Advanced Energy United Reports

On June 16, 2022, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing changes to its regulations governing interconnection processes and agreements. The NOPR comes as interconnection delays across the country are slowing project development, with three times as many requests waiting in interconnection queues today as there were five years ago. FERC’s NOPR seeks to resolve these backlogs by proposing solutions that balance increased requirements for interconnecting generators to demonstrate commercial viability and “readiness” to stay in the interconnection queue and firmer obligations for transmission providers to complete studies on time.

“Understanding FERC’s Proposal for Relieving Interconnection Delays” summarizes the key provisions of FERC’s NOPR, describes how FERC proposes to change the responsibilities of interconnection customers and transmission providers, and highlights the challenges that FERC will need to address in a final ruling in order to break the delays and wait times that plague clean energy projects today.

Acceleration of the clean energy transition is dramatically shifting the types of electric generation technologies used to meet electricity demand and reliably operate the grid. Rapid cost declines in advanced energy technologies like wind, solar, and energy storage are making them increasingly competitive choices for new generation additions. While there has been considerable attention devoted to determining the reliability value of these new resource types, the methods used to evaluate the resource adequacy, or capacity value, of conventional thermal generating resources (including coal, natural gas, and oil-fired power plants) have not been formally reexamined or updated in decades.

FERC Order 2222 requires exceptional coordination between distribution utilities, RTOs/ISOs, aggregators, and state regulators. This report, from Advanced Energy Economy and GridLab, a non-profit mission-driven electric grid consultancy group, provides a framework for state regulators to navigate key issues as utilities look to improve integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into wholesale markets in the coming years.