The nation’s third largest power firm says it’s making an attempt to fulfill carbon discount requirements. However Duke’s actions do not appear to match its phrases.
Ben Adams | September 5, 2024
| North Carolina, South Carolina, Transmission, Utilities
In its most up-to-date transmission planning assembly, carried out on August twelfth, Duke Vitality made a surprising revelation: they’re not planning any new modeling to find out the relative prices and advantages of latest energy traces over the subsequent ten years.
This may occasionally sound technical, but it surely’s an enormous deal for everybody who pays an electrical invoice.
Planning an influence grid is difficult, and the stakes are excessive. The ability traces utilities construct have an effect on how a lot air pollution they put into the air, how typically the ability goes out, and the way a lot we pay for one among our core requirements. Choices about which traces get constructed, and the place, are primarily based on an array of things like laws, pricing, power flows, and extra.
Vitality transmission traces can simply pay for themselves, however you must do the maths to seek out out the place and when to construct them to get essentially the most energy in your greenback. For those who determine not to try this math–nicely, you’re in bother. And, sadly, we’re.
Duke is the third largest power firm in America, and its footprint covers six states, together with massive components of each Carolinas and Florida. The results of Duke’s planning, or lack of it, will probably be felt all through the Southeast.
Background
In 2011, the Federal Vitality Regulatory Fee (FERC) issued FERC Order 1000, which mandates regional planning of electrical energy transmission, amongst different necessities. This was an effort to make sure that our lights keep on, that we will climate hurricanes with minimal disruption, and that we’re not left turning out our pockets when the invoice arrives.
Order 1000 additionally requires that Duke plan its multi-state energy grid to successfully adjust to legal guidelines enacted by the affected states and localities. This consists of North Carolina’s Carbon Plan, which mandates that the state, and particularly Duke Vitality, obtain a 70% discount in carbon dioxide emissions in comparison with 2005 ranges, by 2030. Duke says that it’s been doing the very best it might probably to fulfill this aim. However its current actions don’t appear to match its phrases.
Duke Vitality says they’re complying, however a better take a look at their efforts raises some regarding questions.
In its federally permitted tariff, Duke has created a course of, referred to as the Carolinas Transmission Planning Collaborative (CTPC), to stick to those and different FERC guidelines. However in its most up-to-date hearings earlier than the North Carolina Utilities Fee (NCUC), Duke indicated that it could not meet the North Carolina Carbon Plan by 2030 (though it nonetheless has six years to fulfill it), and requested for an extra 5 years to adjust to the legislation, though the legislation itself features a most grace interval of two years.
Then, final week, throughout Duke’s newest CTPC assembly with stakeholders, they unveiled their newest draft transmission examine plans. For the second time in just a few weeks, Duke gave the impression to be doing much less planning than it claims: Duke’s planning paperwork point out it is going to examine three eventualities for power provide over the subsequent ten years, within the course of measuring six potential advantages of latest transmission traces. (That is wanting the 20-year timeline and 7 advantages required by FERC’s newly issued Order 1920, which covers regional planning. Whereas the CTPC is an area course of and thus not required to adjust to 1920, the broader regional planning course of will in the end depend on analysis and modeling from Duke.)
Solely one of many three eventualities appeared to generate sufficient carbon-free electrical energy to fulfill the 70% discount threshold–and Duke dominated that situation out as too costly, primarily based partially on a suspiciously excessive value estimate. Duke apparently prefers a distinct situation to get to a 70% discount by 2035, primarily based primarily on an aggressive buildout of latest nuclear vegetation. However that yr is notably outdoors the ten-year window of Duke’s present plan.
SACE was among the many teams who requested that Duke study a situation by which all that nuclear power didn’t materialize, however Duke has declined to take action.
Duke suggests guessing at advantages as a substitute of modeling
Lastly — and maybe most starkly — Duke indicated throughout the CTPC assembly that it could not be conducting any new manufacturing value modeling on its three future eventualities. This implies, in impact, that Duke has no particular concept of all the prices that go into constructing new transmission traces, particularly whether or not these traces pays for themselves within the type of cheaper electrical energy, much less want for repairs, higher alternative and suppleness for patrons, much less congestion on the wires, or any of the quite a few different financial and non-economic advantages the brand new traces could ship.
When pressed on this level, Duke stated that it could use present zonal mannequin outcomes (created for Duke’s annual Built-in Useful resource Plan, which is a separate course of not dedicated to transmission) to deduce prices for its future eventualities. Zonal electrical energy pricing is mostly understood to be much less correct than extra granular “nodal” pricing, which is the tactic utilized by practically each transmission planning group in America, together with the mid-Atlantic states, New England, Texas, California, New York, and the midwest.
Extra merely, although, Duke is inferring transmission prices from a distinct set of information than its transmission plans. This makes about as a lot sense as making an attempt to furnish a brand new home by taking a look at a ground plan of the one subsequent door. It merely received’t work until you might be extravagantly fortunate, otherwise you’re tremendous with asking half your loved ones to sleep on the ground (which is to say, charging them an excessive amount of for energy, failing to deal with outages and winter storms, and so forth).
It doesn’t must be this fashion
Transmission planning is a technical and continuously summary affair, and it may be exhausting to see what efficient planning appears like. It’s instructive, although, to check Duke’s course of with that of its friends. In MISO, the physique answerable for transmission planning within the higher Midwest, in addition to in close by states like Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, a very totally different course of is unfolding: MISO’s regional planning considers eight totally different advantages, decided with suggestions from stakeholders. It plans over a 20-year timeline. And it conducts nodal manufacturing value modeling with and with out the precise transmission options to get an correct estimate of the advantages of these options.
A lot of Duke’s planning work is proprietary, so we don’t know precisely what assumptions it makes, the way it decides what info to gather and quantify, or the way it offers with the data it doesn’t collect. Perhaps, as Duke retains telling us, its planning course of is essentially the most environment friendly use of its appreciable assets. However there’s a clear want for these of us impacted by their selections – the ratepayers, the lawmakers, and power patrons, the general public – to try the info and determine for ourselves. If we don’t, we’re selecting to belief them, and when the time comes, to pay the invoice.
