A Retrospective on the Work of Western Grid Group and WCEA

Regional Advocacy for Clean Energy in the Western U.S.:
A Retrospective on the Work of Western Grid Group and WCEA

Dave Olsen
May 2020

Wind and solar are now the least-expensive ways to generate electricity, everywhere. In the last ten years, the world has added more than enough to power the entire U.S. economy: 651 GW of wind power, 580 GW of solar. But the share of global energy use derived from renewables has not grown. The world is burning 80% more coal in 2020 than we did in 2000.

That’s one reason this story of clean energy advocacy remains pertinent. When Western Grid Group was formed, 60% of U.S. electricity came from coal, and the idea that six western states would adopt 100% clean energy goals in our lifetimes was almost unimaginable. The barriers that clean energy advocates in the western U.S. worked through, to help retire fossil power and add renewables, have lessons for current challenges: phasing out gas-fired generation; learning to operate grids dominated by inverter-based resources; electrifying buildings and transport; decentralizing electric service to provide resilience; managing demand to provide system flexibility. As challenges shift, barriers to decarbonizing are ever-more consequential.

The evolution of energy policy and power industry practices has never been a steady march toward the light. In the West over the last few decades, it is more accurately described as a halting series of battles and controversies, many of them provoked by advocates challenging business as usual approaches to utility industry operations. This retrospective sketches a few of these: demanding consideration of renewables in transmission planning; forming a regional coalition to reduce environmentalist opposition to renewables; leveraging interconnection-wide planning to imagine a no-coal future; developing a Clean Energy Vision for the western U.S.; laying groundwork for an Energy Imbalance Market. But first: where did Western Grid Group, née West Wind Wires (WWW), come from, and why?

A Proposal for Regional Advocacy

The idea was simple: promote wind power in regional transmission planning processes, all of which, in 2003, heavily favored fossil resources. Use the experience of former western regulators familiar with utility planning, and regular meetings of existing regional forums, to challenge planning that disadvantaged non-fossil resources in all venues available: general rate cases, dedicated procurement dockets, merger and acquisition applications, project-specific and regional transmission planning proceedings.

Ron Lehr, former Colorado PUC chair, Roger Hamilton, former Oregon PUC chair, Bob Anderson, Montana PSC chair and Dave Olsen, former renewable energy company CEO, developed these insights into a proposal for Energy Foundation support. Although not a commissioner, Olsen had developed wind, solar, geothermal and pumped storage projects in 22 countries and had commercial experience with transmission permitting.

A number of former PUC commissioners across the country were concerned to advance action to mitigate climate disruption. Adding renewables to utility supply mixes, and challenging continued reliance on coal, were certainly first steps. As commissioners, they could question utility plans and disallow certain investments, but could not advocate for or against specific resources. But as former commissioners, they could now advocate for resources they believed to be cost-effective and in the public interest.

In the Midwest, Beth Soholt had formed Wind on the Wires in 2001 to, as she put it, “bring wind crops to market.” WOW rallied wind power companies, transmission developers, environmental groups and farmers to challenge conservative and often unfair and uninformed assumptions about wind power that utility companies used in their resource and transmission planning. Hamilton, Lehr, Anderson and Olsen thought a similar effort could accelerate adoption of renewables in the West. In typically relaxed fashion, Hamilton christened it “West Wind Wires,” west winds being fresh winds.

West Wind Wires would differ from WOW in two significant ways. First, it would leverage the credibility that long-serving former utility regulators had established with utility companies, governors and legislatures. Given their detailed knowledge of utility revenue requirements, capital structures and accounting procedures, gained from overseeing General Rate Cases, transmission and procurement plans, former commissioners might be able to be particularly effective in challenging utility discrimination against clean resources.

And second, it would focus on integrating the balkanized western grid, taking an interconnection-wide view of obstacles to adding clean resources. Wind power development in the Midwest was concentrated in the footprint of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. MISO provided one organized market and centralized transmission planning. In contrast, power resources in the western U.S. were bought and sold almost entirely through bilateral transactions. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) offered the only organized market, covering about 80% of that state. The Western Interconnection was balkanized into 38 separate Balancing Authority Areas (BAAs).

Hamilton, Lehr, Anderson and Olsen were soon joined by former commissioners and state energy officials from eight western states, all working only part-time. West Wind Wires changed its name to Western Grid Group (WGG) in 2008, reflecting a focus on grid access for all clean resources, not just wind. WGG formed Western Clean Energy Advocates in 2009. A brief chronology below outlines the development of the organization. The focus of this story, however, is on specific engagements in which WGG was able to influence planning and policies. But first, let’s remember a bit about the context shaping this work.

Sidebar: National Political Context of Renewables Advocacy

In the early 2000s, wind power was more expensive than both coal and gas-fired generation in most parts of the U.S., and solar PV was much more expensive. In RTO markets, both wind and solar depended on tax credits and state renewable energy standard policies in order to be selected in utility company procurement. In the decade 2000-2010, Congress let tax credits expire three times. Resulting uncertainty about wind power’s financial competitiveness made it risky for manufacturers to make long-term investments necessary to bring wind costs down. Utilities were reluctant buyers of renewables. The country was already polarized into opposing perspectives about climate disruption. Although the US ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, and signed the Kyoto Protocol extending the UNFCCC, the Kyoto treaty was never presented to the U.S. Senate for ratification, where it would likely have been rejected. The considerable corporate momentum developed in the 1990s in favor of adopting a consistent U.S. policy for addressing climate disruption was abandoned by the Bush administration. The narrow failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in 2009 marked the end of Congressional efforts to act on climate issues.

Wind was still an unfamiliar resource to utility companies and state regulatory commissions. Utility resource planners and grid operators worried both about the variability of its output and the uncertainty of when and how much the wind would blow. Many utilities were reluctant to include it in their procurement plans. Large wind projects were often located far from cities, thus requiring new transmission lines to be developed, at added cost. Transmission planners were at a loss as to how to evaluate resources whose usage of the transmission system could vary daily and hourly, and which had much lower capacity factors than coal or gas-fired generation. Some utilities required wind projects to pay for firm transmission capacity, in order to make their power deliverable 24/7, even though wind generation would flow only 30%-40% of the time. Considering all these factors, transmission planning in most of the country assumed that conventional resources would continue to dominate power supply, and that the grid should be planned accordingly. Resource and transmission planning constituted major obstacles to retiring coal and developing wind power.

Transmission Planning: Demanding Space for Renewables

Western transmission planning was dispersed among sub-regional groups including CAISO, WestConnect, Columbia Grid and Northern Tier Transmission Group, joined from time to time by SWAT (Southwest Area Transmission group); NTAC (Northwest Transmission Assessment Committee); STEP (Southwest Transmission Expansion Plan); and CCPG (Colorado Coordinated Planning Group). Existing transmission brought coal-fired electricity from the Rockies and Intermountain West to coastal cities. The best wind resources were also in the Mountain West, setting up a competition that made transmission access key. To add renewables cost-effectively, fragmented BAAs would have to be integrated, and transmission planning would have to be coordinated Interconnection-wide, across utility, state and sub-regional lines.

The first challenge was to convince utility planners to consider a role for wind power in transmission capacity planning. Hamilton, Lehr, Anderson and Olsen drafted Transmission Planning Principles based on public interest considerations. These were adopted by the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) in 2004 for use across the country. West Wind Wires represented the western U.S. in NWCC work for the next decade, helping establish an agenda for changing practices detrimental to adding renewables to the grid. Dynamic scheduling and virtual wheeling; queue and interconnection study reforms; scheduling and forecasting reforms; OASIS and BAA practices were some of the issues that WWW, working with AWEA, pressed utility planners to address. Participating in specific transmission project studies helped advance this policy agenda.

RMATS: Rocky Mountain Area Transmission Study

In 2003-04, utilities from across the West convened an inter-regional study of new transmission to bring resources, primarily coal, from the intermountain region to West Coast and Desert Southwest load centers. The Rocky Mountain Area Transmission Study (RMATS), engaged more than two dozen utilities, coal and gas generation companies and independent transmission developers; WWW was the sole representative of wind power. After 18 months of meetings, it culminated in a final report in early 2006. The utilities hired Jim Byrne, former chair of the Utah Public Service Commission, as RMATS facilitator. Byrne had been a driving force behind creation of the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation (CREPC), and was widely respected across the region.

Initial proposals for transmission projects submitted for study by RMATS, based on PacifiCorp and Xcel resource plans, assumed the vast majority of the power to be transported would be coal, with only about 5% wind. Hamilton, Olsen and Lehr challenged utility planners’ assumptions about capital and operating costs, capacity factors and transmission utilization of coal vs wind, along with assumptions about the procurement plans of potential buyers. They proposed that a wind-only alternative (for export of wind from Wyoming) be studied.

Utility planners’ assumptions about wind power utilization of transmission were driven in part by tariff requirements for reservation of line capacity and curtailment of different categories of transmission reservation. Firm, point-to-point transmission service provided the greatest assurance of being deliverable. Non-firm service was the first to be curtailed. With 30%-40% capacity factors (of 2005-era wind turbines), it was uneconomic for wind projects to pay for firm service which they would use less than 40% of the time. WWW joined with SMUD and AWEA to propose new tariffed services: conditional firm service, and priority non-firm service, both of which (much lower cost alternatives) would enable wind power to use any Available Transmission Capacity (ATC) on the grid when lines were not constrained. More fundamentally, wind advocates maintained that significant amounts of transmission capacity were going used. WWW protest in RMATS helped stimulate a comprehensive assessment of how much of the western grid was actually being used, hourly, daily and monthly, by major line segment.

Hamilton, Olsen and Lehr identified commissioners from several states who were concerned to plan for a more balanced resource mix and persuaded a few such commissioners to attend RMATS meetings, to help make the case for more balanced resource portfolios. As facilitator, Jim Byrne made it possible for West Wind Wires’ challenges to be taken seriously. He also ensured that an NREL study designed by WWW to evaluate wind utilization of specific line segments received due consideration. Transmission proposed in the RMATS final report devoted 50% of transfer capacity to coal, and 50% to wind. This was a stunning change in utility planners’ outlook for the future of wind power in the region.

Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Committee (CDEAC)

With leadership from key Governors, and U.S. DOE funding arranged by Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB), Western Governors Association (WGA) empaneled experts and advocates to study and report on resource alternatives. WWW helped clean energy advocates strengthen the case for relying on renewables and energy efficiency to provide larger portions of power needs. Ratified by the Governors, the CDEAC report provided top-level political endorsement of the idea that these new resources had a future in the West.

Frontier Line and Renewables-First Transmission

MidAmerican Energy’s acquisition of PacifiCorp in 2005 required approval from regulators in the six western states served by that utility. WWW joined with Western Resource Advocates and others in arguing that the acquisition should be approved only if PacifiCorp made a substantial investment in wind power in its service territory and committed to further increase the amount of renewables in its resource portfolio. Roger Hamilton testified before the Wyoming Public Service Commission detailing how new transmission investments and utilization of existing unused capacity could achieve targeted wind levels. Despite strenuous objection by MidAmerican and PacifiCorp, regulators in most of the six states agreed.

In 2006, with support from the Governors of WY, UT, NV and CA, PacifiCorp proposed developing a large-scale transmission project dubbed the Frontier Line, to bring coal, gas and wind power from Wyoming and Utah to Oregon and, via a section through Utah and Nevada, to Las Vegas and Southern California. Like RMATS, planning for the Frontier Line involved utilities from almost every part of the western U.S., along with transmission developers, coal, gas and wind interests, and environmental groups concerned about line routings across large expanses of open land. Having learned from RMATS, participating utilities’ initial load and resource forecasts, which still assumed fossil generation would dominate flows on the line, now made a larger place for wind.

A central feature of Frontier Line planning, proposed and pressed by WWW, was the inclusion of consultation with stakeholders, on the notion that drawing out concerns from those who had ability to frustrate plan implementation would likely reduce project risks and facilitate successful completion of planned projects. Planning work extended through 2007, divided among committees on economic analysis, loads and resources, line utilization, and siting. WWW was now joined by other advocates to press utility planners to evaluate having the project accommodate much larger amounts of wind.

To provide a basis for wind-only transmission, Dave Olsen developed a detailed engineering and economic proposal for renewables-first transmission. Wind power’s relatively low capacity factors led many utilities and policymakers to assume that wind could never use transmission lines to capacity and thus that new transmission projects would always require coal and gas as a generation partner. Olsen instead proposed that overbuilding wind project capacity by 20% or 30% could make full economic use of transmission, without any fossil generation. Using utility assumptions from the Frontier Line study, he showed such “renewables-only” lines to be economically feasible. In fact, several wind and transmission developers were already proposing large-scale wind-transmission projects. Olsen coordinated planning for one of these, on behalf of the California Public Utilities Commission: the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project in eastern California was designed explicitly to deliver wind and solar power to Los Angeles.

WWW advocacy for renewables-first transmission influenced planning across the U.S., and was promoted extensively by the Regulatory Assistance Project. PacifiCorp, unable to develop consensus support, renamed its Frontier Line project Gateway West and Gateway South and continued to seek permitting approvals. (Portions of Gateway West were eventually built).

By the end of the Frontier Line planning process, large-scale solar and geothermal projects joined wind in interconnection queues in several states. A heavy focus on wind power no longer appropriate, WWW changed its name to Western Grid Group. With a tagline, “Connecting Clean Resources in the West,” the name better reflected its concerns for grid modernization, better utilization of the grid and ensuring access for all clean resources.

Interconnection-Wide Planning and Western Clean Energy Advocates

In 2009, with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and prodding by Ron Lehr, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) directed both the Eastern and Western Interconnections to develop 10-year and 20-year transmission expansion plans. Recognizing this as an unprecedented opportunity to influence utility thinking about the future of their resource portfolios, WGG responded to DOE’s Funding Opportunity Announcement with a proposal to manage the planning process for the Western Interconnection. When DOE instead gave the contract for this work to WECC, WGG proposed a scenario process and organizational structure for this planning. WECC adopted much of WGG’s proposal, which included prominent roles for representatives of clean energy and environmental NGOs. The nearly three years of this Regional Transmission Expansion Planning (RTEP) process significantly increased pressure on utilities to plan for much larger shares of renewables on the transmission system, and helped establish clean energy advocates and NGOs as informed and valuable players in western energy planning.

RTEP was governed by a State and Provincial Steering Committee (SPSC) comprised of commissioners or other representatives of every western state and province. The key task was developing scenarios for the future of the western U.S. and thus for the future of power resources and transmission in the Western Interconnection. As proposed by WGG, a Scenario Planning Steering Group (SPSG) was formed for this work.

To take full advantage of this opportunity, WGG formed a coalition of clean energy trade associations, advocates and NGOs, and convinced them to devote significant amounts of staff time and organizational focus to this long-range planning effort. This group came to form the core of Western Clean Energy Advocates (WCEA).

Utilities and conventional generation companies made up a large majority of RTEP participants. But they were unable to dominate the process, thanks in part to the organizational structure WGG had proposed, and thanks to even-handed facilitation by John Savage, Oregon PUC commissioner and SPSC co-chair; and Doug Larson, director of the Western Interstate Energy Board. Larson, Savage and most of the commissioners on the SPSC were concerned to have scenarios describe realistic views of possible future states, even when these might be at odds with utility preferences for fossil power. All WGG staff—former commissioners from six western states—participated in SPSC, SPSG or other RTEP meetings. The fact that most SPSC members, and many utility representatives, knew them helped ensure that WGG and advocates’ views were duly considered.

RTEP scenario planning, based on the Global Business Network model developed by Peter Schwartz, created detailed scenarios to test feasible futures. One of these scenarios, titled “The New Frontier,” allowed climate policy to drive utility sector investment and performance. This scenario accurately describes the path the West has followed.

WGG coached clean energy participants in scenario planning, and orchestrated participation in the work groups that ultimately generated the basis for the scenarios underlying WECC’s 10-year and 20-year plans. The many, frequent meetings of work groups established to complete different aspects of the overall initiative built new levels of communication and cooperation among advocates, and accelerated their learning about resource and transmission planning.

At the same time, with transmission planning only one of advocates’ concerns, WGG developed the Western Clean Energy Advocates coalition to focus on other key issues: larger markets for clean power, more effective intervention in state legislative and regulatory processes, and a solution for reducing environmental opposition to clean energy development. With funding again from the Energy Foundation, ably facilitated by the persistent and persuasive Katie McCormack, WGG recruited many of the diverse organizations working to retire coal and advance clean energy across the West to join.

With its members’ experience in regulatory proceedings in almost every western state, WGG brought an interconnection-wide perspective to state-level decision-making on issues of large-scale renewable energy development, coal retirement, transmission planning and routing, utility resource planning and development of markets for clean power. Many advocates’ initiatives, focused on local or state-specific concerns, often lacked information to help place their work in a broader power system context, or to understand allied efforts in other parts of the West. Across issues such as regional wholesale power market development, transmission planning and integration of Balancing Areas to provide optimized regional dispatch, WCEA provided a forum for state-level groups to learn about and begin advocating for western regional policies needed to meet state goals and replace fossil power with clean resources, consistent with a rational interconnection-wide perspective. WCEA meetings were devoted to sharing information and resources and building trust and alliances among groups working on specific projects or interventions, to build local and sub-regional capabilities.

Western Advocacy Landscape and Environmental Opposition to Renewables

WCEA sought, first and foremost, to link and strengthen existing advocate organizations. Clean energy advocacy took root in the West in the 1990s, with a focus on replacing fossil fuels with energy efficiency and renewables, to minimize power costs and protect public health. The Northwest Energy Coalition built a robust citizen-consumer-labor alliance active in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. CEERT, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, brought environmental NGOs and clean power companies together to influence energy policy in California. The Land and Water Fund of the Rockies became Western Resource Advocates, with a focus on influencing utility policies in the Intermountain West. Renewable Northwest, in Portland, and the Interwest Energy Alliance, in Denver, worked to add wind power into utility resource plans. As a consultant, Ron Lehr gave AWEA an advocacy presence in the West.

National environmental NGOs active in the western U.S. began to broaden their traditional focus on land and ecosystem protection to include advocacy for clean energy. The Wilderness Society, Audubon, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund, among others, maintained chapters across the West pressing for coal retirement and inclusion of efficiency and renewables in utility planning. Along with several others, including the Western Clean Energy Campaign, Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, Defenders of Wildlife and the Coalition for Biological Diversity, they all shared a broad clean air, clean water, clean power agenda.

As wind power development increased in the 2000s, so did tensions between clean power advocates and land preservation-focused NGOs. Wind (and later solar) sometimes intruded industrial facilities into formerly open spaces and fragile ecosystems. Transmission to deliver clean power sometimes required new transmission corridors; transmission developers proposed many times more projects than commercially feasible, each one a major focus of environmental concern.

Clean power advocates and environmental NGOs often evaluated impacts differently. Private, for-profit wind companies thought the need to replace coal with wind outweighed concerns about land preservation. NGOs certainly thought coal must be retired—but maybe not at the cost of impairing tens of thousands of acres of western lands with large wind machines and thousands of miles of new transmission corridors. Environmental opposition to renewable energy development slowed and sometimes derailed wind and solar project permit approvals, to the benefit of utility companies seeking to keep coal plants in operation. This opposition, though well-intended, was sometimes based on uninformed and unrealistic understandings of power needs and grid operations. Retiring coal on a west-wide scale, it became clear, depended on bringing clean power and ecosystem defenders together.

A now-obvious solution focuses renewable energy development into limited geographic areas having the best quality (meaning lowest cost) wind, solar or geothermal resources, preferably close to existing transmission, and applies strict habitat and ecosystem preservation requirements to projects developed in those areas. This is the approach used, for example, by the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), a federal-state agreement guiding energy development in California’s Mojave Desert. This approach was not at all obvious in the mid-2000s.

In 2007, Dave Olsen proposed that California energy agencies create a Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) to develop widespread agreement on where renewable energy should be developed to meet requirements of state law, and on how much transmission would be needed to deliver that power. The RETI steering committee included representatives of 29 stakeholder interests, including utilities, renewable energy companies, environmental NGOs, and state and federal permitting agencies. RETI proposed to concentrate renewable energy development into small geographic areas called Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ). The NGOs, led by Johanna Wald of NRDC and Carl Zichella of the Sierra Club, developed a rigorous environmental impact scoring system capable of comparing development impacts across CREZ located in different parts of the state. Wind and solar companies were concerned that such an approach would not provide them enough siting flexibility. They eventually agreed when the permitting agencies consented to accelerate permitting for projects located in CREZ. RETI’s transmission and CREZ development plan was approved by consensus of all California utilities, energy agencies, renewables companies and NGOs. The CREZ approach to siting renewables and transmission became Development Focus Areas in the DRECP, and this model of stakeholder collaborative planning set a standard for other efforts across the West.

This approach to making renewable energy development sensitive to habitat and ecosystem protection was further fleshed out by other NGOs. Nevada Wilderness Project proposed a “Smart From the Start” approach to transmission development. Western Resource Advocates extended this into a comprehensive “Smart Lines” planning approach which first sought to avoid or minimize new transmission, and then, like RETI and DRECP, required transmission developers to avoid ecologically-sensitive areas and follow rigorous environmental protection practices for their projects. It also provided the basis for Western Renewable Energy Zone planning, initiated by the Western Governors Association in 2010.

Though tensions continue, these efforts in combination drew clean energy companies and environmental groups closer together. Having wind and solar companies structure their projects to respect ecosystem sensitivities made it possible for environmental NGOs to actively support well-planned development. WCEA remains a useful forum for ensuring continuity in such cooperation.

Transmission Expansion Planning Policy Committee

After submitting 10-year and 20-year interconnection-wide plans to DOE, WECC created a Transmission Expansion Planning Policy Committee (TEPPC) to continue regional transmission planning. TEPPC oversees compilation and updating of an Anchor Data Set of transmission system physical characteristics, Interconnection-wide, that all utilities and BAAs use for modeling regional interactions in their own power flow and production cost studies. Technical Analysis and Modeling subcommittees do much of TEPPC’s on-going work. WGG participated actively in TEPPC work until 2012, and maneuvered to ensure that clean energy advocates always had seats on seats on TEPPC itself.

TEPPC’s annual planning studies included evaluation of scenarios proposed by utilities, generators and transmission developers. At WGG’s insistence, TEPPC agreed to consider scenarios submitted by NGOs. WGG submitted aggressive coal retirement scenarios for study each year, from 2010 through 2013. These were based on the need to reduce western interconnection carbon emissions to 80% below 1990 emissions by 2050, consistent with projected requirements of the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). WGG scenarios required TEPPC to model transmission system impacts of much larger amounts of coal retirement than utilities were prepared to consider. With study results made available across the West, this added to pressures for retiring coal and also provided detailed looks at a system operating with fewer fossil resources.

Western Clean Energy Vision

In 2010, to bolster campaigns pressing utilities and regulators to retire coal and add non-fossil resources, WGG began a comprehensive study contrasting business-as-usual approaches with transition to a low-carbon future. WGG integrated Western Clean Energy Advocates into report preparation, to ensure study results would be useful in advocate campaigns in every western state.

WGG and WCEA published “Western Grid 2050” in 2012, following two years of economic and policy analysis, framing it as a $200 billion choice between business-as-usual reliance on aging technologies and unsustainable resources and transition to a more secure, affordable and dynamic energy future. To accompany the study, WGG produced a large set of promotional materials, including slides, infographics and fact sheets, and a set of complementary reports and papers outlining a transition plan for western states. These include: “Modernizing the Grid: How Our Electric System Can Welcome New Resources, Improve Reliability and Reduce Costs;” “Lower Risk, Lower Cost Electric Service: Policies Western States Can Build On;” “Clean Energy Investment and Incentives: Choices for Investors, Utilities and Regulators;” and a “Policy Reference Guide: Orderly Transition to More Secure and Sustainable Electricity.” All these materials remain available on the WGG website.

“Western Grid 2050” became a reference point in TEPPC and other transmission planning processes and was referred to in regulatory proceedings in several states including, for example, the Arizona Public Service IRP proceeding in 2012.

Western Energy Imbalance Market

Renewables need markets in order to compete effectively, especially given utility company monopsony power, the market control that flows from being the only buyer of large-scale power projects in a region. Regional markets would draw utilities into closer operational coordination, while also saving money for consumers, reducing emissions and improving reliability through more efficient dispatch. With transmission often a crucial component of market development, WGG had promoted development of regional markets throughout its involvement in western transmission planning venues.

In 2000, in a quest for greater market efficiencies, FERC pushed for creation of a regional organized market, RTO West, in line with the organized markets covering most of the rest of the country. Most western utilities rejected this proposal, in favor of maintaining bi-lateral transactions, pancaked transmission rates and point-to-point transmission. A few utilities, however, believed that organized markets would enable them to reduce costs for their customers. WGG engaged these utilities, along with state commissioners who also saw potential for market approaches to reduce both costs and emissions. Doug Larson, WIEB director, arranged CREPC meetings to explore possible market approaches. With a full-fledged regional market out of the question, the idea for an energy imbalance market emerged in WECC’s Market interface Committee. As first proposed by Steve Beuning of Xcel Energy, this would be a real-time market devoted only to supplying the relatively small amounts of energy needed to balance hourly supply and demand.

WGG engaged state commissioners to explain benefits of such an energy imbalance market, along with a related proposal for an Energy Curtailment Calculator. Doug Larson and WIEB also played an instrumental role in promoting the concept. This stimulated formation of a “PUC EIM Group” of interested commissioners, which arranged for NREL to model costs and benefits to every western utility. Commissioners in several states pressed their utilities to consider participating in such a market. In response to an RFI issued by the PUC EIM Group, both Southwest Power Pool and CAISO developed proposals to create energy imbalance markets. CAISO’s proposed market was completely voluntary, with very low costs and no exit fees. PacifiCorp immediately agreed to join, followed soon after by several others. The Western Energy Imbalance Market began operation in November 2014. In 2020, it includes 14 utilities in eight western states and has saved over $900 million in power costs since start-up. Participation in this market has demonstrated the substantial benefits of optimized generation-transmission dispatch. It has also drawn utilities into closer operational coordination, laying the groundwork for further system integration.

2020: Work Continues

This discussion of key issues WGG and WCEA have addressed ends, for the moment, in 2013. But the chronology below provides a summary of both activities and staffing up to 2020. The number of advocate groups and their sophistication about power systems and energy policy continue to grow. New organizations like Grid Lab and sharply refocused ones like Energy Systems Integration Group add technical and engineering expertise to help accelerate transition away from fossil fuels. Continuously improving clean technologies and increasing urgency to decarbonize greatly expand the field of issues where pressure from advocates can help remove barriers to evolution of a low carbon economy.

Doug Larson, as Executive Director of Western Interstate Energy Board, energy arm of the Western Governors Association, provided indispensable support in key processes, including the Western Regional Air Partnership, CDEAC, WREZ, WECC’s scenario planning (RTEP) process, and most of all, in educating commissioners and Governors about the benefits to the region an Energy Imbalance Market could provide. As WIEB director, he was sensitive to and had to represent the often divergent interests of all western Governors. He believed he could serve them—and all western consumers and citizens—best by providing decision-makers with accurate and objective information about policy proposals, even when these were at odds with utility business as usual planning. He used his position as staff of CREPC to ensure that controversial issues including coal retirement, transmission system utilization and evaluation of non-traditional resources received appropriate study and were explored fairly. Doug’s leadership contributed materially to the progress western states have made in adding renewables and wholesale market approaches to sharing resources.

Western Grid Group: Organizational Chronology, 2003-2020

2003. Supported by Energy Foundation funding, Ron Lehr, Roger Hamilton, Bob Anderson and Dave Olsen, create West Wind Wires as a network of former public utility commissioners and other experts working as part-time consultants to challenge business-as-usual utility resource and transmission planning. WWW drafts transmission planning principles intended to ensure consideration of non-fossil-resources.

2004. National Wind Coordinating Committee adopts WWW’s public interest transmission planning principles and promotes them nationwide. WWW argues for larger renewable energy targets in WGA’s Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Committee proceedings. Joins with other advocates to press state utility commissions to require PacifiCorp to increase wind investment as a condition for its acquisition by MidAmerican. Joins RMATS planning.

2005. WWW urges state utility commissioners to join RMATS meetings to help push for larger amounts of wind to be considered. Designs engineering study of line utilization by wind and arranges for NREL to perform that modeling. Working with AWEA, proposes Conditional Firm tariff structures to allow wind to make greater use of the grid. RMATS final report includes 50% wind scenarios.

2006. Participates in production cost modeling and routing studies for PacifiCorp’s proposed Frontier Line, pressing for wind-only scenarios to be considered. Develops detailed engineering and economic proposal for renewables-only transmission lines and renewable energy-first planning. Bob Anderson and Jim Byrne join West Wind Wires as part-time consultants, Anderson after having completed his second term on the MT PSC. Anderson had also been president of NARUC, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Byrne, a nuclear engineer, had been commissioner and chairman of the Utah Public Service Commission. He was instrumental in creating, and served as chairman of, the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation (CREPC). He served as manager of the Western Regional Transmission Association (WRTA) and in that role facilitated the merger of WRTA and the Western Systems Coordinating Council to create WECC, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.

2007-08. Amanda Ormond, former director of the Arizona State Energy Office, joins WWW. An Energy Foundation conference, “Transmission and Wildlife Needs at a Crossroads,” brings environmental NGOs and renewable energy developers together to address tensions and find ways to work together to advance clean energy.

2008-09. Wayne Shirley and John Candelaria join WWW. Shirley had recently been a commissioner of the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission. John Candelaria had been staff and advisor to commissioners of the Public Utility Commission of Nevada and the Nevada State Office of Energy. Candelaria was also an employee of Aspen Environmental Group. These additions give WGG local knowledge of and credibility with utility and government agencies, based on its 200 years’ aggregate regulatory experience in eight western states: AZ, CA, CO, MT, NV, NM, OR, and UT.

West Wind Wires changes its name to Western Grid Group (WGG). Bob Anderson succeeds Roger Hamilton as managing director. CEERT, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, becomes WGG’s fiscal sponsor.

WGG submits proposal to manage U.S. DOE-mandated interconnection-wide planning for the West. Subsequently proposes a structure for a scenario planning process that builds in prominent roles for environmental and clean energy interests.

2009-10. Lisa Schwarz and Carl Linvill join WGG. Schwartz was an employee of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) which devoted part of her time to WGG. Dr. Linvill, an economist, had been commissioner of the Public Utility Commission of Nevada and energy advisor to NV Governor Kenny Guinn. Like Candelaria, he was also an employee of Aspen Environmental Group.

WGG forms Western Clean Energy Advocates at the end of 2009. Alicia Healey joins WGG as administrative coordinator in May 2010.

WGG proposes, and WECC adopts scenario planning as the basis of its Regional Transmission Expansion Planning process. WECC scenarios include a clean energy future which accurately describes many elements of the West’s journey toward clean power.

2010-11. Until 2010, the Energy Foundation funded WGG on a year-by-year basis, and members worked only part-time. In 2010, Dave Olsen negotiates a three-year funding commitment for the organization, centered around development of a Clean Energy Vision for the western US. He becomes its first full-time employee, and succeeds Bob Anderson as managing director.

WGG advocates creation of a Western Energy Imbalance Market and organizes state utility commissioners to support study of such an effort. Publishes “Enabling Widespread Adoption of Wind Energy in the West: The Case for Transmission, Operations and Market Reforms.” Western Resource Advocates, Renewable Northwest and the Regulatory Assistance Project join WGG as Associate Members.

2012-13. WGG and WCEA publish and begin promoting a Clean Energy Vision for the western U.S. Undertakes analysis of Nevada’s renewable energy and transmission development scenarios. Completes report on renewable energy export opportunities and mutual benefits of increased CA-NV cooperation. Amanda Ormond succeeds Dave Olsen as managing director of WGG after Olsen is appointed to CAISO board of governors. Continues support of PUC EIM Group.

2013-14. Commissions Synapse Economics to evaluate benefits of a western Energy Imbalance Market; publishes and promotes that report. Testifies in support of EIM creation in regulatory proceedings. Continues dissemination of Clean Energy Vision at Public Utility Commissions.

2014-15. Develops legal arguments supporting disallowance of utility earnings under PUC or municipal board review for utilities declining to join the Energy Imbalance Market. Participates in EIM governance development. Continues support of PUC EIM Group in favor of further expansion of EIM. Works with WAPA to facilitate Western’s customers joining EIM and presses WAPA itself to join. Phil Jones, former WA commissioner and NARUC President, and Kate Maracas, an engineer with utility and developer experience, join WGG.

2016-17. Participates in regional discussions of market benefits and governance issues initiated by California’s SB 350 studies. Works with WIEB to define and refine regional planning studies supporting market expansion. Participates with regional allies in California legislative consideration of changes to CAISO governance structure. Doug Larson retires from WIEB and becomes consultant to Energy Foundation, contributing to WGG and WCEA work on market development issues. Brian Parsons, retired from leading NREL’s system integration work for over two decades, joins WGG and develops a case for support of advocates’ work on system operations for renewables integration. This work leads to EF and other foundation support for creation of Grid Lab. Maury Galbraith takes over as WIEB director.

2018-19. Doug Howe, a former NM PRC commissioner and former Western EIM Governing Body member, joins WGG. Participates with coalition partners in CAISO stakeholder processes in support of creating an Extended Day Ahead Market (EDAM) for EIM participants across the West. WCEA work groups are active in regional market development; Navajo Generating Station retirement and tribal Just Transition impacts; Just Transition coalition building and development of securitization approaches to fund fossil fuel retirement; Tri-State clean energy transition and governance reforms; Colstrip plant retirements; challenges to PacifiCorp planning and procurement; and coordination of CA and NW resources and markets.

2020 – WGG continues focus on EDAM market development in CAISO stakeholder and related regional forums, despite a severely reduced budget. With WCEA, continues advocacy for evolution of regional markets to meet system capability and operational flexibility needs. Advocates broader roles for load flexibility in high renewables penetration futures, incorporating concepts developed by Mark Ahlstrom and other Energy Systems Integration Group leaders. Proposes WCEA work groups to support states considering reforming utility business models (HI, CA, OR, WA, CO, and NV). Partners with Energy Innovations, Rocky Mountain Institute, Sierra Club, NRDC and others to flesh out financial options for utility transition to clean energy; this leads to foundation funding for a “Finance Lab” to support advocates with financial analysis to speed transition to least-cost, clean resources.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Proposal for Regional Advocacy

Sidebar: National Political Context of Renewables Advocacy

Transmission Planning: Demanding Space for Renewables