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Newsdata’s Energy West podcast delivers in-depth conversations with energy experts and weekly news updates about the energy industry in California, the Northwest and beyond. Stay plugged in with Newsdata’s award-winning journalists.
Intro:
Welcome to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about the energy
industry today and where it's going tomorrow.
Dan Catchpole:
Hello, I'm Dan Catchpole, reporter with NewsData's Clearing Up.
And with me is my co-host, Jason Fordney, the editor of
NewsData's California Energy Markets.
We're here to tell you about some of our top stories.
But first, Jason, how are you doing?
Jason Fordney:
Doing great. Dan. How are you?
Dan Catchpole:
I'm good. I'm great.
I'm excited to hear you talk to us, tell us about Kanye West's
bedazzled flip flops.
That was our lead. That's the lead story we're talking about,
right?
Jason Fordney:
That's, yeah, I'm just getting started on this breaking news
story.
I did see the headline.
Apparently, Kanye has some new jeweled flip flops, which I got
to admit, I'm a little bit jealous.
Dan Catchpole:
I mean, there's bejeweled flip flops.
What's not to be jealous about?
Jason Fordney:
Exactly. And I'm sure there's an electric grid angle here
somewhere.
Dan Catchpole:
Oh, yeah. We're working on it, listeners.
Stay tuned.
Jason Fordney:
Yes. And as exciting as Kanye is, well, you want to give a little
rundown of our newsletters for this week?
Dan Catchpole:
I will say they're a little underwhelming, actually.
It does just kind of look like some like.
Jason Fordney:
Way to sell it.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. Sorry.
I actually pulled up the image here, and I've got to say a
little underwhelmed, bejeweled.
It does not look like the something that the from the crown
jewels.
It's just like some crest, like Swirsky.
Whatever. I can never pronounce it.
You know what I mean.
Crystals, like, glued on to the thong of a flip flop.
Jason Fordney:
Right.
Dan Catchpole:
I expected more, Mr.
West. I expected more.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah.
Dan Catchpole:
We'll still look into the energy angle all the same.
Jason Fordney:
This man designs footwear, like.
Dan Catchpole:
I mean, for the colorful character he is, he is an amazing
artist in his own way.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah. As a King Crimson fan, I'm surprised he's brought King
Crimson mainstream by sampling one of
their old songs.
Dan Catchpole:
I missed that.
Jason Fordney:
Still [inadudible] litigation.
Dan Catchpole:
That is not a name I have thought about in a long time.
Jason Fordney:
You need to be a music nerd like me.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, I think I only know they're like one...
really...
Jason Fordney:
Hit.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, that I won't mention here, because I don't feel like that
would be appropriate.
But everybody can go look it up.
I'm sure if you grew up in the nineties, you'd know the song I'm
talking about.
Okay. So in other news.
Jason Fordney:
Dear listeners. Non-newsy news.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. So we've got, let's see SPP, a study about expanding the
SPP RTO into the West and
the benefits that it could provide.
EV charging infrastructure funding for California.
PNNL study about the capacity reliability of western hydro.
Gavin Newsome's climate platform with possibly an eye on the
White House.
A third year of La Nina and CAISO looking to tap into some Idaho
wind
power.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah.
Dan Catchpole:
So but first before we hit all those.
Jason, tell us about the webinar that we've got coming up.
Jason Fordney:
Oh, we've been working hard on this.
It's October 19th, sponsored by NewsData.
"Microgrids in California: Opportunities and Challenges for the
Energy Sector." You can find information on
NewsData.com. It's a two hour event featuring speakers from
Redwood Coast Energy Authority, Sacramento Municipal Utility
District, some utilities, and Schneider Electric.
Moderated by Peter Asmus, the esteemed executive director of
Alaska Microgrid Group and former
Navigant or Guidehouse.
Good guy. Peters is a great guy.
He's interesting to talk to.
So yeah, all about microgrids.
Their opportunities, local reliability.
You can find out more about this at newsdata.com/conf or email
our executive editor
MarkO@newsdata.com. But it's going to be a good event.
Dan Catchpole:
I certainly am looking forward to it.
I have to say, obviously I'm biased, but I think we do.
We put on some great events.
I listened in as a reporter just for my own education, and I
always come away with
having learned some really valuable lessons.
And I do mean that sincerely, obviously.
I'm going to plug it, you know.
But in all honesty.
Jason Fordney:
I have to agree. We've done some good ones.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah.
Jason Fordney:
That's good. We got some good guests, you know, some high level
guests from Mark Rothleder from CAISO,
Elliot Meinzer, Ed Randolph from CPUC, now retired or has moved
on.
But yeah, I think it'll be a really good.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, and you you helped put this together, right?
Jason Fordney:
Yeah a lot of it really was Peter and Mark and Abigail.
I was sort of kind of hitting back up.
But yeah, these things take a lot of work, a lot of coordinating
of people, figuring out the topics.
It's not easy. And yeah, Mark has done a great job, and I'm sure
this will be a home run.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. So if you want to learn about microgrids, opportunities and
challenges, do check it out.
There's information on our website.
And you can find out more info.
I should let people know.
NewsData.com/conf.
NewsData.com/conf.
The first four letters of the word conference.
Jason Fordney:
All right.
Dan Catchpole:
Getting back to the news.
So expanding the Southwest Power Pools Regional Transmission
Organization into the Western interconnection
could deliver more than $70 million in annual benefits to the
current participants in SPP's
Energy and Balance service in the Western interconnection.
That was a very confusing way, or that was a lot to throw at
you.
But basically the handful of folks who are in the Western Energy
and Balance Service group,
SPP's Western Energy and Balance Market, they commissioned a
study from the Brattle Group looking to see
if they expand the RTO to include them, how much could they
save?
The analysis found $70 million in annual benefits, which doesn't
sound like a huge amount.
But in terms of these, it's not a huge amount of in terms of the
load that would be coming in here.
We're talking, I think, let's see, just under 30,000 gigawatt
hours of load between these entities.
Some people in the western area power administration like
Colorado Springs
utilities, some significant utilities, but not like huge ones.
So that $70 million in annual benefits is actually about a
quarter of their adjusted
production costs.
So it would be some substantial savings to them.
Yeah. The interesting thing I just actually was talking to one
of the study leads just actually before we got on here, going
over some of the details.
So it basically would give them, allow these entities to (1)
sell with,
take out the friction between wholesales amongst themselves, but
more importantly, (2) they would really capitalize and
be able to increase their wholesale sales to the east side, the
current SPP RTO
membership. And that's the big benefit for them.
They would lose some transmission wheeling fees, but that would
be well overshadowed by the increase
wholesale market opportunities for these entities in the Western
interconnection.
So talking to, as I said, one of the analysts for Brattle Group
who put this together,
John, to call us.
Yeah. He was saying that there's every reason to believe that in
the aggregate, expanding the footprint in the West would just
increase the the scope of the benefits.
And obviously it would vary from participant to participant.
But there's no reason to believe that the amount of benefits
would not
grow proportionally, more or less, as you brought in more
entities across the West.
One interesting aspect.
One thing limiting this now is just the amount of
interconnections between the east and west grids or inter
ties, which is obviously a limiting factor in terms of how much
power can flow between the western grid and eastern
grid. And so this analysis really said only involves about two
and one half
of the existing eight DC ties between the eastern and Western
grids.
And so bringing in more members, especially if they own some of
that DC inter tie
capacity between East and West, would substantially or would
potentially increase the benefits even more.
So really interesting study, really significant and very
informative in terms of the
larger conversation going on in the West with developing market
proposals from CAISO
and SPP for the Western states.
So obviously, this is some very interesting information that is
going to inform that conversation.
And these participants certainly.
The members of, who commissioned the study, they
seem pretty happy with the results and seem very, very
interested in pursuing things with
SPP and taking this conversation to the next step and talking
about, Oh, this will help inform our negotiations.
So they seem pretty set on moving forward if possible, with the
SPP RTO.
They have not said that publicly, but the public statements they
have made kind of really point in that direction.
So we will be following this story, certainly.
So please stay.
Stay tuned.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, SPP obviously a big player and
then you have CAISO, which has been working towards
regionalization. I think if we discussed this a little bit, you
know, SPP doesn't have a lot of the baggage that California
does. So maybe that'll help.
But yeah, a lot happening and a lot of benefits to these
regional markets as we've seen.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, certainly.
Talking about California.
Jason Fordney:
Oh yes.
Dan Catchpole:
What's going on with funding for electric vehicles?
Jason Fordney:
Well, a lot. We have the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
Plan, which is California recently
got the green light to begin, and no pun, to begin using 56
million of 384 million in federal funding for
EV charging infrastructure.
This is after approval approval of California's National
Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan.
This was submitted by the California Department of
Transportation, the Energy Commission.
It was approved by the US Joint Office of Energy and
Transportation.
Yeah, this will be $56 million in funding.
But over the next five years, California expects 384.
This was funded by a Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
Act of 2021.
These initial funds must first be used to construct charging
infrastructure on federally designated alternative fuel
corridors. California has 55 of these, 19 on interstate
highways, 32 are state routes, and 4 are US
routes.
They combined represent about 6,600 miles of the state's highways
and byways.
So, yes, EV charging infrastructure both where, when and how is
a big topic as we roll this
out. California's NEVI plan, as we're calling it, shows
that 38.7% of all EVs in the US are registered.
I think we mean in California there.
I don't know. I need to look at that.
But the plan calls for deploying 250,000 public and shared
private EV
chargers in California by 2025.
Dan Catchpole:
And that, how many of those, is this 56 million going to cover?
Is that covering all those 250,000 private, or public and shared
private charters?
Jason Fordney:
I don't know. Let me see.
Dan Catchpole:
I mean, it's certainly a lot of money.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, I think that's probably the larger amount.
I would think.
Dan Catchpole:
Okay. The 384 million.
I mean, hey, 56 million.
That's a lot to get started on.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah. I didn't write the story.
This is Linda Daily Paulson.
So maybe look into a little bit more.
The article is quite comprehensive on newsdata.com
Dan Catchpole:
She did do a great job with that.
Yeah, definitely. Go check it out to learn more.
My colleague K.C.
Mahaffey did a great job writing up reporting on a new study from
the
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory looking at hydroelectric
power in the West.
And they found that, you know, despite the stories that we hear
about Lake Mead and various, how things are going at Glen
Canyon Dam and about just getting these areas, getting hit with
droughts and seeing some really disturbing stories in
terms of how low reservoirs are.
What they found was that based on historical data across the
West, hydroelectric power is actually really
stable. There, very rarely, are droughts hit, extreme droughts,
hitting the
multiple regions.
They think they found, let's see, what was it, two, a couple of
times where they found over the
last 20 years the worst hydro droughts for each region occurred
in different years, except two cases where the worst years were
shared by two regions, and that's out of eight regions.
They split the west up into eight climate regions.
So in the worst year in the past two decades, there were two
times that two regions were
affected by extreme droughts.
Yeah, so across the West, basically they found the capacity
factor was about 80% during those
times. And going back further, it doesn't seem like there's much
difference in that.
Now, obviously, as we know, the future is looking very different
thanks to climate change.
So but the last 20 years, that's the start of the shift in
climate trends.
And this is for forecasters trying to get a better look of what
the future like looks like, one thing that they're doing is
shortening the historic data that they're drawing from so that
the trends that we're starting to see with climate
change aren't drowned out by more stable climate of the 20th
century, or at least
the up until maybe the nineties.
So this would seem to be indicative of at least the some of the
the trend line
that we're seeing of more extreme weather.
So.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah, it's a really interesting study.
You know, I found it a little bit surprising.
We've been just writing so much about hydro being down.
It does, it notices here or notes here, the study indicates a
repeat of the '76 - 1977 drought would
cause more severe loss of hydro than any drought so far this
century because of this multiple regions.
Dan Catchpole:
Indeed, I mean, this is not saying that it's immune, but that we
need to
keep the bigger picture in mind.
Jason Fordney:
And as a group, the hydro western hydro plants are pretty damn
reliable.
Dan Catchpole:
Zing. Speaking of climate
policy platforms, what's Gavin Newsom up to?
Jason Fordney:
Well, Gavin has been traveling.
The California Governor, Gavin Newsom.
So, you know, I've been obviously follow this gentleman in the
news.
There's been, he's downplayed the fact that he might be
interested in the White House, but all signs are pointing that
direction. He's taking out national ads.
He's taking a lot of national issues on, including climate
change.
In my take away from his appearance last week at Climate Week
NYC is that climate is going to be a
central issue in his platform.
We know where he stands on climate.
Some good quotes from the Governor, some pretty interesting
language.
First of all, he said, you know, Golden State is tip of the
spear in fighting climate change.
He talked about lifestyles, places and traditions being altered
by climate change, and then saying we need to grow up
on this. You know, his pretty exasperated kind of tone here.
"By the way, we won.
They lost," he said, talking about fossil fuel companies in the
recent rash [inaudible] legislation passed in California.
Big oil lost. They're not used to losing.
I also really had some strong words for The Wall Street Journal,
which ran an editorial last week criticizing his climate
policies. Newsom made no bones about it.
His quote is, "Stop reading the editorial boards of the Wall
Street Journal.
Stop listening to these CEOs of these big corporations that have
been destroying the planet, making it uninhabitable.
It's time to take these guys out in these editorial boardrooms."
That's a quote.
So take them out.
Dan Catchpole:
Well, Newsom, by getting a little.
Jason Fordney:
Yeah.
Dan Catchpole:
Pugnacious.
No, no, that. Yeah. Getting a little rowdy.
Yeah.
Pugilistic, that's the word I was looking for.
Jason Fordney:
Pugilistic.
That's a good one.
You know, he's obviously strong in this issue.
He called Texas "stupid." He said, "they've doubled down on
stupid.
And coal natural gas, these three days they couldn't keep the
damn lights on.
Why the hell are they doubling down on policies that created
those conditions?" Now, and I won't spend too much time on this,
but, you know, we have our own energy problems in California that
are well publicized.
And so it's a kind of a curious you know, there's there's very
little recognition on the
Governor's part, but we understand this is politics.
And also, you know, and this is my commentary, when he rails
against CEOs, energy companies, we know, he has a
pretty good relationship with Pacific Gas and Electric, which is
funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to him and
his philanthropic concerns of first partner Jennifer Siebel
Newsom.
This is common knowledge.
There's a big Washington Post investigation, so it rings a
little bit hollow.
And, of course, you know, he can credit his political rise to
the Getty Oil family.
Again, no secret.
So, yeah, I think people are aware of this.
I just did find that a little bit interesting.
It says last month, a company co-founded by Newsom and oil
billionaire Gordon Getty purchased a $14.5 million
Napa Valley vineyard.
So as I said, you're not the first politician to say one thing
while doing another.
But I think the relationship is a little bit more complicated
here than we'll be seeing on the campaign trail.
Dan Catchpole:
Indeed. But yeah, no.
Interesting write up, and we urge listeners to go check it out
to read more of that coverage from Jason.
Yeah, so another story here from K.C.
Mahaffey. Forecasters predict the third consecutive La Nina
winter for the West Coast, so which is
pretty unusual.
But NOA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
just issued a advisory earlier this
month saying that there was a 91% chance of La Nina persisting
from September through
November and 54% chance of it lasting through March
next year, 2023.
But. They, you know, they left it open saying, you know, it's
not...
Certainly 54% is far from a sure thing.
But it would be interesting.
It's only happened twice before that.
We've had three consecutive La Nina winters since 1950.
The most recent occurrence was 1998, 2001.
Jason Fordney:
Wow. Interesting.
And of course, during a La Nina period, sea surface temperatures
across the eastern equatorial part of the
Pacific Ocean are lower than normal by 3 to 5 degrees.
5.4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit.
But yeah, interesting stuff there.
Weather is always a fun topic.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. And so I should add that the effect is likely
greater chances for cold, wet weather in the Pacific Northwest
and drier weather in California and other parts of the southwest.
So, of course, very important and consequential for Western
hydropower systems and also just
irrigation needs and other various aspects.
Yes. Okay.
That's the last one for me now.
What's going on with CAISO looking up to Idaho Wind?
Jason Fordney:
Yeah. I'll finish up here with the California Independent System
Operator recently got done with a collecting request for
expressions of interest to access Idaho wind.
This would be through the proposed SWIP North Transmission
Projects, which is a Southwest inter tie
project. SWIP North is part of the Southwest inter tie.
And I guess CAISO looked at SWIP North along with Trans West
Express and cross tie projects which access Wyoming.
But this is, this is about Idaho winds.
There's been an economic study request submitted for the SWIP
North project in CAISO's transmission
planning process.
So according to CAISO, this is the only proposed project that
could bring Idaho wind to California.
We've got a map here.
It runs from Idaho down to kind of central eastern Nevada, where
it hooks up with the ON
line, which is already operating, which runs from Robinson
Summit to the Harry Allen substation in southern Nevada, and then
the Desert Link project down there near Vegas.
So this would be one continuous link.
But yeah, these expressions of interest are intended to ensure
alignment with the California Public Utilities
Commission Integrated Resource Plan and the KPUC's Approved
Power Plan, but does not
predetermine the outcome of CAISO's transmission planning
process.
This is also open to a competitive solicitation process.
So a little bit way off the strip line just to finish up is 285
miles, 500 KV run from the midpoint substation in
Idaho to the Robinson Summit substation in Nevada, transfer
capability of about 2300 megawatts.
Yep. A lot of talk about transmission for renewables.
Here's an example.
CAISO proceeding with very careful study here, and we'll see
what came out of this process.
I'll continue to cover this.
Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. As always listeners check out NewsData.com for more
coverage.
I know. I know power certainly is looking more seriously at SWIP
North.
They did, certainly since their last integrated resource plan.
They included it in there, and said hey you know we're going to
start looking at this a little bit more closely.
So yeah. Stay tuned for more coverage.
Well, that's all for me.
Dan Catchpole, thank you for listening.
And as always, if you like this podcast, please rate and review
us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever platform you
use to listen to us and pass us along to a friend.
Energy West is edited and produced by our colleagues at Pioneer
Utility Resources and Lucky Sound Studio.
You can find me on Twitter.
I am @DCatchpole and my co-host Jason Fordney is on Twitter
@FordneyEnergy.
Jason Fordney:
Yes, where I entertain and amaze.
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 letters C-E-M NewsData.
Clearing up is at @CUNewsdata.
That's the letters C-U Newsdata.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you back 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.