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10:00 am - 10:15 am:
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Welcome and Opening Remarks from the Commission
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10:15 am – 11:45 am:
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Panel 1: Factors to Consider in Long-term Future Scenarios
In the ANOPR, the Commission noted that there is a wide range of factors shaping transmission needs driven by a changing generation mix that public utility transmission providers could incorporate into long-term scenarios for use in regional transmission planning processes. This panel will explore whether public utility transmission providers should consider specific factors in developing futures scenarios for use in regional transmission planning processes to ensure that those scenarios incorporate sufficiently long-term and reasonable forecasts that account for transmission needs of anticipated future generation. Potential factors that the Commission identified in the ANOPR include federal, state, and local climate and clean energy laws and regulations; federal, state, and local climate and clean energy goals that have not been enshrined into law; utility and corporate energy and climate goals; trends in technology costs within and outside of the electricity supply industry, including shifts toward electrification of buildings and transportation; and resource retirements. Panelists will be asked to discuss topics that include the following:
- What are the key factors shaping the future generation mix that public utility transmission providers should consider to ensure that scenarios incorporate sufficiently long-term and reasonable forecasts that account for transmission needs of anticipated future generation? Which factors influencing changes to system load should public utility transmission providers be required to consider when incorporating sufficiently long-term and reasonable forecasts into these scenarios? Do current regional transmission planning processes sufficiently examine these factors?
- Are current regional transmission planning processes effectively considering expected changes to the generation mix driven by federal, state, and local climate and clean energy laws and regulations and corporate climate and clean energy goals or commitments? Why or why not? Should public utility transmission providers be doing more to consider federal, state, and local climate and clean energy laws and regulations when evaluating transmission needs? Should public utility transmission providers be required to consider federal, state, and local climate and clean energy goals that are not statutorily mandated?
- Should public utility transmission providers consider utility energy and climate goals beyond those reflected in approved integrated resource plans? Should public utility transmission providers consider end use customer-identified needs such as corporate energy and climate goals? Should public utility transmission providers consider potential retirements of existing generation as the resource mix evolves, as well as planned retirements, when evaluating the transmission needs of anticipated future generation? If so, how?
- Should public utility transmission providers account for changing energy technologies and their costs, including (1) technology costs and characteristics of new generation; (2) the continued proliferation of distributed energy resources; (3) improvements in energy efficiency at the retail level; (4) shifts toward electrification of buildings and transportation; and (5) low cost technologies that may enhance or economize the use of existing or new transmission facilities? Are current regional transmission planning processes effectively considering expected changes in energy technologies and their costs? Why or why not?
- What additional potential reforms are necessary to ensure that scenarios developed by public utility transmission providers incorporate sufficiently long-term and reasonable forecasts that account for transmission needs of anticipated future generation?
- To the extent the Commission requires public utility transmission providers to perform long-term scenario planning, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the Commission establishing uniform, prescriptive requirements for specific factors, or subset of factors, shaping the generation mix and changes to system load that must be considered by each transmission provider when evaluating transmission needs for anticipated future generation? Alternatively, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the Commission allowing greater regional flexibility or providing public utility transmission providers guidance on specific factors, or subset of factors, shaping the generation mix and changes to system load when evaluating transmission needs for anticipated future generation?
- How can public utility transmission providers work with stakeholders to achieve sufficient consensus on the factors shaping the future generation mix, factors influencing changes to system load, and input assumptions on energy technologies and their cost to develop each long-term scenario?
Panelists:
- Zachary Smith, Vice President, System and Resource Planning, New York Independent System Operator, Inc.
- Robert Ethier, Vice President of System Planning, ISO-New England Inc.
- Philip D. Moeller, Executive Vice President, Business Operations Group and Regulatory Affairs, Edison Electric Institute
- Dr. David Patton, President, Potomac Economics
- Robert Gramlich, President, Grid Strategies LLC
- Lauren Azar, Owner and Advisor, Azar Law LLC | Presentation
- Michelle Manary, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Electric Delivery, United States Department of Energy
- Erik Heinle, Assistant People’s Council, Office of the People’s Counsel for the District of Columbia
- Nelson Peeler, Senior Vice President of Transmission and Fuels Strategy and Policy, Duke Energy
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11:45 am – 1:00 pm:
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Lunch Break
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1:00 p.m. – 2:30 pm:
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Panel 2: Consideration of Longer-Term Futures Scenarios in Regional Transmission Planning Processes
In the ANOPR, the Commission sought comment on whether and how to reform regional transmission planning processes to require the development and study of long-term scenarios. Developing long-term scenarios based on a reasonable range of relevant assumptions could help public utility transmission providers to better identify and anticipate transmission needs and potential solutions. This panel will examine issues related to developing reasonable long-term scenarios that capture a diverse range of futures. In order to explore these issues in more depth, panelists will be asked to discuss the following:
- To the extent public utility transmission providers currently model long-term scenarios of future transmission needs in different transmission planning regions, or have efforts to expand or refine these modeling efforts, are these existing efforts sufficiently identifying transmission needs for anticipated future generation? Why or why not?
- Are there best practices for considering which anticipated future generation projects that have not yet submitted interconnection requests are most likely to be built?
- How far into the future should projections be made when creating long-term scenarios? Does an optimal long-term transmission planning horizon exist? What are the advantages and disadvantages to longer or shorter long-term transmission planning horizons?
- How frequently should the development of long-term scenarios occur? How should the long-term transmission planning process coordinate with shorter-term transmission planning processes? How should long-term transmission planning be incorporated into the overall planning framework?
- Is traditional scenario planning, i.e., evaluating transmission facilities over a base case and a single future, or several different futures, sufficient to capture the range of uncertainties of a long-term regional transmission planning process, or are more advanced methods necessary, such as probabilistic modeling? For example, can traditional scenario planning methods and use of multiple scenarios help identify common, or “least regrets,” transmission facilities in a manner that sufficiently accounts for uncertainties? Are there other modeling methods and approaches that can help account for the inherent risks and uncertainty when modeling future scenarios with long-term forecasts? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods?
- To the extent the Commission requires public utility transmission providers to perform long-term scenario planning, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the Commission establishing uniform, prescriptive requirements governing the approach to long-term scenario planning that each transmission provider must adopt versus allowing greater flexibility in approaches to long-term scenario planning?
- When performing longer-term scenario planning, are there unique challenges that need to be resolved or new assumptions that need to be developed to maintain system reliability and sufficient resource adequacy? For example, what issues may public utility transmission providers need to address when modeling longer-term scenarios with high penetration rates of renewable resources?
Panelists:
- Aubrey Johnson, Executive Director of System Planning and Competitive Transmission, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc.
- Kenneth Seiler, Vice President of Planning, PJM Interconnection, L.L.C | Presentation
- Jay Caspary, Vice President, Grid Strategies LLC
- Natalie McIntire, Technical and Policy Consultant, American Clean Power Association and Clean Grid Alliance
- Kamran Ali, Vice President of Transmission Planning and Analysis, American Electric Power Company
- Karen Onaran, Vice President, Electricity Consumers Resource Council
- Adam Stern, Manager, Regulatory Affairs, Enel North America, Inc. | Presentation
- Bryce Nielsen, Director of Transmission Planning, Strategy & Development, Salt River Project | Presentation
- Sarah Edmonds, Director of Transmission and Market Services, Portland General Electric
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2:30 pm – 2:45 pm: Break
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2:45 pm – 4:15 pm: Panel 3: Identifying Geographic Zones with High Renewable Resource Potential for Use in Regional Transmission Planning Processes
In the ANOPR, the Commission asked for comment on whether it should require public utility transmission providers to implement processes to identify geographic zones that may host large amounts of anticipated future generation to facilitate regional transmission planning to integrate this generation. This panel will focus on whether and, if so, how the Commission could structure a requirement for public utility transmission providers to establish a process for identifying geographic zones, as well as best practices for identifying the location of such geographic zones. In order to explore these issues in more depth, panelists will be asked to discuss the following:
- Should the Commission require public utility transmission providers to implement processes to identify geographic zones that may host large amounts of anticipated future generation to facilitate regional transmission planning to integrate this generation?
- Are there best practices for identifying geographic zones and, if so, what are they? How may the process for identifying geographic zones be coordinated with or inform the modeling of long-term futures scenarios for transmission needs, including transmission needs of anticipated future generation?
- Some public utility transmission providers already create geographic-based forecasts of future renewable generation development because the economic development of future renewable generation is often constrained to specific geographic areas. Could such forecasts be used in the regional transmission planning process to identify geographic zones? If so, how?
- Does the generator interconnection queue provide a reasonable guide to identifying geographic zones where additional transmission facilities are likely to be needed to integrate anticipated future generation? Why or why not? Alternatively, should geographic zones be identified based on other factors such as the quality of the renewable resource or open solicitations to gauge interest from generation developers?
- Does offshore wind interconnection raise specific challenges or opportunities with respect to identifying geographic zones, and, if so, what are they? How should public utility transmission providers account for geographic zones on federal land or in federal waters designated for renewable energy development, such as Wind Energy Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf?
- What role should public utility transmission providers, project developers, state commissions, and other stakeholders have in identifying geographic zones? What approaches could be used to identify geographic zones in multi-state transmission planning regions? How can differing state policies be considered when identifying geographic zones? For example, could each state or the public utility transmission providers within each state identify geographic zones within each state’s borders that could collectively be used to effectively plan transmission on a region-wide basis?
- What, if any, aspects of the current regional transmission planning processes should be changed to better achieve the goal of planning with geographic zones? For example, are there impediments to using geographic zones under the current approach used by several public utility transmission providers to plan regional transmission facilities, which separately identifies transmission needs driven by reliability obligations, economic considerations, or Public Policy Requirements?
Panelists:
- David Hurlbut, Senior Analyst, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
- Neil Millar, Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations Planning, California ISO | Presentation
- Antoine Lucas, Vice President of Engineering, Southwest Power Pool, Inc.
- Al Tamimi, Vice President of Transmission Planning, Policy and Compliance, Sunflower Electric Power Corporation
- Jeffrey Cook, Vice President of Transmission Planning and Asset Management and Chief Engineer, Bonneville Power Administration
- Debra Lew, Associate Director, Energy Systems Integration Group | Presentation
- Judy Jagdmann, Commissioner, Virginia State Corporation Commission
- John Lewis, Managing Director, Native American Energy, Avant Energy
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4:15 pm – 4:30 pm:
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Closing Remarks
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