The ISO New England Inc. will hold its 14th forward capacity auction, covering the 2023-2024 delivery period. The previous annual auction held last February was the first to be held under new rules to accommodate entry of state-sponsored resources by introducing a secondary substitution auction, where retiring resources can transfer their capacity to subsidized new resources that didn’t clear in the primary auction. Clearing prices slumped to a six-year low last year, with the primary auction concluding with commitments from about 34.8 gigawatts. More than 2.6 gigawatts of new resources secured obligations in the primary and substitution auctions. The grid operator retained Exelon Corp.’s Mystic 8 and 9 natural gas-fired generating units, needed for fuel security in the 2022-2023 capacity year. READ MORE

The Maine Public Utilities Commission will hold a preliminary bidders conference to provide information to parties interested in participating in its competitive procurement of distributed generation resources. Legislation enacted in June 2019 directs the agency to conduct multiple solicitations to obtain 250 megawatts of distributed generation from shared resources and 125 megawatts from commercial and institutional accounts over the next five years. The agency will review plans, process and anticipated timelines for the initial procurement block. READ MORE

The New York Public Service Commission will discuss electric utilities’ standby and buyback service rates to recover appropriate grid availability costs from customers who use distributed generation to offset energy use or sell excess output from their facilities to the grid. The value stack pricing mechanism, adopted in 2017, began a transition from net metering to compensate distributed energy resources in a more accurate and granular manner, but also contemplated methodologies to better reflect the costs that DERs impose on the grid. Utilities filed their proposals following the commission’s May 2019 order intended to craft rates that more accurately align individual customers’ contribution to system costs with the rates such customers pay, thereby sending improved price signals to those customers. 15-E-0751

The Missouri Public Service Commission will hold a public hearing on a rate hike requested by The Empire District Electric Company. Last August, the company filed an application seeking an increase in annual electric revenues by about $26.5 million. For a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, the proposed increase would raise monthly bills by about $7.85, or 5.80 percent. ER-2019-0374

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will discuss whether the second revised environmental review of Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline project is adequate. The state’s Department of Commerce issued a revised assessment following the commission’s order in response to a June 2019 ruling by the the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which found that the project’s environmental review failed to consider the potential impact of an oil spill in the Lake Superior watershed. The project entails replacement of Enbridge’s aging and deteriorating 50-year old pipeline, which spans over 1,000 miles to deliver crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Midwest and beyond. READ MORE

The California Public Utilities Commission will hold a workshop to discuss efforts to address the potential for electricity system resource adequacy shortages. Last November, the agency authorized the procurement of 3.3 gigawatts of new, non-emitting electricity resources by 2023 to forestall potential resource adequacy shortages starting in 2021. The order also seeks to keep some natural-gas-fired power plants open past their current 2020 closure dates by recommending the State Water Resources Control Board to extend the deadlines to comply with the once-through-cooling policies by one to three years. READ MORE

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to receive comments on rules regarding the filing of distribution system plans by Colorado’s investor-owned electric utilities. The move stems from legislation enacted last June that directs the commission to adopt rules requiring electric utilities to submit distribution system plans and workforce transition details when they propose to retire power plants. The agency must also consider the cost of carbon in utilities’ resource planning processes. READ MORE