Energy News

State regulators reopen case on San Onofre nuclear plant

The California Public Utilities Commission said it is reevaluating the settlement agreement that left ratepayers on the hook for $3.3 billion of the cost of closing the plant. The commission is giving parties involved in the case the opportunity to comment on whether the agreement was reasonable given that representatives of the plant's primary owner, Southern California Edison, engaged in secret talks with regulators over the closed nuclear plant.

Without energy, West Virginia's economy is flat, and that's a problem

It's possible West Virginia's coal mines might never come back. It's something both presumptive presidential nominees have been reckoning with as they campaign in the state ahead of Tuesday's primary.

But a relatively small number of West Virginians are actually in the coal business — energy is more than 17 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, but just 4 or 5 percent of employment — so what about the rest of the economy?

In six counties, between a fourth and a third of people have lost jobs in the past few years. Plus, the decline in natural gas has been a double-whammy. And unlike Wyoming and North Dakota, most of those workers stay in West Virginia, driving up the unemployment rate, or they drop out of the workforce entirely. West Virginia already has the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation, and it leads in disability payments. And those aren't the only factors holding back employment: West Virginian workers also trail the nation in education and overall health.

PJM Study Defends Markets, Warns State Policies can Harm Competition

A PJM Energy Market analysis released concludes that the RTO’s markets are efficiently managing the entry and exit of capacity resources but warns their efforts could be hamstrung by policies to protect social, economic or political interests.“Policymakers must weigh these trade-offs, but understand that pursuing individual actions that ‘defeat’ efficient market outcomes will aggregate to a point they will altogether thwart effective operation of the market to the point it can no longer be relied upon to govern resource exit and entry and attract capital investment when needed,” it said.
 
The report was commissioned by the Board of Managers last summer, following efforts by money-losing coal-fired generators in Ohio and nuclear generators in Illinois to win state-backed subsidies.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is grappling with how to respond to a recent FERC order requiring federal review of power purchase agreements it granted to American Electric Power and FirstEnergy.

Meanwhile, Exelon CEO Christopher Crane said in an earnings call on Friday that if Illinois legislators don’t step in and provide aid, it will decommission its money-losing Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants beginning next year. 
 

A Top Utility Regulator Talks About How to Prepare California for 50% Renewable Energy

As California looks to get half its electricity from renewables by 2030, energy regulators in the state have never been busier.

Among the many pressing issues facing the California Public Utilities Commission this year: how to share data between utilities and distributed energy providers; how to allow utilities to rate-base distributed energy assets like storage, rooftop solar and electric-vehicle chargers; how to design new dynamic rates to shift demand and avoid cost-shifting; and whether to allow third parties to deploy infrastructure as a service model in place of traditional generation, transmission and distribution build-out.