Roger Caiazza
I have provided earlier updates from the New York State crash test dummy experiment to reach a zero-emissions electric grid by 2040 as part of its Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I have previously described issues identified by the organizations responsible for the electric system associated with the generating portion of this transition. This post summarizes the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACENY) webinar “Grid Planning to Meet Climate Act Goals” that addressed the transmission challenges.
ACENY Webinar
On April 11, 2024, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACENY) hosted a webinar entitled “Grid Planning to Meet Climate Act Goals” that was recorded on a video. The webinar was moderated by Chris Casey, from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and featured speakers from the Department of Public Service (DPS), New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), and National Grid. This article describes each speaker’s presentation and provides links to sections of the video so that readers can follow the presentations.
Chris Casey, a lawyer from the NRDC opened the webinar with an overview. It was not surprising that his introduction ticked all the boxes. New York is on the “forefront of the transition to address the “impacts of destructive climate change”, increase access to “affordable” renewable energy, bolster “resilience against life-threatening extreme energy events”, all while “creating jobs and delivering substantial economic benefits”. Behind the rhetoric, however, reality lurks, and it does not look so grand. In the following sections I include slides and links to the section of the video that discusses the slide.
DPS Presentation
Elizabeth Grisaru (Senior Policy Advisor) from the DPS made the first presentation “Planning for Future Electric System Needs”. One of her main job responsibilities is transmission planning associated with the Climate Act transition. During her introduction she included a slide that illustrates the connections between generators and customers that were the focus of the webinar.
Since the inception of the Climate Act, DPS has begun several initiatives. These projects total $6 billion over and above what is needed to keep the system running. The investments are for both Climate Act needs and reliability issues. What was not included was the breakdown between the two needs or any estimate of how much more will be needed. Clearly many more investments will be required.
The transition to an electric system that depends upon diffuse wind and solar requires a significant upgrade to the transmission system. The PSC has a new “Coordinated Grid Planning Process” to address this issue. However, the first report will not be available until the fall of 2025. The Climate Act has an interim 2030 electric grid target of 70% power from renewable sources by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. I have to say I don’t think the schedules match.
The DPS final slide addresses outstanding issues. On one hand existing sources of generation are being forced to retire while on the other hand electrification initiatives are increasing loads. Grisaru claimed that at the PSC “We all agree reliability is the most important thing we have to worry about”.
NYISO Presentation
NYISO Director of System Planning Yachi Lin talked about their plans to implement a clean and reliable grid. The following slide describes the NYISO planning process. There is a two-year cycle of reliability planning that includes quarterly checks on the status of the system. NYISO is constantly evaluating future reliability needs.
The following slide describes the generation system and the investments expected to be needed. Existing generating capacity is 37.4 GW, but an additional 20 GW must be in service in seven years to meet the 2030 goal. The unanswered question was whether this is feasible. Note that the feasibility question has been studiously avoided by the state and the NYISO and utility companies have not overtly called the aspirational schedule out as impractical.
Lin explained that additional transmission is needed to meet the 2030 70% renewable energy goal. There are different areas of the state that do not have adequate transmission capabilities to move the solar and wind power out without curtailments. To address those needs the NYISO planning process is supporting “unprecedented expansion”.
One of the planning reports is the quarterly Short-Term Assessment of Reliability (STAR). Anyone interested in the status of the New York electric system would do well to listen to Lin’s explanation. The following slide notes that last year’s second quarter report noted that there was a reliability deficit of 446 MW in the summer of 2025. The deficit was projected because of planned fossil unit deactivations. In response, NYISO opened a solicitation for market solutions or regulatory solutions. No feasible market solution was submitted so they had to go to Plan B.
To maintain reliability, NYISO had to resort to a regulatory solution. They designated two peaking generation plants as reliability needs and postponed their retirement for two years. The NY Department of Environmental Conservation “Peaker Rule” incorporates this provision and there is a potential for an additional two-year extension. If the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission project is delayed beyond 2026 the additional extension might be required.
The Comprehensive Reliability Planning (CRP) report incorporates changes associated with demand growth. In the following slide NYISO describes expected changes. As mentioned previously, fossil generator retirements and growth in demand are primary expected changes to the system. Part of the load demand shift changes the peak loads from summer to winter. This is troublesome because the winter diurnal peak will occur when there is no solar. She also mentioned the dual-fuel units. Many New York generating units normally burn natural gas because it is cheaper but have the capability to switch to oil firing when natural gas is needed by residential consumers. The increased reliance on these units, which at the same time are targeted for retirement is a problem. The CRP analysis also identified added risks. The addition of the Micron chip fab plant near Syracuse will add load equivalent to the total load of Vermont and New Hampshire. The New York Power Authority operates small natural gas plants in New York City that are supposed to be phased out by December 2030 due to political pressure. Lin had to make the obligatory gesture that climate changes to extreme weather was a risk. Finally, the shift to a weather-dependent generating system means that reliability design criteria need to be revised to account for extreme weather conditions outside current planning horizons.
The next four slides summarize the challenges to meet the 2040 Climate Act mandate for a “zero-emissions” electric grid. The next slide repeats the points raised in the previous slide. Lin remarked that the year of the cross over from summer to winter peaking can only be guessed at this time. Depending on the trends in load it could be almost any time in the next decade. The 90/10 and 99/1 forecasts are probability estimates for the likelihood of extreme weather events. The final bullet in the slide points out that there could be substantial load growth needed to provide reliability services. The NYISO includes a high load policy case that incorporates this possibility.
The next slide lists the challenges on the generation side. Lin makes the point that generation issues extend beyond simply evaluating the capacity needed to match the load projections. Wind, solar, and energy storage are inverter-based resources that require ancillary service support to make the transmissions system reliable. Weak-grid interconnection and common mode failures are issues that most people, including me, do not understand well. (In the vein of better understanding of these issues I recommend the Practical Engineering video Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder than You Think.) The key point is that all the people that I know who understand these issues are worried but there has not been any wavering of the official political position that all is well. Consequently, the Scoping Plan outline produced by the Hochul Administration to guide the energy transition is incomplete. Lin makes the little recognized point that the Dispatchable Emissions Free Resources are not needed just for the long periods of low renewable resource availability but also to provide these ancillary services.
The next slide addresses DEFR specifically. I will not discuss this much because I already covered the Department of Public Service (DPS) two-day technical conference last December that focused on characterization of the potential “gap” caused by low renewable energy resource availability over long periods of time. I mentioned but did not emphasize the importance of providing the “reliability attributes of retired synchronous generation”.
The focus of this webinar was on the transmission challenges as covered in the following slide. Lin explained that transmission expansion is required to get the diffuse wind and solar energy from where it is collected to where it is needed. The existing system is not adequate for this task.
enormous amount of work underway, but the analysts have a big challenge dealing with changes in the development of resources. As noted earlier, the 2026 expectation is that the Champlain Hudson Power Express project will be online. Even after years of development work the right of way is still not fully permitted and there are numerous examples of supply chain issues delaying other projects, so this may not occur. Clearly longer-term planning is subject to massive uncertainty.
National Grid Presentation
Brad Franey Vice President Clean Energy Development explained how National Grid addressed the need for transmission support. As he points out the utilities receive funding for their transmission and distribution (T&D) system investments from rate cases. Those rate cases are, in no small part, influenced by politics. As a result, New York’s utility companies are held hostage and are not going to overtly challenge the political narrative that the Climate Act objectives can be achieved on schedules mandated by the law. The following slide probably went through multiple iterations to achieve a description of plans that checks all the boxes for what the company thinks that the politicians want to hear.
In the remainder of his presentation, he described specific projects that the utility is doing in its service territory. If you are interested in that information, check out my blog post that covers all the slides.
Questions and Answers
The question and answer portion of the webinar was interesting. The first question asked was “Is reliability a prerequisite for everything else or is it co-equal with our policy objectives?” I have heard suggestions from climate activists that policy objectives should be considered more than they are currently but anyone hoping to hear that there have been changes to protections in place to make sure that those policies don’t get ahead of reliability would have been disappointed in the answers. Elizabeth Grisaru from the DPS made it clear that reliability comes first, that there are “off ramps” for the implementation schedule, and that the PSC will not let the zeal for meeting de-carbonization goals get out in front of reliability. Yachi Lin from the NYISO emphasized the point that they are constantly evaluating reliability. The quarterly short term assessment of reliability and the longer term reliability needs assessment both address it. She admitted that we are going to have outages because the network is not built to be 100% risk-free or outage free. The alternative it “gold plating the system” which we cannot afford.
There was a question about longer planning processes planning and deployment timing. Liu explained that the NYISO resource adequacy process identifies risk factors and the timelines to develop the responses. Franey explained that the building component is the fastest but still takes years. The process has to determine what is needed and where before the planning permitting, and construction plans can be developed. Only when all that is done can construction begin but there are potential delays due to procurement and supply chain issues that also must be addressed.
Discussion
My impression of the speakers at this meeting is that they were desperately trying to make the point that the transmission challenges for the Climate Act mandates and schedule were impossible goals without actually saying that. I believe that all the technical people who really understand the electric grid in the DPS, NYISO and the electric companies are being held hostage to the political narrative that “All is well”. That did not work out for Kevin Bacon in Animal House and it won’t work out here either.
This overview of the transmission challenges for an electric grid that relies on renewable energy is a useful overview for any jurisdiction thinking about the transition away from fossil fuels. While it may not be necessary to develop and deploy a not yet commercially available technology like the generation sector to make this all work there still are inverter-based resource integration issues that need to be resolved.
In my opinion the bigger problem is the scale of the transmission upgrades and additions needed. New York has already committed $6 billion to start “unbottling” renewable resources which is code in New York for Upstate utilities paying for support for New York City access to renewables. New York also has plans for three major bulk transmission projects to get hydroelectric power from Quebec, another to collect the energy from part of Upstate to New York City, and the third to start the process of connecting the expected 9 GW of offshore wind into the grid. Nobody has admitted to the total costs.
The other New York problem that I suspect is common elsewhere is that the politicians who enacted these net-zero laws were more concerned with the optics of aspirational timelines and not the feasibility of those schedules. A question about longer planning processes planning and deployment timing made the point that the NYISO resource adequacy process that identifies specific need for transmission development, the New York’s de-regulated market process to propose, bid, and choose the development, and the project planning, permitting, and construction plan development which all need to be completed before construction can begin takes a lot of time. Reading between the lines all the speakers are highly skeptical that the artificial deadlines of the Climate Act can be achieved.
One final point not addressed in the webinar but certainly affecting the viability of New York’s energy transition goal is the decarbonization of heating and transportation. That is going to require a complete rewiring of the distribution network.
Conclusion
Francis Menton’s recent article on the Green Energy Wall concluded that something has to give with these energy transition policies. The magnitude, costs, and technical challenges of the generation and transmission electric grid transition ensure that that there is no question that New York will hit that wall. The only question is when New York’s crash dummies will hit it.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
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I don’t understand how they can perform distribution planning when they don’t know where the electricity is going to be generated. If these fools go with more solar, or wind, then the source generation is likely to be very far from where the energy is to be consumed. How does one guess the right of way required? How does one get in the supply-delivery chain when its not clear what needs to be obtained and a schedule for when it will be deployed.
OTOH, with thermals, its a function of finding sufficient land near rail, pipe and plenty of water. Then the legal fun of getting past the NIMBY lawfare.
Government isn’t oriented in the least bit to favor human flourishing, profitability nor efficiency. So it seems axiomatic that when government is a senior partner in any endeavor, while they have the bottomless budgets and the guns to ED whatever property and right of way is required, they tend to have designs with unicorns and fairy dust as significant components of their schemes.
This all seems like a Job For Life scheme for rent seekers, sinecures and government careerists.
I agree. The refrain from all the speakers was that the planning is a continuous process and your point is the underlying reason.
DEFRs=“A miracle occurs!”
“Planning to plan.”
Does DEFR stand for a Deadly Energy Free Result?
If you give it a name (DEFR), it will come (in your imagination).
“Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources”
Sweet Dreams, Rainbows, Pixie Dust, Unicorns, all childish beliefs….they never checked with the engineering department who would say “but there is no ‘nuclear’ checkbox on your automated response”…
Wow, really packed the lies. The essential dogma in a nut shell. The green utopia.
Yes. The insane idea that New York can make any impression at all on the global climate, no matter what it does. Basic arithmetic should tell them (and California too!) that nothing they do, including disappear, will make the slightest difference.
Cold New York state should be welcoming warming, not fighting it.
In my “rants” to state, enviro, forestry, energy and other honchos here in Wokeachusetts- I point out that the population of the state is less than 1/1,000 of the human race- though of course the energy use per capita is higher. But arriving at net zero nirvana couldn’t possibly have any measurable effect on the climate of the planet- even assuming there is such a relationship between CO2 and the climate. Of course I’m ignored as if I have leprosy. What’s dumb on their part- they don’t say something like “if the rest of humanity also reaches net zero, we’ll save the planet”. No, they say if our state reaches net zero, we’ll save the planet. It’s so ironic, that this state really thinks it’s the smartest place on the planet, what with all the colleges- especially Hah-vid and MIT.
(Doing my best Oprah impression)
You get a DEFR …and You get a DEFR… and YOU get a DEFR!
The NRDC has been around since 1970 originally in opposition to hydro power that it has maintained because hydropower ‘gobbles up the space we think should be covered by true renewables’, it opposed concentrated solar power in the Mojave Desert but supports rooftop PV, it opposes nuclear power because of ‘risks’ and if it didn’t ‘it would lose donations’ (Wiki).
They oppose natural gas because it causes climate change air water and plastic pollution earthquakes and harms ‘communities of color’.
According to the NRDC New York City NY State presumably the US and the world can and will be powered by windmills and PV panels.
The big lie in all of this….
The big lie is that what is being advocated is a wind+solar system. It isn’t.
Its a hybrid system consisting of a base capacity of gas, adequate to supply 95% of peak demand for an indefinite period, plus supplementary wind and solar.
There is no way you get to turn off or not build the gas. If you do, you simply will not have a functioning grid.
The business case question is therefore a different one too. Its not whether wind or solar is cheaper than gas or coal. Its whether the total costs, capital plus current, on a net present value basis, of adding wind and solar to the gas system are low enough to make the addition profitable.
You have some fuel savings. But you also have all the costs of building and connecting and maintaining the gas and solar, and your capital cash out for the gas or coal does not change because to have a functioning grid you have to have the full capacity of the gas or coal.
Another way of looking at this at a policy level would simply be to specify that all bids from wind or solar operators must deliver dispatchable power to the consistency, reliability and controllability standards of coal or gas. Then see what they bid.
It is very interesting in this piece that advocates are now starting to raise the question of whether policy goals should be prioritised over reliability of supply. This suggests they are starting to understand the problem. But the fact that they even raise it shows they have no understanding of how the electricity grid works, and what the effect of unreliable power would be on users and then on society and economy. Basically, you prioritize net zero over reliability and you will not have an electric society, you will have one without any electricity at all.
But you also have all the costs of building and connecting and maintaining the gas and solar
Sorry, meant to say ‘wind and solar’.
Actually, if there is no priority given to reliability then there will not even be a ‘society’
Maybe that is the objective?
Wind and solar should have been required to provide dispatchable power from the start. They weren’t and still aren’t. As a result, there is already a huge storage deficit.
https://www.therightinsight.org/Current-Storage-Deficit
The scariest thing is that the Biden Administration’s new rules for power plants is going to have major impacts on their abilitity to remain in operation or to ever be built. As you said there is no way that the power grid can continue to operate without natural gas. Coal forget about it and nuclear is too “scary”.
‘Another way of looking at this at a policy level would simply be to specify that all bids from wind or solar operators must deliver dispatchable power to the consistency, reliability and controllability standards of coal or gas. Then see what they bid.’
Amen, but I would also impose a ‘make whole’ penalty on those bidders who fail to deliver.
Its also incredible that people keep on talking about ‘dispatchable emission free resources’ when after years of this stuff they cannot say what they are, or even give an example of one.
How can responsible public bodies talk like this? Its completely crazy.
Its like keeping on talking about planning to introduce electric planes while using ‘high density power storage’ devices, which would be batteries weighing no more than the equivalent power store of jet fuel. And keep on planning on the basis of using them for year after year, despite the fact that no-one has the slightest idea how to make them.
Hope is not a strategy.
Another problem that I haven’t seen mentioned is that of harmonics (Frequency multiples of the base frequency). Inverter generated electricity creates harmonics (which conventional generators do not).
I have to admit that my knowledge and understanding of harmonics is small, it was well over fifty years since my college days but the more renewables we have the more harmonics on the system. It increases the heat load and decreases the efficiency of transformers, essential components of the grid.
Has anyone any up to date information on this matter in our grid systems ?
Maybe they should consider sculpting stone heads plant them in the shore line looking out to sea. That will encourage the energy gods to deliver the necessary constant 20 mph wind needed day and night to save the people of NY from blackouts.
I know it has been tried before, but hey, maybe this time it will work.
You skeptical folks and doubting Thomases just need some Amore Love-ins-
World’s biggest grids could be powered by renewables, with little or no storage – if we are smart enough | RenewEconomy
(2) Dean Martin – That’s Amore – YouTube
Just feel the energy flowing.
Aaaah! The solution is “Demand Management”. That’s when government bureaucrats command you to leave your EV connected to the grid in your garage (if it hasn’t already burned down) and supply its stored battery energy to the grid. But don’t worry, soon the wind will blo and the sun will shine (somewhere), and the powers that be will command someone to recharge your EV.
That will surely work./s
…then signal your smart meter to discontinue service, or use the Internet of Things to shut off your heat pump, water heater, laundry dryer, etc.
Perhaps they could supply a battery powered annunciator panel which would inform you that you were working from home today because your EV battery had been discharged. Perhaps they could even notify employers of the names of employees would be working from home for lack of transportation.
Man, that is a heap of delusion.
On the slide labelled Generation investment required to meet… it states 20GW needed in 7 years. However, it’s not clear if that is the nameplate capacity, or the actual amount of (averaged) power needed. If it’s actual power needed, then really they need to double or triple that 20GW figure, as well as the transmissions costs. I’m not a US citizen, so I’m not sure that 20GW of wind and solar could be built in NY State, let alone +/-60GW (assuming generation of 33% of nameplate capacity), in 7 years.
Your assumption of 33% of nameplate capacity is quite generous for New York.
They are talking about nameplate capacity in that slide. The energy output (GWh) is buried but those numbers are from the NYISO so are more connected to reality. The State numbers are way off. The odds of building that much wind and solar much less the connecting infrastructure are essentially zero even after the State of New York modified the permitting requirements to accelerate the process. All the reports from the entities that know reality imply this but no one dares come out publicly. Eventually the politicians in charge are going to have to admit this and are probably trying to figure out how to deflect blame now.
Has anyone asked the obvious question, what might a “dispatchable emissions-free resource” be?
Hydro, yes, but that’s limited by geography?
Nuclear, yes, but if you’re going to build that, then why bother with the wind/solar in the first place?
What other possible technologies are out there that are even in the theoretical phase?
They are literally working on the assumption that an electricity fairy is going to appear out of thin air and wish them all the electricity they’ll even need.
Details get in the way of political dreams.
Kind of a planning fanatic’s wet dream come true?
My overall impression of the ACENY Webinar presentation slides shown in the above article:
So many words, so little information.
So many gigantic problems glossed over.
Very nice Roger, I don’t know how you put up with these knuckle draggers The solution is pretty simple, these people need to talk in plain English. If they did then we would know that wind, solar and storage can not substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear. They say that right there in their reports but the average guy won’t understand it reading what they write. They have admitted wind, solar and batteries can’t do it on their own. They have admitted that the grid that is sufficient for fossil fuel and nuclear won’t handle the inadequacies of wind, solar and batteries. Not to mention the added pressure if we try to further electrify more stuff. These guys are liars and cheats and they all need to be fired..
DEFR
DISPATCHABLE Emission Free Resources.
LMFAO. Better kick start the nuclear power plant mass build today.
Otherwise, we’re back to that really complicated mathematical equation on the blackboard with “and the a miracle happens” in the middle of it. 😆😅🤣😂
Stop wasting money on worse-than-useless wind and solar and build power plants that work, or just admit your stupid “plans” WILL NEVER BE REALIZED.
Should be THEN a miracle happens. Missed the edit window.
DEFR (Dispatchable Emission Free Resource)
So it’s Nuclear then? About time.