Regulators Face Worst of Times

Kennedy Maize

Pages: 1 2 3

It’s not a pleasant time to be an electric utility regulator, as a daylong conference in March at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington demonstrated. Regulators at the federal and state level face a Herculean set of tasks, not all of them compatible with each other. It could be the most difficult time facing the electricity industry since the fall of the Insull empire in 1932. FERC titled the technical conference, “Integrating Renewable Resources into the Wholesale Electric Grid.”

Countless Challenges

Regulators must deal with state renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and, most likely, a federal RPS mandate. Several state solons already face state-mandated carbon reductions and Uncle Sam will likely implement carbon dioxide limits and a cap-and-trade program. Regulators at all levels must confront cybersecurity for the transmission grid. They’ve got to assure reliable operation of a national grid that has potentially fatal flaws.

On top of all that, they have to help the nation come up with a new, fully interconnected high-voltage transmission system that facilitates least-cost renewables—generally located in remote places but needing to get to places where the people are—while allocating the costs and benefits (who pays and who plays) equitably and ensuring reliability.

All this amidst hopes for a federal system in which the national government and the state governments (and the multistate regional transmission organizations and organized markets) can all get along. That’s a tough agenda.

Pages: 1 2 3