"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Citizens in Upshur County are planning to attend the Upshur County Commission meeting at 10:15 on Thursday, Nov. 12. They will be encouraging the Commission to remain active in their role as intervenors in the WV PSC case. If you can attend the Commission meeting, please do so and offer your ideas about how the Commission can best represent Upshur County citizens in the PATH case.
Upshur County citizens are taking a leading role in telling the truth about PATH in the media. Here is a letter to the editor published yesterday in the Charleston Daily Mail from Rhonda Brooks of Buckhannon.
Letters to the editor are essential tools for fighting the propaganda and paid advertising that AEP/Allegheny put in every local newspaper throughout the state.
In addition to the WV PSC’s order, the WV PSC staff filed their response to AEP/Allegheny’s scheme for tolling the case deadline and bifurcating the case.
Here is a link to the staff’s filing.
The most interesting part of the document for me was the staff’s reference to the power companies’ shiny .44 that they laid on the table last week. Apparently, the WV PSC staff is ready to call their bluff.
Here is what they said today:
Adding further uncertainty is the Applicants’ assertion they may re-file with FERC. The implications of a FERC filing are profound and certain to lead to extensive and time-consuming litigation in the Federal Court system as to whether FERC can assert jurisdiction or if the federal backstop provision is even constitutional. If the decision is made to file with the FERC, it could be several years before a decision is made in Maryland’. [emphasis mine]
In other words, “Go ahead, punk, make my day.”
The WV PSC issued an order this evening that includes the following response to the Staff’s motion to dismiss and the power companies’ suggestion to create two separate case schedules:
After a preliminary analysis, given the size and complexity of this case, the attempt to split the issues for purposes of either hearing or testimony may create an untenable morass.However, the Commission is willing to consider further argument on this point.
At present, the Commission is prepared to do two things. First, the Commission will suspend the current procedural schedule, as contained in the September 4,2009 order. In particular, this means that the Staff and Intervenors will not be required to submit pre-filed testimony on November 17, 2009. If the Commission does not grant the Staff motion to dismiss, the Commission will issue a revised procedural schedule.
Second, the Commission will grant the parties until 12:00 noon, Tuesday November 17,2009, for the purpose of filing a final response to the Staff motion to dismiss and offer to toll tendered by the Applicants. As to the Applicants’ filing, the Commission would be interested in receiving recommendations for a workable procedural schedule that does not require separating the testimony between need and non-need issues.
So it looks like the PSC agrees with most of the parties that bifurcating the case would create a procedural “morass.” That is an excellent description of what would happen if the case were split as the power companies suggested.
Beyond that, we don’t know much, except that the PSC has decided to change next week’s deadline for testimony. With all responses on dismissal or tolling to be filed by next Tuesday, it looks as though we should have a final PSC order on the issues raised by the Staff and the power companies by the end of next week.
WV land owners who earlier signed agreements with AEP/Allegheny to allow surveying for the PATH line, even though no decision on the line is due from the PSC until June 22, 2010, are beginning to notify the power companies and the WV PSC that they have changed their minds.
Here is the latest notification that the power companies will not be permitted to survey for the PATH line until it is approved by the PSC.
Last Friday, AEP/Allegheny made a motion in the VA SCC PATH case to delay the VA procedural schedule with essentially the same conditions they requested in WV to separate the issue of whether PATH is needed from all other issues in the case.
Here is a link to the motion in East Virginia.
The power companies make a very clear threat in their motion that if the VA SCC tries to delay the case without the power companies’ other conditions, AEP/Allegheny will remove the case from East Virginia and apply to FERC. Their hand is on the long barreled .44.
The Plot Thickens – Power Companies Notify MD PSC That They Will Re-Apply by 12/31/2009
AEP/Allegheny filed additional information concerning their motion to delay the PATH case in WV. This supplemental information consisted of a letter to the MD PSC from power company lawyers. This is the text of that letter in its entirety:
Please be advised that The Potomac Edison Company intends to submit a filing to the Commission regarding the construction of the Maryland portion of the Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline Project to the Commission by December 3 1 , 2009. The filing will be submitted in a new case and not in the above-referenced case.
Note that the letter states that Potomac Edison will be the applicant, not PATH Allegheny. Does that mean that Potomac Edison will own and operate the MD portion of PATH, not PATH Allegheny? What will happen to the FERC approved rate scheme which includes the 14.3% profit incentive that was awarded to PATH Allegheny and not Potomac Edison?
More important for us in WV, what will the WV PSC do now that we know MD’s application won’t be refiled for another two months? We don’t know what they are planning in MD until we see the application. Can the WV PSC take their word for it and proceed with the WV case? Or should we all wait and see where the PATH line is going to end up?
AEP/Allegheny didn’t ask the WV PSC to do anything more than they already asked for last week. They just filed the Maryland letter.
Here’s a link to the full filing today by AEP/Allegheny in WV.
Think back to last summer as you consider AEP/Allegheny’s claim that they will file in MD by 12/31/2009. Last summer, the power companies insisted they would be applying for PATH in WV in October 2008. They didn’t apply until May 15, 2009. Deadlines are a a little iffy with AEP/Allegheny.
Some time has passed since the legal staff of the WV PSC filed their motion to dismiss the PATH case. Since then, AEP/Allegheny filed a response that requested a 217 day delay in the case.
Other parties are beginning to file their responses to the power companies’ request to delay the case.
First, let’s look more closely at the power companies’ request for delay or “tolling” of the 400 day limit to the PATH case. AEP/Allegheny requested the delay, but put certain conditions on the delay. They would only agree to delay the case if the case were divided, or “bifurcated” as lawyers say, into two cases. One case would deal only with evidence regarding the need for PATH. The other case would deal with all other issues. The “need” case would be delayed by the requested 217 days, while the deadline for presentation of evidence on all other issues would remain at the current Nov. 17, 2009, about a week away.
This condition, of course, is absurd. The power companies are the only party to the case that believes that the PATH line can be judged on the basis of whether it is needed or not without connecting the question of need to the costs that West Virginians will bear. The PSC must weigh both costs and benefits of PATH and almost all parties to the case do not see any division between the need issue and any other issues in the case.
The bifurcation of the case is also absurd, because the PSC Commissioners cannot possibly enforce the separation of issues. If an intervenor includes references to need in his or her Nov. 17 testimony, will the Commissioners go through all the written testimony and cross out references to need?
Originally, the PSC staff requested a delay of the case without conditions or a dismissal of the case. The frivolous conditions requested by the power companies would seem to leave the Commissioners with dismissal as their only alternative.
Three parties to the case, Tucker County Landowners, the Jefferson County Intervenors’ Group and J.C. Baker & Son, Inc. have proposed a third alternative. Tucker County Landowners and the Jefferson County Intervenors’ Group have filed a joint response which calls for a tolling of the case immediately so the PSC and the parties can come to a decision about what should happen in the WV case in light of the dismissal of the MD PSC case. J.C. Baker & Son, Inc. has requested a tolling of the entire case for a time determined by the PSC which adjusts the entire case schedule, without bifurcating the case either by issues or by schedule which does not give preference to the power companies’ view of the case.
Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking. We are approaching the halfway point in the legally required 400 days allotted for the PATH case. If the case cannot be completed in the 400 days, currently set for June 22, 2010, the PATH certificate of need will automatically be granted. Those of us in the case are also facing our first deadline for submitting testimony in less than ten days.
It is clear that the PSC needs to act immediately as the staff and the other parties have requested. Any further delay gives a significant advantage to AEP/Allegheny by allowing them to run out the clock with no progress in the case.
We should find out this week if the PATH case will be dismissed, delayed or will continue as planned.
AEP/Allegheny just responded to the WV PSC staff motion of last week by asking the WV PSC to toll the deadline for a decision on PATH by 217 days from June 22, 2010 back to January 25, 2011.
In their motion to dismiss the PATH case last week, the PSC legal staff also gave the power companies an alternative. Under WV law, which is heavily slanted to favor the power companies, the PSC must make a decision on a certificate of need in 400 days or the certificate is automatically granted. Only the power companies, in this case “the applicant,” can ask for a delay or a “tolling” of this deadline.
Rather than risking a complete dismissal of the case, the power companies blinked and decided to ask for a delay.
The three Commissioners still have to issue a ruling on both the staff’s motion and the power companies’ motion to delay the case. So far, nothing has been decided. Only motions have been filed. The Commissioners have not issued an order to finalize their decision.
If you read the power companies’ motion, note that they attached their response to the East Virginia SCC staff’s motion to dismiss in their WV motion. This seems very odd, unless you realize that they wanted the WV PSC to see that shiny long barreled .44 that the power companies laid on the table in East Virginia.
They couldn’t resist flashing the big iron in WV as well. Note this from the body of the power companies’ WV filing:
Potomac Edison’s decision on re-application for approval of the Maryland Segments and the Kemptown Substation will be announced in the near future. Whether this filing is made with the Maryland Commission or with FERC, it will assuredly confirm the Kemptown Substation as the eastern terminus of the PATH Project.
The delay in the WV case is definitely a sign of the power companies’ weakness in WV. However, this may just be one more step in moving the entire case to the federal level, pushing aside all state regulators and citizens.
Will the political leaders of WV, VA and MD stand with us against PATH if the power companies go to FERC? We shall see.
The collapse of US manufacturing has changed the face of the US coal industry. There is falling US demand for steam coal (to produce electricity) and metallurgical coal (to make steel). This is beginning to look like a long term trend. Here is a link to an AP article today explaining current trends.
We are entering a period of rising coal prices, driven by coal exports, and lower natural gas prices. In the last year, there has been a dramatic shift in electrical power production from coal to natural gas. Coal is now producing less than 47% of all electricity consumed in the US. Just two years ago, this figure was more than 50%. There is further discussion of coal/natural gas differences on The Power Line here.
Natural gas is used primarily for domestic heating, cooking and electricity production because the US has no capability to export natural gas. Coal is easily exported, so domestic coal prices are influenced much more by international markets. There is basically no basic steel industry in the US anymore to use US metallurgical coal. That is not true of Asia, where steel production is rising again, pulling US coal export prices higher.
US coal producers have shifted their production from steam coal to metallurgical coal and supplies of steam coal in the US are falling. As steam coal supply falls, prices rise for steam coal as well as metallurgical coal.
WV electricity users have seen this trend recently as both AEP and Allegheny Energy asked for, and got, rate increases of more than ten percent from the WV PSC. AEP has made it clear that it will return to the PSC for the next two years for similar increases.
PJM Interconnection’s argument for PATH and TrAIL is based on low coal prices and rising peak demand on the east coast. The huge new power lines make even less sense now that it is much cheaper for east coast power companies to build and operate their own natural gas fired power plants.
John Howley reports here that:
The falling trend of Maryland’s net imports of electricity provides little support for the nightmare vision of impending blackouts and brownouts. Maryland’s power imports fell from 24,715 GWh in 2003 to 20,505 in 2007. The severe economic recession of the past year has likely reduced imports further.
As it turns out, MD didn’t even need PATH even before the current economic collapse. 4 gigawatt hours of power is a lot of electricity. When they do need it again, natural gas will be the choice to generate it, not imports of coal fired power along huge power lines.
Earlier this week, AEP/Allegheny quietly laid a long barreled .44 revolver on the table in the four-handed poker game they are playing with the PSCs in MD, VA and WV.
The WV Consumer Advocate Division took notice. Here is what the CAD said in a statement filed this afternoon in support of the WV PSC staff’s motion to dismiss the PATH application:
PE [Potomac Edison, Allegheny's subsidiary in MD] apparently is contemplating eschewing state regulatory review of the Maryland portion of the project entirely and instead seeking authorization to construct the Maryland facilities from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”).* The full impact of such a drastic departure from the customary approach to obtaining siting and construction approval, not only on the outcome in Maryland but on the proceedings in West Virginia and Virginia as well, is hard to assess at this juncture and injects further uncertainty into the matter before this Commission.
Here is what the CAD was referring to:
In addition, such decision-making involves consideration of whether PATH Allegheny should seek authorization to construct the PATH Project in Maryland through an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), pursuant to Section 216 of the Federal Power Act.
This statement was made in AEP/Allegheny’s lawyers in their response to the motion to dismiss the East Virginia PATH case made a week ago by the staff of the East Virginia State Corporation Commission.
Section 216 of the 2005 Federal Power Act was the law pushed by Dick Cheney that allows the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force new transmission lines through states that don’t want them.
As the WV CAD statement implies, this is a clear threat to the authority of the states of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia to protect their citizens, property owners and rate payers from a project that is not needed.
The long barreled .44 is on the table.
Will our governors, PSCs and legislators wring their hands and dive under the table, or will they stand up to this open threat and protect their states from corporate blackmail?
I don’t think anyone expected to see .44 on the table so early. But there it is.
The WV CAD claims that this threat raises “uncertainty.” There is no uncertainty in my mind. This is a threat to every citizen of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. And it must be stopped.
President Obama held his little smart grid circus the other day in Florida. This memorandum of understanding was one of the emissions of the event.
For those of us who understand the difference between the “smart grid” and the power company push to built mega-transmission lines, the document is pretty depressing. The memorandum starts with lots of vague happy talk about the smart grid and renewable energy, but ends with a clear focus on making it easier for power companies like AEP to build their transmission lines on federal land.
The Obama administration seems hell bent on implementing the recommendations of Cheney’s secret energy task force. Look at Chapter 7 of the Cheney report and compare it to yesterday’s memorandum.
David Morris of the Institute for Energy Self Reliance has an excellent article on the smart grid smokescreen for dumb grid transmission.
Here’s a sample of some really dumb thinking from yesterday’s memorandum:
The process of siting and permitting new transmission lines on federal lands has posed a barrier to efficient grid enhancements. Under President Obama’s leadership, we want to expand and modernize our nation’s transmission grid so we can access renewable energy sources, improve reliability, and reduce grid congestion.
As we know from expert testimony by George Loehr and Hyde Merrill in the East Virginia PATH case, new transmission lines reduce grid reliability and increase grid congestion, just the opposite of what Obama’s memorandum asserts. We also know that power companies’ plans for new transmission lines are about coal, not “renewable energy sources.”
Thus, “President Obama’s leadership” is taking us in exactly the wrong direction.
PATH will not be stopped at the federal level. We have to do this one from the bottom up. We need to convince our state officials and public service commissions to stand up and protect our states from big corporations like AEP and Allegheny Energy who are shaping and using federal policies to destroy state authority.
Here it is:
Comes now the Staff of the West Virginia Public Service Commission Staff (“Staff’) by John R. Auville, Counsel, and respectfully submits Staffs Motion, requesting that the Commission dismiss this certificate application as insufficient, or in the alternative, require the Applicant to request a tolling and implement further case processing procedures. Staff asserts that the Applicant’s failure to seek all necessary regulatory approval for the proposed transmission line in a timely manner prejudices Staffs ability to accurately evaluate this certificate application and prepare its case on the statutory deadline applicable in this case. Forthcoming economic forecasts, PJM load forecasts, and an updated RTEP will contain crucial information and present a compelling reason to require PATH to file updated information for this Commission’s consideration. As a result of the prejudice resulting from PATH’S failure to seek all necessary regulatory approval in a timely manner, Staff moves that the Commission either dismiss this case or require PATH to request a tolling sufficient to allow the Commission to implement further case processing procedures for the parties and assure a complete review of the application.
The legal staff of the WV PSC has just filed a motion to dismiss the PATH case, or to at least postpone the 400 day deadline, until AEP/Allegheny figure out what they want to do in Maryland. Until then, as the staff says, their application is “insufficient.”
The WV PSC, like the East Virginia State Corporation Commission, now faces a decision to throw out the West Virginia PATH case.
The entire motion is worth reading here. The PSC staff provides an excellent argument, made often here on The Power Line, that 2010 revisions to PJM’s Regional Transmission Expansion Plan, may further erode PJM’s claims that PATH is needed.
Expert testimony on PATH by electrical grid engineer Hyde Merrill has just been filed with the East Virginia State Corporation Commission. Here is a link to Mr. Merrill’s testimony.
If you are an intervenor in the WV PSC PATH case, you need to read Merrill’s testimony carefully. You have been reading for the last year on The Power Line that PATH is not needed. Now, Merrill’s testimony tells us why.
November 17 is the deadline for all intervenors to file their written direct testimony in the WV PSC case. If you do not take advantage of Mr. Merrill’s facts in your own testimony, you will have missed a major opportunity to stop PATH in WV.
Merrill’s testimony will also be filed in the WV case by Nov. 17, but the early filing in East Virginia gives WV intervenors access to his arguments now.
Here is some of what Mr. Merrill reveals about PJM’s black box:
- PJM has recently revised its estimates of projected power flows in its CETO models downward, but has not adjusted its justification for PATH. These lower power flows, if included in the PATH plan, would eliminate several of the NERC violations PJM is claiming.
- Even PJM’s revised CETO values are too high, compared with similar projections used in New York and New England. Merrill points to these higher than industry standard power flow estimates as the main way that PJM has rigged its argument for PATH. Correct CETO values used in PJM modeling would completely eliminate all NERC violations claimed by PJM engineers in the PATH application.
- PJM applies NERC standards incorrectly in its identification of NERC violations.
- By including only demand management actions that have cleared PJM markets, PJM has completely inaccurate power demand estimates for time periods more than three years in the future. PJM essentially eliminates the reductions demand management after 2012, resulting in much higher power flow estimates that would be expected.
- PJM changed its assessment of voltage instability between 2008 and 2009 which resulted in identification of voltage drops appearing for the first time in the PATH argument. Merrill could find no explanation of why this change was made in PJM’s testimony and believes that the changes may have been the result of calculation errors.
- Merrill shows clearly how PJM has rigged how it counts or excludes new east coast power generators to suit its conclusion that PATH is needed. Merrill shows how PJM undercounts new generators that would solve east coast power shortages, but overcounts generators to show how existing circuits are overloaded.
- Investment of a few hundred million dollars in reactive power capacitors and transformers, much of which PJM is already planning to do even if PATH were built, would solve most of PJM’s NERC violations and all of its voltage instability problems.
Intervenors are the only way that citizens of West Virginia can really participate in the PSC decision process. We intervenors have an obligation to make the best case we can against PATH. Hyde Merrill gives us that opportunity.
Now it’s up to us to use what he has provided.
Experts in the East Virginia PATH case before the State Corporation Commission have filed testimony providing a detailed description of why PJM Interconnection’s reasoning about PATH is wrong.
Engineer George Loehr is one of the leading grid reliability experts in the US. In his testimony, Loehr states that PATH is more about profit for AEP/Allegheny than reliability.
PATH would effectively provide a subsidy to existing and future western [PJM] generators – access to the lucrative eastern load centers without cost to themselves. Conversely, the western subsidies would place eastern generators at a significant disadvantage.
Ken Ward has more information about the testimony on Coal Tattoo, plus links to the testimony of Loehr, engineer Hyde Merrill and engineer/economist Robert Fagan.
Here is Mr. Merrill’s conclusion about PATH:
PJM’s planning studies do not justify the PATH line. The vast majority of alleged reliability issues that are presented in support of the PATH line are not based on any modeling or contingency analyses as NERC requires. None of the alleged violations is based on reasonable assumptions regarding the need for power transfer from western to eastern PJM — i.e. reasonable Capacity Emergency Transfer Objective (“CETO”) values. And even if the alleged violations were based on credible analysis — which they are not — none of them creates a present need to build the proposed PATH line. Rejecting PATH now will allow time to develop far better alternatives for the evolution of the power system within PJM’s boundaries.
In contrast, approving this line will lead to increasing reliance by the East Coast on remote coal-fired power plants with continuing or increasing transmission congestion, transmission losses, and a greater risk of cascading blackouts.
Read this remarkable testimony if you want to know in detail why AEP, Allegheny and PJM are wrong about their claimed need for PATH.
We now have enough experience with AEP/Allegheny PEAT guys and PR hacks, and the TV commercials we are all paying for, to become familiar with the big lies they have been churning out.
The Power Line has a new series of pages designed to give you a better understanding of the truth behind the power company propaganda.
Here are the first two pages about the first two big lies:
Psyop #1 – PATH Isn’t About Coal-Fired Power
Psyop #2 – The Grid Is An Interstate Highway System
Note: I had originally referred to power company propganda as “big lies” in this post and the two pages linked to above. The phrase “big lie” comes from World War II propaganda strategy. I have realized that power company PATH propaganda strategy is much more sophisticated than the big lie technique. AEP/Allegheny are employing the much more subtle strategy of “psychological operations” that were used by the Cheney administration to convince the US public that invading Iraq was a good idea. I have changed my titles accordingly.
