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Gabel Associates estimated that including batteries to the estimated 9.7 gigawatts of solar energy now anticipated to be accessible on PJM in 2026 and 2027 might increase these initiatives’ efficient load-carrying capability — a measurement of their potential to reliably present energy throughout instances of peak grid want — from just below 2 gigawatts to just about 8 gigawatts. Resources that may present such a increase are expensive and briefly provide on PJM’s grid.
How PJM has closed the door on SIS
Unfortunately, Borgatti stated, PJM’s guidelines for surplus interconnection service have rendered the method roughly “ineffective” within the area — a stark distinction to how different grid operators have discovered methods to make it efficient.
It’s at all times doable that including new sources to an already accredited interconnection might negatively affect the grid, he stated. It’s additionally doable that they may trigger delays to different initiatives looking for interconnection, which wouldn’t be truthful to builders which were ready for years to get on-line.
But different grid operators have found out methods to work by means of these challenges, Borgatti stated. He cited the examples of Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which function grids throughout the U.S. Midwest.
MISO’s SIS course of permits undertaking homeowners to conduct research to find out whether or not the proposed additions would set off the necessity for grid upgrades or intervene with initiatives awaiting interconnection. If the reply is sure, they are often denied. But if the reply is not any, “that undertaking can go ahead,” he stated.
SPP has a comparable assemble that, whereas a bit extra time-consuming, permits the mandatory research to be accomplished inside “a 12 months or two,” Borgatti stated. All in all, he described these approaches as “the fitting stability of creating positive that there’s the flexibility for standard interconnection initiatives to maneuver ahead and ensuring the grid stays dependable, but in addition accelerating deployment.”
PJM’s method, against this, primarily presumes that any surplus interconnection request could have unfavorable penalties for the grid or for the initiatives ready within the queue, he stated. It then makes use of that presumption to justify denying them with out even learning the potential penalties, he stated.
“They’ve adopted a commonplace that claims, ‘If it’s doable that interconnecting one thing might affect one other undertaking within the queue or set off a transmission improve … at some hypothetical level sooner or later, we’re not going to permit it,’” he stated.
EDPR’s grievance to FERC documented how PJM utilized this seemingly capricious method to disclaim the addition of 200 megawatts of photo voltaic to the developer’s 200-megawatt Meadow Lake 1 wind farm in Indiana. EDPR submitted its preliminary request in August 2023, making clear that it will function the wind and photo voltaic farms to maintain complete output to the grid throughout the website’s present 200-megawatt restrict.
In March 2024, PJM requested the developer if it meant to function the present wind farm and the brand new photo voltaic set up concurrently. When EDPR replied that it did, PJM took lower than six hours to reject the request on the grounds that this “would produce materials impacts” to the transmission system. PJM didn’t supply to conduct a examine to find out whether or not that affect would in truth be a drawback.
Denying proposals on this method defies FERC’s directions to grid operators, EDPR argued in its grievance.
In an August submitting with FERC, PJM disputed the validity of EDPR’s grievance, noting that FERC accredited its present SIS strategies in 2020. It additionally disputed the concept the method might be useful in assembly future grid wants, stating that it “does nothing to answer the necessity for extra capability to fulfill future demand.”
PJM’s statements to FERC point out that it doesn’t see its present method to surplus interconnection service as a drawback. In its May submitting laying out its plan to fulfill FERC’s newest interconnection mandates, PJM said that “few builders have requested” surplus interconnection service and requested to be exempted from providing “a service nobody in PJM is requesting.”
EDPR pushed again in opposition to that characterization in its grievance to FERC, noting that it and different builders have been attempting for years to suggest adjustments to PJM’s method. “There is not any puzzle as to why Surplus Interconnection Service just isn’t widespread in PJM,” the corporate wrote. “PJM has adopted processes that forestall its use.”
Melissa Alfano, senior director of power markets and counsel for the Solar Energy Industries Association, stated throughout the September webinar that the dearth of requests from builders is a direct results of PJM’s method of preemptively denying these few which were made. Planning out such proposals takes time and prices cash, and “there’s no incentive to place up that cash simply to get that request rejected,” she stated.
Looking for options to SIS
As builders and environmental teams push for federal intervention into PJM’s surplus interconnection guidelines, some consultants see a glimmer of hope in one other pathway to reform: PJM could be open to working immediately with stakeholders on the problem by way of a separate wonky grid course of.
PJM is within the midst of a “generator alternative course of” to review options to paying money-losing coal crops to remain open for years till new transmission strains or energy crops may be constructed to backfill the reliability issues created by their closures. Batteries might be one such possibility, as underscored by research evaluating the Brandon Shores plant in Maryland, a PJM territory, stated Mike Jacobs, senior power analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
PJM had initially proposed that it ought to apply its present SIS method to those generator alternative research, “which might render that ineffective too,” Borgatti stated. In observe, this might possible create a dynamic much like how PJM handles SIS requests immediately: The grid operator may merely solid apart helpful options (specifically batteries) to outdated, uneconomic coal crops with out truly learning them.
More just lately, nevertheless, the grid operator has “signaled some receptivity” to performing research that “consider precise impacts,” he stated. If PJM is keen to embrace a extra considerate method to generator alternative, the logic goes, it could be keen to do the identical on SIS.
Borgatti and Mindham each stated they’d want to see this occur — for PJM to make use of its ongoing generator alternative work to interact with its stakeholders on adjustments to its SIS method.
EDPR’s grievance to FERC “has some benefits,” Mindham stated, because it brings the matter on to the federal company to resolve. “But it has a fairly massive drawback, and that’s there’s no statutory timeline for FERC to rule.”
It can also be doable that EDPR and PJM might resolve this dispute with out FERC’s intervention. Last week, EDPR and PJM filed a joint movement with FERC to postpone consideration of the grievance to present them time to contemplate settlement discussions.
Meanwhile, FERC could select to disclaim PJM’s request to eradicate surplus interconnection altogether as a part of its plan to adjust to Order 2023. But it might take a 12 months or extra of back-and-forth between FERC and grid operators for the company’s orders to yield concrete adjustments in how grid operators set and administer guidelines to adjust to them.
Mindham stated he hopes PJM will reply to the repeated calls for from power builders and different stakeholders “as a clear sign that they need to do one thing rapidly within the stakeholder course of and provide you with a resolution that works for everybody. Because I’m unsure that FERC guidelines on a timeline that basically helps individuals.”
