Pushmepullyou: Disputes and Discussions on Grid Politics

By Kennedy Maize

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In the last full week of September, a Dickensian moment occurred: the best of times and the worst of times, simultaneously. Readers can conclude which were the best and which were the worst, based on their own perceptions and predilections.

Pushing the “Smart” Grid

In Washington, D.C., the annual GridWeek yack-and-brag fest took place. It’s a conference organized by Clasma Events for the many folks who believe the smart grid is the next high-tech energy gravy train. The Obama administration’s economic stimulus package has $4.5 billion pointed at the allegedly smart grid.

Conference organizers claimed it was the best turnout they had ever seen for the GridWeek extravaganza and supplied suggestions about how to cope with GridWeek gridlock. It was their third meeting, and by all accounts the most successful. Watch for more to come.

In the week leading up to the GridWeek show, my email inbox was brimming with opportunities to meet with executives from multiple firms, pitching their goods and services, seeking to spin any available journalists to the gospel of the smart grid. I had planned to attend, and registered for the event, which made my email address available to PR types of all descriptions. IBM, Current Communications, Siemens, you name it—and lots of firms you couldn’t name. The PR pros were earning their keep.

The Undecided Fate of the “Strong” Grid

At the same time, in Shepherdstown, W.Va., the smart grid was far from the minds of the West Virginia Public Service Commission and many ordinary citizens from the region of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, where the 765-kV PATH transmission project proposed by American Electric Power and Allegheny Energy would run. The West Virginia regulators were holding the first of a series of public hearings on the project, which has drawn enormous, vociferous, and predictable local opposition, along with muscular support from local unions seeing the project as a jobs engine.

This is one of the “national interest” grid projects the Department of Energy has identified under the terms of the feckless 2005 Energy Policy Act for potential federal siting preemption. If one of the state commissions that must judge the project turns thumbs down on the PATH project, it could wind up at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to potentially overturn the state action. The project has the enthusiastic support of West Virginia’s Democratic Governor Joe Manchin and much of the state’s prodigious Democratic political machinery.

I suspect that if any state along the route rejects the project, years, maybe decades, of litigation will follow. The same will occur if the project gets all the needed state approvals. I wouldn’t bet a dime on the outcome of the PATH transmission conflict one way or the other.

My view is partially based on an attempt more than 20 years ago by West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore (a Republican in a Democratic state, who eventually was felled by corruption charges involving cash in a desk drawer) to build an interstate line to move excess West Virginia power to markets in New Jersey and New York. That ultimately failed when Pennsylvania regulators—facing well-organized opposition—concluded there was nothing in the plan that benefited the Keystone State.

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