN
-- impacted by hurricanes.
A catalogue of synthetic worst-case storms have
7
additional data (audio glitch) -- for assessing their
8
response strategies.
9
a possible landfall, CFAN provides extended range
Risk management begins 7 days prior to
10
probabilistic forecasts of tropical cyclone threats (audio
11
glitch) -- models.
12
worst case storms is used to assess the worst case
13
possibility for the pending landfall.
14
A catalogue of historical and synthetic
Based on CFAN's ensemble forecast of landfall
15
winds, outage models are (audio glitch).
16
manpower requirements are made so that mutual aid repair
17
crews in local repair units can be in place several days
18
before the actual landfall.
19
Estimates of
This general approach of developing technical
20
adaptation strategies can be (audio glitch) - that reduced
21
damage to infrastructure and will quickly restore service.
22
Thank you.
23
24
25
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Judith.
Let's go to
Neal next followed by Mark.
MR. MILLAR:
Thank you Eric.
I would say at the
111
1
ISO we see the current approaches create the opportunity to
2
consider the broader range of conditions that need to be
3
assessed, but not necessarily require them.
4
the standards that are employed for transmission planning,
5
the study of extreme events is something that's expected to
6
be conducted considering the local conditions and the issues
7
facing that particular system, and the people operating that
8
system, but there aren't hard and fast criteria as to when
9
someone should mitigate and to what extent.
Following on
10
And so we see the criteria themselves as creating
11
the framework, but then the question is are people taking it
12
as far as they need to, and considering how far some of
13
these issues should be pursued.
14
think the bulk system issues combined with the resource
15
planning need to be taken into account, and that we can do
16
more on these conditions, but I'll look forward to talking
17
about the details as we go through the conversation, so
18
thank you.
19
20
21
MR. VANDERBERG:
And there that's where I
Thank you Neal.
We've got Mark
next followed by Devin then Alison.
MR. LAUBY:
Thank you Eric.
And I'm also
22
delighted to join this panel today, and to think about where
23
we've come from.
24
measures the 1 event in 10 it was based on a number of
25
assumptions, most importantly, that capacity equaled energy
And in the past when we calculate capacity
112
1
plus reliability services, plus flexibility of ramping.
2
So if we had the capacity we had a number of
3
other things available to us.
4
course the conditions.
5
years and projecting those for the next 10 or 5.
6
start thinking a little bit more outside the box because
7
it's no longer what's possible, but what's plausible.
8
9
That's one.
The other is of
We can't be looking at the last 30
We have to
So we can start thinking a little bit more around
not only the capacity needs, but the energy needs.
And
10
remember that it's a basis of a lot of these adequacy
11
analysis.
12
outages due to random failures in plants.
13
would take -- or units.
14
out just to be really excruciating on the system.
15
It was around independence.
Independent forced
And sometimes it
Sometimes you would take a plant
But now we're talking about common conditions,
16
and we're talking about a resource mix that is now affected
17
more around the extreme weather.
18
extreme weather we're talking about something a little bit
19
different here too.
20
tornadoes, the ratios you know severe blizzard.
21
And when we talk about
Extreme weather was hurricanes,
Now we're talking about extended cold weather,
22
extended hot weather, weather, wind droughts, solar
23
droughts, and we have to build those into our framework, and
24
of course we don't have a lot of experience looking back, so
25
we have to see what's possible going forward so we build a
113
1
system that not only provides the energy along with the
2
capacity energy and ramping and reliability of services, but
3
then ensures that they are there during the more severe long
4
duration events.
5
6
7
8
9
So with that I'll be happy to pass it onto my
colleagues.
Thank you.
MR. VANDERBERG:
All right.
Thank you Mark.
Devin then Alison.
MR. HARTMAN:
Thank you Eric and thanks to you
10
and the rest of the Commission for having me today and for
11
addressing this important topic.
12
I will start off with emphasizing is that you know the top
13
of our panel looking at long-term citing best practices.
14
It's 1,000 foot level that
I really emphasize that there's a big gap between
15
existing planning processes and best planning processes
16
under static climate conditions, and then I would look at
17
the gap between the static best planning practices, and
18
where we are under global climate change.
19
And I think the existing deficiencies that we see
20
in many ways from which climate risks in the existing
21
reliability policy, and we look at the ways that climate
22
change manifests itself in that risk profile.
23
need to recognize that as a previous speaker said there's a
24
lot of work we can do on just a no regret approach.
25
think that's really important to emphasize because I think
We really
And I
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1
climate risks largely exacerbate a lot of the existing risk
2
factors that this industry ostensibly already incorporates
3
to some degree.
4
But as the magnitude and the likelihood of some
5
of these events increases over time, any deficiencies that
6
we already have in our reliability risk management framework
7
are going to be further exacerbated.
8
on specifically on resource adequacy transmission planning
9
overall, I really emphasize that as we think about tail risk
And so to your point
10
and how these constructs incorporate tail risk, that we
11
think about a few elements.
12
So one thing is we do recognize that this
13
industry has always relied on engineering characteristics,
14
and we've always you know pushed the need to make sure that
15
this economic criteria that is getting better infused into
16
that ecosystem, and that those are reliability institutions,
17
and are more market-based institutions and processes are
18
seeking up better.
19
And then next when we think about this
20
conversation about should we be thinking about expected
21
outcomes and drivers of central tendency et cetera, as
22
opposed to you know indicators of reliability paradigm
23
adjustments as we compare that to the incorporation of tail
24
risk event, I think that we need to make sure that we
25
emphasize that we can distinguish between risk and
115
1
uncertainty.
2
So a lot of climate risk will actually manifest
3
itself in things that are reasonably known probabilities.
I
4
think that we can assign probabilities to, and that we can
5
codify the consequences on.
6
job with economic criteria, we can better understand the
7
consequences and develop expected values right, which is the
8
basis for cost benefit analysis and conventional risk
9
assessment.
And thus, when we do a better
10
Whereas, when we get into uncertainty analysis,
11
we get to the spaces where we have a lot more unknowns and
12
perhaps we can't even assign a probability.
13
need to start doing and employing tools like break even
14
analysis and other tools to at least say hey, if we're going
15
to construct scenarios about things, about like correlated
16
outages and how they're affected by perhaps multiple climate
17
risk vectors that could be worsening in the future, that we
18
at least build in more transparent single modes and how they
19
manage, and multiple risk streams.
20
That's where we
And then we at least can evaluate the avoided
21
damages, or the reliability benefits of reforming policy to
22
address those.
23
Thank you.
MR. VANDERBERG:
24
Alison followed by Richard.
25
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Thank you Devin.
Let's go to
Thank you and good afternoon.
116
1
Thanks for having me in the panel.
2
else that current planning methods are inadequate.
3
topic -- our panelists focus on long-term planning, but to
4
be frank it's not clear that short-term planning methods are
5
significantly better than long-term planning methods because
6
they both use a lot of the same premises.
7
I agree with everyone
This
We are not using enough creativity and
8
imagination about the breadth of the threats and
9
consequences.
A lot of what we are looking at in terms of
10
-- or what we should be looking at in terms of threats and
11
consequences as others said, have compound and synergistic
12
effects.
13
But beyond that I think we are in -- it is very
14
difficult for me to see how to realistically put believable
15
credible probabilities on most of this.
16
to stop pretending that we can do sort of deep, deeply
17
credible probabilistic weighted scenarios, and calculated
18
meaningful expected values, and just start looking for where
19
are the boundaries of all the scary things that might happen
20
that we should be preparing for.
21
So I think we need
Second, we need to be a lot more focused on
22
consequences, not just causes.
In many cases so many of the
23
things that could go wrong all have the same consequences,
24
and most of them are dreadful -- for the system, for
25
customers, and for our economy.
117
1
So that says to me that we need to put a lot more
2
focus on how do we mitigate, and as the prior panel
3
discussed insure against these common consequences, and put
4
a lot more emphasis on protection and resilience, rather
5
than attempting to prevent every potential thing that could
6
go wrong.
7
Some of the most -- those what they were calling
8
no regrets or insurance measures.
If you look at them from
9
a consequence perspective and ask how do I find mitigations
10
that are going to work every single day, rather than only
11
pay off against a single kind of harm.
12
transmission, storage, demand response, black start, and
13
frankly energy efficiency, which is probably one of the most
14
effective ways to protect customers against all the stuff
15
that could go wrong.
16
Those include
And particularly, building on the load, protect
17
improvements, air-conditioning and heat, because inefficient
18
heating and inefficient air-conditioners are what contribute
19
to some of the most trying things and times that go wrong on
20
customer, in terms of causing the grid to have operational
21
problems.
22
And last I concur with many of the past panelists
23
that when we talk about cost benefit analysis we far too
24
often talk about and assume that what matters is the cost of
25
the measures that we are considering taking, rather than
118
1
comparing not just those measures against each other, but
2
more critically what are the consequences and costs to us if
3
we don't take these measures?
4
What could go wrong?
And how do the costs of
5
more transmission, or more energy efficiency, or better
6
demand response -- how big or small are those costs, and how
7
often will they work and help us compared to the very
8
significant costs of the kinds of events that Texas just
9
suffered because we hadn't taken enough of those protective
10
11
measures, thank you.
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Alison.
12
Richard next followed by Eric.
13
you're on mute.
14
MR. TABORS:
Let's go to
Richard if you're speaking
Thank you sir.
So I'll start again.
15
I am my coauthors and co-conspirators Paul -- thank you for
16
the opportunity of participating on this panel.
17
heavy look at your question I think the analytic
18
methodologies and models in utility planning today can only
19
be described as woefully and grossly inadequate.
20
Taking a
Our resource adequacy metrics and planning
21
methods systematically understate the probability, the
22
depth, and economic health and safety costs of high impact
23
events, and significantly increased demand or reduced
24
reduction in the output of multiple resources.
25
So there's a lot going on, and I think that the
119
1
fact that the industry still references an engineering
2
driven reliability standard of 1 day in 10 years is somewhat
3
close to unbelievable.
4
consider the economic consequences of service interruptions,
5
the fact -- and that fact is compounded by the assumption of
6
unit outage independence, and a failure really to reflect
7
weather trends.
8
9
That standard of LOLE doesn't
Understanding the probability of common mode
events is really the kind of the critical variable in all of
10
this.
11
nature, so as a result we need probabilistic approaches to
12
deal with it.
13
to our demand forecast which is also weather driven, to
14
intermittent resource forecasts, generation resource
15
adequacy, and quite honestly transmission adequacy as well.
16
We focus on the fact that weather is probabilistic in
We should adopt some probabilistic thinking
For example, on this one we've written about in
17
the days proceeding the Texas event, it was well understood
18
and recognized by anybody who really was looking at
19
probability distributions that there was at least a 10
20
percent chance that temperatures would be fully 30 degrees
21
below normal in Texas.
22
The result is that from my perspective on kind of
23
answering your question, we have to really understand that
24
there are probability distributions out there that we're
25
simply not paying attention to and that fit nicely into the
120
1
mindset of the utility industry, but we've got to get them
2
into that mindset, not kind of ignore the fact that we know
3
a lot more and are able to do a lot more analysis now, than
4
has been the case in the past, so I'll stop thank you.
5
MR. VANDERBERG:
6
let's go to Eric, last but not least.
7
MR. HEINLE:
8
MR. VANDERBERG:
9
MR. HEINLE:
Thank you Richard.
And then
Thank you Eric can you hear me?
Yes we can.
Great and thank you, and thank you.
10
It's been a delight to be part of this panel with such a
11
distinguished group of panelists.
12
that you just said, which is I think it's a really critical
13
question.
14
I want to go to something
How much resiliency can you afford?
As a ratepayer advocate for ratepayers in the
15
District of Columbia, I want to make clear that when we look
16
at costs and resilience of the grid, we have to understand
17
that resilience efforts that are not affordable do not make
18
the grid more resilient.
19
ratepayers interests.
20
In fact they simply do not serve
And that's the goal of all to make sure that we
21
are able to serve ratepayers 24/7, 365.
So these efforts
22
that are cost prohibitive really don't solve our issue.
23
here to tell you that consumers want to be part of the
24
solution.
25
this panel.
I'm
And that's why I'm so thankful to be included in
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1
Because consumers want a seat at the table.
2
want to understand, and we want to work with you on
3
understanding how we do the analysis, looking at the
4
information, look at the data, look at the popular six
5
scenarios.
6
We
And consumers have an active role to play too,
7
whether and I think something good Alison hit upon.
Whether
8
it's through issues like demand response, distributed energy
9
resources, energy efficiency, these are all ways that
10
consumers can play an active role in helping the resilience
11
needs of the grid, and helping assure that we do get to a
12
much more resilient grid, which frankly, as the last one
13
that was shown we are not.
14
It's also important that there's an
15
accountability level that when we look at different programs
16
for you know whether it's an analysis of extreme weather
17
events, whether it's incentives to address those events and
18
tail end events, that there is a recognition that again
19
these programs need to have a real benefit for consumers and
20
-- the costs.
21
And then as I look forward to working with this
22
group and talking at this conversation about ways that we
23
can make the grid more resilient, that we can address the
24
extreme weather events but do so in an affordable way.
25
MR. VANDERBERG:
Very good thank you Eric.
I
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1
appreciate it.
2
Hard to pick where to start first but what I'm going to do
3
is start off with a session of something that's come up a
4
couple of times here and in the prior panel which is
5
capacity.
6
A lot of good comments to get us started.
A couple of panelists have mentioned you know the
7
importance of thinking in a new way about common mode
8
outages, changes in the resource mix, and then you layer on
9
top of that you know the impacts of extreme weather events
10
having you know common impacts across really large areas.
11
So what I wanted to tee up was current resource adequacy
12
approaches -- a number of people mentioned the reliable on
13
the 1 in 10 year standard.
14
Do we need changes to those approaches to take a
15
different tact in the way we look at it, the meet changes,
16
and the way we think about the metrics and the way that we
17
procure capacity, so we are getting the most value for
18
consumers?
19
20
I see Alison's hand up.
Alison's hand went up
first so let's start with her and then Eric's was second.
21
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
All those years of playing hit
22
the button faster paying off thank you.
23
completely outmoded, and it's generation centric and ignores
24
all of the other capabilities out there including demand
25
response, including the fact that we can actually enlist
Yes 1 in 10 is
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1
customers to control their demand and manage it in better
2
ways, and it ignores a lot of the other capabilities out
3
there.
4
And the fact that the grid is much more energy
5
dominant and stochastic than it used to be, instead of just
6
turning a dial and controlling a power plant, or multiple
7
power plants.
8
capacity mostly, and not much else.
9
So let's be super clear, and 1 in 10 is about
The ERCOT event and others have demonstrated that
10
a lot of the things that go wrong on the grid are due to
11
energy failures.
12
just isn't working.
13
nothing to do with the virtue of having iron on the ground.
14
And 1 in 10 isn't going to fix that in any way.
15
We have lots of iron on the ground, it
For a variety of issues that have
The other problem with 1 in 10 is again it's all
16
on the generation side, and since this is about the
17
balancing of supply and demand, it ignores that it's often
18
more cost-effective to improve demand than it is to just fix
19
supply thank you.
20
21
22
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Alison, let's go with
Eric and then Devin.
MR. HEINLE:
So first off I would echo everything
23
Alison said about the importance of balancing supply and
24
demand and look at the supply, from looking at the consumer
25
side, what can consumers do to programs like demand response
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1
and energy efficiency to meet the capacity?
2
But it's important that when consumers do that
3
that when RTOs and utilities look at modeling for capacity
4
they take into account the value of those inputs, the value
5
demand response, the value of distributed energy resources.
6
Make sure that they are accounted for when we consider you
7
know what capacity we have on the grid, and I think you
8
know, making sure that they're incentivized properly.
9
We talk a lot about for generation, but we also
10
need to make sure we're getting the antennas right on the
11
demand side as well.
12
know Order 2222 maximum opportunity I think to build on some
13
of that with distributed energy resources.
14
sure that they are fully accounted for on the load side of
15
the grid.
16
And on the load side as well.
You
And again making
And then finally I think you know when we look at
17
from a supply side, looking at constructs like effective
18
load carrying capability and other ways to make sure that
19
you know recognizing that every resource on the supply side,
20
whether it's solar, whether it's coal, whether it's nuclear,
21
they all have certain limitations to their operations, and
22
we need to effectively model that so that you know we
23
recognize what their limitations are and we're balancing
24
that in an effective way, and in a way that recognizes that
25
we don't overbuild and procure for capacity.
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1
MR. VANDERBERG:
2
MR. HARTMAN:
Thanks Eric.
Devin?
Eric you gave us a lot to chew on
3
there, so I'll start off with the 1 in 10.
So the 1 in 10
4
standard historically has always been more of a metric of
5
convenience than any type of optimization exercise.
6
it's really going forward something that is increasingly
7
becoming obsolete.
And so
8
And we need to -- I think the last year's events
9
have really highlighted importantly the need to distinguish
10
between different types of reliability events, and different
11
really looking at also getting away from just treating all
12
firm load as equal, and assigning like the central estimate
13
of that through an administrative process.
14
So really getting away from things, whether it's
15
1 in 10, or if we were to shift it to 1 in 5, or 1 in 15 for
16
different types of reliability events.
17
what is the distribution of the value of lost load?
18
know we'll probably have further conversation on this later,
19
but we need to start thinking about like there's just
20
inherent constraints of treating reliability as just an
21
exogenous constraint that's always imposed on these
22
constructs, and start thinking about we facilitate more
23
endogenous reliability in these systems, where as the
24
variance within consumer preferences can really be brought
25
out in the system.
Also thinking about
And I
126
1
And that's really what should be encouraging, and
2
we have better technology going forward to address this both
3
for the more historic event as well as you know scenarios
4
going forward where we see more extreme events.
5
And then secondly, I'll point out that when we
6
get into capacity constructs, and I'll note that 49 states
7
do some form of capacity, recognized capacity planning on
8
the gen co side.
9
than others.
Some of them just do it more efficiently
But we know the capacity markets discussion of
10
FERC purview, we're going to get a lot more attention, and
11
we'll probably get into more about the you know the ELCC and
12
some of these other capacity accreditation mechanisms,
13
especially for the deficiencies in addressing common mode
14
failure.
15
But I would also emphasize that over the last
16
year we look at which 4 out of the 7 RTOs have implemented
17
involuntary rotating outages over that time period.
18
really what we're seeing is also a need to have a
19
conversation about capacity procurement outside of just the
20
conventional, you know, mandatory centralized construct.
21
And
And so there's a real need to both align
22
reliability institutions at the federal and state level,
23
especially in the cost of service jurisdictions, and we're
24
really seeing that cropping up here in the grid of the
25
future type of conversation in some of those regions.
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1
And so I'd strongly you know when we think about
2
some institutional framework as well as the metrics
3
prospective, as well as the quality of inputs that go into
4
this as we've noted that historical indicators are no longer
5
the sound estimate of the future condition.
6
chew on there, but we'll probably dive into each one of
7
these a little bit further later, thanks.
8
MR. VANDERBERG:
9
MR. LAUBY:
Great.
So a lot to
Thank you Devin.
Mark?
Thank you for that and you now you
10
have to remember where this 1 in 10 came from.
11
enough to remember.
12
the 1960's with Calabrese doing all these calculations over
13
at PJM, and it was like 1 in 8, then they felt like that was
14
suitable for the reliability of those kinds of generating
15
plants at the time.
16
I'm old
Some of you may be, but it came from
And they popped it up to 10, like you said it's
17
not economic now.
18
energy plus reliability of services plus ramping.
19
not getting that anymore if we just get the 1 day in 10.
20
What we need to do is start thinking about those other paths
21
of the equation.
22
And as I mentioned before capacity equals
Now we're
How much energy are you going to need?
How much ramping are you going to need?
What are
23
the reliability of services you're going to need?
And back
24
out of that what one day or whatever means.
25
remember at that time you didn't have computer space, you
Because
128
1
only had 1 event in 10 because that's all you could model in
2
the 1960's on an IBM 360.
3
and hours and hours of calculations.
So obviously now we can do hours
4
So I think what especially as the importance of
5
electricity has increased, and we can model all the demand
6
response we want.
7
Garver, multi-state modeling.
8
that, but we need to understand exactly what are the actual
9
parameters we need to be modeling to, and what is going to
We can do ELCC came out in 1969 with Len
We know how to do all of
10
be acceptable given the subsector dependence, and the
11
expansion of electrification.
12
And to see how that warrants the difference in
13
energy requirements and flexibility requirements and likely
14
service requirements and then figure out what the 1 in
15
whatever is.
16
1 in 10, you figure out the dog gone reserve margins.
17
It don't work that way no more.
18
get it down to basic principals of what makes up that
19
capacity and what it delivers, thank you.
Again, it used to be cool because you get your
20
MR. VANDERBERG:
21
MR. MILLAR:
You've got to
And Neal?
Thank you.
So when I hear the
22
discussion around the 1 in 10 it sounds like at one extreme
23
some people are still thinking of it in the context of the
24
way it was calculated 20-30 years ago.
25
I calculated it 30 years ago.
And I admit the way
But in jurisdictions like
129
1
ours there's a high penetration of renewable resources,
2
we've had to look even in that probabilistic calculation
3
around what's actually going to serve the load each hour of
4
the day, and what kind of within some reasonable framework
5
of outages, what's your probability around being able to
6
supply load, but you have to be looking at 8760.
7
As Mark was indicating you can't just think of it
8
as a single point in time.
If you are still calculating it
9
that way well that won't work for us, and I suspect it's not
10
working for a lot of you.
11
say around the averages is one way to go about it.
12
think a single metric will ever convey all the new
13
conditions that we need to consider.
14
This probabilistic approach I'll
I don't
The amount of assessment that we have to do with
15
the much more diverse league of resources, much different
16
demand side response requires much more careful analytics
17
considering a broader range of conditions, and I totally
18
agree with Alison that we also need to explore what the
19
boundary conditions are so we see an evolution towards
20
probabilistic approaches geared around the center line.
21
But then also scenario analysis and assessment
22
that have to consider the boundary conditions and
23
effectiveness.
24
longer term resource planning considerations, not just
25
taking whatever falls out the bottom of a model per se, well
And a lot of that really has to come in the
130
1
that's your most economic generation mix, but then you have
2
to test your scenarios.
3
What sort of common event exposure do you have
4
with that fleet?
5
concerns that are emerging for your particular local area.
6
You know for us we're trying to consider a number of these
7
parameters.
8
the wildfires in itself caused degradation of performance of
9
solar panels.
10
Does it give you a system that meets the
I admit the fact that smoke contamination from
It was one of those second order effects behind
11
climate change that we have to take into account.
12
have to look at other conditions that are on a more normal
13
basis, but also a broader range of extreme events.
14
year's summer assessment work in preparing for this summer
15
we noted that what we used to consider a 1 in 10 peak load
16
are mid and 1 in 5 hadn't changed much, but the 1 in 10
17
jumped by 5 percent over what we would have previously
18
considered a 1 in 10 event to be.
19
We also
In this
So there's a broader range of conditions we have
20
to take into account, and we have to study a much broader
21
range of scenarios and conditions because the fleet is
22
capable of that type of broader performance.
23
24
25
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thanks.
Thank you Neal and let's go to
Richard.
MR. TABORS:
Thanks.
Let me pick up a little bit
131
1
on Neal and on Mark.
One of the things that what we haven't
2
really said so far is that the 1 in 10 and the whole issue
3
of resource adequacy is really intended to focus on do it
4
once and get it right and then move on.
5
reality at this point is in fact not that, but rather that
6
there's a need to have a relatively continuous process based
7
on what we learn on a whether you want it day by day, hour
8
by hour basis, and I know that in terms of sort of
9
operational planning that's kind of the way the thought
And I think the
10
process goes, but it's not the way that we're answering what
11
I'd call a stochastically mature way of handling resource
12
adequacy.
13
We've been working on something called SNAP which
14
is stochastic nodal adequacy pricing which is an effort to
15
take this whole process that's been very engineering
16
oriented and turn it into a stochastic process that's
17
weather driven, and then but then at the end of the day ends
18
up really getting consumers who are the ones that count only
19
in this game, getting consumers a value, something
20
associated with value of lost load that they would then be
21
able to decide well do I want to pay this amount for
22
reliability, or do I not at this point.
23
In other words there's a sense of price driven
24
response, so to me there's an effort at this stage to
25
getting away from the one day in 10 years which I think by
132
1
the way calculate what that is in economic terms.
2
rather shocking value that we assume consumers are willing
3
to pay, but ignoring that for the moment, looking at it and
4
saying okay let's get the resource adequacy process into a
5
much more efficient and routine and dynamic process of
6
calculation of probability of there being a problem if you
7
were.
8
9
It's a
We have this information, weather information
today, it's orders of magnitude better than it was two years
10
ago, three years ago, four years ago at the most.
11
you dig into that what you find very quickly is gee, you
12
know there's a lot of information here that I didn't have
13
before that I now have, and there's computing technology and
14
capability in the cloud based computing that I didn't have
15
and now I have.
16
So I can't sort of say gee, I can only do it once
17
a year because it's too difficult.
18
now.
And it's not too difficult.
19
20
So once
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
I can do it once a day
Thank you.
Eric can I offer a follow-up
thought?
21
MR. VANDERBERG:
22
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Absolutely Alison.
Thank you.
The basic premise
23
of 1 in 10 and designing to that has always been if I get
24
this number right everything will be fine.
25
only thing that matters is so you build to 1 in 10 because
And then the
133
1
that's what the standards allow, and then you sit back and
2
essentially assume everything's going to be good.
3
But you know feeling lucky is not a plan these
4
days, and it doesn't get the job done, and the grid and
5
people, and extreme events are showing that we are not
6
lucky, and that a lot of bad stuff is happening.
7
think that requires us to take a very different approach.
8
9
And so I
Instead of saying I'm going build to this level
then just sit back and wait and trust my operational
10
instincts, and capabilities.
11
a really different approach to planning, and then not to
12
solve the probabilistic and scenario stuff that we're
13
talking about, but to me that demands that we go much more
14
to no regrets investments rather than heroics.
15
MR. VANDERBERG:
That necessitates that we take
Thank you.
Thank you Alison that's a
16
really good point.
17
think a thread that would bring it through comments from
18
Mark and Neal and Richard was you know taking in more --
19
slightly differently, but a more probabilistic approach Neal
20
I think you described it as continuing to focus on the
21
center line, but augmenting that with additional what if
22
scenarios.
23
One thing I wanted to follow-up on was I
Can you talk me through how you know an approach
24
like that, or a more probabilistic approach addresses the
25
issue of common mode failure?
Once again I think one of the
134
1
challenges that we're seeing and we're not seeing resources
2
linked in ways that we haven't thought about before
3
previously.
4
outages as independent, now we're seeing them linked.
5
6
We've always kind of thought of resource
And so just trying to get a better sense of the
best approach for dealing with that challenge.
7
MR. MILLAR:
Sure I'd be happy to comment a bit
8
on that.
I don't want to suggest that we think we're out of
9
the woods and it's perfect here.
Clearly, there's a lot of
10
room for improvements.
11
looking at is that we have a number of things that are
12
changing more or less at the same time.
13
I think the situation that we're
We're moving to a much more reduced GHG fleet.
14
We're also seeing the demands on the existing gas fired
15
generation fleet to be producing less energy, but being
16
available especially for many of the units that are older,
17
more heavily depreciated, a lower cost sort of capacity
18
insurance to help ride through other conditions.
19
But the analysis now has to focus on how do you
20
make these use limited resources work together to provide an
21
overall reliable system across a pretty reasonable range of
22
possible outcomes around what kind of conditions your system
23
might be facing.
24
25
But even after you finish that you still have to
look at some of these common mode failures.
We've been
135
1
putting more time on looking at what the gas supply system,
2
what redundancy is on the gas supply system into California.
3
Given the shift in usage for parts of the system where the
4
gas fired system is expected to operate much less than it
5
did in the past, but much more urgently when called upon
6
puts more pressure on the local gas storage fleet for what
7
sort of gas storage capability do you have in certain
8
areas.
9
So we have to pull it much further back than just
10
what's the mathematical probability of the unit having a
11
mechanical failure.
12
even stepping back from that a lot of the initial portfolio
13
development around developing future generation scenarios,
14
or focusing on minimizing cost, but once you've done that
15
even if that gives you a starting point, you then have to
16
look at how that helps you manage reasonable worst case
17
events.
18
That clearly doesn't cut it.
What about an extreme heatwave?
But then
What about
19
something that affects you know.
20
fairly major solar eclipse, but we saw it coming, and we
21
were able to adapt with other resources, so you have the
22
system positioned.
23
know that kind of notice that you're going to be seeing a
24
shortfall in a particular type of resource.
25
We rode through our first
You're not always so lucky to have you
So I think it's necessary to consider those kind
136
1
of extreme events that needs to be taken into account and
2
asking yourselves okay I've optimized this fleet, was it
3
really worth from a resilience point of view, getting that
4
last dollar of optimization out.
5
resource diversity, and at times for some of these resources
6
we need a bit more redundancy in addition to capacity to
7
ensure that we can reliably operate the system.
8
9
Should we have more
And I think some of the same conditions apply
also to the transmission planning as well.
That even if you
10
go through your normal planning exercise there's still that
11
extra level of review after the fact that does this give you
12
a fleet you can operate?
13
operate?
14
range of even you know a minor change in average temperature
15
is one thing, but what we are seeing is that the extreme
16
events are getting much more extreme than what we used to
17
face.
18
Does it give you a grid you can
And have you actually considered the possible
And that's something we really have to take into
19
account to these planning decisions.
And that's not a
20
separate exercise.
21
your planning and development activities.
22
take into account the local conditions that you're
23
experiencing.
24
the west coast, that a one size fits all approach might
25
address problems that we don't have and miss the boat on the
That needs to be baked into the rest of
It also has to
And that's always a concern to us I admit on
137
1
problems that we do have.
2
3
So that's where we see that local consideration
being critical.
4
MR. VANDERBERG:
Great thank you Neal.
I think
5
Richard and then Mark put their hands up next followed by
6
Judith.
7
MR. TABORS:
hey I mean I'm following up really
8
on Mark's -- sorry on Neal's comments that you know common
9
mode events are probably the critical thing, but for most
10
part I think at this stage most of the common mode events
11
have been ignored in the past, but now we know what to look
12
for at least in some probabilistic sense as to what's going
13
on.
14
The combination of drought, high winds that go
15
with it, thunder and lightening storms, lack of water, those
16
all go together, and they all affect the power sector and
17
with it the
18
to flag because it's a FERC problem is that essentially the
19
fact that the natural gas market runs on a time clock and a
20
mindset that's incredibly different from the electric
21
mindset and time clock in terms of the market that
22
essentially there's just a desperate need to get
23
information flow, to get data flow, between those two market
24
structures if we expect to be able to use the natural gas,
25
and we're going to have to in order to handle ramping and
natural gas sector.
And so one thing I'd like
138
1
other issues that are associated with the industry as the
2
industry moves more into more renewable technologies.
3
And picking up one other pet complaint of mine at
4
the moment that is FERC related, at least, and that is that
5
you know the transmission system we treat that as a fixed
6
asset with no variability and no flexibility in it.
7
there is a fair amount of technology in transmission
8
optimization, dynamic line ratings, all of which are sitting
9
out there, but nobody uses them because the incentive
10
11
And
structure just isn't there to do it.
So you know you look at it and you say what are
12
the two big issues?
Yeah, we've got demand response and a
13
lot of other things that are critical, but if you look at it
14
at the moment, the gas supply problem is critical.
15
transmission lack of flexibility problem is critical.
16
the fact that we're just ignoring tremendous amounts of
17
information that we actually have that we just don't use in
18
the sense of the stochastics of the system.
19
MR. VANDERBERG:
20
MR. LAUBY:
Thanks Richard.
Yeah thank you.
The
And
Mark?
Of course when NERC
21
has got a white paper out on the website which would work
22
with industry on to really look at this energy issue.
23
we look at it from three timeframes, nothing surprising here
24
-- long-term, of course like a year or more, a year or less
25
to the day the operational planning, and then of course
And
139
1
operations.
2
And each one of those will require changes in the
3
way in which we currently do our analysis and our planning.
4
And certainly from a long-term perspective what is the
5
energy that I need to deliver, and what are the scenarios
6
that I need to be delivering against, I think that the idea
7
of common modes, or common conditions as we transfer a grid
8
that goes to a grid which is much more sensitive to the
9
weather conditions, understanding those implications.
10
And then of course how we back that up.
And of
11
course from a one year or more of a plan, an operational
12
plan.
13
summarizing plants, this is also around really managing your
14
energy, managing where your demand response is, managing
15
where your units are and maintenance, managing which
16
critical infrastructure load you're serving.
17
Now it's more than just winterizing plants, or
Make sure you continue to serve it, and then go
18
through that process on a seasonal basis, and of course then
19
maybe a rolling 21 day average.
20
reliability assessments together every year and more and
21
more now we are putting these scenarios together, so we
22
really understand the implications of these we'll call them
23
bookends of serious conditions, and we're learning as you
24
said before the impacts of these common mode failures.
25
Now NERC of course puts its
One of course looking at them and lengthening the
140
1
timeframe, and then understanding again as an industry where
2
we have our folks being electrified.
3
kind of resource mix we need to be putting in place to begin
4
with, the wide implementation of those kind of resources,
5
and then ensuring them we can deliver them.
6
What that means, the
Because many folks are going to be experiencing
7
the same weather at the same time.
8
thinking about what we mean by extreme events anymore.
9
mean the idea that an extreme event is 20 below zero for a
10
And we might start
I
week in Texas, maybe that's not extreme weather anymore.
11
Maybe it's something we're going to have to start
12
thinking about a little bit more and this is the way I'm
13
going to plan, this is the way I'm going to operate towards,
14
and start thinking what are the implications of that, how
15
much that load as more folks get more electrified, electric
16
transportation, and dependence on communications and natural
17
gas facilities, and how we would have to serve them because
18
otherwise we don't serve them and they become critical to
19
the operation of the bulk electric system.
20
How do we manage that as well?
So there's a lot
21
yet on our plate to do.
22
excited about this panel because we're really kind of
23
picking apart some of the important issues.
24
25
I agree with that.
MR. VANDERBERG:
right.
And anyway I'm
I appreciate that Mark.
Let's go to Judith and then Eric.
All
141
1
MS. CURRY:
I'd like to make a comment about the
2
extreme heat and cold events.
These are associated with
3
massive high pressure systems which can cover like more than
4
half the country.
5
speeds.
6
know, three days, five days.
7
Okay.
They're also associated with low wind
And they can produce heat and cold events, you
So if you've got these extreme events,
8
temperature events with no wind speeds, and all your
9
neighbors are facing the same thing, where you know it's not
10
like you can rely on your neighboring region to transmit
11
something to you.
12
issue with a heat and cold event.
So you know to me I think this is a big
13
If they're so widespread, they have a lot -- it's
14
not like a hurricane, it's over in a day, you know it's over
15
in a day.
16
can -- we do heat and cold wave probability forecasting in
17
my company, and you can often see you know significant
18
probabilities, maybe 18-20 days in advance, and by the time
19
you know you're 12 or 14 days out you know you can give a
20
pretty good probability that something is going to happen,
21
and by the time it's day 5 or 6 you can really get a sense
22
of the magnitude.
23
These things can go on for several days.
Now you
You know is it going to be a record breaker, or
24
whatever.
So we really have some information, some weeks in
25
advance, and so you know my question is what's the plan when
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1
you see something like this coming?
You know it seems like
2
relying on the mix of you know, huge demand, no supply from
3
the wind and the whole region is suffering the same
4
conditions.
5
I mean what's the plan here.
6
MR. VANDERBERG:
7
8
points and very interesting.
MR. HEINLE:
Thank you Judith very good
Eric?
Thanks.
I want to go back to
9
something that Richard hinted on, which is the gas electric
10
coordination, and you now when I went through the comments
11
for today for today's technical conference, this was
12
something that a lot of parties hit on, and from a
13
consumer's perspective this is really an opportunity to gain
14
a lot of value for the buck.
15
You know we've gone through different discussions
16
about fuel security, onsite fuel storage, dual fuel supply
17
for black start facilities, and all of these are significant
18
cost upgrades and infrastructure upgrades that you know will
19
cost consumers quite a bit of money.
20
And before we sort of leap to those types of
21
costs upgrades, looking at something where we can better
22
coordinate better manage the gas and electric markets so
23
that you now we can get a better sense from delivery, get a
24
better sense of what's available in the pipeline.
25
sure that those gas resources that we count on for things
Making
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1
like capacity performance in the PJM region are available,
2
and are able to perform, you know, that's really a bang for
3
the buck for consumers and you know much more cost
4
beneficial way of perhaps you know maybe it doesn't address
5
every situation, but it does address a lot of potential you
6
know resilience weaknesses.
7
And so those are the types of things that the
8
Commission really should be looking at before we sort of
9
jump to the more costly and you know iron in the ground type
10
of solutions.
11
it is gas/electric coordination, or other operations in
12
terms of more conservative operations, by system operators,
13
those types of things, and that can really be a good benefit
14
for consumers.
15
16
17
What way can we improve operations?
Whether
So I hope that's something that we talk about a
little bit here, and the Commission explores.
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Eric.
I see a couple
18
of panelists that still have their hands up.
19
additional comments folks wanted to make, or are those left
20
over from earlier?
21
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
22
MR. VANDERBERG:
23
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Were there
I have a fresh one if I may?
Absolutely.
Well thank you.
All of the --
24
I agree with everything that the other panelists have said,
25
and it highlights the many, many, many things that can go
144
1
wrong, and the degree to which grid reliability is teetering
2
on more and more what ifs, and more and more preparations.
3
So I want to say yet again that given the high
4
number of things that can go wrong on the supply side, let's
5
please put some attention to the ways that we can protect
6
customers from all of those dreadful outcomes on the demand
7
side.
8
in FERC's jurisdiction.
9
coordination isn't exactly in it either.
And I know that energy efficiency is not classically
10
But then again maybe gas electric
There's a lot of things that we can do to protect
11
customers that we need to do in cooperation with others.
12
And so, just because all you have is a market's hammer
13
doesn't mean that everything is a nail.
14
ways to find other solutions and make them work to protect
15
customers.
16
We need to find
I mean we are not in this just about electricity.
17
We're in this to serve people, so let's think about how to
18
protect and serve them, not just about electricity for its
19
own sake.
20
Thank you.
MR. LAUBY:
And I wanted to mention that we need
21
to engage industry in a broader conversation around what the
22
design basis of the system of the future is really going to
23
be.
24
little better over here.
25
minus one would be the transmission line or a generating
And this picks up on what Neal was talking about a
That you know it used to be the N
145
1
station or plant, and then extreme conditions were something
2
you know, and now we're talking about common everyday
3
so-called extreme events that takes out wide swaths of
4
resources and so how do we then respond to that?
5
What is the design basis for that system?
And
6
that would add to kind of the different types of solutions
7
we're talking about, be it demand response, be it energy,
8
whatever.
9
that new design basis is given the transformation of this
We have to have a real open conversation of what
10
grid.
Not only in the next five years, but in the next 20
11
years, and then really talk about what that basis is and it
12
may be a little bit different depending on where you are,
13
what's going to be acceptable, but as we have to electrify
14
this country and become more and more dependent on
15
electricity, and in many ways that it can be generated, be
16
distributed, these smart grids or through long distance
17
generation and transmission.
18
We need to understand what that basis is going to
19
be so that we can ensure that we've built a system that will
20
serve the consumer's needs.
21
in this because we really care about the end user.
22
about reliability.
23
the North American continent.
24
25
As you know Alison says, we're
We care about the nation.
MR. VANDERBERG:
We care
We care about
Thank you Mark and that's
actually a great segue into the next question that I was
146
1
going to tee up for this group which is about the current
2
approach that we're taking to transmission planning, so I
3
want to shift gears a little bit and talk about transmission
4
planning.
5
know, the current approach that we have in the NERC
6
standards in TPL1 is a deterministic approach.
7
Mark as you were eluding to a minute ago, you
We have planned contingencies.
We have definite
8
performance criteria.
As Neal noted at the outset there is
9
a framework there to have entities look at these wide area
10
events, evaluate the potential impacts, but it is just that
11
as a framework.
12
basis, nor does it require any type of you know mandatory
13
corrective actions or anything to that affect, so the
14
question I wanted to pose to the panel is how should the
15
current deterministic approach that we are taking with the
16
transmission planning, how should that evolve in light of
17
the threats posed by extreme weather that we've been
18
talking about here?
19
20
21
It doesn't you know, establish that design
I think Richard was first followed by Devin, so
let's go in that order.
MR. TABORS:
Okay.
I think transmission planning
22
is a real bugaboo and I will take some responsibility for
23
having taken transmission and swept it under the rug when we
24
were doing the restructuring of the power industry and 808
25
little things like that, so I have some guilt on this.
147
1
On the other hand, I think that something that is
2
absolutely critical at this point is that until there's an
3
economic incentive for transmission owners to try and be
4
creative, and try and do things that are creative in terms
5
of operating efficiently, we're really stuck in a hole with
6
the ability to plan transmission.
7
I mean what it means today that we all agree is
8
wrong I think, is that what I have to do is I have to build
9
more wires and bigger wires in order to hook more things up,
10
when in fact we've got a ton of wires.
11
out how to run them and operate them more efficiently, which
12
there are technologies to do that as I said before.
13
Let's try and figure
So I think one of the issues with transmission
14
planning is to say what is it I'm trying to do?
15
Alison's raised this thing.
16
real question to go back to the drawing board and say you
17
know what is it that we expect transmission to do, where and
18
how do we want to evolve that process intelligently, and
19
effectively and efficiently.
20
Mark raised it.
And
I think it's a
Big word on efficiently.
Building transmission lines is expensive.
We've
21
got a whole lot of them and some of them aren't where we
22
want them, but a lot of them are where we want them.
23
we start with what we have because you can't sort of say oh,
24
I've got to build it from scratch.
25
How do
I'm sorry the chances of building it from scratch
148
1
are real close to zero.
Thanks.
2
MR. VANDERBERG:
3
MR. HARTMAN:
Thank you Devin?
Yeah I think this is a great
4
example of where we have deficiencies I the existing
5
planning process and factoring in climate considerations are
6
just going to be like all right, like more you know stronger
7
case in point now to reform this arena.
8
9
And I think you can kind of segment it into
interregional, regional, local, and I'll just make some high
10
level global observations so we can avoid you know some
11
region specific issues here.
12
evaluation perspective, because that might give a little bit
13
more to the deterministic question, we're seeing a couple
14
pronounced problems in transmission planning kind of
15
manifest in a few areas.
16
But I'll just say from an
So one is like we keep thinking that economic and
17
reliability considerations have to be siloed, and so we're
18
like constantly putting everything into an economic bin,
19
calculating those types of projects and doing that, and then
20
there's a reliability project bin and if we're going to have
21
this conversation and really move forward we need to start
22
talking about like the value of reliability is inherently
23
economic, and we need to start talking about co-optimizing
24
it, what we call limited economic benefits today, with the
25
broader reliability benefit.
149
1
And we're seeing that especially play out in the
2
regional processes, right?
3
side there's a few RTO experiments I think broadly everyone
4
would say interregional planning has been disappointing, but
5
as it relates to the -- approach, I'd emphasize that like
6
even a couple of the regions that have started to take next
7
steps to collaboratively work together are really struggling
8
to come up with a common set of benefits.
9
And then on the interregional
It's like the basic, like the rubric to even
10
define like how to proceed going forward.
11
even get like the more conventional benefits really ironed
12
out between regions, that's big, and I think that you do
13
inherently within the system have a bunch of fundamental
14
questions about for example how independent the RTOs are
15
going to be in the transmission planning process.
16
So if we can't
That's everything on the criteria upfront to
17
project selection, and then you -- we've got a framework
18
that looks at a lot of regulatory arbitrage occur in the
19
planning process, and then that's really still not also even
20
outside of the Order 1000 context when you look at some of
21
the most vulnerable areas to extreme weather and
22
transmission repercussions.
23
A lot of times you see a massive amount of
24
variance between the reliability performance within a single
25
region right.
We sort of have these chronic dead zones if
150
1
you will right.
2
have persisted for a long time now.
3
customer valuation of reliability manifested in the planning
4
process evenly across these spatial elements right.
5
And there's reason that those dead zones
We're not seeing
And we're seeing a systematic suppression of
6
competitive forces, and a lot of these competitive forces,
7
especially new entrants want to pair with end users, and I
8
think listening from transmission dependent utilities we're
9
really learning a lot more because they're tremendous case
10
11
studies.
But if you talk about extreme weather, those are
12
some of the most disaffected parties right now.
13
think about addressing transmission planning deficiencies at
14
those three scales is a great place to begin thanks.
15
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Devin.
16
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Thank you.
So overall
Alison?
So transmission
17
planning and it's inadequacies matter because the nation
18
cannot possibly achieve our decarbonization goals without
19
more transmission period.
20
existing transmission more efficient and effective, but that
21
doesn't change the fact that all of our most productive
22
renewable resource areas will need to be opened up through
23
new transmission.
24
25
Richard is right that we can make
And getting those to our greatest customer
concentrations, and where electrification will have the
151
1
greatest impact requires more transmission.
So more
2
transmission is non-negotiable for the sake of achieving
3
decarbonization.
4
the last panel, for a reliability point of view transmission
5
is an absolutely essential reliability tool and protector.
6
So it's not enough to just say -- to wring your
And as many of the panelists discussed on
7
hands and say we need more transmission.
We do need more
8
transmission, and it's very obvious that the current methods
9
aren't working, and the current processes and systems aren't
10
working.
11
say look, they aren't working we need something better.
12
So instead of trying to go incremental we need to
And that means starting fresh on a whole lot of
13
stuff and building on, but not being handcuffed by the
14
current systems that we have.
15
form of benefits definition that is significantly broader.
16
We need it to encompass what benefits do we measure.
17
We need a significantly new
We need it to count more benefits to more people.
18
And we need it to cover a much longer point in time.
And
19
this kind of needs to be consistent as well as the planning
20
processes and the metrics and the cost allocation tools need
21
to be consistent across both regional, intraregional and
22
interregional transmission because too many people are
23
getting screwed by the lack of transmission, and by the lack
24
of participation and representation in a lot of these
25
critical conversations and processes.
152
1
So just saying let's tweak around the edges is
2
not going to change this in any way, shape or form, that's
3
the definition of insanity.
We need much better tools.
4
need much better processes.
And we need to do a complete
5
shake the etch-o-sketch as one of my old bosses used to say
6
all the time, of transmission planning and my recommendation
7
for large intraregional and interregional is that we create
8
a national electric transmission authority that is
9
responsible for developing -- working with everybody in the
10
came to develop a lot of these tools and make them
11
applicable across the entire nation in every region.
12
We
Because if we just have the tyranny of every
13
state's small benefits, old-fashion calculation methods, we
14
are never going to break out of the permitting trap, or the
15
cost allocation trap, or the cost effectiveness trap.
16
think we need to just start fresh because we can't do decarb
17
without it.
So I
Thank you.
18
MR. VANDERBERG:
19
MR. HEINLE:
Thank you Alison.
Eric?
So to add on to what other folks
20
have said.
I think you know all the benefits of both inter
21
and intraregional transmission planning, whether it's
22
decarbonization, whether it's improve resiliency, they
23
simply can't happen unless or until the Commission I think
24
frankly, really steps up and looks at federal ways to
25
conduct transmission planning, encourages the RTOs to look
153
1
for more authority.
2
You know the RTOs they're called regional
3
transmission organizations.
4
planner.
5
planned in a very vulcanized way, it's planned state by
6
state, transmission zone by transmission zone, and perhaps
7
that works great for that state, or that transmission zone,
8
but it also then doesn't work to serve the region and
9
certainly not on a more national scale.
10
They should be the regional
But quite often when we see the transmission is
And so I think the Commission really needs to
11
look at really I would say invigorating Order 1000 and
12
looking for ways to encourage much more regional planning,
13
much more direction from the Commission, from the RTOs,
14
perhaps something like Alison suggested with a national
15
transmission planning authority.
16
consumer advocate it's always been a mystery why we look to
17
market to solve a lot of the issues with capacity, energy,
18
reliability.
19
I also think to me as a
But with transmission we still really rely on
20
right of first refusal, and sort of you know with few
21
exceptions, the transmission owners have sort of the you
22
know, an almost inherent in terms of redeveloping
23
transmission and again, you know, sometimes they make great
24
choices, sometimes they make less than good choices, but
25
prudence of user are very difficult to do.
154
1
So it's frankly very difficult from a consumer
2
perspective to challenge them.
3
you know, not only is this the right choice for this area,
4
but who's the right choice for the region you know
5
especially look at nine wires alternatives.
6
storage, again really we need the Commission to be a little
7
bit more invigorated.
8
9
And again it doesn't look at
Stuff like
We need RTOs to be a little bit more empowered to
direct the transmission for the region that they are
10
serving.
11
and then we can start looking at potential benefits of inter
12
and intraregional planning.
13
really going to be hard to capture those benefits.
14
15
16
So you know I think that's where we need to start,
MR. VANDERBERG
But before we do that it's
Thank you Eric.
Neal?
Neal if
you're speaking you're on mute.
MR. MILLAR:
Okay sorry about that.
I was going
17
to say this is where I was wanting to jump in such for a
18
minute because this is a concern for us in the west and in
19
the ISO in particular.
20
generalizations being spread about all ISO's do this, or all
21
RTO's do this, all transmission owners do this.
22
When I'm hearing broad
There are differences in the different areas and
23
those need to be taken into account.
California is a little
24
unique where CALISO has about 80 percent to the state inside
25
our footprint as well as the small portion of Nevada, so a
155
1
lot of people consider that to be a one state ISO.
Within
2
our region we believe our regional processes have been very
3
effective.
4
We do see they're at a reflection point where we
5
need to advance considerably more transmission to move past
6
the solar development that's gotten us to this point.
7
see we need an inflection point to build, to capitalize on
8
other resource diversity to move beyond the penetration of
9
renewables that we've achieved to this point, even with
We
10
augmenting the solar with considerable storage, we do need
11
to expand the diversity of the fleet and that is going to
12
take more transmission.
13
But those processes have been successful in
14
getting us to this point with quite a bit of transmission
15
being built to support them.
16
interregional side that's where some of the discussions have
17
gotten a bit bogged down, especially by parties who are
18
following the letter of Order 1000 when it came to
19
interregional planning.
20
Admittedly, on the
But we're largely doing that as the most that you
21
shall do as opposed to the floor of what you should do, and
22
then consider future opportunities beyond that.
23
look at competitive solicitation and incentives, we think
24
our competitor solicitation process has been extremely
25
successful.
When we
156
1
We've gone through that process for 12 major
2
projects that were put out for competitive procurement, and
3
7 of those went to independents, and 2 to consortiums that
4
included incumbents, but also included independents.
5
think those processes have been quite successful.
6
So I
So we get concerned when we hear the broad
7
generalizations made about a particular process is
8
completely broken.
9
that's something FERC should certainly take a look at, but
Well there may be cases of that and
10
that's where like I said applying a broad brush at times can
11
be a concern where people have different sorts of issues
12
that they're dealing with, and different sets of
13
circumstances.
14
15
16
MR. VANDERBERG:
Very good.
Thank you Neal.
Richard?
MR. TABORS:
Yeah just I just want to sort of
17
pick up on one of Alison's points, and also on Neal's.
I'm
18
in total agreement that effectively transmission has to be
19
handled regionally.
20
nature is that the ISO's that I work with, which tend to be
21
on the east coast, not California have -- are operating when
22
it comes to transmission you frequently have the feeling
23
that the ISO is owned by the transmission owners in the
24
sense of when you try and get something done you run smack
25
into try and get something true in ISO you run smack into
And my only comment of a negative
157
1
the transmission owners.
2
On a side they use a very different tack on this.
3
I'm in total agreement.
4
a plan.
5
to get interregional.
6
that in order to make any of the goals that any of the
7
states have at this point on decarbonization and the use of
8
transmission, we've got to use the existing transmission
9
more effectively than we do today.
10
I think with Alison that we've got
We've got to get it you know national, and it's got
I would really emphasize the fact
And we're just not doing it.
And so that's the
11
question of how do you go from where we are to a regional
12
interregional transmission system?
13
carbon impact of it, if what I'm really worried about is
14
carbon then the first answer is I got to run the system that
15
I have now better than I do.
16
The answer is -- and the
And oh, by the way, I've got a plan for the
17
future.
18
you're lucky.
19
system more efficient is a one to two year process.
20
get that one to two year process done and move ahead.
21
you.
22
23
24
25
Getting transmission built is a 10 year process if
Getting out there and making the transmission
MR. VANDERBERG:
Great.
Let's
Thank you Richard.
Thank
And
I believe Commissioner Clements has a question.
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Thanks Eric.
I wanted to
follow-up on Alison's proposal, appreciating everything that
158
1
got said from you know the demand side all the way up to
2
making the current system more efficient.
3
the need that Alison described if you accept her premise.
4
At some point to
And can you talk to me, provide some more
5
specificity Alison?
6
would do?
7
you thought about it enough to provide details around
8
whether or not it lives outside of the RTOs, or is connected
9
to them?
10
Is this something that the Commission
This national entity?
And would it be -- have
I'm just wondering if you have any more specifics.
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
I have a few specifics.
I've
11
been thinking about this and working on it with a few other
12
people.
13
I think there's plenty of room for improvement on these
14
ideas.
15
supported with the intellectual muscle and funds of the
16
Department of Energy because we know that many excellent
17
transmission and planning tools and things like benefits
18
analyses and methodologies have already come out of the
19
Department of Energy and are floating around.
20
And so we haven't worked out all the details yet.
It clearly needs to be empowered by FERC and
It's FERC's job to get transmission built by I
21
assume, or at least to find effective ways to plan and build
22
transmission.
23
to get appropriate participation, rooting, et cetera, and
24
identification of benefits and the cost allocation that
25
follows from that.
It's also FERC's commitment to figure out how
159
1
So I view it as FERC's job to figure out how to
2
whether it is frankly just and reasonable to use a bunch of
3
outmoded benefits calculation methods, and a bunch of overly
4
short horizon benefits timeframes, or cost allocation
5
methods that don't reflect the full scope of beneficiaries
6
from transmission, particularly interregional transmission
7
over not just a 10 or 20 year period, but a 40 or 50 year
8
period.
9
So I think there's a lot of room for FERC to
10
decide that maybe there is an opportunity and a need and
11
justification for broad sweeping reform of almost every
12
element of the transmission planning process.
13
Now clearly small local transmission processes
14
are working.
15
large intraregional in many cases, and large interregional
16
high-voltage transmission backbone is absolutely not
17
working, and so I think that if FERC thinks there is a
18
national benefit to making that happen, I think you have an
19
obligation to pull people together and figure out how to
20
make that happen, and what to do about it.
21
We know how to do that.
But equally clearly
The energy systems integration group is I believe
22
working up a paper that will be made public on this soon,
23
and I think also the folks at the -- Center have been
24
thinking about it a lot and doing some really good
25
foundational work on this question as well thank you.
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1
COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS:
Thank you and since you
2
brought it up I'll just lob one more question to you and
3
your fellow panelists before turning off my camera.
4
benefits question.
5
consequences, not causes.
6
The
You've spoken about thinking about
We all have there's been several comments
7
inferring that the determination of benefits investment
8
upfront may be different than who benefits from those
9
investments later and I'm just curious if you all could say
10
a little bit more about your thinking on how at least the
11
FERC and appreciating the split jurisdiction on a lot of
12
those questions, or at least multi-layered jurisdiction, how
13
we think about the part that is FERC jurisdictional.
14
Thanks.
15
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Well almost everything that's
16
reliability related is FERC jurisdictional, and that
17
includes things like whether we have -- whether Texas has
18
interconnection to the rest of the nation, and could have
19
gotten black start had we needed it.
20
no.
21
The answer is clearly
And so we could have been deeply out of luck had
22
we not come back from the brink by dropping 25 gig of
23
customer load.
24
of transmission is not merely that it is a supplement to
25
capacity or a way to bring in energy or ramping when you
The consequence of the fundamental benefit
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1
need it, it's that it creates this foundation of flexibility
2
and optionality.
3
Because again and again we find that we built
4
transmission for one reason, and it turns out to be valuable
5
for 12 others.
6
you know, we built CREZ to be able to develop renewables in
7
west Texas, and it's powering fracking.
8
fastest electric growth of the nation is in west Texas for
9
natural gas wells.
10
It's like the Swiss army knife of the grid,
Where some of the
You may not like them, but transmission
made that, enabled that development.
11
Again and again we build one thing for economics,
12
and it turns out to be reliability essential, or we built it
13
for reliability, and it turns out to lower everybody's
14
market power and delivered cost.
15
delivering.
16
credit to those optionality benefits, wholly apart from the
17
facilitation of decarbonization, or the reduction of market
18
power, and those kinds of things.
19
20
21
So even if we -- I don't think we give enough
And so there's a much broader set of benefits
that need to be recognized and accredited, thank you.
MR. VANDERBERG:
22
and Eric with hands raised.
23
on that question as well?
24
25
Transmission just keeps
MR. HARTMAN:
Thank you Alison.
I see Devin
Would you two like to weigh in
Sure and if it's okay Eric, I'd
like to chime in on the first question that Commissioner
162
1
Clements posed as well.
2
is very interesting because it addresses the institutional
3
question which I think really lies at the fundamental
4
element of how to fix interregional planning processes.
5
So first off I think Alison's idea
To a point Neal made earlier the quality of
6
transmission planning varies a lot by region.
CAISO, in my
7
opinion, does a lot of things better than some of the other
8
regions for what it's worth.
9
though it's very clear that something's broken, and just
When it comes to interregional
10
tinkering around the edges, we don't know how much benefit
11
we'll get out of that.
12
It's important keeping in mind to another point
13
that was raised that you know these are voluntary
14
organizations, largely where membership is driven by
15
incumbent transmission owners.
16
some favoritism to those incumbents.
17
admitted to that before, and so we have to rate the bottom
18
of the question to what extent do we actually have
19
independent transmission planning framework in place -- it's
20
actually for interregional right?
21
There's always going to be
RTO staff have even
And this problem hasn't even been isolated, just
22
the transmission to look at like what seems management
23
issues have been lingering in the state of the market's
24
reports or recommendations for market monitors for years
25
now.
A lot of this goes into interregional trade right?
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1
There's always going to be incumbent interests
2
that do not have some interest and enhancing the ability to
3
import power.
4
governance process, well we're going to have a challenge,
5
especially if RTOs consider on the first among equals.
6
And if there's a dominant player in the
And so I think that Alison's idea is one idea to
7
definitely address that institutional problem.
And then on
8
the benefit side part of it is to make sure that we're
9
holistically including all categories of transmission
10
benefits in the integrative process rather than the silo.
11
mentioned economic and reliability projects, but there's
12
also the public policy objectives of the state that Order
13
1000 acknowledges.
14
I
I know that in the past that's been controversial
15
in terms of how it's been viewed as legitimate by some past
16
leadership at FERC.
17
that as an exogenous and put that as something that is not
18
-- should not be in the judgment of the Commission to you
19
know, to validate or invalidate, but just to say things like
20
state's RPS policies are there.
21
going, and we need to be building that into the input rather
22
than kind of putting it in that separate bin all together.
23
I would stress the need to just treat
This is where they're
And so we really need to do a more integrated
24
cost of some of the benefits, the valuation side which will
25
really help the four regional.
It's helpful with
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1
interregional, but unless we address that fundamental
2
institutional dilemma, I'm not sure how many strides we can
3
make on that front.
4
MR. VANDERBERG:
5
MR. HEINLE:
Great thank you Devin.
Eric?
Thank you Eric and I also wanted to
6
address Commissioner Clements great question about cost
7
benefit.
8
old saying was reliability at least cost.
9
need to sort of maybe change that paradigm a little bit and
10
You know from a ratepayer standpoint you know the
And I think we
look instead for cost effective reliability, sustainability.
11
And part of reaching that is when you look at
12
something like transmission you look at the value of that
13
for example, it brings to decarbonization, and maybe you say
14
you know this transmission asset it's construction will
15
result in your know a cost of carbon reduction by such and
16
such.
17
And for that reason loads should be assigned
18
because they benefit from that reduction to that cost in the
19
transmission in addition to sort of traditional generator
20
pays for transmission upgrades.
21
a little more trickier to do with reliability and resilience
22
because as we've discussed here today, finding those metrics
23
for what creates reliability and resilience, and what the
24
value of reliability and resilience are, are a little more
25
difficult.
But I think also, and it's
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1
But I think you could do something again very
2
similar where you could say this transmission asset you
3
know, brings a certain level of reliability or resilience to
4
the system, and again that reliability and resilience has
5
value per load, and loads certainly pay for things that have
6
clearly defined benefits for it.
7
And again we have to make sure that those
8
benefits are clearly defined, and that you know the modeling
9
is reasonably good, but I think if we do that, that is one
10
way to address the cost allocation issue.
11
MR. VANDERBERG:
12
MR. TABORS:
Thank you Eric.
Richard?
Yeah just a real quick comment on
13
this one and that is that a lot of the work that we've been
14
doing lately in my world really does work on the stochastics
15
of resource adequacy, and one element of that is in fact the
16
ability to really price reliability provided by transmission
17
-- in other words, value economically the value that
18
transmission is providing, or I might indicate not providing
19
if you look at the economics of it.
20
21
22
So just a comment back to wherever Commissioner
Clements started that question.
MR. VANDERBERG:
Very good thank you Richard.
I
23
believe that is all the hand raises.
So we have about a
24
half hour left in our panel.
25
I want to make sure that the other Commissioners here have
Time is really flying, and so
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1
an opportunity to ask questions as well, so I'll turn to
2
Chairman Glick to see if he has any questions.
3
CHAIRMAN GLICK:
4
question at least, and maybe another.
5
maybe Richard you had mentioned earlier you talked about
6
earlier the need to make things in the transmission grid
7
more efficient in addition to going towards transmission
8
capacity.
9
Thank you Eric.
I did have one
But if I could start
And I agree with both points actually.
I was wondering in addition to dynamic line
10
ratings and in the ratings and so on, are there other things
11
we could be doing, or should be doing or looking at in terms
12
of improving the efficiency of the existing grid?
13
MR. TABORS:
I suspect the answer Mr. Chairman is
14
you know we work on topology optimization.
15
optimization is nothing more than -- I say nothing more,
16
very wise software that basically allows us to look at how
17
to reroute power through the transmission grid.
18
And topology
And so the answer in part is you know we know how
19
to do it.
We've known for a while how to do it, but the
20
question is how do you get -- how do you get the
21
transmission owner to say, or the transmission
22
owner/operator to say yes, we'll look at the alternatives
23
that you're bringing to us and then make a decision as to
24
whether from our analytic perspective, that's a good thing
25
to do, or not a good thing to do.
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1
So I think there's that channel down there, and I
2
think you know if you really were to raise a flag and say
3
hey, give me a bunch of good ideas about how to run the
4
transmission system more effectively, like I having I think
5
-- well like will occur with I suspect the technical
6
conference in maybe September, whenever the next one on
7
transmission is.
8
You know I think there are a lot of ideas.
There
9
are a lot of bright people running around out there that I'm
10
not convinced really look at this problem as being as truly
11
important as it is.
12
have, and we're not doing a very good job of operating them.
13
14
15
These are huge asset bases that we
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Richard.
I also see
Alison with her hand up.
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Thank you.
I need to support
16
11 years of my professional career by reminding us that
17
there's lots of synchrophasor data enabled analytical
18
solutions that can be used to operate the grid more
19
effectively.
20
And I also want to point out that we could be
21
using it -- at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we
22
could be using geographically and topologically targeted
23
energy efficiency and demand response to help decongest the
24
grid, and to improve voltage and deliver a lot of ancillary
25
services that would take some of the pressure off the
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1
transmission system.
2
3
Thank you.
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Alison.
No more hands
up Mr. Chairman.
4
CHAIRMAN GLICK:
Thanks Eric.
Actually Alison,
5
that's a very good segue into my second and probably final
6
question which is you've mentioned earlier the importance of
7
energy efficiency and I agree wholeheartedly with what you
8
said.
9
extremely important element that we're going to be spending
10
a lot of time with over the next year or so, but you know I
11
think there's a dichotomy and you know this better than
12
anybody, between you know the items we have authority over
13
at FERC, of course the items the states have.
14
Obviously, transmission is an
So it's not just energy efficiency, it's also
15
DERs behind the meter, generation facilities that don't
16
necessarily compete or participate in the wholesale markets,
17
but also who do play a huge role addressing resource
18
adequacy and reliability issues, especially in terms of
19
improving our resilience in the face of extreme weather.
20
I'm wondering, you know you've actually worked
21
with FERC, you obviously spent a lot of time on the state
22
side as well.
23
as to how we could address those issues given our
24
jurisdictional constraints and limitations?
25
I was wondering if you had any advice for us
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
One consideration is a long
169
1
time ago when I was at FERC, one of the things that we did
2
was to -- we were trying to solve the southwest congestion
3
issue.
4
transmission built, one of the things that we actually did
5
was to tell the ISO New England that they could build
6
transmission, but if we all truly believed that energy
7
efficiency and demand response were valid alternatives, as
8
non-wired solutions, then anything that they did within on
9
energy efficiency and demand response significantly
And because it was taking a long time to get new
10
alleviated that transmission constraint that they could
11
implement within the same period as the transmission
12
approvals were pending would be uplifted.
13
That they could implement it and those costs
14
would be uplifted across all of New England customers in the
15
same way that the corresponding transmission solution would
16
have been.
17
state regulators who are going to be bearing the costs of
18
new transmission that FERC approves, that there are multiple
19
ways to skin these cats, and that there are three sets of
20
costs that need to be compared.
21
That's one possibility.
Another is to remind
One of them is the classic transmission and
22
supply side solution.
The second is the -- what are the
23
non-wire supply alternatives or compliments that can help
24
make this happen, and the third is if we can't do any of
25
these how bad could it get?
And invite people to compare
170
1
these three sets of costs and consequences, and pick their
2
poison.
3
Because if we can achieve solutions that combine
4
non-wire solutions and transmission and clean energy
5
solutions on the supply side, with a significantly better
6
benefits on lower cost solution then getting into the
7
climate change and disaster car wreck that's going to cause
8
the kinds of human and social and economic costs that we saw
9
here in Texas in February.
10
If I were back in my state regulator role I would
11
be pretty willing to help make some of those energy
12
efficiency side solutions happen.
13
having the option to help control that fate.
14
ordered by the federal Congress -- hypothetically assuming
15
that Congress were willing to act, it would be ideal to be
16
able to design our own fate and pick our own preferred
17
solutions rather than just saying you're not the boss of me,
18
and let my people sit in the cold rather than be protected.
19
Thank you.
And I would also prefer
If to being
20
CHAIRMAN GLICK:
Thank you.
21
MR. VANDERBERG:
Does anyone else want to comment
22
on that?
23
Neal and then I see Eric and Devin with their hand raised
24
also, so Neal first then Eric and Devin.
25
I believe Neal has his hand raised, so let's go to
MR. MILLAR:
Yes.
And thank you for the chance
171
1
to comment on this.
2
considerable emphasis on energy efficiency.
3
capture demand response programs in a way they can
4
effectively help, not only on a system-wide basis, but we
5
also employ demand response programs in our local resource
6
planning as well, so very heavy emphasis on those programs.
7
Obviously, like in California there's
Trying to
That being said though we are also expecting
8
increased electrification both in transportation as well as
9
buildings, that despite those efforts we do see upward
10
pressure on our load forecast going forward, and we do think
11
that will put increased pressure on the transmission system
12
to deliver, as well as access the need to access other types
13
of resources that we currently can't capture with the
14
transmission system we have.
15
Offshore wind, out of state wind projects and so
16
forth will push beyond the existing systems capability.
17
while we put a great deal of emphasis on those other
18
alternatives on the demand side, whether it's energy
19
efficiency, demand response programs, we do see that we are
20
going to have to be pushing the boundaries and getting some
21
additional transmission built to capitalize and to allow
22
those other industries to decarbonize.
23
So
We just can't get there with the measures that
24
have gotten us to this point.
So I just wanted to be clear
25
about that, so I hope that helps.
Thank you.
172
1
MR. VANDERBERG:
Okay.
Thanks.
I think Devin
2
we're going to go to Devin and Eric and then I know Alison
3
wants to circle back and make a clarification after that.
4
So let's go to Devin and Eric.
5
MR. HARTMAN:
Sure.
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I
6
think it's encouraging to hear the DER/general demand side
7
of the equation being brought up in all of this.
8
think it's one of the big lessons learned through the Texas
9
and California here recently too, where a lot of the initial
And I
10
conversation was very fixated on what went wrong on the
11
supply side.
12
But going forward as much as a reliability policy
13
conversation has to be on the demand side.
14
colleague of the former ERCOT market would have been great
15
on this is the fall out of Texas, and we've fortunately been
16
able to get a lot of traction on it.
17
Alison and my
It is for the Commission given jurisdictional
18
elements, but going forward there's a few principles that
19
would really be helpful going forward and that's thinking
20
about the Commission's role of going forward and
21
systematically identifying how to reduce barriers to entry,
22
information asymmetries and transaction costs, especially as
23
it relates to really all forms and DERs, but also being more
24
cognizant than we have the potential to unlock so many
25
opportunities to provide a physical hedge to reliability.
173
1
But historically it always had to be industrial
2
CHP or pretty much nothing else.
3
portion of technology has emerged, and really the
4
reliability value of investments is so much greater
5
downstream, and the ability for a lot of these entities to
6
physically hedge just needs to be there, and it's very
7
important for the system overall.
8
help also on the resilient side from the bounce back angle
9
too.
10
Now we're seeing just a
And a lot of them can
So there's a ton of opportunity to manage
11
emerging reliability threats better with emerging
12
technology, and the last point I'll really make is when we
13
think about tangible forms especially for DR we need to
14
think about more opportunities for unlocking both economic
15
DR, as well as emergency DR.
16
And one of the things that we missed out on in
17
the economic side I should say, we're looking at both the
18
supply side treatment of it, DR as a supply side equivalent
19
which is naturally difficult because it's an imperfect
20
substitute for generation in many forms, but also really get
21
in deep DR we need to think about cultivating pressure on
22
the demand, and that goes into the overarching constructs
23
behind the role of energy and ancillary services and
24
capacity as well.
25
And then on the emergency side, what we really
174
1
need to be thinking about a bare minimum, starting to have
2
better emergency protocols that can isolate and control
3
power flows better to high value those uses, both to avoid
4
outages for the customers that value it the most, but then
5
also making sure that the ones that were the value of
6
offload is very duration sensitive, that we can get those
7
customers prioritized on the restoration side.
8
9
So there's really both a massive amount of work
that can be done on this front, and it's huge both for
10
adjusting to avoid the more extreme weather, as well as
11
integrating those type of technologies that are going to
12
help assist in decarbonizing, thank you.
13
MR. HEINLE:
Chairman Glick thank you for the
14
question and I think you know at the risk of I'm a state
15
employee, so at the risk of getting in trouble for blurring
16
the states and federal boundaries that we certainly support,
17
the Commission can play an important role incenting.
18
Resources like DR, DER storage and you now it did a great
19
job with Order 841, Order 2222, those were significant steps
20
forward in breaking down barriers for these resources to
21
participate in the market.
22
But you know I think we need to look at other
23
options and other ways to again encourage those resources.
24
We talked a lot about incentives from the supply side with
25
respect to capacity markets, with respect to energy markets.
175
1
We also need to look at incentives for load side
2
participation and response to operations in the grid.
3
You know we should explore whether there are
4
options in terms of islanding that also makes sense for the
5
Commission to encourage through an order that might be
6
similar to 2222 or 841.
7
at ways to incent the states to do the right thing.
8
And so I think really again looking
I think most states want to do the right thing,
9
and providing the basis for the state commissions then to go
10
to their respective ratepayers and say you know, we now have
11
a concept that allows us to support these behind the meter
12
resources and these load resources as a way to hedge against
13
extreme weather and other resilience factors.
14
So again I think creating the right incentives,
15
the right atmosphere and opportunities for those resources
16
to you know really flourish is something the Commission can
17
do, so thank you.
18
19
20
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Eric.
And back to
Alison.
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Thank you and to close out this
21
important question Mr. Chairman, I want to be the first to
22
acknowledge the customer side, demand side resources are not
23
going to -- or distributed energy resources broadly, will
24
never obviate the need for more transmission and generation.
25
Let's be absolutely frank about that.
176
1
But I like Devin's framing of demand and DER
2
fixes as a physical hedge for reliability, and let me be
3
more explicit about that.
4
like energy efficiency keep customers alive against the
5
almost certain consequences of grid failure.
6
the grid is going to fail again, and again, and again.
7
For resilience purposes measures
And we know
Whether it's local, whether it's a city or
8
whether it's God forbid another ERCOT.
So with increasing
9
heatwaves, increased higher temperatures, colder cold, more
10
flooding, anything that we can do to change customer
11
premises to keep them alive when the grid fails for whatever
12
reason is an investment that is probably worth doing.
13
The other reason that these resources have value
14
is we can do them faster than we can do transmission sadly,
15
which those of you who have done energy efficiency know it's
16
not fast or easy, but God knows it's faster as PV and
17
storage and a lot of other things, and building new
18
interregional transmission.
19
So that doing more energy efficiency and
20
distributed resources gives us time.
It reduces stress on
21
the grid.
22
air-conditioners, and more energy efficient heaters, we
23
lower the odds of the next summer heatwave failure, or the
24
next ERCOT disaster, because we've lessened demand at that
25
peak.
Every time we do more energy efficient
177
1
And given us more tools to stabilize with demand
2
flexibility, and it gives us more time to figure out how to
3
work this whole new set of markets and resources that are
4
new to all of us frankly, and we are in unstudied space.
5
So the more that we can use demand side resources
6
and distributed resources to buy time and destress the
7
supply side in the operation of the grid, the better off
8
we're all going to be.
9
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GLICK:
Thank you.
I just wanted to
10
follow-up on that point.
11
first of all.
12
new transmission capacity, but it does take time.
13
an easy issue.
14
include efficiency, behind the meter generation, demand
15
response, but also as Richard mentioned earlier, making the
16
existing grid more efficient, or operating the existing grid
17
more efficiently.
18
I agree with you wholeheartedly
We definitely need a significant amount of
It's not
We need to look at alternatives which
So I think you know kind of all of the above
19
situation, but I think we have a big challenge on our hands,
20
and I think we need to figure out a way to take advantage of
21
all of our options.
22
Thank you Eric.
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you.
At this time I'll
23
just ask any other Commissioner questions?
No.
Okay.
Well
24
we are actually near the end of the panel.
We have about 15
25
minutes left, so one thing I would like to do as we look
178
1
towards closing would be just to go through all of our
2
panelists and again, we have a couple of our Commissioners
3
here today with us, and I know it's difficult, but I wanted
4
to see if we can boil it down to one or two things that we
5
should take away -- we being this Commission, as action
6
items from this discussion.
7
If folks are able to kind of boil it down to kind
8
of one or two action items that we should take away from
9
this I think very informative wide-ranging discussion that
10
would be really helpful to kind of personalize what we've
11
heard today.
12
start with Judith.
13
So interested to hear from everyone, so I will
MS. CURRY:
Okay thank you.
I guess from my
14
perspective from the weather and climate space, I'll
15
reiterate the point that there's a lot of information out
16
there on the table that's not being adequately used from the
17
weather forecasts to information about future scenarios, not
18
just from the climate model, but there's a lot more that we
19
know about the climate system in terms of natural
20
variability and things that we can expect in the coming
21
decades.
22
In terms of what we understand about the climate
23
system we're on much more comfortable ground going out 30
24
years in the future, since we're talking about going out to
25
2100 it's much more uncertain.
So the extent that we can
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1
take advantage of the greater confidence that we have in our
2
understanding of how the next 30 years might play out, I
3
think would be a useful focus because that's the lifetime of
4
a lot of infrastructure, and certain things.
5
I mean we don't need to figure out what's going
6
to happen in 2100.
7
weather time scale, and here's where the probabilistic
8
forecast comes in, we have information out to week three,
9
you know, probabilities.
10
11
And the other point is you know on the
I mean our understanding and our
confidence increases as we get closer.
But there's a lot of information there that can
12
be used in the context of decision-making, whether it's
13
probabilistic based decision-making, or whether it's tied to
14
operational things, or scheduled maintenance for power
15
plants, things like that.
16
You know paying attention to a possible cold wave
17
in week three with all those power plants in Texas being
18
down for maintenance, that's something that the information
19
was there to say don't shut those power plants down for
20
maintenance.
21
information out there that we can make better use of you
22
know in the sort of climate and weather space.
23
So again, just to reiterate, there's a lot of
MR. VANDERBERG:
Great, thank you Judith.
24
we'll go to Neal followed by Mark.
25
MR. MILLAR:
Thank you.
Next
First, I'd just like to
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reiterate and especially point to some of the comments made
2
by panelists in the first session, that the climate change
3
adaptation covers a whole range of activities from detailed
4
engineering efforts around standards for construction and so
5
forth, through transmission planning all the way to the
6
longer term resource planning activities.
7
just a single topic, this is a whole spectrum.
8
9
So this isn't
And that the climate change considerations need
to really be baked into processes whether they're fine as
10
they are, or need to be redesigned.
11
considerations need to be baked into all of those planning
12
processes, so that we're reliable at every stage of the way.
13
These kinds of
And in doing that we also need to make sure that
14
we, like I said, and I know that I mentioned this before,
15
but we really need to take into account the local challenges
16
that people are dealing with that are specific to the
17
geography as opposed to applying broad brush solutions that
18
cause additional work without necessarily addressing the
19
challenges that that area itself is experiencing.
20
So that's just one of our major concerns we keep
21
coming back to on trying to effectively integrate climate
22
change adaptation into the rest of the transmission design,
23
planning, and resource planning considerations.
24
you for the opportunity to speak on the panel today.
25
appreciate it.
And thank
We do
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MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Neal.
If I may I'd
2
like to follow-up on one thing you said really quickly.
3
Baking in you know climate change into all aspects of the
4
assessment process.
5
that?
6
ISO, at least to some extent, so could you just unpack that
7
a little bit more?
Can you talk a little bit more about
It sounds like that's something you've done at the
8
MR. MILLAR:
Well one example for is -- sure,
9
I'll touch on two quick examples.
One that was specific to
10
climate change is our consideration of the need for a more
11
diverse resource fleet that California has done a lot of
12
decarbonization over the last decade focusing on solar
13
resources, and now augmenting with storage.
14
We do see thought that that caps out with this
15
inflection point where we need to access other types of
16
resources.
17
review of what all the modeling techniques tell you is the
18
right solution.
19
dealing with today I doubt can ever be successfully built
20
into a probabilistic analysis.
21
And that's where we need to apply a second
Because a lot of the parameters we're
You know if you try to calculate the odds of a
22
forest fire being so severe it creates its own weather
23
system.
24
that have to be considered at some level, just won't find
25
their way through a probabilistic analysis to actually
Like these kinds of issues that are real to us, and
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1
affect an outcome.
2
So that's where we see that we always need to
3
also apply that pragmatic consideration of what your models
4
are telling you to land on a path forward.
5
something we did employ, but it was for a different cause,
6
but we did employ this type of technique looking at the San
7
Francisco greater Bay area, and looking at earthquake risks.
8
9
This is
Where the obvious solution was to start building
more transmission.
But what it really led to was a hard
10
main, instead of the main grid, a hardening of the
11
sub-transmission system which is where the vulnerabilities
12
actually is arrested.
13
scenarios of extremes of earthquake events.
14
And that involved looking at various
So this type of consideration being applied above
15
the conventional planning process we think is critical.
16
it's not a replacement.
17
mill the ball on an N minus 1 outage, and cause a disruption
18
in an area, that's going to haunt us too.
19
well as, not instead of.
20
And
After all is said and done if we
MR. VANDERBERG:
So this is as
Thanks Eric.
Yeah, thank you Neal.
Very good
21
point.
22
an N minus 1 outage, it caused a big blackout, so we
23
certainly can't take our eye off the ball there either, so.
24
Let's go to Mark, followed by Devin.
25
We are not that far removed from 2011 where we had
MR. LAUBY:
I have two points. One is of course
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1
start looking again at planning in the three timeframes.
2
And certainly, we're looking at long term as some of the
3
bookends, consider in back in the day what happens if all
4
nuclear plants have shut down?
5
scenarios look like so that you can make a plan around those
6
and to a sensible resource mix that's going to deliver the
7
energy, the reliability services, and the ramping that
8
you're going to need.
9
Look at what those kinds of
And it can be a multitude of different solutions,
10
including transmission, energy efficiency, all the whole
11
host that we talked about and more.
12
shorter term start planning that season ahead and use all
13
the tools available to you and of course in the day of, and
14
have a rolling 21 day because you get more information as
15
you go forward, so think about that framework, and build new
16
methods and tools and planning around those.
17
And then from more of a
Second it's a design basis.
What we have today,
18
and what we've been designing to is not I don't think going
19
to be acceptable in the future in the reliability of the
20
future when we have a society that is very much electrified,
21
very much dependent on good, clean, affordable electricity.
22
We need to understand what those implications,
23
are, how we mix the smart grids with the long distance
24
transmission we're talking about and the energy efficiency
25
and all that, how we tie that all in to be able to get to a
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1
design
basis that delivers the kind of reliability security
2
resilience that we expect in the grid.
3
MR. VANDERBERG:
4
MR. HARTMAN:
Thank you.
Thank you Mark.
Thank you.
Devin?
I think climate change
5
simply makes a more compelling case to do a better job but
6
for reliability policy.
7
down to a couple simple concepts that are a little bit
8
harder to execute in practice.
9
thought infused into all of our reliability institutions,
10
Plain and simple.
And that boils
One is getting economic
and decision-making processes.
11
And then the second point is getting our
12
reliability institutions better coordinated.
To the first
13
point for example, if you're talking about a design basis
14
for future standards to Mark's point.
15
in standards development or the reconsideration of standards
16
in the NERC domain, we need to factor in at least for a
17
major consideration an objective of trying to maximize net
18
benefits to consumers.
If you're developing
19
That's ultimately who we care about.
But then
20
also on the coordination side we need to talk -- we need to
21
recognize that there is an increasing codependence between
22
all these different sets of actors that influence the
23
investment and asset management of both the generation side,
24
transmission as well as in the downstream distribution and
25
DER space.
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1
And right now there's such confusion of what
2
institutions are responsible for what, and a lot of this
3
came out in response to the California and Texas events.
4
really stepping up to make sure that we can get better
5
higher-quality information and coordination infused within
6
all the players in those eco-systems across all the
7
different types of reliability policy instruments would be
8
incredibly important for the grid of the future, thank you.
9
10
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Devin.
So
We'll go to
Alison and then Richard.
11
MS. SILVERSTEIN:
Thank you.
I wanted to build
12
on what Devin was saying in a different way.
13
things he was saying was we need planning methods to be
14
consistent, and we need them to be improved.
15
hard me say I think that needs to start with benefits,
16
methods and metrics identification.
17
start working with the Department of Energy and its
18
components to start thinking about some of the elements I
19
suggested for the scope of a national electric transmission
20
authority and what it might do to improve broadly planning
21
methods, benefits, calculations et cetera.
22
One of the
And as you've
And I encourage FERC to
The second thing is again that stuff is going to
23
happen.
I reframed that from the classic framing.
Stuff is
24
going to happen on the grid, and it's going to fail big.
25
It's going to fail small.
It's going to fail for a number
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1
of reasons, including climate change and normal weather
2
variability.
3
And so, as well as gas cyberthreats and a whole
4
lot of other stuff that we keep thinking should be worse
5
than it is, and I'm surprised that we haven't had cyber take
6
down the entire grid already.
7
invest hard and push hard all of the no regrets insurance
8
and mitigation measures because we need stuff that's going
9
to pay off every single day against every single threat, not
So I think that I beg you to
10
just the mitigation measures that are big expensive
11
hardening one off's.
12
We probably need some of them, and I'm sure
13
they'll be cost-effective against whatever it is, but
14
there's so many other things that you can do to keep us safe
15
every single day, and that are going to pay off with bill
16
savings and job creation, and people's lives.
17
shouldn't have to wait for big heroic measures to get those
18
kinds of benefits.
And we
Thank you.
19
MR. VANDERBERG:
20
MR. TABORS:
Thank you Alison.
Okay.
Richard?
Two points I guess.
One is
21
that I'll follow-up on something Judith said which is that
22
we're not using information that's available very
23
effectively, and I think the example I would use is that we
24
work with IBM the weather company where we get 4 kilometer
25
by 4 kilometer grid weather forecasting information off of
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1
what we use about 20 variables for forecasting, both wind
2
and solar.
3
So there's just a tremendous amount of
4
information there that's available that generally speaking
5
is not being used in a coordinated fashion.
6
is that essentially I think we really need to work and
7
develop better use of scenarios, and I use a terrible
8
example from years ago when I was working with colleagues on
9
oil forecasting, and that was you know forecasting oil
10
And the second
prices, looking at what happened historically.
11
And in our case, forecasting anything historical
12
is a little bit like driving down Pike's Peak looking only
13
in your rearview mirror.
14
So thank you for allowing me to be part of this today.
15
16
It just doesn't work very well.
MR. VANDERBERG:
All right.
Thank you Richard.
And 5:45 turning to Eric to take us home, thank you Eric.
17
MR. HEINLE:
Okay.
Thank you Eric and I'll be
18
quick and leave everybody with just two thoughts.
First,
19
again let's look to least cost options first, you know the
20
nice benefit of them is they are often also the quickest to
21
implement.
22
coordination, which certainly I think can help benefit
23
things like potential gas generation outages is broad as
24
that is it's probably easier to do that than to build a
25
bunch of new pipelines and a bunch of new gas storage.
Whether something like an improved gas electric
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1
Looking at as other panelists have mentioned.
2
Making sure we're using all the information that we have,
3
all the data we have to informed RTO and utility operations
4
so that they are best prepared to mitigate these.
5
suggesting that information and coordination alone will
6
solve all of our problems, but before we go the next step,
7
and you know and put iron in the ground let's make sure
8
we're taking advantage of what we have on the system and
9
using it as offensively as possible.
10
And not
And then the last point is please keep the
11
consumer involved.
12
opportunity to participate in today's panel.
13
being at the table.
14
not just sort of in the planning and the discussion and the
15
modeling, but keep us involved in helping mitigate these
16
issues through consumer side tools like demand response,
17
DERs, all the sorts of behind the meter things.
18
Again, I really appreciate the
Consumers like
We have a lot to add, and keep involved
Make sure those are incentivized correctly.
Make
19
sure the barriers are reduced, so that consumers can you
20
know, participate.
21
everything whether it's you know new investments, or the
22
cost of an outage, and so consumers really should be at the
23
center of solving all these issues as well, so thank you
24
again.
25
Ultimately consumers bear the costs for
MR. VANDERBERG:
Thank you Eric and thank you to
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1
everybody.
2
just want to one more time say to all of our panelists for
3
participating, we had an excellent discussion.
4
incredibly information and so I want to again thank you for
5
taking time out of your busy days to join us for this very
6
helpful technical conference.
7
That brings us to the end of our time today.
It was
So with that thank you to everybody and we will
8
reconvene tomorrow afternoon for the next set of panels.
9
Thank you.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
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25
I
(Whereupon the technical conference adjourned at
5:47 p.m. to reconvene the next day at 1:00 p.m.)
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CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER
2
3
This is to certify that the attached proceeding
4
before the FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION in the
5
Matter of:
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Name of Proceeding:
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Technical Conference to Discuss Climate Change,
8
Extreme Weather & Electric System Reliability
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10
11
12
13
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15
Docket No.:
AD21-13-000
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Place:
Washington, DC
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Date:
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
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were held as herein appears, and that this is the original
19
transcript thereof for the file of the Federal Energy
20
Regulatory Commission, and is a full correct transcription
21
of the proceedings.
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Gaynell Catherine
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Official Reporter
| File Type | application/pdf |
| Author | Mark Jagan |
| File Modified | 2021-06-07 |
| File Created | 2021-06-07 |