The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission will consider Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania Inc.’s application for adjustments of retail rates and charges applicable to its gas service. The NiSource Inc. subsidiary asked for an annual revenue increase of $98.3 million. The revision would result in an average monthly bill increase of 14.49 percent for residential customers. The commission will hold an additional meeting on June 16. R-2021-3024296

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities is due to receive comments on Eversource Energy’s petition seeking grid modernization cost recovery for rates effective July 1, 2021. The company proposes to recover a total of about $13.4 million for grid modernization capital investments from 2018-2020, as well as incremental operations and maintenance expenses for 2020. Eversource states that the bill increase over current rates for all customers, including commercial and industrial customers, will not exceed 0.1 percent, depending on rate class and usage. READ MORE

The Illinois Commerce Commission is due to receive information from utility service providers and operators regarding their response efforts and communication plans to ensure they are adequately prepared and equipped to tackle weather-related crises with minimal impact on customers. The commission opened a notice of inquiry in response to the mid-February winter storm event that affected the south-central U.S., forcing natural gas processing plants and compressor stations to shut down. The reduction in supply, coupled with an increase in demand for home heating, caused prices to soar from about $3.50 to nearly $24 per MMBtu between Feb. 10 and Feb. 17, reaching as high as $255 per MMBtu for gas delivered to Illinois by pipelines. The inquiry also seeks input from other interested persons and entities on a range of topics including current wholesale and retail policies relevant to pricing during an extreme event, cost recovery mechanisms to mitigate the final impacts on utilities and ratepayers, and coordination between water, electric and gas utilities to strengthen resilience and reliability of utility distribution systems.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission is due to receive comments on the implementation of certain sections of the 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act, which requires utilities to phase out coal-fired power by 2025, achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and transition to a carbon-free electric system by 2045. The commission is examining the treatment of energy storage, particularly how the energy used and provided by storage resources should be accounted for, so that the nonpower attributes of renewable generation are not double counted. The agency is also examining whether compliance and reporting should be differentiated based on storage technology, location within the grid or collocation with a generating resource, and ownership. UE-210183

The Missouri Public Service Commission is due to receive stakeholder input regarding the implementation of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 2222, issued in September 2020, requiring regional grid operators to revise their tariffs to ensure that their market rules facilitate the participation of distributed energy resource aggregators 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 Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will consider an application by Big Bend Wind LLC and Red Rock Solar LLC, subsidiaries of Apex Clean Energy Holdings LLC, to construct what would be the state’s first wind-solar utility-scale hybrid renewable project. The proposed wind farm, spanning 43,523 acres in portions of Cottonwood and Watonwan counties, would have up to 308 megawatts of nameplate capacity. The solar Project is proposed as an up-to 60-megawatt facility on about 483 acres in Cottonwood County. Depending on the total capacity approved for the hybrid project, the electricity generated from the projects would be adjusted to not exceed a total of 335 megawatts. The purpose of the project is to produce renewable energy for purchase by electric utilities or other entities to satisfy the state’s renewable energy standard or other sustainability goals. WS-19-619