Power Moves On Power

Good morning and happy Friday,

In this week’s headlines, the Department of the Interior says it will?cut rents and fees in half?for wind and solar projects on public lands.?

Meanwhile on private farmland, a new study found that a?“near corn collapse”?is coming in the Midwest by 2100 if climate change continues on its current trajectory. The news?provides a new perspective against concerns around solar facilities built on agricultural land?eliminating livelihoods and reducing local food production. Open land is a valuable resource, let’s?get the most out of it.?

Read on for more.

Power Moves On Power

Florida’s largest utility, Florida Power & Light (FPL), proposed a 176-mile transmission line to help meet peak electricity demands. While a project of such scale could take a decade to get from proposal to completion, FPL shortened the time to about two years.?

With a history of cutting corners and avoiding certain regulations, the project is facing criticism as?just another shady power move?and attempt to increase electricity rates. How FPL got here:

• FPL took a shortcut.?To keep the project under a 230 kilovolt threshold that would’ve required extensive regulatory review, FPL limited the line’s voltage to 161 kV. With this, approval and funding for the project were grouped into FPL’s case for a $692 million rate increase.?
• Certain state policies give FPL automatic power.?With eminent domain, FPL has the authority to build its project regardless of county-level approval. With this, the transmission line can go through communities that don’t even receive electricity from the utility.
• FPL has a monopoly.?From 2015 to 2019, it spent over $190 million on civil and political activities, a sign of efforts to protect its power. While Florida’s Public Service Commission should regulate utility’s investments, state officials were reluctant to scrutinize FPL because of its political influence.

?? The Takeaway

Flying under the regulatory radar.?FPL’s kilovolt shortcut strategy avoided consideration of whether the project was even necessary, allowing it to force costs onto ratepayers and take over county land without a fight. This scenario raises interesting questions about where public interest falls in terms of energy policy and who will bear the costs of such projects.

All Hands On Grid

In recent months, the grid pileup has been a seemingly impenetrable issue. From multiyear waitlists to unreasonably high interconnection costs, the congestion quandary has many sides. However, FERC and state-level energy regulator stakeholders recently stepped up to plate in a?task force meeting?to?examine potential solutions?for the massive transmission backlog. A few of the key ideas:

• First ready, first served.?To reduce queue crowding, the FERC could create a higher threshold by which projects can enter the queue. Projects that are shovel ready would be prioritized over more speculative ones.
• Cut complexity.?A few solutions could help speed up and streamline the interconnection study process, including incentives for meeting assessment deadlines, adding reporting requirements or scorecards to track improvements, or adding more staff and resources.?
• Shift the costs.?To avoid putting the full cost of interconnection upgrades onto project developers or power customers, there need to be transmission cost-sharing policies. Upgrade costs should be fairly distributed among grid operators, utilities, and developers to ensure that costs align with received benefits.

?? The Takeaway

All hands on deck…or in this case, grid. For the country to build out the hundreds of gigawatts of renewables needed to meet carbon-reduction mandates and decarbonization goals, the FERC, energy regulators, and developers need to implement near-term solutions to the gridlock.?

• Seeking Solar: Hit hard by high energy costs, Hawaii looks to the sun.
• Recovery Time: As the grid adds more wind power, researchers have to reengineer recovery from blackouts.
• Going TransWest: Greenlit powerlines portend Wyoming's wind energy boom.
• Probe Problems: Can Biden end the Auxin solar tariff investigation?

• Canadian Solar Wraps Up?100 MW Mississippi PV?Plant
• Mayflower Wind?Files PPAs for Approval
• Californian Solar?Project Powers Up
• Engie and Google?Partner to Optimize Wind Trading
• DeepOcean Assists?Offshore Wind Project

Let It Snow

What does snow mean for solar? While skeptics often claim that it’s bad news, a new study found that “bifacial” panels that take in light on both sides can produce?substantial amounts of electricity in the winter. While one-sided panels had an energy loss of 33% due to snow, the two-sided panels only lost 16%. For these panels, sunlight reflected off of the snowy ground and hit the back side of the panels, creating a double exposure effect.

Also, snow melted faster on the bifacial panels, potentially because they were catching light at multiple angles. These findings are great news for northern regions that get a lot of snow year-round, showing that snow doesn’t stop solar from doing its thing.