Our coalition of the “Municipal Intervenors,” Stop the Lines! and “Environmental Intervenors” has filed a Motion to Dismiss in PSEG’s Susquehanna-Roseland proceeding in New Jersey.

Here it is – enjoy!

Notice of Motion, Proposed Order

Motion – Supporting Brief

Motion – Exhibits 1-8

Motion – Exhibits 9-20

Nutshell version:

NO!

… ahem… really, it’s that simple!

The hearing is set to begin on the Monday after next, November 16th, and we’re having a phone conference next Monday.  They ought to just toss it out, and tell them to come back when they’ve really got something.  I kinda feel sorry for PSEG, because they’re having to carry the water here when it’s not even their project.  PJM’s the one that should be in the hot seat.

Did I hear that right???

I’m fighting with PSEG out in New Jersey, representing Stop the Lines on the Susquehanna Roseland transmission line.  PSEG can be vile… but on this one point, PSEG’s Ralph Izzo is right. Now, if we can just get him to be consistent.

Transmission is not rocket science, and Izzo statements reflect that he understands what Midwest transmission is all about — $$$ and coal.  He and PSEG have joined the many who are standing up to Midwest transmission plans.  Now, is the Midwest paying attention?  As PUC Chair Boyd said at the last Legislative Energy Commission meeting, they need a solid business plan.  Guess what — they don’t have one, DUH!!!!  There’s no market (Doesn’t Chair Boyd or anyone else in the room think there’s something a little too cozy about Boyd advocating for transmission with MISO???).

Today at a conference, PSEG’s Izzo let loose and let them have it:

Izzo also outlines his opposition to transmission superhighway proposal. “A subsidized national build out of transmission is economically unjustified and, since it will be utilized significantly to also transport energy from coal plants, environmentally self-defeating,” said Izzo. “While purporting to help move green energy, the new lines would more often be moving electricity from coal plants to new markets in the East.”

Here’s some propaganda from PSEG:

FULL TEXT OF IZZO’S SPEECH

The Role of Transmission in a Clean Energy Economy

In short:

A national transmission build-out would cause more expensive projects to be built, enable coal plants to run more often, and hurt local efforts to promote renewable generation.  It also would create a new national bureaucracy and have a chilling effect on the development of new renewable projects while transmission routes are planned and built.

Now just who does this sound like?!?!?!?! Hilarious… dig this, though he’s not admitting the INTENTIONALITY of the transmission scam:

This physical reality results in an unintended consequence of building large superhighways of transmission lines that go far beyond delivering green power to the grid. It will provide access not just to renewable resources, but to all power plants in the surrounding region where the lines are built. For the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) market region, which currently generates more than 75 percent of its power from coal, coal plants also will gain new, additional access to eastern markets and higher prices. So, instead of Midwest renewable energy competing against Midwest coal-fueled electricity, both coal and green energy will travel along these new lines to more easterly markets and replace eastern renewables and eastern power generated with cleaner, but more expensive, natural gas, which is more prominent in the East. Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets will be more difficult to achieve, and it will put upward pressure on emission prices.

And this broad view so contradicts their Susquehanna-Roseland transmission plan, which is all about coal from Amos = it’s the NE part of “Line 1” in Project Mountaineer.  PSEG, you can’t have it both ways!  Let us hope that now that he’s spouting opposition to the Great Midwestern Transmission Scam he’ll see the scam of New Jersey transmission.  At least we’ll now have this to use.  THANK YOU, RALPH IZZO!

Just in, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has delayed the Evidentiary Hearings for PSE&G’s (and PJM’s!) Susquehanna-Roseland transmission line, from the week of October 19 to the week of November 16!

BPU Amended Scheduling Order 2009-09-11

Even better, the Discovery that was due right now is now not due for two more weeks! Two more weeks of figuring out how to torture those poor witnesses for PSE&G!!

For more info, see STOP THE LINES!

And that fits well with the CapX 2020 Brookings hearings, that were supposed to begin November 23 but now probably starting the week after.

From WSJ article below, the chart says it all…

Another great Wall Street Journal article came out, again noting that demand is DOWN, DOWN, DOWN.  This is pretty important given the massive infrastructure rush by the utilities.  It’s showing what we’ve known all along, the 800 lb. gorilla in the corner that could/should stop any new infrastructure buildout.

Rebecca Smith, Wall Street Journal, wrote this piece, published last week:

Electricity Prices Plummet

Here’s the PJM Report it’s based on:

2009 Quarterly State of the Market (January – June)

There are some choice snippets in the WSJ article, such as:

On Friday, the nation’s largest wholesale power market serving parts of
13 states east of the Rockies is expected to report that electricity
demand fell 4.4% in the first half of the year. That helped to push
down spot market prices by 40% during the first half of this year.

… and…

The price declines in this market, which extends from Delaware to
Michigan, come on top of a 2.7% drop in energy use in 2008 over 2007.

… and…

Power demand in Texas is down 3.2% so far this year due to business
contraction and reductions in employment which are causing many
households to economize.

… and …

But the flagging economy has resulted in a slump in demand that has jolted some energy markets. American Electric Power Co. and Southern Co., for example, both reported double-digit drops in industrial electricity use for the past quarter.

… and…

“There’s more supply than demand and prices are really low so it
doesn’t make sense to build anything,” says John Shelk, president of
the Electric Power Supply Association in Washington, D.C., a group that
represents power generators.

Once more with feeling… SUSQUEHANNA-ROSELAND TRANSMISSION IS NOT NEEDED!

I was a big Posner fan in law school, mostly because he was so much fun to pick on, I so hate the “Chicago school.”  But here’s another Posner, doing good!  It’s a hilarious opinion, all the better because it so clearly tells FERC and PJM what to do with their rate shifting cost apportionment.  GO POSNER!

Here’s the decision:

Illinois Commerce Commission, et al. v. FERC

LISTEN TO THE ORAL ARGUMENT HERE!!!

Two issues in this case:

1) PJM/FERC pricing based on marginal cost v. pricing including sunk costs.  That one went for PJM/FERC, and American Electric and others lost in just a few paragraphs.

2) Where the action is — Ohio and Illinois Commissions objected to the 500+kV cost allocation on a pro rata basis, that “their rats should be raised by a uniform amount sufficient to defray the facilities’ costs.”

What’s particularly interesting to me is that this is all about “Project Mountaineer,” which PJM doesn’t even want to acknowledge exists!  the Susquehanna-Roseland line that I’m working against is the NE part of line 1, and the MAPP line through now “just” a part of Delaware is the NE part of the southern line, line 4.  Here’s the magnitude of Project Mountaineer – the Susquehanna-Roseland line is QUAD 500kV plus double circuiting the existing 230kV line, that’s one big project:

FYI, in the Cudahy dissent, he did some digging, and there is a Project Mountaineer tootnote quoting PJM stating that Project Mountaineer “would bring about substantial congestion relief and reliability improvements increasing Midwest-to-east transfers by 5,000 MW.”  See Ventyx, Major Transmission Constraints in PJM (2007).

A quick sidebar… FYI, from Delaware Electric Cooperative 2009 Energy Plan – “CONFIDENTIAL”, arguing for the MAPP transmission project…

… and they report that transmission congestion is down 75% to 275 hours ANNUALLY!  Really… so for that 275 hours we should build the $1.2 MAPP project?  HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE?

OK, back to Posners 7th Circuit decision.  It was PJM’s idea, approved by FERC, to hit up all the utilities, and Illinois, a BIG example of the problem, would have had to pay out some $480 million while not receiving one dime of benefit.  PJM used the theory that, well, PJM used to do it this way all the time before in massive infrastructure buildouts, but as Posner reminded them, that was then and this is now, PJM is a lot different now, Illinois wasn’t even part of the picture.

Posner was pissed off that there was no data at all to support their desired allocation, no data, no specifics about difficulties in assessing benefits, no lawsuits about inequities, no particulars, “[n]ot even the roughest estimate of likely benefits to the objecting utilities… oh yes, he let them have it… for page after page… and notes that FERC “brief devotes only five pages to the 500kV pricing issue.”  FERC seems to presume a similar brainwashing in the courts that they and utilities presume of Commissions and legislatures, one that I see to often, that frantic claim of URGENT need, ‘WE’RE GOING TO FREEZE IN THE DARK IN AN INCUBATOR WITHOUT A JOB” theory, presented despite documented long term decrease in demand across the country.  Once more with feeling, HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE?

Oh, these guys irritate me.  Anyway, check out this decision and consider the impact on all the 500kV and above projects applied for or waiting in the wings.