Weekly Wrap Up — Feb. 18, 2022

Listen in as Dan Catchpole and Jason Fordney discuss highlights from February 11-18 in the energy industry on the west coast and northwest.

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NewsData's "People in Power" is an exciting new biweekly podcast that explores issues in the energy industry, featuring expert guests from a wide range of backgrounds. Hosted by veteran energy journalists Jason Fordney and Abigail Sawyer of California Energy Markets and including appearances by writers from sister publication Clearing Up, People in Power will explore trends such as development of a Western wholesale electricity trading market, the transition to a more electrified world of new infrastructure and transportation, renewables integration and reliability, wildfire response and mitigation, and many other topics. "People in Power" draws from an unprecedented pool of expertise and insight in a way never seen before! It's available on all major podcast platforms as well as at www.newsdata.com.

Intro:
Welcome to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about the energy
industry today and where it's going tomorrow.

Dan Catchpole:
Welcome everybody, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Dan Catchpole, reporter with NewsData's Clearing Up, joined
by my colleague Jason Fordney, editor at

California Energy Markets.

Jason, how are you doing today?

Jason Fordney:
Good, Dan, how's it going?

Dan Catchpole:
I'm doing well, thanks.

And wJason and I are here today to do our weekly wrap up of our
latest stories from NewsData and to help listeners be a little

smarter, a little quicker about what's going on in the energy
industry in the West, in the northwest and California and

beyond. Yeah, Jason.

Things are good down there in California?

Jason Fordney:
Yeah, we're doing pretty well.

We're really hopeful for some snow.

Our snowpack here is rapidly melting.

It's creating a lot of concern.

I live at about 5,000 feet and yeah, it's almost gone.

So we need something here in the next five weeks or so.

They call it the March miracle, and we definitely need one.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, I'm trying to think of some NCAA March Madness, but it's
just not there quick enough.

I'm a step slow today, apparently.

Sorry, sorry, listeners.

I'll do better next week.

Yeah, I think we're actually there's, you know, in a rare twist,
Seattle might get a little snow on

Monday, which is when this should be going on the web.

It might be up before then, but.

So we've got some big developments this week in the energy
industry, in the Northwest.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is wading into,
considering wading into, one of the most contentious issues in

the region: the potential breaching of the Lower Snake River
dams.

These are four dams that are federally owned, operated as part
of the giant hydropower system in the Columbia River Basin

that's really the backbone of the region's energy system.

But there's a lot of debate over whether these dams are actually
worth the investment and the

money they spent on them, and also considering what they do to
the salmon and steelhead populations that have been struggling

for decades in the Columbia River basin.

So there's been a growing chorus of voices calling for removing
the dams, coming largely from environmental advocates

and also fishermen, fish-women...

Jason Fordney:
Fisher-people

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, fisher-people, not to be confused with Fisher Price people,
but I'm going to get like angry emails from the

fishing community now.

So this is, like I said, been a very contentious issue.

Representative Mike Simpson from Idaho came out with a plan to
take the dams down, which as a Republican, was very

unexpected. This was a couple of years ago, met with a lot of
controversy, but it certainly fueled

talk. And now the Northwest Power and Conservation Council is
considering doing an exhaustive, possibly as long as two year

study of figuring out the energy impacts of removing the dams
and how that would affect the region

and what it would take to replace the generation from those
dams.

But also, you know what they do for integrating renewables and
balancing the system and all the ancillary services they provide.

That's the study won't look, though, at things like its benefit
to navigation and

economic benefit from that, irrigation, recreation, all these
other things that are federally mandated as part of the values of

the federally recognized values of the hydro system.

So it's a very the council's being very clear that we're just
looking at the energy thing.

This is not...

We're not going to weigh in on whether they should be removed or
not.

We're just trying to give it an accurate picture of what would
happen to the energy system if we took these dams out.

So they're considering it.

They'll come back in March, make a decision.

They've already received a flood of comments and calls.

Lots of people weighing in real quickly, saying, Do it, don't do
it, have you?

Either way, they're very well aware, the council members, that
there, if they undertake this, they are putting a target on

their backs. There are few issues that temperatures rise as
quickly around this issue in the Northwest.

So beyond that, speaking of the council, they also approved
their regional power plan this past week.

They're mandated to come out with a regional power plan every
six years.

They started after the Whoops Fiasco in the early 80s.

And this plan, though, is unlike any other one that's come before
it in that it's envisioning a future that is rapidly changing.

And really the term they kept using, and a very apt term, is a
new paradigm, going from

thermals and hydropower to lots of renewables, lots of
renewables,

and hydropower and demand response.

You know, peak shaving, load shifting, flexibility, hopefully
some more transmission.

I mean, they're forecasting 401 gigawatt buildout by 2040.

So I'll just let that sink in again.

401 gigawatts.

237 gigawatts by 2030.

That's eight years away.

237 gigawatts.

What like about 5% of that, even a little less maybe is natural
gas.

So there's some natural gas, but yeah, it's some really mind
boggling numbers.

And then beyond that, speaking of the dams, we actually have a
little bit of good news in the fish world, fish conservation

world, which matters, of course, for the power system because
the Columbia River Hydro Power System is constrained

by fish and wildlife mitigation measures.

And so if this salmon and steelhead populations have been
struggling for decades and so the river systems operate, the

hydro power systems operated, to help try to get those
populations healthier.

So in the good news, though, as reported by my colleague Casey
Mahaffey, fish biologists from state and tribal agencies

in Washington say that they're winning the battle to stop
northern pike from spreading downstream to where salmon and

steelhead breed in the Columbia River.

So the northern pike are just voracious eaters, and they were
illegally brought into the state, and if they spread

below Grand Coulee Dam, they could just decimate the salmon and
steelhead populations, which are listed as endangered species.

And if they get down there into their breeding grounds, they'll
just gobble up all those juvenile salmon and

steelhead. And so that's you know, hey, if we can win that
battle and keep those northern pike

away from there, that is good news for those fish populations
and God knows they need a little good news.

Let's see. In the statehouse in Washington, state democrats want
to pass a $16 billion transportation package that

includes strong clean energy and climate elements that would
stretch out, the spending would stretch out to

2038. The package would implement the Move Ahead Washington
Initiative to bolster clean transportation

and make investments in transportation, electrification and
transit electrification and so on.

So they've struggled to get transportation package through.

We'll see how that goes.

And BPA had a better first quarter of their fiscal year than
expected, and now they're forecasting much

higher year end net revenues for the agency.

They've raised it from 178 million dollars to 456 million
dollars.

Now, finances have been an issue for BPA in recent years, and
they've really made a lot of progress in terms of getting their

costs down and stabilizing their financial situation and managed
to pay down some of their debt.

And so that's more good news for them.

So also, in some other good news, we've just got lots of good
news that we're passing around.

This is a great, great issue.

I'm better than some others where you just feel like you're
bringing rain clouds everywhere.

Northwest utilities are some of the most affordable, reliable
and environmentally responsible.

That's according to a new ranking from the Citizen Utility Board
of Illinois.

So the board ranked Washington, Idaho and Oregon all in the top
five of overall utility performance.

Montana finished in 14th, which solid performance.

Nevada took the top spot overall.

Washington and Oregon finished first and second, respectively, in
the environmental category.

Idaho came in fifth.

Montana came in 21st.

They also all had good strong showings and the affordability
category.

Thank you, thanks to that cheap federal hydropower system.

The utilities did not do as well on reliability, ranking much
further down on the overall or

much, much further down than their other showings.

But they did not finish as poorly as California did, right,
Jason.

Jason Fordney:
Yes, California did not fare well in the reliability category.

I guess that's not a huge surprise.

We have everything from wildfire related outages to our infamous
public safety power shutoffs.

In fact, California finished 51st on average time to restore
power per customer with

major event days.

One thing I did notice here is that if you have a lot of longer
outages, it obviously pulls this score down.

And we have a lot of long outages.

For average frequency of power outages with major event days and
ranked 23rd and 15th for power

outages. That would be restoring power during outages without
major events days.

California's overall reliability ranking using those metrics and
others was 36,

so not outstanding.

California didn't do well on affordability, either.

Ranking electricity costs lowest to highest per kilowatt hour for
all customers.

It ranked 47th came in 46th place in that same measure for
residential customers.

Its ranking for annual household electricity expenditures was
16th.

We did do well in total household electricity costs as a
percentage of income, finishing 8th at

1.5%. And I'm not a, you know, statistics is not my specialty,
but I assume with a

little bit higher income in California, that's how that
happened.

The California's overall affordability ranking, which is an
average of all those, was 22nd

overall. The overall finish on utility performance, which is a
combined score for affordability, reliability

and environmental responsibility.

Some of this data was from 2019, some from 2020, we finished
24th.

One thing to note on affordability is, as the study points out,
it's more about bills than it is rates.

And California, with relatively low demand per customer because
of rooftop

solar, you know, the bills ranking is not not quite as dramatic
as the rate.

It's no secret we have high rates here in California.

One other interesting takeaway is the researchers said

states that tended to do well in one category also did well in
other categories, which indicates that

state policies and state, you know, the situation in each state
or state policies can

really affect things across the board and have an importance in
utility performance.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. One thing I didn't read the report, but it was reading over
my colleague Steve Ernst story on this

and you noted that guess states that spent a lot of money on
grid modernization, some of them actually also —

not all of them — but three states that spent gobs and gobs on
grid modernization, didn't do well in reliability.

And I guess the report authors said that that might mean that
introducing new technologies and advanced

meters is all well and good, but doesn't necessarily do much
unless there's a lot of careful oversight from

regulators and consumer advocates, they say so.

Yeah, interesting takeaway.

Jason Fordney:
That is. Another big one was that, you know, conventional wisdom
that fossil fuels contribute to lower energy

costs was also not borne out.

And states that rely on a lot of coal, like West Virginia and
Indiana, were below average in affordability.

Dan Catchpole:
Interesting.

Jason Fordney:
Yeah, great report, you can read more about it in this week's
Clearing Up and California Energy Markets.

We both did separate stories on that.

Dan Catchpole:
Both can be found at NewsData.com.

So what else is going on down in California?

Jason Fordney:
We had a pretty big proposal from Southern California Gas
Company.

It's proposed an extensive network of green hydrogen based
energy in the Los Angeles basin, which the company says could

address several pressing energy issues and reduce greenhouse
gases.

It's a multimillion dollar project proposed to the California
Public Utilities Commission.

It would be, it's called the Angeles Link, would be the nation's
largest green hydrogen network, according to the

utility. So Cal Gas is requesting approval from regulators to
track costs related to development of the Angeles Link.

And it's proposing a multi-phase approach to this.

The expectation is for Angeles Link to "significantly decrease"
demand for natural gas and diesel, as well

as other fossil fuels in the region.

And this fuel shift would help the region and the state meet
climate and clean air goals.

Los Angeles, of course, has the 100% Clean Energy Plan in
effect, which

it has acknowledged will require re-firing natural gas plants in
the basin with

renewable natural gas.

And the basin itself is really isolated, and it's tough to build
new transmission lines into Los Angeles.

So that's one reason why they're embarking on a lot of in basin
changes to

generation. Yep.

Also this week, the California Energy Commission approved more
than $10 million in grants for projects that will advance

electric vehicle charging technology and build cleaner
alternatives to diesel fired mobile

generators. California has nearly 80,000 EV chargers and plans
to have 500,000 by 2025.

But ensuring that EV charging does not stretch the grid during
peak demand times and making it easy for drivers to

understand charging has been a challenge.

EV charging stations can require a subscription or membership,
which can make charging more complicated than filling up at a gas

station. Also, EV charging is expected to continue to push up
the state's peak demand in the evenings when

people plug in after work, which is unfortunately the most
stress time on the grid because, of course, solar has gone

away. Separately, the CEC at its voting meeting approved a $2
million grant to ChargePoint to build a

charger for medium and heavy duty vehicles that decreases the
chances the charger will be run over by a vehicle.

The charger is called a pantograph, does not require a cable and
connector.

Instead hangs over the top of large vehicles like a banana tree
branch supplies power through a vehicle's roof rather than

through a cord that lives on the street.

And this is all reporting from our fine staff writer David
Krause.

Also approved by the CEC was about 1.2 million to UTA Energy,
that's U-T-A, to build a solar power and

energy storage system on a roof at an affordable housing complex
in Santa Ana.

Also in the CEM this week in southwest news, Public Service
Company of New Mexico has proposed extending operations of

a single unit at the coal fired San Juan generating station by
three months to ensure reliability.

This is because replacement solar and battery energy storage
resources for the 847 megawatt plant were delayed

due to global supply chain issues.

The proposal follows months of negotiations with the other five
owners of the plant, including the City of Farmington and

the county of Los Alamos, which also plan to use power from San
Juan and their resource mix this summer.

PNM, in a Feb.

17 filing to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, said
regulators must issue a decision on the proposal by March 25th

in order for the utility to secure fuel for the continued
operation of San Juan unit 4.

This has been a big issue in New Mexico.

It was interesting the the Public Regulation Commission actually
mentioned CEM in their

meeting this week.

We covered PNM's earnings calls where they said that they've got
this shortage covered, but they were at a

-3.4% reserve margin.

I think now they're now at a 9.8% reserve margin with the
retention of this coal

unit. But yeah, not the best situation.

They're having to keep coal online and showing the interrelated
relationship between supply chain

and really emissions because a lot of renewable projects being
slowed down from the supply chain crisis.

You can read about all this in our issue of California Energy
Markets coming out today and also on our website at News

Data.com.

Dan Catchpole:
That's right. And you can find us online on Twitter.

Clearing Up on Twitter at @CUnewsdata.

And CEM is on Twitter at @CEMnewsdata.

I'm Dan Catchpole.

I'm on Twitter too @dcatchpole.

And Jason, you're on Twitter as well at @FordneyEnergy.

Jason Fordney:
That's correct.

Dan Catchpole:
Check us out.

Thanks for tuning in.

Jason, why don't you sign us off?

Jason Fordney:
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed catching up in the latest
Northwest and California energy news.

Please come back next week and for the next episode.

Outro:
You've been listening to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about
the energy industry today and where it's going

tomorrow.