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The state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a briefing this week to discuss grid reliability and infrastructure and provide an update on the future outlook of power production, according to state Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township, who chairs the committee.
"The aftermath of Winter Storm Elliott in December has spurred a welcomed conversation on grid reliability with PJM," Yaw said, according to a news release. "Short sighted environmental policies have forced fossil fuel plants into nonexistence, resulting in fewer reliable energy sources to shoulder the burden of increased demand on Pennsylvania's electrical grid."
During the briefing, the committee heard testimony from power generators and industry experts including Glen Thomas, president of PJM Power Providers Group. Thomas discussed current trends and explained that demand is rising faster than historic rates.
"Retirements are happening faster than anticipated," Thomas said, according to the news release. "PJM projects that 20% of its existing capacity will retire between now and 2030 and replacement capacity is not of the quality and quantity necessary to sustain reliability. As a result, at the current trajectory, PJM is not going to have sufficient power to meet the demands of consumers and prices are likely to increase."
PJM, a regional transmission organization for 13 states and the District of Columbia, coordinates the flow of electricity from generators to local utilities across a web of high-voltage transmission lines. Local utilities distribute this power directly to consumers.
Also among the testifiers was James Locher, chief operating officer of Keystone-Conemaugh Project Office and the manager of two large, essentially identical, coal-fired plants in western Pennsylvania. Locher touched on capacity market decline and the impact of policies such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
"The capacity market decline is clearly hastening plant closures without regard to the reliability implications," Locher said, according to the news release. "The incorporation of Pennsylvania into the multistate RGGI will most certainly shift market power to non-RGGI generator states in PJM and make Pennsylvania-based KeyCon plants non-competitive in the marketplace, forcing their immediate closure."
"The bottom line is that grid stability requires a diversified energy portfolio," Sen. Yaw said, according to the news release. "Wind and solar are great energy sources, but they are not reliable sources. Renewables are intermittent, limited and dependent on weather. Baseload generation has to be available at 3 a.m. when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. When renewables come online in states with clean energy goals, they are relying on Pennsylvania to make up that difference."