The electric power sector has become another arena for political battles, as two items demonstrated this week.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright boasted that his department had canceled or revised billions in “Green New Scam” loans and conditional commitments from the Biden-era. On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill used her inaugural address Tuesday to highlight executive orders seeking to freeze rate hikes, accelerate distributed energy resource deployment and rein in utility profits.
Oh, and, of course, there is news out of PJM.
Here is your week in numbers.
►$83B
The value of loans and conditional commitments the U.S. Department of Energy has restructured or eliminated, the department said this week. DOE made the announcement as part of a “year in review” letter from leadership without releasing a list of impacted projects, and it was unclear how many of the changes were already known. But the department said in a press release that it had eliminated around $9.5 billion in “government-subsidized, intermittent wind and solar projects, and is replacing them with investments in natural gas and nuclear uprates.” It said that of the $104 billion in Biden-era principal loan obligations, it has completed or is in the process of de-obligating almost $30 billion, with another $53 billion “in revision.”
►45 days
How long New Jersey regulators have to initiate solicitations for new solar and storage resources under existing programs and to expand registration in the state’s community solar program, according to executive orders signed by Gov. Mikie Sherrill on her first day in office Tuesday. The governor also directed regulators to study how to “modernize” the traditional electric utility business model by making utility profits “less dependent on capital spending” in another indication of rising political and regulatory pressure on utilities over consumer costs and perceptions of fairness.
►$11.6B
The cost of proposed regional transmission upgrades in the PJM Interconnection. Pennsylvania’s ratepayer advocate is urging the grid operator to reconsider one of the projects included in that plan, citing uncertainty around data center demand forecasts. The advocate’s specific concern centers on a $1.7-billion, 765-kV power line proposed by NextEra and Exelon that would run about 221 miles from Marshall County, West Virginia, to Perry County, in central Pennsylvania. The project has the potential to become the “poster child” for overbuilding and the “failure to solve reliability needs with potentially less expensive generation options, storage, demand response and other innovative proposals,” the advocate said.
►2.1 GW
How much new generation capacity was installed in PJM from January to early October, according to the grid operator. The number raised the possibility that 2025 could lag 2024, when a total of 4.8 GW was added. The board called for a stakeholder process this year to consider changes to PJM’s capacity market framework, which they said may no longer be adequate to justify new generation investments “in today’s volatile and uncertain investment environment, particularly when elevated costs are combined with external constraints or intervention.”
►$249M
The estimated total cost of adding a second 345-kV transmission circuit to an existing line between Douglas County, Minnesota, and Cass County, North Dakota. Five Upper Midwestern utilities, led by Xcel Energy, proposed the expansion to Minnesota regulators and intend to do similarly in North Dakota soon. The petitioners said the project was needed to address thermal and voltage issues and to maintain electric system reliability throughout the region as more generation resources are added..
