dbeard@dominionpost.com
MORGANTOWN – When you get up in the morning, you want to know your lights will come on and you can plug in and recharge your laptop and cell phone.
It’s PJM Interconnection’s job to make sure you can do that. PJM’s Executive Director for Governmental Services Jason Staneck talked to legislators on Monday and the Regional Transmission Organization’s role in light of the growing demand for electricity and the shrinking capacity to produce it.
PJM doesn’t produce the electrons, he told the Joint Standing Committee on Energy and Manufacturing, meeting for December interims, it just herds them from place to place.
And it’s fuel neutral. “We effectively have no particular interest in where these watts are generated, so long as they are generated,” he said.
Translated, the power could come from coal, natural gas, the sun or 10,000 butterfly sneezes.
But, he said, government-led decarbonization polices are pushing fossil fuel plant retirements faster than reliable replacement capacity can come online. “There is cause for concern.”
PJM oversees the grid for 13 states – including West Virginia – and Washington, D.C.
The last 12-18 months have seen a growth in power demand by data centers, here and nationally – something not on the radar even 24 months ago, he said. “Planning to meet that customer growth is going to be essential to keeping a grid in balance.
Staneck compared PJM’s current supply mix to what’s in the queue for project applications. Natural gas makes up about 48% of total capacity; coal about 22%; nuclear about 18%; wind, hydro and solar combined make up less than 8%.
In West Virginia, the fossil-fuel generation contrast is even sharper: 89% coal; natural gas, about 8%; wind and hydro, 3%; solar not even a blip yet.
But for projects in the queue across PJM, solar makes up 58%; wind is 15%; natural gas, 2%; and coal isn’t a blip. For proposed West Virginia projects, solar makes up 66% of the potential new capacity; natural gas, 18%; wind just under 7%. No coal-fired proposals are in the queue.
But while power demand is growing, forecasted retirements across the PJM grid make up 21% of its current capacity. Coal makes up 60% of the projected retirements, natural gas, 30%.
The fundamental problem is that renewables aren’t yet reliable enough to guarantee baseload supply.
And politics is driving most of the retirements, he said. Of 40 gigawatts of projected retirements, about 24 GW – 60% – is due to governmental policies, particularly federal. Economics is spurring about 3 GW of retirements – just under 8%.
PJM’s top priority and responsibility, he said, is grid reliability. The fleet has adequate resources but needs generators to perform when called upon. He recalled Winter Storm Elliott of 2022, when power suppliers failed to deliver, forcing outages.
And while retirements will be outpacing new capacity, “We will continue to need some amount of thermal generation to provide certain essential reliability services until a replacement technology is deployable at scale.
The course isn’t sustainable, he said, and PJM has made the EPA aware of that.
PJM is also trying to alert legislatures all across its footprint about the looming supply-demand challenge, he said, Even if federal policy changes under the next administration, some state policies will still pose issues.
Asked if PJM is reevaluting its decarbonization plans, he reminded the legislators that PJM doesn’t build capacity, it manages it. “Our utmost goal is maintaining system reliability.”
Decarbonization is a secondary or tertiary priority for PJM, he said. At the same time, it has to work with green-leaning states. To the extent PJM can accommodate state decarbonization goals, that’s important too. “At the end of the day our job is to keep the lights on 24/7.”
Staneck offered two policy takeaways – items it shares with every state legislature.
One, avoid policies that push generation resources off the system until adequate replacement generation is online and proven to be operating.
And two, analyze state and local challenges regarding deployment of new resources and electricity infrastructure, and enact policies to facilitate more and quicker construction.
