Day 4 Observations
The PUC does not like hearing about reality
Listening to the questions from Commissioners Gilman and Plant to Zachary Ming, Gilman & Plant desperately want neighboring resources to ride to Colorado’s rescue. And Ming answers them calmly, laying out the facts. The facts are that the neighbors are not all that reliable.
What the Commissioners really seemed to struggle with is that joining a market will, at times, hurt Colorado. They clearly assumed from their questions that the larger market is there always providing Colorado the additional power it needs.
Nope. What a market does is provide power, from all available resources, to the utility willing to pay the most for it. That means that not only can other states buy all the excess power from our neighbors, but also from any sources in Colorado too. At this point, the market will reduce the power available in Colorado and increase the wholesale cost of the power that Colorado uses. This is Econ 101.
Observation 1: Joining a regional market may help a little. But it will unequivocally hurt at times. And other times, when we need it, will be of no help.
Next, and it was not directly discussed, is the transmission capacity from next-next-neighbors. Say there’s no excess power available from the SPP but there is from Iowa. Great, we’ll pull from Iowa.
That requires transmission capacity from Iowa to handle all demand from the SPP plus all demand that will be passed on to Colorado. So we will need that additional capacity built. And as it’s for our benefit, we’ll have to pay for it. For lines across the width of Nebraska or Kansas.
Observation 2: I did not hear anything about the transmission lines required to pull power from anywhere other than the closest generators in the SPP. And it takes 5 - 7 years to get all the permitting and approvals to run a transmission line. Assuming Nebraska/Kansas will ever approve giant transmission lines crossing their state, that are of no advantage to them.1
The commissioners dove in to the usefulness of power consumers that could be shut off, up to 80 hours/year. This again is an avenue they clearly hope will solve the problem of the intermittency of wind & solar.
Ming walked them through how that is problematic. An individual may be willing to delay charging their car from 6:00pm to 4:00am. But they are not going to be willing to say I can’t drive until the wind picks up. Especially when that could easily be 3 days.
There are industries that can turn off for 80 hours/year if you pay them enough. But for a lot of consumers, they’re more in the you can turn it off for 15 minutes (air conditioning/heat pimps) or 4 hours (EV charging) during multiple days.
Observation 3: The ability to turn off power when needed will be a small help. But not a large help. It’s use is more for the hottest/coldest days peak usage, not for 3 days of no wind.
Conclusion
Gilman & Plant seem to be almost flailing at times. I took it at first that they just don’t understand this well. Maybe that is it. But I listened to the key part a second time and I think they understand all this but are desperately trying to find a workable solution for wind & solar that does not require a ridiculous2 amount of batteries.
And credit to them for trying. But will they eventually be able to understand reality?3 And when they do, what then?
Of course I may be totally misreading the what/why of all their questioning. Am I?
Yes they’ll gain some slight advantage of redundancy and using them when Colorado doesn’t need them. But that ain’t much compared to all the residents complaining about the giant eyesore across their backyards.
i.e. way more than we can afford.
Chairman Blank did not join in on this questioning. I think he already does understand the reality they face.