The New York State Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment will consider a petition for rehearing of a permit allowing High Bridge Wind LLC, a subsidiary of Northland Power New York Wind LLC, to construct a wind energy project of up to 100.8 megawatts in Chenango County. The petition includes arguments that the board made an error of law by denying their request for an extension of the 12-month statutory time period because of the extraordinary circumstances of COVID-19 and did not allow adequate public participation in arriving at the decision as required by the public service law. 18-F-0262

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities will hold a technical conference to discuss alternative bill payment options as part of its investigation into a ratemaking proposal filed by electric and gas distribution companies for the recovery of costs related to the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The commission opened the proceeding in December 2020 to examine the proposal’s cost recovery provisions, in order to determine whether they are consistent with public interest and if they would result in reasonable rates for customers. The companies developed the proposal in consultation with the Customer Assistance and Ratemaking Working Group. The proposal, filed in August 2020, identifies areas of consensus and opposition among the group members regarding methods and approaches for cost recovery. 20-91

The California Public Service Commission will hold a meeting to review the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board’s draft recommendations on a wildlife mitigation plan for 2022. Topics of discussion include performance metrics and safety culture for investor-owned utilities, as well as small and multi-jurisdictional utilities. The board was established in 2019 to review mitigation plans to ensure that electric utilities are taking effective actions to reduce wildfire risk. The recommendations cover a range of topics including risk assessment, mapping and resource allocation, public power shutoffs, vegetation management, grid hardening, and communication and community outreach.

The Missouri Public Service Commission will hold a workshop to gather information regarding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 2222, issued in September 2020, requiring regional grid operators to revise their tariffs to allow distributed energy resource aggregators to participate in wholesale energy markets. In March, the federal regulator issued another order clarifying that all heterogeneous aggregators have access to wholesale markets, including those that have a demand response component. The Missouri commission opened a working case to determine how it may respond to changes resulting from the orders and to review its current practices regarding distributed resource aggregation. EW-2021-0267

The California Independent System Operator Corp. will host a meeting of the Western Energy Imbalance Market Regional Issues Forum to discuss broad issues related to the market. The meeting will include a presentation of new participants on their “go-live experiences and lessons learned,” as well as a staff presentation on resource adequacy. The market is an automated system that secures the lowest-cost energy to serve real-time customer demand over a broad region spanning across multiple western states. The western market reported a record $101 million in first-quarter benefits for 2021, with cumulative benefits reaching $1.28 billion since its launch in November 2014. Currently, the market serves 10 states, which includes parts of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and Montana.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will discuss performance metrics for Xcel Energy Inc.’s electric utility operations with a focus on refinements to future metrics related to service quality, safety, and reliability. Last year, the commission directed the company to develop an interactive map that would depict these metrics. The commission seeks to build shared understanding of existing metrics ahead of a comment period for final map display. Xcel recently filed its performance metrics annual report with the commission for the period of Jan. 1, 2020 to Dec. 31, 2020, detailing data for about 28 metrics and progress updates on future metrics. M-20-406

The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission is due to receive an update from Hawaiian Electric Companies on the status of data sharing efforts as part of its grid modernization strategy. The commission approved Hawaiian Electric’s plan to switch from an opt-in to an opt-out approach for advanced meters, finding that the strategy could expedite deployment. The commission noted that plan did not request modifications to previously-approved cost caps, which reassures that deployment costs will not increase under the opt-out approach. The update should include the status of its data sharing discussions with public utilities, completed data sharing arrangements, data already shared, and a date by when public entities would have access to aggregated and anonymized data. READ MORE