Public Power Underground

Jacob Mays, PhD, Matt Schroettnig, Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, and Paul Dockery discuss a paper Prof. Mays co-authored on contractual form in electricity reliability obligations, how it applies to the program getting developed in the Northwest, and what perspective he has on electric market development in the Northwest.

06:52 - discuss recently published article by Professor Mays and Han Shu

• Shu, Han, and Jacob Mays. "Beyond capacity: contractual form in electricity reliability obligations." arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.10858 (2022).
• episode from the last time Prof. Mays was on Public Power Underground

23:54 - applying Prof. Mays insights to the Western Power Pool’s Western Resource Adequacy Program

47:27 - thoughts on the NYT article on electric utility deregulation

• Why are Energy Prices so High? Some Experts Blame Deregulation by Ivan Penn
• twitter thread by @MichaelGiberso3 in response to the article
• substack post on 
• Knowledge Problem by Lynn Kiesling
• RTO Insider article in response to the NY Times piece
• Ari Pesckoe twitter thread in response to the article

54:56 - New Segment!: Ahlmahz’s Insightful Question of the Week!

1:01:43 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• NWPCC: NW Needs More Reserves to Maintain Resource Adequacy
• Pause in Storms Allows Utilities, State Responders Valuable Time to Regroup
• Washington State Report: Salmon Remain ‘In Crisis’
• IOUs Report Significant Demand Reduction With Time-of-Use Rates With EVs
• PG&E, Energy Vault Seek OK for Biggest U.S. Long-Duration Storage System
• Eugene Board Votes to Develop Decommissioning Plan
• Goforth, T., Nock, D. Air pollution disparities and equality assessments of US national decarbonization strategies. Nat Commun 13, 7488 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35098-4
• Texas PUC nears market redesign decision amid criticism performance credit will not spur new generation
• Rachel Dibble has been named the vice president of bulk marketing at the Bonneville Power Administration
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast

1:11:53 - we talk a lot more about Texas’s controversial Performance Credit Mechanism

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, where you’re valued and appreciated.

Kyri Baker, PhD, Karen Heim, Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, and Paul Dockery address topical energy issues and share stories in the latest episode of Public Power Underground.

06:36 - hot takes and lessons to be learned from Winter Storm Elliott

• oral history of the winter storm elliott takes on #energytwitter compiled by Brian Bartholomew
• TVA and Duke Energy notices of level 3 Energy Emergency Alerts
• PJM, MISO, and SPP energy emergency alerts
• paper co-authored by Prof Baker on the Texas freeze of February 2021

19:26 - debrief from White House Electrification Summit

• RTO Insider coverage
• recording of the event
• Dafoe, S., Krarti, M., and Baker, K. (March 7, 2022). "Optimal Designs of Grid-Connected Energy Efficient and Resilient Residential Communities." ASME. J. Eng. Sustain. Bldgs. Cities. February 2022; 3(1): 011004. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4053908

33:00 - transformer shortages and why distribution needs to be taken more seriously in discussion of electrification

• Utility Dive coverage of transformer shortages by Robert Walton
• APPA survey of its members shows that production of distribution transformers is not meeting current demand
• Inaction on electric transformer crisis adds to reliability concerns, APPA warns

43:25 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• Power restored to 4 Pierce County utility substations after Christmas Day vandalization
• FERC Orders NERC Reevaluation of Substation Security Standards Following Attacks by Greg Mason in Clearing Up
• C. Crozier, A. Pigott and K. Baker, "Spatial Arbitrage through Bidirectional Electric Vehicle Charging," 2022 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM), 2022, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/PESGM48719.2022.9916944.
• Senate passes bill to increase EV battery recycling as part of defense budget
• Power Supply Negotiations End for Washington Aluminum Smelter by Dan Catchpole in Clearing Up
• A Changing Landscape: Native American Tribes Turn to Renewable Energy by Iolande Bloxsom in California Energy Markets
• 19 Participants Formally Commit to WRAP's Binding Phase by Dan Catchpole in Clearing Up
• Two Northwest Clean Hydrogen Proposals Advance in Federal Grant Program by Dan Catchpole in Clearing Up
• Atmospheric Rivers Deluge California, but No Relief for Long-Term Drought by Linda Dailey Paulson in California Energy Markets
• NuScale Submits Standard Design Application for Small Modular Reactor With NRC by Steve Ernst in Clearing Up
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast
• Energy-Themed Carols to Liven the Holiday Season from Clearing Up

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

LIVE from the Lounge at NWPPA’s Power Supply Conference hosts Paul Dockery, Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, and Dan Catchpole play an energy-themed analogy game; Arne Olson and Laura Trolese make sports analogies to electric markets in a continuation of Season 4’s Electric Market Enthusiasm Series; and Debra Smith joins to rant about energy and energy-adjacent topics in a rant wheel segment inspired by Lovett or Leave It.

03:22 - the Underground vs OpenAI: a game of energy-adjacent analogies with contestants Doug Gilmore and Matt Schroettnig

16:30 - Electric Market Enthusiasm pt 5.1: sports analogies for electric markets w/ Arne Olson and Laura Trolese

35:47 - the rant wheel w/ Debra Smith; and special contributors Crystal Ball and Matt Schroettnig

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

Nicole Hughes, Karen Heim, Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, and Paul Dockery address topical energy issues and share stories in the latest episode of Public Power Underground.

06:43 - debrief from The NY Times article on the opportunities awaiting electric utilities

• How utilities can maximize IIJA and IRA benefits
• a new way to reference the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (aka the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

24:34 - another run at transmission siting reform

• SEEC releases Policy Brief on Permitting Reform for the Clean Energy Future
• REPEAT project report on Electricity Transmission
• Michael Cembalest’s 12th annual energy report
• We recorded on Monday December 5th. Permitting reform legislation has gained some momentum in the days since. If we recorded again today, we’d probably have more to say!

39:34 - Southwest Power Pool Markets+ detailed design proposal 

• Coverage in Utility Dive by Robert Walton
• Coverage in Clearing Up by Dan Catchpole

57:11 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• BPA Proposes New Transmission Line Near Tri-Cities by Stever Ernst in Clearing Up
• NuScale SMR Project Still on Track, While Costs Rising by Steve Ernst in Clearing Up
• Southern California Natural Gas Supplies Good, Barring Extreme Cold by Linda Dailey Paulson in California Energy Markets
• CPUC Allows PG&E to Exit Enhanced Oversight Process by Anne Ernst in California Energy Markets
• Clark Public Utilities Acquires Output From Box Canyon Dam by Steve Ernst in Clearing Up
• Hydropower Uneconomical in Willamette Project, DEIS Says by KC Mehaffey in Clearing Up
• NuScale, Shell, others to develop hydrogen production concept with heat from small modular reactor by Stephen Singer in Utility Dive
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

Goodbyes are hard and tend to be cringeworthy. WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A SPECIAL EPISODE!!! The original cast of Public Power Underground gets together for a nostalgic recording with a throwback script to celebrate Ian Bledsoe's promotion to Senior Power Analyst, and acknowledge Paul Dockery's last day at Clatskanie PUD.

3:48 - Celebration of Ian Bledsoe's promotion to Senior Power Analyst!
8:06 - Conveyance of Anadromous Championship smelt belts for best friends of the underground because they kept coming back
12:03 - Paul gives a pep talk on the difficulty of transitions while Ian plays the ukelele

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it's work to watch!

Lea Fisher, Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, Dan Catchpole, and Paul Dockery cover electric utility and electric-utility-adjacent news in Season 5, Episode 3.

06:32 - introduce Ahlmahz Negash, PhD as new co-host for Public Power Underground

Ahlmahz has been a recurring guest on Public Power Underground and even accepted the designation of a Special Correspondent during earlier seasons. She has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, was recently the Chair of the Pacific Northwest Utility Conference Committee’s System Planning Committee, is a recipient of PNUCC’s “Albert Einstein Award”, and is currently on sabbatical from Tacoma Public Utilities where she is a Senior Power Analyst. [I forgot to do an adequate introduction during the recording because I figured y’all knew Ahlmahz, but then I realized I shouldn’t take knowledge for granted and am hopeful y’all will look here.]

09:18 - a lot going on with WRAP

• BPA’s draft close out letter and workshop materials
• coverage of draft closeout letter by Steve Ernst in Clearing Up
• Dan Catchpole’s coverage in Clearing Up on deficiency letter from FERC
• Comments filed by the Power Pool acknowledging BPA’s unique statutory obligations (WRAP22 0011 - Edmonds/Western Power Pool)

27:05 - tensions/tradeoffs of the incremental approach to markets

• coverage of Markets+ two-day, in-person development session by Tom Kleckner in RTO Insider
• presentation from workshop on implementation cost of Markets+ (slide 14)
• an earlier presentation on RTO West implementation costs

43:22 - reliability assessment: Not Great

• coverage of NERC’s 2022-2023 Winter Reliability Assessment by Rory Sweeney in Clearing Up
• North American electric grid faces ‘unprecedented’ widespread risk this winter: NERC by Robert Walton in Utility Dive
• NERC’s announcement with links to full assessment and infographic

53:55 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• Decade-Long Effort to Remove Klamath Dams Gets Final OK by KC Mehaffey in Clearing Up
• FERC, States Hash Out Independent Transmission Monitor Concept by Jason Fordney in California Energy Markets
• Boardman to Hemingway Power Line Approved by Oregon EFSC by Greg Mason in Clearing Up
• Study: Coal Facility Closures Could Increase Available Western Water by Linda Dailey Paulson in California Energy Markets
• BPA Rate Cases Kick Off; Settlement Calls for Keeping Rates Flat by Steve Ernst in Clearing Up
• Diablo Canyon Selected for $1.1-Billion Federal Boost by Jim DiPeso in California Energy Markets
• Heat-Wave Power Sellers Argue Their High Prices Were Justified by Jason Fordney in Clearing Up
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast

1:04:07 - Paul shares some personal news

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

Travis Kavulla, Abigail Sawyer, Dan Catchpole, and Paul Dockery cover electric utility and electric-utility-adjacent news in Season 5, Episode 2.

05:51 - energy angles to election coverage

• Abigail Sawyer coverage of elections in the Southwest in California Energy Markets
• Anne Ernst coverage of California elections in California Energy Markets
• Dan Catchpole’s coverage of NW election results in Clearing Up

21:15 - Travis Kavulla acts as the Underground’s Special Correspondent from the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC) Annual Meeting in New Orleans

• White Paper on approaches to State-Federal Cooperation in a Decarbonizing Electricity Sector
• Twitter Wager between Rob Gramlich and Travis Kavulla

32:57 - Travis Kavulla’s take on bifurcating spot market price formation

45:33 - legislative mandates for RTO participation from a former regulator’s perspective

• story on Nevada legislation from Utility Dive
• story on Colorado legislation from Utility Dive
• job opening for Executive Director of the California Electric Transmission Authority

55:58 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• California Public Utilities Commission releases NEM 3.0
• WECC's 2022 resource adequacy assessment
• Powerex committed to joining SPP’s Markets+
• NW Groups Compete for Slice of $7B From Feds for Clean Hydrogen Hub
• Joe Manchin won’t hold a renomination hearing for FERC’s Rich Glick
• Mike Hummel, CEO and general manager of Salt River Project, announced he will retire in May 2023
• PacifiCorp Proposes Nearly 26 Percent Rate Increase for California Customers
• the Public Utility Commission of Texas released a study of Market Reform Options
• Travis Kavulla quoted in the Wall Street Journal
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

Kieran Connolly, Dan Catchpole, Abigail Sawyer, and Paul Dockery kick off the Season 5 premier of Public Power Underground.

06:11 - what evolution into a centrally dispatched market means for a hydro-centric region

• SPP Sees Markets+ as Potential Path to Full RTO in the West
• Carrie Simpson to serve as Southwest Power Pool’s director of western services development
• California Independent System Operator released its draft final proposal for the Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM)

18:42 - how does increased deployment of wind and solar in the Northwest impact hydro operations

• Biden Signs Inflation Reduction Act; Permitting Reform Next Step
• Rural Electric Co-ops Glad to Be Included in Inflation Reduction Act Benefits
• Twitter memo on Ira versus I-R-A
• The definitive podcasts on the content of the Inflation Reduction Act

29:05 - thoughts on SMRs in a hydro dominated region like the Pacific Northwest

• PacifiCorp, TerraPower to Study Deploying Five More SMRs by 2035
• TVA developing plans for 20 small nuclear reactors to power Tennessee Valley by 2050
• TVA takes step to build small modular reactor near Oak Ridge

38:52 - hydro operations under stressed grid conditions

• California Avoids Rolling Blackouts in Record Heat; Energy Prices Surge
• Pacific Northwest heat wave was a freak, 10,000-year event, study finds
• An energy emergency alert 3 for CAISO in August of 2020
• Extremely constrained system in the Northwest in March of 2019

53:46 - Short to Ground; where we TL;DR our way through the rest of the news

• SPP membership elects two new directors
• Western Power Pool Approves Nominees for New Independent Board of Directors
• SRP coverage by Abigail Sawyer
• Southwest elections preview by Abigail Sawyer
• Coverage of PPC pressing Columbia Basin Collaborative by K.C. Mehaffey
• Fusion coverage by Dan Catchpole
• Product switch coverage by Dan Catchpole
• Hydrogen project coverage by Steve Ernst
• Drought coverage by Linda Dailey Paulson
• Briefs in Clearing Up
• Spot Market Power
• La Nina
• NOAA Climate Forecasts
• WY2023 Water Supply Forecast

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

In the fifth installment of Public Power Underground’s Electric Market Enthusiasm series, an expert panel including Laura Trolese (Senior Market Design & Policy Analyst, The Energy Authority), Carrie Simpson (Director - Western Markets, Xcel Energy), and Jeff Spires (Director - Power, PowerEx) discuss different choices made in market paradigms and how it all makes sense. 

Specifically the discussion is framed as a compare and contract episode of different market design choices, but in a fun, infotaining way using professional sports analogies whenever possible. The notes from the analogies are available as a google sheet (← link works).

05:59 - Resource Adequacy is like Roster Management for professional sports leagues

25:24 - Real Time Markets are “the game”

43:34 - Day Ahead Markets are like practice / training / coaching

55:50 - Transitioning from bilateral to centrally dispatched markets make comparisons complex

01:09:23 - Transmission cost recovery is as controversial as who pays for professional sports stadiums

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!

Richard Glick, the Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), joined Crystal Ball, Matt Schroettnig, and Paul Dockery for the fourth installation of our Electric Market Enthusiasm series. We try to keep it light while discussing transmission, batteries, price formation, the incremental approach to market expansion, governance, and FERC’s recently published five year strategic plan. To close it out we played an outro game called "Which FERC is the best FERC?".

06:02 - Discuss elements of FERC’s FY22-26 Strategic Plan

• FERC FY22-26 Strategic Plan | Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Fact Sheet | Strategic Plan FY 2022-2026 | Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

15:01 - New merch idea

15:12 - Benefits of Transmission Regionalization

• The Pacific Northwest/Pacific Southwest Intertie
• MISO board approves $10.3B transmission plan to support 53 GW of renewables
• the Organization of MISO States

24:28 - Governance and the incremental approach to market expansion

27:58 - “I think it’s inevitable”

31:46 - Outro Game: Which FERC is the best FERC?

You can find our merch on shopify. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to share this with any friends you have that are electric utility enthusiasts like us!

Public Power Underground, for electric utility enthusiasts! Public Power Underground, it’s work to watch!