On August 6. To watch the webcast, click here (or possibly here). For a pdf of the testimony, click here.
Highlights: Chairman Wellinghoff’s testimony focused first on the need to reduce regulatory barriers to installing renewables for electric generation, especially given the nation’s enormous potential in this regard. He also touched on the enormous and mostly untapped potential of energy efficiency. He pointed toward the need for climate legislation to move these efforts further forward.
He touched on FERC’s ongoing attempts to reform transmission planning and praised current RTO planning efforts. However, he also called for more FERC powers to help develop transmission:
A significant expansion of renewable resources in our electricity supply portfolio will impose other stresses on the electric grid, requiring additional high-voltage transmission facilities, network upgrades, and feeder lines. It is highly unlikely that the transmission facilities necessary to deliver the output of these renewable resources will be constructed without additional federal planning, siting, and cost allocation authority.
Another topic was the importance of demand response – an especially important tool for reducing transmission congestion.
Consumer energy use management, also called “demand response”, refers to consumers reducing their usage at certain times that will result in improved grid efficiency. Consumer energy use management increases efficiency by reducing transmission congestion, enhances the amount of variable renewable energy such as wind that can be integrated into the grid, and reduces the need to run inefficient and costly generators. Thus, the incorporation of consumer energy use management into the operation of the electric grid will reduce consumer costs, and will reduce the carbon footprint of our electricity supply… (A previous FERC study found that by 2019) the potential for peak electricity demand reductions across the country is 188 gigawatts, up to 20 percent of national peak demand. These savings, if realized, can reduce significantly the number of power plants needed to meet peak demand and thereby reduce carbon emissions by as much as 1.2 billion tons of carbon annually.
Wellinghoff also covered the need for a smart grid, and outlined FERC’s guidelines for smart grid development.
— posted by Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
