Factor This

Can the Northeast fix its interconnection slog?

Can the Northeast fix its interconnection slog?

Rhode Island PUC Commissioner Abigail Anthony, National Grid distributed generation ombudsperson Michael Porcaro, and Convergent Energy and Power regulatory affairs manager Emma Marshall-Torres joined Episode 56 of the Factor This! podcast to discuss the challenges, and opportunities, facing DER interconnection in the Northeast.

Join them and many more industry experts at the GridTECH Connect Forum - Northeast in Newport, Rhode Island Oct. 23-25. Register here to receive 20% off admission.

A simple mention of the word can send shivers down a developer's spine.

Interconnection.

It's the bogeyman of the energy transition. Long delays and steep upgrade costs can doom projects before they ever get off the ground. The interconnection slog may be the single biggest threat to national and local clean energy and climate goals. And the people critical to improving the process — developers, utilities, and regulators — don't always get along, to say the least.

In the Northeast, solving the interconnection equation couldn't be more urgent. Extreme weather events and strained natural gas supplies have raised the importance of adding new capacity to the grid; aggressive state policy goals demand faster integration of clean energy resources.

And while perspectives on how to achieve these goals may differ, there's common ground in pursuing a cleaner, more reliable electric grid, key stakeholders say.

"We're not doing things the way we have done the past hundred years," said Michael Porcaro, National Grid's distributed generation ombudsperson. "We are trying to think differently. Whether by choice or not, the change of the world is coming."

Porcaro joined Rhode Island Public Utilities Commissioner Abigail Anthony and Convergent Energy and Power regulatory affairs manager Emma Marshall-Torres on the Factor This! podcast to discuss the challenges, and opportunities facing DER interconnection in the Northeast. Each will be speaking at the GridTECH Connect Forum - Northeast in Newport, Rhode Island, Oct. 23-25 as part of an effort to bring together developers, utilities, and regulators around the critical issue of interconnection. Register with this link to receive 20% off admission.

While much of the U.S. transmission grid is governed by regional operators, providing uniform standards for resource interconnection, the distribution grid is guided largely by a patchwork of policies set by individual state regulators. Inconsistencies create challenges for developers, adding to an already time-consuming and expensive process.

Land constraints in the Northeast, meanwhile, often necessitate that projects connect to the distribution grid over the bulk power system. In Massachusetts, for example, more than 4 GW of solar power generating capacity is currently operating, good enough for third-most nationally for installed solar per square mile.

National Grid has 2.5 GW of interconnected DER in Massachusetts alone. Another 2 GW waits in the queue for approval, 80% of which comes from batteries.

"Going forward, the state has a lot of aggressive goals to double or triple (clean energy capacity) over the next 10 years. It's pretty aggressive," Porcaro said. "We have a higher complexity of what we're trying to connect and we're having a high volume that's coming in very quickly."

The only way to adapt to the flood of resources aiming to connect to the grid is to invest in new infrastructure, Porcaro added. But making that case to regulators can be tricky, especially when it comes to proactive investments.

In Rhode Island, as in other states across the country, Anthony said regulators have to assess whether proposed grid modernization investments are: 1) needed, and 2) needed on a particular timeframe. "That is much harder to do than it might sound," she noted. That's in large part due to the shifting of risk from utility to regulator (and ratepayer) with pre-approved investments.

Rhode Island's interconnection challenge, she said, has less to do with rapid load growth and more with larger projects attempting to connect to the distribution grid to avoid the higher costs and longer timelines often tied to transmission-level interconnection.

"We might not want to invest in something now that will be nearly fully depreciated by the time of need, should the need even materialize," Anthony said.

It's not technical standards or technology inadequacies that receive the bulk of blame for interconnection inefficiencies. Improved communication and transparency among all parties involved could drastically improve the process, experts say.

FILE - Framed by the Manhattan skyline, electricians with IBEW Local 3 install solar panels on top of the Terminal B garage at LaGuardia Airport, Nov. 9, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. President Joe Biden is promising “strong executive action” to combat climate change, despite dual setbacks that have restricted his ability to regulate carbon emissions and boost clean energy such as wind and solar power. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Emma Marshall-Torres, regulatory affairs manager for Convergent Energy and Power, a New York-based battery storage developer, said she's optimistic that key stakeholders are moving toward a more collaborative and open approach to interconnection.

Several informal working groups, like the Interconnection Technical Working Group in New York and the Energy Storage Interconnection Review Group in Massachusetts, are convening developers, utilities, and regulators outside of more-formal regulatory proceedings.

"I think just what needs to happen is that the conversation needs to allow for all of our vantage points and hopefully we can all coalesce on something that works for everybody."

Marshall-Torres said that policies in New York and New England are "excellent" on paper, but that states and utilities can differ in interpreting them. She said this actually creates an opportunity for meaningful collaboration and to find common understanding.

Some projects can be difficult to fully explain in writing, she added. And a misunderstanding can lead to added costs and time stuck in the queue.

"Those are kind of the real examples that I think sometimes we miss when we speak very loftily about these concepts,” Marshall-Torres said. “We kind of distance ourselves from the real on-the-ground effects of what that means for the projects that we're looking to get online."