Legalectric

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with Discovery to and fro with PSE&G.  Here’s the results:

PSE&G-response1 to BPU Discovery

This is their response to the BPU Discovery.  Although Ken Sheehan at BPU had said we could proceed with Discovery before we were parties, we’d sent the blanket request for others’ requests to avoid duplication and find out where we were at, but they ignored it, and even BPU would not forward their requests… so we sat in the dark until after our intervention was formally granted.  I asked again, and lo and behold, that same day, BPU turned over their requests and PSE&G turned over their respones to BPU Discovery.  Many of the responses aren’t, so I imagine there’ll be some wrangling about that.

Here’s what we’ve sent to them so far:

STL-Discovery-Herling-1

STL-Discovery-McGlynn1

STL-Discovery-Crouch1-corrected

STL-Discovery-Millies1

STL-Discovery-Bailey1

STL-Discovery-King1

The Discovery deadline for the Direct Testimony has been extended to June 5th.

Prehearing Order – May 14, 2009

Are we having fun yet?

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa!  One for the home team!!!!

First it was NYISO and ISO-New England:

Feb 4 2009 NYISO & ISO-NE Letter to JCSP

Then it was New York’s Deputy Secretary of Energy testifying before Senate Energy Committee:

DeCortis Testimony- March 26, 2009

And now the Governors from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have stood up against the insane Midwest transmission plans — transmission plans like CapX 2020, JCSP/MTEP, Green Power Express, and the unnamed group announced on April 3rd, starting in North Dakota, banding southern Minnesota, and shooting out into Wisconsin.

Here’s their letter:

East Coast Govs Transmission Letter

It’s blurry, so click the letter and read the whole thing.  An eye opener for the Midwest, those who don’t recognize that there’s a big world out there and it’s not all about Midwest wind.  Folks, you have a marketing problem, your target market says NO!  What about NO can’t you understand?

I’d wondered why “The Economist” had shown up in my blog stats, and now I know.  But from the viewpoint of this article, it’s clear they didn’t do more than scratch the surface of transmission in the Midwest.  This is “party line” all the way — I hope they’ll now take the time to read NYISO and ISO-NE’s letter of withdrawal from publication of JCSP!

YOUR TURN!  Let them know what you think and why — the registration is instantaneous and easy, so COMMENT AWAY!

Spreading green electricity: A gust of progress

Apr 30th 2009 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition

Creating windpower transmission in the Midwest

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT helped bring electricity beyond America’s cities to its most distant farms. Barack Obama hopes the countryside will return the favour. Much of this challenge rests in the gusty upper Midwest. In recent years Interstates 29 and 80, highways of America’s heartland, have teemed with lorries bringing wind blades to new plants. Efforts to build transmission have moved more slowly. There are 300,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects waiting to connect to the electricity grid, says the American Wind Energy Association. Of these, 70,000 megawatts are in the upper Midwest.

Now action is at last replacing talk. Firms are proposing ambitious transmission lines across the plains. The region’s governors and regulators are mulling ways to help them. The federal government is playing its part. In February the stimulus package allotted $11 billion to modernise the grid. Since then members of Congress have proposed an array of bills to develop transmission. Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate energy committee, intends to start marking up transmission plans next week—though debate over other parts of the energy bill may delay progress.

America’s grid is complex: 3,000 utilities, 500 transmission owners and 164,000 miles (264,000km) of high-voltage transmission lines are stretched across three “interconnections” in the east, west and Texas. If wind is to generate 20% of electricity by 2030, as in one scenario from the Department of Energy, about $60 billion must be spent on new transmission. Just as important, regulations must change.

Historically, electricity has been generated close to consumers. Regulations are ill-suited for transmission across state borders. Rules for allocating a project’s costs burden local ratepayers rather than distant beneficiaries. One state’s regulators can scuttle a regional plan. The process for seeking approval from federal agencies is so disjointed and slow that pushing a line over a national park or river might as well be crossing the Styx.

American Electric Power (AEP) built a transmission line from West Virginia to Virginia in two years. The approval process had taken 14. “There are lots of people with authority to make pieces of the decision,” explains Susan Tomasky, president of AEP Transmission, “and no single entity that can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” Despite recent changes, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has limited power to make projects go faster.

Fortunately, officials have started to address these problems. In September 2008 the governors of the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin formed an alliance to co-operate on regional planning. Midwest ISO, which supervises 94,000 miles of high-voltage lines, is considering ways to spread the costs of new transmission beyond local ratepayers and taking part in preparing a broad plan for the eastern interconnection.

Federal legislation will help too. Harry Reid, the Senate’s Democratic leader, Mr Bingaman and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota have offered three of the most prominent proposals. Each would require comprehensive plans for the interconnections, and would, to varying degrees, expand FERC’s authority to locate big new projects and allocate their costs.

Initiatives like this would help to encourage firms already eager to invest. Two of the most ambitious plans belong to AEP and to ITC Holdings, which each want to build lines from the upper Midwest to cities farther east. In April FERC offered ITC’s “Green Power Express” initial incentives to push the project along.

However, even quick progress in the world of transmission is slow. If all goes according to schedule—an unlikely thought— the Green Power Express would still not be in service until 2020. Fights in Washington are inevitable. FERC’s role in siting projects is controversial. More important, this debate may be bogged down by broader ones, such as the fight over a mandate to make a greater share of electricity from renewable sources. Meanwhile the winds whistle across the plains.

Day before yesterday, New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities met to make determinations on the Motions for Intervention of a large number of parties.  Stop the Lines, of course being one!  They’d objected to our Intervention:

PSEG Response to Intervention Motions

PSEG Response to Escrow Motions

… but had no objection to my Pro Hac Vice… go figure.  And the feeling I had from the BPU is that they were honestly encouraging interventions.  SO, what happened?

State: 17 groups may intervene in PSE&G’s power line proposal

By Colleen O’Dea • Daily Record • April 27, 2009

All 17 groups that sought to be part of the hearing process on Public Service Electric and Gas Company’s proposed transmission line project may do so, the state Board of Public Utilities decided today.

Meeting in Newark, the board also directed PSE&G to meet with the intervening parties – several municipalities, environmental organizations and citizens groups – to negotiate an agreement on the establishment of an escrow account from which the groups could pay for expert witnesses.

“Super,” is how Dave Slaperud of the 300-member Stop the Lines, one of six groups the utility had sought to bar from intervening in its application to add 500 kilovolt lines along a 46-mile transmission corridor from Pennsylvania through Morris County to Roseland, described the BPU’s decision.

“We would have been really surprised if we had been denied intervener status,” said Slaperud. “There are so many of us living along the line who are affected and not all the municipalities are getting involved in the process.”

Among the government bodies that are involved are East Hanover, Montville, Parsippany and Byram townships and the Montville Board of Education. Interveners are allowed to request discovery documents, cross examine witnesses and present their own expert testimony.

And more:

Groups cleared to speak at powerline hearings

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HEY MOES, I’D SIGNED UP FOR THE LIST AND AS OF TODAY, 4/28, HAVE NOT RECEIVED NOTICE OF THIS PROJECT APPLICATION THAT YOU’VE POSTED ON APRIL 24!  WHAT GIVES?

Here’s the state’s routing webpage – HERE’S THE LINK FOR APPLICATION AND TO SIGN UP FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

MOES page for Hiawatha Project

Now take a look at this map for the FULL plan, well, at least a larger picture, than what they’re disclosing for the Hiawatha Project.  Here’s the map, and note carefully, from B-C is what they’re calling the Hiawatha Project.  tHIS SECTION IS FOR XCEL’s PAM RASMUSSEN, WHO HATES IT WHEN I PUBLISH THIS MAP, SO I’VE GOT TO BE VERY SPECIFIC WHERE THIS INFORMATION IS COMING FROM AND WHAT CONSTITUTES THE “HIAWATHA PROJECT” and as far as Xcel is disclosing, the applied for Hiawatha Project is “B-C” of this map.  Look below to see where the rest comes from!

Here’s the NM-SPG meeting minutes reporting on the A-B link, the 345kV line from a new substation on Hwy 280 (A) to the new Hiawatha Project substation (B).

Minutes – NM-SPG meeting July 24, 2008

Then there’s “Hiawatha Project” from B-C.

For C, D and E, see the “Minnesota Transmission Owners” 2007 Biennial Transmission Plan, where they list these extension alternatives:

Alternatives. Initial investigation and scoping discussions have led to the development of three potential alternatives:

(1) Construct a new 115 kV line from a new Hiawatha Substation along Highway 55 to a new Oakland Substation near Lake Street and I-35W. The line would then continue south to a new Highway 62 Substation near Highway 62 and Nicollet Avenue. The line would continue to its final termination at a new Penn Lake Substation near I-494 and Sheridan Avenue.

(2) Similar to Option 1, but the final 115 kV line would stretch from Highway 62 Substation to the existing Wilson Substation near I-494 and Wentworth Avenue.

(3) Construct two smaller 115 kV loops with new 115 kV lines running from Hiawatha to Oakland to Elliot Park and a second loop from Penn Lake to Highway 62 to Wilson.

Section 7 of Biennial Transmission Plan, go to Section 7.5 and all the way down to 3rd and 4th to last pages:

CLICK HERE FOR SECTION 7 OF TRANSMISSION PLAN

Another point to note:  the Hiawatha Project is WAY over spec’d.  This is a double circuited ACSS 795kCmil conductor — see what that means and compare it with the claimed 100MW need in the FUTURE!

Ex. 35 – conductors – from SW MN 345kV docket

And now, for today’s STrib article:

Will burying power lines in Midtown bury city, users with $12.6 million bill?

Xcel Energy prefers to route transmission lines along the Midtown Greenway; public officials question the fivefold cost increase of putting them underground.

By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune

Last update: April 27, 2009 – 11:27 PM

If Xcel wanted buried power lines along this corridor, they should have expressed that when the greenway project was in the planning … read more stages. They could have accomplished this with a substantially reduced cost. Poor foresight on their part is not the responsibility of the city.

Xcel Energy has told state regulators that it wants its controversial twin high-voltage power lines through the Midtown area of Lake Street in Minneapolis to run along the rim of the Midtown Greenway.

But the utility told the Public Utility Commission that the line could be run either overhead for $3 million or underground for $15.6 million. If it’s the latter, either the city or electrical users in Minneapolis should pay the extra $12.6 million cost, Xcel said.

Some city and Hennepin County elected officials said the proposal represents an opportunity for state regulators to consider a paradigm shift in assessing those costs and whether the utility should bear the expense of installing a new underground line in an urban area. That’s because the lines would penetrate a dense urban area, unlike more typical routing through rural or developing suburban areas, said Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff.

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