The Notice of Comment Period has been issued:

Here’s the plan to review:

2021 Biennial Xmsn Projects Report

Here’s the poop:

How to file comments? See below, and be sure to ask to be on the service list! If you want live links to make it easier, use link to Notice above.

First the state court, though there’s that matter of a HUGE bond, and now federal court.

Here’s the Order:

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zgvomrqomvd/rulingLine.pdf

Bottom line:

Given the balance of harms implicated by the parties and the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, a narrowly tailored motion for preliminary injunction will be granted with respect to land on or near
federal jurisdictional waters until issuance of this court’s decision on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment, which will be fully briefed within a day of the issuance of this order.

From REUTERS (!):

Judge delays construction on parts of $500 mln U.S. power line

It’s that time of the year, errrrrr, it’s that time of every other year… time for the Minnesota Transmission Owners:

It’s filed in Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Docket M-21-111.

The Biennial Transmission Projects Report is required by statute, but there are no longer public meetings, and I must admit, I had pushed and promoted a lot initially, but ran out of time and energy for such a … ahem… waste of time. See Minn. Stat. §216B.2425 for how it’s supposed to go.

If history is any guide, it seems Initial Comments are about a month and a half out, mid-January, with Reply Comments another month and a half out, so mid-March. I’ll put it on the calendar and send a reminder around.

There’s nothing really exciting that I see, at first glance, but I did enjoy seeing the NERC Report excerpts. Last time they included the NERC Reliability as a separate filing, this time they included excerpts at the tail end of the report, above.

Here’s the full NERC Report — it comes out every year, and has a great assortment of important info, about reliability margins, load forecasts, and predictions of generation mix for energy and peak demand. I LOVE THE NERC REPORT!! Here’s the most recent ones — they used to come out in October, now it’s December:

NERC 2020 Long-Term Reliability Assessment

This is how reliability was defined in the transmission world decades ago, circa 1999 NERC Long-Term Reliability Assessment:

Keep in mind that now transmission is no longer about reliability — it’s about economics, so it’s a very different type of evaluation.

Who cares about the NERC Report? Over the decades, the NERC reports have looked at the various areas of the country, based on the grid’s organization, and it evaluates the system’s ability to provide electricity. What I like about it, though, is that the charts, graphs, circles, and arrows belie the party line, like all the talk about decreasing coal and fossil fuel generation, but look at projections for MISO:

Here’s the chart for MISO — the devil is in the details — look at the predominance of fossil fuel:

Remember how the utilities were blathering about the NEED for transmission, and that the transmission build-out would decrease need and reliance on reserve margin — at that time, MISO reserve margin was 15%.

They got their billions in transmission and we’re paying them way too much for it, and look at the reserve margin, the last line in that chart:

18%

Oh, well… I must have misunderstood… SNORT!

And yeah, the purpose of that big transmission build-out morphed into “IT’S FOR WIND!” yet remember, the CapX 2020 lines start at the coal plants and head east:

And the MISO MVP 17 Portfolio of projects supporting coal:

It’s exhausting, dizzying, seeing these scams spinning through, and yet here we go with “Grid North Partners.” Just NO!

Again, there will be opportunity for Initial and Reply Comments, expect Notice in a couple weeks, with Initial Comments probably due in mid-January. So later… in the meantime, look at the NERC report and compare with all the blather you’re hearing, particularly with COP26 in the works.

Can it be?!?! The rulemaking based on the 2005 statutory changes was published in the state register today. TODAY… 2005… SIXTEEN YEARS, and NINE YEARS since this 12-1246 docket was opened. Comments are due by November 17, more on that below.

The Public Utilities Commission did one hell of a job delaying until BILLIONS of CapX 2020, a/k/a CapX 2050 and Grid North Partners and MTEP MVP projects were rammed through. Public interest anyone? Naaaaaaah…

Here it is — First the Notice (60 page service list!), then Statement of Need and Reasonableness (SONAR) and then the proposed rules (yeah, 120+ pages):

Comments are due November 17th:

Here’s the catch — they are planning on putting these through without a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, UNLESS there are at least 25 requests for a hearing — I think that can be arranged. Here are the details, note that they must be “valid” requests, which means explain in short what you want differently in the rules:

ONWARD! SIXTEEN YEARS… UNREAL!

Today, starting at 10:30, the Wisconsin PSC meeting is on, and last on the agenda, #15, is the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line. They will be deciding whether they will interfere in judicial review of their C-HC order and make that moot by rescinding the order, and then, whether they will immediately RE-ORDER as the utilities want. Regulatory capture much?

Tune in early, because last time they ran through 40 items in 5-6 minutes!

FULL AGENDA

To listen to meeting (whatever happened to the webcast?) go HERE: https://apps.psc.wi.gov/APPS/eventscalendar/broadcast/livebroadcast.aspx

To check out all the filings in this docket, go HERE! Some very interesting and highly recommended comments were filed over the last month.

If you’re curious or upset that there is no longer video livestreamed, contact PSC Helpdesk at (608) 267-9195 or email at PSCHelpdesk@wisconsin.gov