Massachusetts OKs over $450M in grid modernization spending by Eversource, National Grid, Unitil

Brief:

• Massachusetts regulators gave final approval last month for Eversource, National Grid and Unitil to invest a total of more than $450 million over four years for grid modernization.
• The electric distribution companies will improve technologies for grid monitoring, communication and automation.
• Acadia Center, an environmental advocacy group, sees little emphasis on environmental justice in the grid modernization plans.

Acadia Center, an environmental advocacy group, said last year it’s concerned the proposed plans include “minimal or no mention of environmental justice principles” and that the timelines for putting in place time-varying rates are too slow.

Kyle Murray, senior policy advocate at Acadia Center, said in an email Wednesday the analysis for the most part “still holds.”

Read the full article at Utility Dive here.

Coalition Supports New England Offshore Wind Transmission Grid Plan

New England for Offshore Wind has filed comments in response to a request for information issued by five New England states seeking information concerning the development of a networked offshore electric grid to help unlock offshore wind power in the Northeast.

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“This collaborative initiative is very exciting,” says Melissa Birchard, director for clean energy and grid transition at Acadia Center, a co-author of the coalition’s comments. “This is an innovative step forward to help secure the clean energy we need to power a reliable, modern electric system. New England and its neighbors can lead the nation in developing a networked offshore grid that maximizes the cost savings and reliability benefits of offshore wind, reduces the impacts of transmission, and forms the backbone of a future Atlantic offshore grid.”

 

Read the full article in North American Windpower here.

New England’s electric grid operator opened its doors to public participation — and got a dressing down

New England’s electric grid operator has been famously closed to the public, with most decisions happening behind closed doors, with little or no public input.

On Tuesday, yielding to years of pressure, the board of ISO New England opened its doors for the first of what it says will be an annual open meeting. What followed was an hour-long dressing down, as speaker after speaker took the grid operator to task for failing to adequately respond to the climate crisis.

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In addition to the lack of transparency, Hank Webster, the Rhode Island director of the clean energy advocacy group Acadia Center, said ISO-NE needs to better align itself with the climate policies of the states it represents. Many of the states call for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but without coordination with the regional grid, it will be hard to reach those goals.

“State policy and consumer concerns remain without a regular home in the ISO New England process and decisions,” Webster said.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

How to save money and protect New England from rolling blackouts, according to Acadia

Early in December 2021, ISO-New England, the region’s electric grid operator, issued a warning on the outlook for the coming winter, describing New England’s power system as being at “heightened risk heading into the winter season.”

For Melissa Birchard and Amy Boyd, both of the Acadia Center in Rockport, Maine, warnings like this have a straightforward solution: decrease reliance on natural gas and instead focus on renewable energy.

Birchard, director of clean energy and grid transition, and Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy hosted a webinar aimed at avoiding the possibility of rolling blackouts during winter, which ISO-New England warned in 2018 could take place by the 2024-2025 winter heating season.

In the webinar, Birchard said each year New England uses at least 50% of natural gas toward electricity. On July 14, 2022, New England used 69% of natural gas for electricity.

One solution proposed by Birchard was for the state to start managing consumer demand. Although this can mean weatherization and insulation, it can also mean using large-scale commercial and industrial resources.

“It can include everything from using solar paired with batteries, to shifting the time that we do things like charge electric cars or even using electric cars and batteries to support the grid,” Birchard said. “It can also include delaying energy-intensive processes like rock-crushing processes in an industrial cement-making facility in order to help support the grid when the grid needs help.”

Birchard also suggested investing in renewable energy like off-shore energy solutions and energy storage which can reduce the need for fossil fuels in the winter.

“Pairing energy storage with offshore wind is really a sweet spot,” Birchard said. “We need a balanced portfolio of all of these things – demand management, renewable energy, energy storage – all of the clean solutions together, make a portfolio that is reliable overall and many of these solutions are already at hand or will be at hands soon.”

Solar-plus-storage is another method Birchard suggested that residential homes can use to lower their natural gas usage. Solar-plus-storage operates similarly to a power plant, Birchard said, in the sense, you can turn up or down the resource when needed.

“While solar isn’t that strong in the winter, as it is in the summer, it can still provide substantial electricity even in the winter when it’s cold. And we need to stop thinking of solar-plus-storage, but also other types of residential demand resources as only summer resources and start valuing reliability benefits,” she stated.

Lastly, Birchard suggested switching to the use of heat pumps and renewable energy resources in residential homes to lower fossil fuel usage.

This winter energy bills are expected to increase as the state’s largest energy suppliers Eversource and National Grid have increased their rates. Boyd suggests that consumers sign up for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP is, “a federally funded program administered by the states that can provide assistance to low-income households that are seeking help with their energy bills,” Boyd said.

Boyd also suggested homeowners work with their utility provider to help lower their energy bills.

“They often will offer payment plans to help residents who are struggling with their bills,” Boyd said. “But it’s important to note that that protection is temporary, will eventually go the full amount of the bill, unfortunately.”

Read the article at Mass Live here.

The state races that may reshape U.S. energy

Control of Congress is up for grabs in the midterm elections — but for climate policy, state races may be the ones to watch.

That’s because much of the money in the new climate law will be distributed through the states. State leaders can apply for the Inflation Reduction Act’s numerous grant programs, for example, including ones that fund new large transmission lines and energy-efficient buildings.

With gubernatorial races on the ballot in 36 states, the scope and pace of the country’s energy transition may partly depend on who takes office.

“There’s a lot of decisions that state agencies need to make about what policies they’re going to prioritize and how to distribute the money,” said Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy at Acadia Center, an environmental group in New England.

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Read the full article in Politico here.

As offshore wind plans grow, so does the need for transmission

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Melissa Birchard, director of Clean Energy & Grid Reform at the Acadia Center, says that less onshore work also means less impact on people and communities.

“Will it still have impacts? Absolutely,” she says. “And I can imagine that there might be environmental justice communities or indigenous communities that we will need to listen to as the process moves forward. But by reducing the on-land impacts, we reduce impacts on those communities as well.”

And unlike onshore transmission development, which needs approval from many regulatory bodies and individual landowners, the only “land owner,” so to speak, in the offshore wind areas is the federal government.

An ocean grid could also reduce how much cable needs to be buried beneath the ocean floor. In the current project-by-project approach, most wind developers are planning to use cables that can each carry about 400 megawatts of electricity — an 800 megawatt wind project requires two cables, for instance.

Read the full article in WBUR News here.

Rhode Island starts to wrestle with what its net-zero goal means for natural gas

Rhode Island utility regulators are beginning to consider what the state’s mandate to zero out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 means for its natural gas system.

The state Public Utilities Commission, or PUC, has opened a docket to investigate the future of the gas distribution business, a response to the passage last year of the Act on Climate.

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Hank Webster, Rhode Island director for the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy organization, said it’s crucial for the state to start this discussion now.

“The gas distribution system is one of the major sources of greenhouse gasses,” he said. “Every time a new gas connection is made, adding to ratepayer costs, it locks in long-term fossil fuel use.”

Read the full article at Energy News Network here. 

National Grid customers could see 64% increase in electric bills

BOSTON (WHDH) – National Grid customers could be in for quite the shock when they open their utility bills this winter.

The company has announced its winter rates, which go into effect on Nov. 1, stating that residential customers that use electricity can expect a price increase of 64%.

That means if you paid the typical $179 a month last winter, be ready for a monthly bill of at least $293. And it is not just an electric shock, either: customers who use gas will also feel a 22-24% price hike.

“At National Grid, this is the highest we’ve experienced,” said National Grid Chief Customer Officer Helen Burt. “Our customers pay what we pay. We’ve kept our electric distribution and transportation piece of the bill flat, year-over-year, and so this is entirely due to the cost of energy in the marketplace now.

Eversource is also predicting its gas customers will see their bills rise anywhere from 25% to 38%.

The massive price increases are reportedly due to natural gas production dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the war in Ukraine, both straining production.

“Really, (customers) need to reach out to legislators to push for A, more renewables, more clean energy, and B, in the very short term, bill relief,” said Senior Policy Advocate Kyle Murray of the Acadia Center.

Read the full article here.

Trouble brewing in the power grid as officials warn of possible electricity shortages in N.E. this winter

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“Investing in more fossil fuel infrastructure is not going to solve the problem,” said Melissa Birchard, the director of clean energy and grid transition for the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy group. “It just continues our cycle of not investing in clean resources, and can exacerbate climate change.”

 

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here. 

Local researchers are aiming to create the perfect battery. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Researchers and companies around the world are racing to solve the problem of storing clean energy when the sun isn’t shining on solar farms or the wind isn’t turning turbines. Of course, good batteries are already in common use in electric vehicles and Tesla Power walls, but those batteries rely primarily on lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and other rare materials. They’re expensive, flammable, and their materials available in limited supplies and from just a few locations, including in China, Congo, and some of the deepest parts of the ocean.

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Environmental advocates in Massachusetts said they’re hopeful that technological breakthroughs would accelerate the adoption of large battery storage systems, especially as thousands of megawatts of new offshore wind are built in the region’s waters.

Kyle Murray, a senior policy advocate at the Massachusetts Acadia Center, called the region’s current rate of adoption “woefully slow.”

“We need to speed up the process so we can meet our state decarbonization goals and tackle the climate emergency,” he said. “We currently have batteries that can already do some marvelous things for society, and we need to be deploying more of them. That needs to be paired with developing and deploying new, amazing technologies.”

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.