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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:
Hello. Thank you for joining us.
I'm Dan Catchpole, reporter with NewsData's Clearing Up.
And joining me is my co host, Jason Fordney, editor of California
Energy Markets.
Jason, how are you doing today?
Jason Fordney:
I'm fantastic. Dan, how are you?
Did you have a good weekend?
Dan Catchpole:
I did. I got to take my kid to a little league game.
Always fun watching that.
It was raining, but, you know, it was fun.
How about you?
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, well, my daughter is seven, but I can't wait to do some
little league.
But we're pretty active.
Yeah, I went to the river, the Yuba River yesterday.
I was expecting it to be too cold and too crowded, but it was
neither.
So we had a blast.
Just beautiful, beautiful weather here in NorCal right now.
Dan Catchpole:
It's getting to be that time of year heading out onto the rivers.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, first trip of the year.
First of many.
Dan Catchpole:
I'm glad to hear that it wasn't too crowded or too cold or too
anything.
Sounds like it was just, just right.
Jason Fordney:
It was. It was really beautiful.
Dan Catchpole:
Goldilocks River Day.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
But the crowds will be here soon, coming up from Sacramento,
etc., which is fine.
We welcome everybody.
Dan Catchpole:
Invite all types.
Everybody's welcome on the river.
Jason Fordney:
Yes.
Dan Catchpole:
Speaking of that summer weather, drawing people to the rivers.
CAISO came out with their summer outlook.
Can you tell us what's in it?
Jason Fordney:
Yeah. I had some interesting news last week.
Our two lead stories were on summer reliability.
I'll get into it in a couple of minutes.
Kind of different takes from CAISO, the California Independent
System Operator, and the Energy Commission which I'll get
into. CAISO had a little briefing for summer 21,
2022. It's resources and loads assessment results.
What they said is the CAISO grid is better prepared for summer
than it was last year.
The number of hours of risk and the threat of load shed is
significantly reduced.
The conditions are better because of new resources, especially
energy storage, officials said.
This is at the May 12th, CAISO Board of Governors meeting, where
they also covered the new strategic plan for the next 4 years
and some interconnection process enhancements.
So yeah, conditions are better despite low hydro levels and
changes in load.
But, and this is key, the grid remains vulnerable to high loads
and low import availability during widespread heat events,
especially in late summer.
That's what happened back in August 2020 when we had rolling
blackouts, high loads from air conditioners in the evening after
solar has gone offline and low imports.
And this happens whenever there is a west wide heat wave.
Although heat in California is nothing new.
A little detail, CAISO said, "Traditional planning techniques
used for loads and resources assessment," and this is
why I think their take is different from CEC.
This is just my hunch.
What they said "It does not take into account the risk of more
extreme weather events and climate change." CAISO uses pretty
sophisticated analysis with probabilistic results from a
stochastic model and deterministic stack analysis
results.
Stochastic meaning you're using models that estimate the
probability of various outcomes while incorporating
certain inputs that have uncertainties.
Dan Catchpole:
Right, so did the California Energy Commission address the
issues in the same way as CAISO?
Jason Fordney:
A little differently.
And that was what's interesting.
When I, you know, our headlines here were quite different, but
CAISO headline says
"CAISO's Summer Outlook Better Than in 2021 and a Pretty
Strategic Plan." Our headline for
CEC was "Reliability of Forefront of CEC Discussions State
Unprepared for Summer 2022." So a
little bit different. What the CEC says — and this is a lot of
staff speaking at a meeting last week — a confluence of
local and world events, including retiring generation supply
chain disruptions, drought and international policy is poised to
test California's grid reliability this summer and into the near
future.
And the state remains ill prepared for an uncertain future.
This is according to staff.
There was an update during a presentation at the May 11th
business
meeting. So we had tight conditions last summer, and of course,
the
blackouts in 2020.
The CEC is looking at various solutions, I guess include
delaying
generation plant retirements.
There's talk of keeping Diablo Canyon open now, which I never
thought would happen.
But there's a lot of new resources due online, 11.5 gigawatts,
140 new projects due online within within the next four
years.
About, you know, about 11,000 megawatts of new nameplate.
The other issue that we've been reporting on is this
procurement.
As we're aware, the California officials recently held a press
conference warning of reliability problems.
And one of those issues is supply chain affecting all of this
new procurement.
So kind of a dicey situation to sort of wrap up.
The biggest takeaway I can think of is I think the CEC may be
considering a few more factors than CAISO,
which works with CEC inputs, but some interesting results there.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, a lot to take in.
It's like drinking through a firehose, but those are some really
interesting and important forecasts, especially now more than
ever. Yeah.
Of course, transmission remains a central part to answering all
of these problems.
And so I'm going to use that as a segue into one of our top
stories over at NewsData here this past week.
State regulators in Wyoming and Utah have given Pacific Corp the
green light to start construction on two segments of its energy
gateway transmission project.
The 2000 mile long project is the largest one currently under
development in the Western US, the largest
transmission project.
Development got started in 2007 and so far they've completed
only 525 miles of the project, which has
cost $2.4 billion.
And I think the total project's supposed to cost upwards of $8
billion.
So the sign offs from Wyoming and Utah state regulators say that
they can start work
on a 400 mile section, the Gateway South segment stretching from
Medicine Bow, Wyoming,
to Mona, Utah, and a 75 mile section of the Gateway West line.
This part of the line running through eastern Wyoming, and it's
a massive transmission project that is
trying to tie in together a lot of parts of Pacific Corp's
footprint, which
covers seven states.
One, two, three, four, five.
At least six, maybe seven.
I'm not. But it's a lot.
It's big. Yeah. They're basically.
Yeah, they're one of the biggest utilities in the West.
But, you know, I want to get back to the situation in California
and thinking ahead, because you had a
column on, not the forecasts, but looking back how
CAISO, it's evaluation of some of the challenges facing it.
So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, this got quite a bit of press coverage.
CEC and CPUC recently held a press conference where I thought it
was pretty remarkable.
They said, you know, we might have blackouts this summer.
I don't remember that in 2020 or 2021.
And one recurring theme is this, like I said, the procurement
and supply chain.
Planning officials say resources are about 1700 megawatts short
this summer for the evening net demand period, which is when we
see the problems, and up to 5000 megawatts short by 2025.
My column, which I here's my headline, "Blaming California's
blackouts on climate change is tenuous at
best." So as we know, climate change is a tricky topic.
I don't want to get into religion here, but I've watched this
process sort of unfold back in 2019 when CAISO's CEO, Steve
Burbridge, went to the CAISO board.
And I wrote this up, it really struck me.
He said, you know, we're going to be short in the evening
periods after solar goes away.
And what he said, it's the ramping.
There's insufficient imports, especially when there's a heat
wave, because obviously there's less power available.
There's various reasons for that.
But I noticed after the 2020 blackouts, climate change became a
central theme and was kind of
slapped on the root cause analysis.
And, you know, this gets tricky.
We know climate change is real.
We know it's causing more extreme weather, drought.
But can we attribute blackouts to climate change?
And I think, as I said in my column, it's a little bit tenuous.
Dan Catchpole:
It seems like it's putting a lot on a slow and uneven
development.
That it is taking decades to — I mean it's climate change.
It happens. Well, what we're talking about, the context we're
talking about, it's all in all slow changes.
These are not suddenly, oh, you know, now you've got effectively
like half the generation capacity because of this, that
and the other thing due to climate change.
Jason Fordney:
Right, and there's a couple things worth pointing out.
For instance, demand on the CAISO grid in 2021 was less than in
1998 by
several thousand megawatts because of rooftop solar.
And that rooftop solar people might not know shows up as a
demand reduction at CAISO.
So demand is not going up on the California grid in terms of the
CAISO grid, I should say there are
other parts of the grid.
So it's not like we're having massive increases in demand in
California.
Quite the opposite. And that's really a testament to good
planning in that sense.
Energy efficiency, you know, keeping demand flat or lower,
although we've seen spikes
over that period of time.
You know, it's pretty impressive.
And also, we've had major heatwaves before.
Climate change is nothing new.
You know, we've known about it since the late nineties.
You think, we should be able to plan for it.
But yeah, 2006, we had several hotter days than in 2020.
It wasn't as widespread, but yeah.
And it gets a little murky for me once you start, and when
you're making such direct comparisons, like they put
up the first slide and the presentation was "back to back years
of energy reliability challenges driven by climate change in
2020 and 2021." So yeah, I think it, you know, it takes the
responsibility
off the utilities, off the legislators, off the regulators, and
they just throw up their hands.
Well it's climate change. So just, you know, something, I keep an
eye out because I
want an honest conversation on this.
So, yeah, that's kind of where I went.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. And I should tell listeners here.
So there's some interesting conversation a little bit if you
want to hear some more about this one.
If you want to learn more about it, you can read Jason's
excellent coverage over at CEM and coverage from other CEM
reporters. But also you guys talked about it this a little bit
more on the Public Power Underground latest podcast
episode that we do with Clatskanie PUD.
Listeners should certainly go check it out.
There's an interesting conversation around some of this with the
weekly guest Ben Serrurier was on from
RMI, but I'm just going to give my last one here, if you don't
mind me jumping in.
Jason Fordney:
Sure thing.
Dan Catchpole:
So hundreds of yearly summer Chinook salmon were dumped into the
Columbia River below Chief Joseph Dam on May 6.
Their survival rates will be compared to fish released further
upstream at dams with no juvenile fish passage facilities, which
will give biologists valuable information about the obstacles
fish face in their life cycle going from northwest rivers out to
the Pacific Ocean and back to the rivers to spawn and die.
This juvenile survival study will continue for at least the next
five years, and it's one of many being conducted by
the Upper Columbia United Tribes as it works to determine what
it would take to bring salmon back to the blocked areas above
some of the world's largest hydroelectric dams.
That story is reported out by my colleague K.C.
Mahaffey, who also reports in a separate story that salmon
managers with the Columbia River Technical Management team are
not changing operations at lower monumental dam for the time
being, thanks to higher passage rates for adult spring
Chinook salmon.
And just last, a letter was released recently by the Public
Power Council, which
represents the vast majority of Bonneville Power Administration
preference customers.
The PPC, the Public Power Council, came out and said that they
are all up for the day ahead
markets.
CAISO is pushing its extended day ahead market, and the Southwest
Power Pool is developing its markets plus
proposals. We've got two competing day ahead market options.
And PPC says that it is working on developing both, open to
either
one, but it did stress in the letter that any market proposal
should
ensure and maintain that statutory preference customers, public
power has access to
cost-based federal power.
Well, that is it for me.
I'm Dan Catchpole with Clearing Up.
Thanks for listening. And as always, please rate and review this
podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen and let
other people know about it.
You can find me on Twitter.
I'm @DCatchpole and my co-host Jason Fordney is on Twitter
@FordneyEnergy.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, thanks, Dan.
Good coverage on the EDAM story.
And yes, everybody, thanks for listening to NewsData's Energy
West.
You can read more of our coverage at NewsData.com.
Nobody covers energy in the West like we do.
Follow us on Twitter. CEM is @CEMNewsData.
That's the letter C-E-M NewsData.
Clearing Up is @CUNewsData.
Again, that's the letters C-U NewsData.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you here next week.
Outro:
You've been listening to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about
the energy industry today and where it's going
tomorrow.