Todd Snitchler’s Post

As a business, an industry and a nation, we must place the continued development of the electrical system at the forefront of U.S. energy and economic policy. This is part of the message American Electric Power Interim CEO Ben Fowke shared as he testified before the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources. We're navigating a landscape where demand is increasing at historic levels. AEP has requests for more than 100,000 MW of energy in our development queue, and most of that comes from large-load customers looking to build manufacturing plants and data centers that will help strengthen our local economies. One of the challenges to greenlighting these investments is the need for permitting reform to remove bottlenecks and get projects into construction. But many projects spend more time in regulatory hang-ups than they would take to build. To continue providing safe, reliable, and affordable power, we must advocate for flexibility and quicker decision-making by regulators alongside decisive action from policymakers. You can see the webcast of Ben’s testimony along with representatives from the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, Micron Technology and the National Center for Energy Analytics here. ⬇️

Earlier this week, the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee highlighted a coming reliability crisis driven by a surge in demand for electric power at a hearing on Capitol Hill. Mark Mills, Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, and a witness in the hearing, explained that the fastest way to increase power supply, “is not things we don’t know how to build but things we know how to build. The vast construction of dispatchable power will come from gas pipes and gas turbines. That will be the primary source of new supply. This will be true with the United States, almost every state, and it’s also true in Europe. That’s what’s happening in and around the world but especially here.” Already, natural gas fuels 43% of electricity generation in the United States, and as demand for electricity skyrockets we will need to be able to build accompanying infrastructure to get natural gas from where it is produced to the power plants that need it. Chairman Manchin put it best during the hearing when he said: “To put it plainly, we can’t be open for business if we can’t keep the lights on.” Natural gas is a critical part of the puzzle to meeting our growing electricity demand now, and for the foreseeable future.   https://lnkd.in/esKDpwMh

A thoughtful article was published in last week's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussing the complexity of incorporating Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), especially those managed by third-party aggregators, into grid operations. "The [public utility commission] is asking some basic questions and some very complicated ones. For example, what happens if the transmission grid needs a resource to perform but the distribution, or utility, grid overrides it?...Can such resources be able to participate in both transmission grid and distribution grid programs without getting paid twice for the same service?" At Camus, we believe local energy resource aggregations can provide benefits to all levels of the grid. Doing so in practice, however, relies on a real-time visibility into local grid constraints, effective feedback loops from aggregated devices, and effective data exchanges between parties: including transmission operators, distribution utilities, and third-party VPP operators. We're helping utilities illuminate the path to a more dynamic, distributed grid. If your utility is looking to engage third-party VPPs alongside utility programs, get in touch with our team at www.camus.energy/contact https://lnkd.in/gMHYBdKR

The Texas power grid continues to be a challenge for all Texans unless we prepare. That's why we want to invite all stakeholders in the MUD industry to attend our webinar: "2024 Texas Grid Crisis and Solutions". 📆 Date: March 14th, 2024. 🕚 Time: 11:00 am -12:00 pm. ➡ Sign up here and add the event to your calendar: https://bit.ly/4bUt7xO Key industry leaders will discuss: -Current state of the Texas electric grid. -New policies and programs created by ERCOT and the PUC. -The current state of Microgrids, pilot projects, and the role of the TDSP in enhancing reliability. #AcclaimEnergy #TexasReliability #EnergyInTexas #Microgrids #ERCOT #EnergyReliability #MUDs

The Texas power grid continues to be a challenge for all Texans unless we prepare. That's why we want to invite all stakeholders in the MUD industry to attend our webinar: "2024 Texas Grid Crisis and Solutions". 📆 Date: March 14th, 2024. 🕚 Time: 11:00 am -12:00 pm. ➡ Sign up here and add the event to your calendar: https://bit.ly/4bUt7xO Key industry leaders will discuss: -Current state of the Texas electric grid. -New policies and programs created by ERCOT and the PUC. -The current state of Microgrids, pilot projects, and the role of the TDSP in enhancing reliability. #AcclaimEnergy #TexasReliability #EnergyInTexas #Microgrids #ERCOT #EnergyReliability #MUDs

On July 26, the IPA hosted Power Hour 6—Long-Term Regional Transmission Planning, State Initiatives, and the Power Grid. This educational webinar provided an overview on the role of Regional Transmission Organizations in long-term regional transmission planning and current challenges that states are facing on transmission planning and development. Speakers also discussed Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) transmission planning and cost allocation rule— Order No. 1920, its anticipated impact, and upcoming FERC transmission actions. The webinar also examined Illinois’ initiatives implementation, state legislative proposals crafted to support new high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, and key state players around transmission planning and processes. The webinar featured expert presentations from Qingliu (Mary Yang), Attorney-Advisor, at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Jason Stanek, Executive Director of Government Services at PJM; and IPA Director Brian Granahan. Thank you to all the presenters for sharing such valuable insights on the issue. The full recording and presentation slides can be found on the IPA Events page: https://lnkd.in/gyBZyzhU https://lnkd.in/gEn5XTkS #PowerHour #webinar #series #LongTerm #Regional #Transmission #planning #FERC #PJM #IPA

Robert Kuzman, our executive director of external affairs in the central region, is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison today lending his expertise to the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute's Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) Fundamentals course. This panel discussion is focused on the the future and the important role RTOs play as the electric grid faces a number of imminent and complex reliability challenges. Visit our website to learn more in our latest Reliability Imperative report: https://ow.ly/bfe050RctlZ. #energytransition #gridofthefuture

♻️⚡️The Pennsylvania Utility Commissions charting the course for a groundbreaking shift in energy management exploring how the small-scale energy resources can unite to stabilize the grid during times of crisis.    This move could revolutionize the way we harness energy, offering benefits from reduce emissions to enhanced reliability.  #EnergyRevolution #GridStability   Check out the full article here: 📰https://lnkd.in/gMHYBdKR             

The Texas power grid continues to be a challenge for all Texans unless we prepare. That's why we want to invite all stakeholders in the MUD industry to attend our webinar: "2024 Texas Grid Crisis and Solutions". 📆 Date: March 14th, 2024. 🕚 Time: 11:00 am -12:00 pm. ➡ Sign up here and add the event to your calendar: https://bit.ly/4bUt7xO Key industry leaders will discuss: -Current state of the Texas electric grid. -New policies and programs created by ERCOT and the PUC. -The current state of Microgrids, pilot projects, and the role of the TDSP in enhancing reliability. #AcclaimEnergy #TexasReliability #EnergyInTexas #Microgrids #ERCOT #EnergyReliability #MUDs

This morning American Electric Power's interim CEO, Ben Fowke testified before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the unprecedented growing demand for electricity, not only in the 11 states we serve, but across the country, tied in large part to data centers. His remarks also focused on the challenges that extremely large customer power demands present, the risks of not addressing the topic, and policies that would help address them. In his testimony Ben said, "Just a few years ago, a large-scale industrial manufacturing facility might require 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to power about 100,000 homes. Now, it is common for a single data center to require three times to up to 15 times this amount of power for a single site." His comments start at 38:30, but the entire thing is worth a watch. #AEP #AmericanElectricPower #AI