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Grain Belt Express: Secrets Revealed!

7/31/2022

Grain Belt Express filed a new application for its project to cross Illinois at the Illinois Commerce Commission this week. In that haystack of thousands of pages of legal dreck and testimony, I found several needles. I'm going to guess that Invenergy didn't expect anyone to find the needles... but here they are!

In 2020, the Missouri Landowners Alliance filed a complaint at the PSC claiming that Invenergy had changed the design and engineering of its project as announced in a press release. The press release claimed Grain Belt Express would increase the capacity of its interconnection in Missouri to 2500 MW. During the evidentiary hearing, counsel asked Invenergy witness Kris Zadlo some questions about its interconnection requests in Missouri. Invenergy's counsel objected to these questions, but the judge initially overruled. The witness gave evasive non-answers to the questions, and his counsel continued to object to any probing into Grain Belt's interconnection in Missouri. Eventually the judge capitulated and shut down this line of questioning. The complaint was eventually dismissed based, in part, on Zadlo's testimony that the project design had not changed and that Invenergy was pursuing the project as permitted. The permitted project contemplated a connection with the MISO system in Missouri at a point in Ralls County. Turns out that was not true at all at the time Zadlo testified.

Invenergy recently re-announced its offering of 2500 MW in Missouri. Grain Belt's ICC application demonstrates that Zadlo was prevaricating. In testimony, Invenergy witness Carlos Rodriguez stated

One 1018 MW interconnection request (queue number GI-083) was submitted to AECI (Associated Electric) in June 2019, with a point of interconnection to the McCredie 345 kV substation.

and

Four interconnection requests were submitted to MISO in April 2019. The point of interconnection for all four interconnection requests is breaking Ameren’s McCredie – Montgomery 345 kV line, approximately 0.5 miles East of AECI’s McCredie 345 kV
substation. Two of the interconnection requests (total 1,500 MW) are being processed per MISO’s Merchant HVDC Transmission Connection Procedures (“MHCP,” Attachment
GGG) and the two remaining are being processed per MISO’s Generator Interconnection Procedures (“GIP,” Attachment X).

So Invenergy changed its proposed interconnection points and sizes in 2019, although Zadlo testified at the PSC in 2021 that nothing had changed and Invenergy was still pursuing to interconnect 500MW in Ralls County.

So, what is Invenergy planning now?

The converter in Missouri is proposed to be interconnected with the MISO system along the Ameren 345 kV AC transmission line connecting the McCredie substation and the Montgomery substation. The proposed connection will be made via a single 345 kV circuit from the converter station to a nearby tap point along the Ameren 345 kV transmission line. The proposed converter will also interconnect with the AECI system at the McCredie 345 kV substation. The proposed connection will be made via a single 345 kV circuit from the converter station to AECI’s McCredie 345 kV substation.

It looks like MLA was on to something before the PSC shut it down during the evidentiary hearing. More importantly, MLA was RIGHT all along. Invenergy had begun making plans to change its interconnection size and location. I highly doubt the amazing Zaldo had no knowledge of this.

Also revealed in the new application is more information regarding Grain Belt's interconnections with SPP, MISO and PJM. Bottom line is that GBE has NO approved interconnections. The SPP one needs to be restudied because of the increased capacity, the MISO ones won't be finalized until sometime next year, and the PJM ones won't be finalized until at least 2025-2026.

Another tidbit Missourians may find interesting... GBE says it will use monopoles in Illinois unless the landowner agrees to lattice, or the lattice structures are needed to support a turn in the line or a long span, such as over a body of water. Missourians were also promised monopoles, but once approved and purchased by Invenergy, GBE announced that all structures will be lattice.

Invenergy also revealed that it has a slightly different plan for use of the line. The public service commissions of Kansas, Missouri and Indiana permitted the project on the condition that no costs would be involuntarily allocated to the state's consumers. Word has it that Invenergy has been pursuing MISO to include GBE in its regional plan and that GBE claimed it was doing that so that it did not have to pay for system upgrades it caused and that they would be involuntarily allocated to all ratepayers in the MISO region. The plan to pay for the project that was permitted relied on federal Negotiated Rate Authority, where GBE negotiated voluntary contracts with customers to pay to use the line. In that scenario, GBE would sell its service to its voluntary customers. However, in its ICC application, GBE now claims it may sell or lease the project to others, instead of, or in addition to, selling service itself.

Subject to additional oversight and approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), Grain Belt Express may sell and/or lease an undivided interest in the project to potential buyers and/or lessees, and Grain Belt Express and those buyers/lessees may seek to provide transmission service over the line to eligible customers as defined by FERC on a non-discriminatory basis under a FERC-approved open access transmission tariff (“OATT”). Any co-owner or lessee of Grain Belt
Express that seeks to provide transmission service will be required to operate pursuant to an OATT on file with FERC that will meet the requirements of the Federal Power Act and FERC’s regulations. Grain Belt Express may also sell a cotenancy interest or lease a long-term leasehold interest in the transmission line, in which case it is not providing transmission service to such buyer/lessee because the buyer/lessee has control over that undivided interest.

Invenergy may just build the project and "flip" it to others, who may or may not be a public utility providing public use of the line for public benefit. Those entities would have to come up with their own rate scheme at FERC and find their own customers, and Invenergy would be off the hook to negotiate rates under its Negotiated Rate Authority.

Grain Belt Express has been granted negotiated rate authority from FERC, which
may be updated. Under this authority, Grain Belt Express is required to broadly solicit interest in taking service on the Project from potential customers and accordingly, will offer the opportunity to contract for firm and non-firm transmission service to eligible customers, and to provide transmission service over its available transmission capacity to all eligible customers on a not unduly discriminatory basis. Grain Belt Express will provide eligible customers with the opportunity to contract for transmission service where available transmission capacity exists on the line and cannot and will not unduly discriminate against any transmission customer in favor of another transmission customer. All eligible customers will have equal opportunity to obtain firm and non-firm transmission service through these means. If Grain Belt Express sells or leases one or more undivided interests to potential coowners/lessees, Grain Belt Express may be required to seek FERC approval of such a sale or lease if Grain Belt Express is a public utility subject to FERC jurisdiction at that time pursuant to Section 203 of the Federal Power Act. Furthermore, if any co-owner/lessee seeks to provide transmission service to eligible customers, such co-owner/lessee will be required to comply with FERC’s statutory and regulatory open access requirements and similarly be obligated to provide available
transmission service on its portion of the line on a not unduly discriminatory basis.

Oh, it may be updated? Or maybe not, and maybe Invenergy plans to chuck its Negotiated Rate Authority altogether. I wonder... is Invenergy's NRA even valid any longer, since they never notified FERC that the project was sold and a new entity is in charge? Why hasn't Invenergy broadly solicited interest in the project since it bought it?

Grain Belt Express expects that its co-owners, lessees and transmission customers will consist principally of (i) entities with wind and solar energy ownership interests located in southwestern Kansas and (ii) buyers of electricity—particularly buyers seeking to purchase electricity generated from renewable resources—located in MISO and PJM who take delivery at the respective delivery points. These buyers of electricity are expected to be principally participants in the wholesale markets (utilities, alternative retail electric suppliers (“ARES”), other competitive retail suppliers and brokers and marketers) but could include retail purchasers. The ultimate beneficiaries of the Project will be retail consumers of electricity in Illinois and other parts of PJM, MISO and adjacent markets who purchase and consume electricity from renewable resources that the Project delivers to the MISO and PJM delivery points.

It expects? So GBE doesn't have these customers now? I see. Still no customers. No customers, no revenue, no project. After all these years, Grain Belt Express still does not have enough customers to make construction of the line financially feasible. So how does it plan to generate revenue?

At this time, all of the costs associated with the development, construction and operation of the Project are expected to be recovered through a combination of sales/leases, as well
as FERC jurisdictional services including transmission service agreements with customers and other rates and charges pursuant to FERC approved tariffs and rate schedules. Grain Belt Express does not intend to seek to recover all of the costs of the Project by regional cost allocation to retail
customer load using the transmission cost allocation processes of PJM or MISO.”

So it plans to recover some of the costs by regional cost allocation to involuntary customers? Is this because there are no voluntary customers? Without customers, there can be no financing of the project.

The projected cost to construct the total Project and place it into operation is approximately $4.95 billion (not including network upgrades). Grain Belt Express has a viable plan for raising the capital necessary to finance the cost of constructing the Project on a project financing basis. Specifically, after advancing development and permitting activities to a status at which developers of wind and solar generation facilities and other potential customers of the transmission line are willing to enter into commercial agreements for an undivided interest (purchase or lease) or long-term contracts for transmission capacity on the Project, Grain Belt Express will enter into such contracts with interested subscribers that satisfy necessary
creditworthiness requirements. Grain Belt Express will then raise debt capital using the
aforementioned contracts as security for the debt. Grain Belt Express may also raise additional equity capital.

So, like I said... no customers, no financing, no project. Is this really a "viable" plan? Invenergy admits it cannot finance the project until it has customers. It currently does not have enough to pull this off. Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.

It looks like GBE is just as far away from constructing this project as it has ever been. But yet it continues to tweak the project and condemn private property for a project that still has no customers or signed interconnection agreements. How many more "changes" and additions to this project will the public have to suffer before Invenergy comes up with a workable plan?

When will the PSC stop approving speculative transmission projects and visiting financial pain and uncertainty on the citizens of Missouri?

It's about time that Invenergy takes off its sheep costumer and reveals the wolf within, don't you think?

Still thousands of pages of haystack to paw through... what needle is going to fall out next?

2 Comments

Hiding Information in Plain Sight

7/25/2022

1 Comment

I've watched a lot of transmission projects come and go, but never have I seen a project that has been so hidden from public notice. Think about it: If the public never finds out about it, then they won't form opposition, hire lawyers, and intervene at the PSC. They also won't generate any negative media or political unpopularity. A transmission project hidden from public notice is traveling a stressful road richly studded with hidden landmines. In my opinion, it's a stupid idea headed for failure.

Grain Belt Express "Tiger Connector" transmission project was barely mentioned in Invenergy's press releases earlier this month. It was hidden in plain sight on the second page of the release, a place reporters rarely go, especially if the "important" talking points are bulleted for them on the first page. Local press didn't even mention it. No story, no public notice, no participation, no opposition.

When the project was announced, the few maps that circulated were vague dotted lines on a zoomed out map that only included major roadways. Transmission developers ALWAYS have detailed aerial photography maps available at Open House dog and pony shows, and increasingly these developers share their maps online well in advance of the "meetings". Seeing a detailed map of their property with a new transmission line drawn in is often the trigger point for landowners. But if Invenergy keeps these maps hidden until just two days before the Open House, then less landowners will have an opportunity to see them. Less notification, less participation at the Open House, less opposition.

And speaking of those Open House "meetings" they are always, and I do mean ALWAYS, the subject of a well-circulated press release for local media, along with paid advertising in print, radio, TV and internet. The idea of holding these meetings is to gather public input. But if the public doesn't know about these meetings because the transmission developer has not adequately advertised them with plenty of notice, then the public probably won't attend. No attendance, no maps, no participation, no opposition.

Invenergy mailed a letter to what it called "impacted landowners" notifying them of the Open House meetings just two weeks in advance. Actual delivery of the letters was well within that two-week window. And who is checking to make sure Invenergy's list of "impacted landowners" is accurate? Even the best transmission developers miss large numbers of "impacted landowners" at this stage, which is why they also buy advertisements and press reporters for news stories. They may actually want the public to find out and attend the "meetings." But if a landowner doesn't get a letter, or has a scheduling conflict, then they miss out. No notification, no attendance, no participation, no opposition.

Invenergy has performed a parody of "public notice" for its Tiger Connector transmission project by not using industry best practices for public notice and hiding "information" in plain sight in places landowners would never look.

The Public Service Commission should be very concerned about these shady practices. Your elected officials should also be concerned about it. Please let them know how disappointed you are in "public notice" shortcuts for this project.

You can submit an online comment to the PSC here. The case number is EA-2023-0017.

Invenergy has created a "virtual public meeting" on its website. According to earlier statements, it will only be available for a very short time. You can visit it here.

Be sure to check out the aerial photographic maps all the way at the bottom of the page. If you don't see them, or can't make them function (which has already been a complaint) you may need to change or update your internet browser. Don't give up! But, then again, if half the internet visitors can't access the maps because they are not designed to operate in a wide-variety of internet browsers, then less people see them (we're really developing a theme here!)

The rest of the page is what I call propaganda. Let's review.

"New power delivery" In fact, Invenergy claims 2 nuclear power plants worth. Reality: Grain Belt is a MERCHANT transmission project. That means that it will only deliver power to an entity that has signed a contract to pay to use the power line. Grain Belt cannot and will not just "deliver power" in general. "Existing customers" have contracted for just 10% of Grain Belt's capacity, although 20% of its new capacity has been offered for years with no takers. That's right, nobody has purchased 250 MW of service in Missouri that GBE has been offering for years. All the propaganda and marketing spiel in the world cannot make electric distributors in Missouri buy something they don't need. Missourians know the story about painting Tom Sawyer's fence very well. If nobody wants it now, it's probably not marketable.

"New local jobs, spending and tax revenue!" But selling 2 nuclear power plants worth of extra energy into Callaway County directly competes with the reliable sources of energy Callaway already relies on, such as Ameren's Callaway Energy Center. The nuclear power plant currently provides thousands of good paying jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue and local community charities. Which would provide more? I think it is the Callaway Energy Center, hands down. Absolutely no contest. A bird in hand is worth more than the promise of two in the bush.

Invenergy's "experience." They say, "Invenergy knowns (sic) how to build the right way and has relationships with over 12,000 landowners, more than 80 percent of whom are farmers and ranchers." But reality is that nearly 100% of these "farmers and ranchers" signed voluntary agreements with the company because they were promised royalties or other payments that "share in the wealth" of Invenergy's land use. Transmission lines make a one-time "market value" payment for the perpetual use of your land. No matter how much money Invenergy makes from the transmission line, your compensation will not increase. Invenergy has recently begun condemning the land of folks who won't sign voluntarily.

The cheaper Grain Belt Express is to build, the bigger profit for Invenergy. GBE is approved to sell its service at market rates. The price GBE charges is set by market forces. It is not reliant on its cost to build and operate. While regulators can limit a jurisdictional utility's profit, the sky's the limit with Grain Belt Express! Nobody can hold their profit in check. And the cheaper the project is to build and operate, the more profit is in it for Invenergy! Perhaps that why, after promising single structure "monopoles" to landowners for a decade, Invenergy recently changed the structures after it purchased the bankrupt project from Clean Line Energy Partners. Invenergy says all transmission structures will now be cheaper 4-legged lattice construction. Promising monopoles seems to be a Grain Belt Express bait and switch.

All this same information will be decorating Grain Belt's venue tomorrow and Wednesday on strategically placed poster board easels manned by perky but clueless company representatives. But we all know that the only thing people come to see are the maps.

Make your plan to attend:

Audrain County
Tuesday, July 26
Knights of Columbus
9584 State Hwy 15, Mexico, MO
65265
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00p.m. to 7:00p.m.

Callaway County
Wednesday, July 27
John C Harris Community Center
350 Sycamore St, Fulton, MO
65251
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Don't let Invenergy get away with preventing you from getting information about a project that could have devastating effects on your home, your business and your community!

1 Comment

Magic Math Is For Fools

7/21/2022

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In case you missed it last week, Invenergy posted an "Analysis Summary: Impact of Grain Belt Express on Kansas and Missouri Ratepayers." It goes something like this:

Low-cost modeling process market consultants assuming estimated wind generation projected average reduce expected potential forward-looking wholesale market impacts revenue requirement controllability assessment aggregates combined impacts lower inclusion utility investment the collective partial revenue requirement average approximately production capacity factor flat production profile evening peak electric demand SPP MISO regions wholesale electric costs region spanning prices price spread opportunity arbitrage nodes average annual basis off-peak price differences translate Kansas and Missouri. Billions.

That was my take away. It really is that obtuse and meaningless. I don't think it's meant to be understood. I think maybe it's meant to be held by well-fed, middle-aged "economic development" big fish in small ponds while they slap each other on the back and bloviate knowingly about "savings" from Grain Belt Express. You know these guys as well as I do... they've got a finger in everyone's pie and they trade in "Do You Know Who I AM?" Jack of all trades, master of none, small government sycophant who likes to pretend he knows everything about energy and his opinion is gold.

Except... if you quizzed these guys they'd quickly find something more important to do than talk to you, or simply get angry at you for implying they are a know-nothing waste of flesh. They're probably on their way to find out what Invenergy can do for them. Quid pro quo, you know.

First of all... GBE is just a transmission line. It doesn't sell power. Power purchased separately. How in the world did this variable get handled in the opaque report? Notice how the variables are not identified, much less the equation shared? My 8th grade Algebra teacher would give Invenergy an "F" and send it to the principal's office for not showing its work.

Fugheddaboutit. Here's all you need to know about electricity prices in Kansas and Missouri.

See that? The price of electricity in Kansas is 10.38 cents per kWh. The price of electricity in Missouri is 9.64 cents per kWh. So if we export electricity from Kansas and make it available for use in Missouri, it will RAISE electric prices in Missouri, not lower them. In addition, Missouri ratepayers would need to add the $7B, that's BILLION, dollar price tag of Grain Belt Express to their equation, since Invenergy claims it necessary in its report.

There, wasn't that simpler and a whole lot more logical?

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Dropping Off Some Reality

7/17/2022

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Some of Invenergy's fake news this past week mentioned that Grain Belt Express will "drop off" power in Missouri. This is an inapt phrase used by people who don't understand transmission. It annoys the spit out of me.

When you think "drop off" it sort of sounds like Missouri is getting a gift of electricity. But it's actually more like getting a delivery of something you ordered and paid for, like a box of Amazon junk. Did anyone in Missouri order electricity from Invenergy? If the answer is "no", then you're not getting anything. Only someone who has ordered and paid for the merchandise (electricity) is going to have it "dropped off" in Missouri. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Our electric transmission system is sort of like a network of water pipes. That network is fully pressurized with water, and only when a paying customer turns on the taps do they receive anything. Electricity is like water in a pipe network. The lines are fully pressurized with electricity. Only when you've signed a contract to pay for the electricity and for the delivery do you get to turn on a light switch and receive electricity from Grain Belt Express.

The problem is that GBE has only one known customer, a common buyer for municipal electric distributors known as MJMEUC. MJMEUC signed a contract to purchase "up to" 250 MW of transmission service on GBE. Separately, it signed a contract with a wind generator in Kansas to buy electricity to be delivered on GBE. Only those customers who take service from MJMEUC will receive anything from GBE. The rest of Missouri gets nothing.

The only thing being "dropped off" in Missouri is propaganda.

And think about this... MJMEUC's contract buys electricity shipped to Missouri on GBE, but it also buys service for MJMEUC to ship electricity from Missouri to PJM in equal amount. Now go back to that analogy about the water pipe network... if MJMEUC buys electricity and sells electricity in equal amount, is there really any electricity being "dropped off" in Missouri at all? Electrons are all the same, no matter where or how they are generated. The electrons from Kansas are exactly the same as the ones generated in Missouri. MJMEUC actually gets nothing but the bill for pretending it's buying and selling electricity. If the price MJMEUC buys electricity for in Kansas is less than the price it sells that electricity for in PJM, then MJMEUC gets paid the difference, minus line loss that happens from being transmitted and converted from AC/DC/AC. Is it worth it? Would PJM want to buy power from Missouri when it can generate the same power at home?

But what if the second "phase" of GBE from Missouri to PJM is never built and MJMEUC can't sell electricity, what does MJMEUC get then? It gets more electricity than it needs to serve load and the generators in Missouri could be shut down.

It sort of sounds like the biggest scam ever, doesn't it?

I sort of wish these folks would educate themselves about the physics of electricity and the realities of the electric power market. Then they'd simply drop Grain Belt Express off the nearest cliff.

Look out below!!!

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Missouri PSC Hits The Brakes On Invenergy's Rush To Site and Permit 40 Miles of New Transmission

7/14/2022

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Invenergy seems to have overestimated its power over Missouri in the wake of the complete capitulation of the legislature earlier this year. It seems like Invenergy thought it could do anything it liked to Missouri and nobody would say "boo."

What other explanation could there be for GBE's filing of a "Notice of Amendment" to amend its current GBE permit to:

Increase the capacity of the transmission line from 4,000 MW to 5,000 MW.
Increase the available capacity for delivery to Missouri from 500 MW to 2500 MW.
Relocation of the line’s mid-point converter station from Ralls County to Monroe County.
The addition of an approximately 40-mile transmission delivery line through parts of Monroe, Audrain and Callaway Counties.

Just minor technical changes? No these are material, major changes that landowner groups tried to warn the PSC were coming in a complaint case filed in 2020, which the Commission dismissed. In the meantime, GBE has been filing condemnation lawsuits to take property from private landowners to use for its for-profit project. All the while, it knew it was going to change the project and be subject to new approvals. What happens if the PSC does not approve all these changes? Will GBE have to give back the land it has condemned for its speculative project that has now been re-routed?

In addition, GBE contemplates taking 40 miles of new rights of way from previously unaffected landowners. And it plans to do that in a big ol' hurry, using its previously granted eminent domain authority to take land that was never contemplated to be taken when the PSC awarded it. The PSC must decide whether Invenergy's sudden "need" for this new transmission is in the public interest.

Since GBE's capacity increase announcement is nothing more than a marketing exercise to try to attract customers who have heretofore been uninterested in buying capacity, I can't find any public interest here. It's all private interest for Invenergy to use the people of Missouri as mere pawns in its attempt to make money building transmission that nobody wants.

Missouri law requires that the filing of utility applications be subject to a 60-day notice requirement. This means that the utility must file a notice that it intends to file at least 60 days prior to filing. Invenergy thinks it should receive a waiver of this requirement because,

Good cause exists for the waiver, if necessary, as notice was provided as soon as practical after finalization and the public announcement of the proposed modifications.

So Invenergy's media scheme is reason to ignore the law? And, after harassing Missouri for more than 10 years and not exercising its Missouri permit for a number of years, suddenly there's an emergency to get started as soon as possible without legally required public notice? This is a garbage excuse. The PSC did not grant any waiver, but told GBE to ask again in the correct docket.

The PSC slapped down Invenergy's silly Amendment yesterday and told them they needed to file a complete application to amend the permit in a new docket. This isn't going to be quick or easy for Invenergy, as it shouldn't. These are real people, real lives, real businesses that Invenergy is asking to toss under the bus because its plans for its SPECULATIVE transmission project have changed. That's nobody's fault but Invenergy's... and the MO PSC that thought it was a good idea to grant a permit and eminent domain authority to a merchant transmission project without a confirmed interconnection point, confirmed customers, confirmed financing, and a confirmed route. This new "Tiger Connection" did not need to happen if the PSC had required Grain Belt Express to come with a certain plan, not a speculative wish list.

Hopefully the PSC won't be fooled again. Who's to say that this "amendment" will be the last one? Until Invenergy has signed interconnection agreements and signed customers, it's all subject to "amendment." Landowners should not have to bear the brunt of corporate uncertainty. That's not in the public interest.

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Invenergy Manufactures News

7/13/2022

2 Comments

The decline of journalism over the past 20 years or so would shock your grandfather, who lived in news' heyday. Investigative journalism is dead. Main stream media no longer reports the facts... it reports an agenda. Reporters are now less valued and more overworked than ever. Today's reporters have grown lazy about verifying facts and have become a staid, incurious bunch. They no longer want to tell both sides of the story. They simply repackage corporate and government press releases without verifying anything or providing any balance to the story. They are nothing more than media puppets. The bad news is that corporations can now pretty much write their own news, true or false. The other bad news is that you need to look elsewhere for the truth. There is no good news. Journalists say that the internet ruined the news industry, but perhaps the news industry ruined itself by losing its impartiality and accuracy to corporate overlords.

And Invenergy took full advantage of it on Monday, pumping out stories like this AP blurb that was sent around the country to use as filler. What does it say?

Grain Belt Express has been expanded so that it would "match" the power of 4 nuclear power plants.
Investment has increased to $7B.
Some municipalities intended to use the line for a "long" time.
There will be some magical amount of "savings."
Some advocacy groups love it.
"Some" farmers don't want the project.

Where's the mention of "Tiger Connector" which is a 40-mile transmission extension through virgin ground? There's "some" more farmers who are going to be furiously opposed to that. How did this happen? Invenergy's press release, news conference, and the fact that the average reporter had about 10 minutes to spend on this story combined to create a "story" full of non-news that buried the real news of an expansion of GBE's route and intent to use eminent domain in Missouri.

As you'll notice in the press release, the Tiger Connector is buried on page 2, past the bulleted list of important points. No reporter read that far. They stopped at the bulleted list because it was there that Invenergy had so conveniently summarized the important points. But those weren't the important points. They were just complete nonsense and fluff designed to bury the Tiger Connector story. And it worked. Thanks a lot, lazy reporters.

Also take a look at GBE's website. Where's the Tiger Connector? Oh, here it is, one page deep, where a curious reporter would never find it. And it's not part of the "Route" page where someone would look for the route of the project. It doesn't exist on the route. It has its own separate tab, which is unexplained, and the page contains nothing of any value to anyone. I've been doing transmission for nearly 15 years now and I've never seen a new transmission project rolled out with so little actual information. There aren't even any maps for residents of newly affected counties to see. It doesn't even mention where this project might want to go. It's almost like Invenergy is HIDING this new proposal.

Is Invenergy embarrassed that it has spent so much time and money on a route that isn't even viable for the project because it could not connect to the grid at any points even close to the route it has been buying and condemning for years? Is Invenergy embarrassed because it still doesn't have any customers aside from the loss-leader municipality contract for only "up to" 250 MW?

Nah, I think they did this on purpose as a ploy to keep this information from any landowners who could object to the plan and challenge it at the PSC. If there is no information about it in the news, nobody would know. If the information is hard to find on GBE's website, nobody will find it. If they do find it, there is no detail that might set an affected landowner off. If GBE doesn't mail notification letters to affected landowners until AFTER the news conference, and dangerously close to the "Open House" dog and pony show "meetings," nobody would know. We have yet to see one of these notifications show up, but they may be designed to look like a junk mail postcard you'd toss right into the trash without reading. If that happens, nobody would know. GBE didn't "announce" the details of its Open House meetings until AFTER the news conference, therefore the media would not publish that information and nobody would know about it.

Here's the information. Spread it around because GBE is hiding it and the media isn't interested in public notice.

Audrain County
Tuesday, July 26
Knights of Columbus
9584 State Hwy 15, Mexico, MO
65265
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00p.m. to 7:00p.m.

Callaway County
Wednesday, July 27
John C Harris Community Center
350 Sycamore St, Fulton, MO
65251
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

The public meetings will be open house format and attendees can come and go as they please during meeting hours. No formal presentation will be given. For those unable to attend in person, there is a self-paced Virtual Open House that is accessible on the website anytime between July 25 and August 5, 2022.

Got it? The information for landowners is only available for 12 days. If you miss that time frame, or the meetings (like say, you did something completely outrageous like GO ON VACATION in the middle of summer), then you're out of luck. You don't get any information. That's outrageous!

Ya know... real public notice that isn't actually trying to HIDE things is always sent to the media, who could help notify the public. What are you trying to pull Invenergy?

Invenergy says Tiger Connector is just a small change and the story is elsewhere. No sane person would believe that! Maybe opposition doesn't need GBE to help tell their story. Maybe Invenergy is about to get slammed. There's no way they're getting this through the PSC as a minor change that nobody minds. In fact, the Missouri PSC said it was not a "change" and that Grain Belt Express has to file a whole new application for these changes. Oops! Nice try, Invenergy, but did you actually think that was going to work?

Next, let's look at those manufactured talking points Invenergy fed to the press and analyze how useful they actually are, and whether they have a chance of biting back.

GBE will now be the equivalent of 4 new nuclear power plants. Sorry, but GBE does not generate energy. Maybe they meant that it could deliver the equivalent of 4 new nuclear power plants, if it actually had interconnection requests to inject that much power (but that's a different blog). But where would that power be generated? Not in Missouri. It would be generated elsewhere and imported. And if Missouri imported the power of 4 nukes located in Kansas, then an equivalent amount of Missouri generation would close, maybe even actual nuclear plants, like the Callaway Generating Station owned by Ameren that employs a lot of people and pays a lot of taxes in Callaway County. Ya know, maybe this wasn't really a smart talking point.

Investment increases to $7B. How in the world did GBE go from its historic $2B price tag under Clean Line Energy Partners to today's $7B price tag? Even with today's sky-high inflation, that's impossible. Even the cost of the Tiger Connector couldn't get this transmission project to $7B. Maybe there's more to this story than a transmission line.

What's that you say? $7B of new wind projects? So the investment isn't just a transmission line? What'cha building, Invenergy, and where's the check on your market power when you're "negotiating" with other wind developers to take service from the line? No chance that Invenergy could negotiate a better price with itself than it would negotiate with a competitor. No chance at all...

Invenergy trots out the same old, tired "customers" who got the deal of a lifetime to take service at below cost rates. I notice these customers didn't figure prominently in Invenergy's fluffy press release. Invenergy found some new friends to "cheer" for it. 2-4-6-8 What are we here to validate? Rah! Rah! Rah!

Magical savings. Because Invenergy hired some company to toss a word salad that concludes there will be all these magical savings that real people just can't figure out. It's all made up crap and they won't show you their math. You're supposed to trust the results. But without seeing the figures used to calculate these savings, it cannot be verified. They could have put anything in their equation (and maybe they did!). It's not just you... this savings report doesn't make sense to anyone I know.

Advocacy groups. I really don't think this needs an explanation. Gimme an S. Gimme an H. Gimme an I. Gimme an L. Gimme another L. What does that spell? Rah! Rah! Rah!

"Some farmers." How about "the vast majority of agricultural land owners along with their non-agricultural neighbors"? "Some" would more appropriately apply to the advocates, because they're so few in number. But, despite the backhanded attempt to minimize opposition, some farmers still managed to pollute Invenergy's dream story. That's the best a lazy press could do.

There were a few other giggles in the few stories that were original journalism. I particularly liked this blurb:

Utility regulators in Missouri and Kansas have already approved construction of the line. An Invenergy spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an email asking if the expansion plans required additional approvals.

Not only does it require additional approvals. It requires a WHOLE NEW APPLICATION.

And then there's this:

“We heard that story over and over: ‘We want to see more of it brought to Missouri,’” said Shashank Sane, who leads Invenergy’s transmission business, after a Monday news conference in St. Louis. “It was really about bringing benefits to the state.”

Invenergy did not disclose which Missouri entities it expects will buy the additional power, but it is “confident that the customer base is there,” said Sane.

Right, mystery customers. The same ones that have failed to buy the 250 MW leftover from the last offering.

Invenergy carefully created a whole stack of hay to hide its "we need a new connection point" needle. But all that hay may end up being too hard to chew.

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Where's the Customers, Invenergy?

7/12/2022

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When I said I could make a month of blog posts out of Invenergy's "Tiger Connector" scheme yesterday, maybe I was only half joking. Today, we're going to concentrate on the reality of merchant transmission. Grain Belt Express is a merchant transmission project.

A merchant transmission project is strictly a financial proposition. A company proposes that if it builds a transmission line between two points that load serving entities will find it so useful and economic that they will voluntarily negotiate a contract to use it. Just because Invenergy offers new transmission does not mean anyone will use it.

We need to separate Invenergy's false bravado about "energy" from the reality of merchant transmission in order to think logically about Invenergy's scheme. A transmission line is only a transmission line. It does not produce energy. It's strictly a roadway to get energy from one place to the other. Invenergy is only selling capacity on its transmission line (road), it is not selling energy. It is aptly compared to a toll road -- customer pays to use the roadway to transport something it finds useful and economic. If Invenergy had customers for Grain Belt Express, the only thing the customers would be purchasing is use of the transmission line. Any energy transmitted over the line would have to be purchased from an electricity generator under a separate contract at a separate price. In order to actually take electricity over the line, a customer would have to buy electricity from a point near one of the converter stations and then ship it to their point of use. GBE is a direct current (DC) transmission line. In order for electricity to use the line, it would first have to be converted from alternating current (AC) before being loaded on the line for use at its destination. When the DC electricity gets to its destination, it will once again have to be converted back to AC before being offloaded from the line. The conversion process wastes a considerable amount of energy. If you purchased AC energy from, say, Kansas, you'd lose a considerable portion of it in the two conversion processes before it arrived at your destination in, say, Missouri. If you were the customer, you'd eat the cost of that lost electricity you paid for.

As mentioned, a merchant transmission project is strictly voluntary. A merchant project is not vetted or planned for reliability, economic, or public policy purposes by regional transmission planners. Electric customers don't "need" it for reliability, economic or public policy purposes. It's simply something extra that customers would volunteer to purchase if they found it financially lucrative. And this has been the problem with merchant transmission in the Midwest. It's not attracting customers. Customers in the east are looking at offshore wind and other local renewables, like solar, to meet their renewable energy needs. Eastern utilities have NEVER looked at importing electricity from half a continent away using toll road transmission projects. The cost of the transmission to get it there must be added to the cost of the supposedly "cheap" energy from the Midwest, and the result is often equal to or more expensive than buying local renewables. Another factor for Eastern utilities (and states) is that building renewables locally provides an economic bump to the locality. Eastern states do not want to export all their energy dollars to a generator and transmission company thousands of miles away when they could create jobs and economic development at home. This is why merchant transmission for export has never worked.

First Clean Line Energy Partners, and now Invenergy, have previously claimed in Missouri PSC testimony that Eastern customers in PJM Interconnection will make up the vast majority of the customer base for Grain Belt Express because they can sell the capacity for more money there. Clean Line even offered a below-cost contract to a handful of Missouri municipalities in order to get the project approved as "useful" to Missouri. Clean Line purported that it would make the loss up in its sales to Eastern customers. Except we've never seen any evidence that those customers exist, and with Invenergy's big announcement yesterday that it will only construct the first "phase" of its project from Kansas to Missouri for the time being, I believe that demonstrates that those Eastern customers don't exist. If they did, GBE would be decreasing its offering in Missouri and increasing its offering to PJM.

So, what's left? Invenergy thinks it can maybe find enough suckers, err customers, in Missouri to buy service for importing 2500 MW of electricity for use in Missouri. Except, do those customers even exist? GBE has been offering "up to 500 MW" of service to Missouri customers since the Clean Line days. It has only secured a contract for "up to 250MW" with the municipalities. That extra 250MW has been for sale for years and it appears that nobody has purchased it. But yet Invenergy now thinks its service is so popular it will suddenly be able to sell ten times that amount. Does this even make sense? Where's the customers, Invenergy?

In media quotes yesterday, Invenergy tried to play coy about customers.

Invenergy did not disclose which Missouri entities it expects will buy the additional power, but it is “confident that the customer base is there,” said Sane.

The line is a so-called merchant line, meaning its costs wouldn’t be spread broadly across the region like most intrastate transmission lines. Instead, only utilities and other consumers that buy capacity on the line would pay.

Among those customers are more than three dozen small cities and towns across Missouri, which estimate they will save more than $12 million annually compared with coal plants that supply power under existing contracts.

So the only customers it has are the loss-leader priced ones it has had all along. If there were new customers, Invenergy would have been pushing them to the front of the quote line. Instead, the only advocates singing GBE's praises in yesterday's news coverage were business groups who don't buy electricity. Those aren't customers. Customers are load serving entities who buy electricity wholesale and sell to others at retail.

There is no indication that any new customers are eager to purchase capacity on GBE. Maybe Invenergy is trying to paint Tom Sawyer's fence to attract customers, however Missourians are wise to that game. Duh.

In another self-flagellating talking point yesterday, Invenergy claimed GBE would sell the equivalent of the output of 4 nuclear power plants to Missouri electric utilities. That electricity will be produced in Kansas, not Missouri. If Missouri is going to increase its electricity imports by an amount equal to 4 nuclear power plants, then it must decrease the amount of electricity currently produced in Missouri by the same amount. This is the death knell for 4 (or more) Missouri electric generation plants that currently employ thousands. Importing electricity over GBE isn't going to provide an amount of good-paying jobs equal to those lost. In addition, localities will lose the tax revenues they currently enjoy from those plants that will be shut down without an equal replacement from GBE. GBE is an economic loss to Missouri, no matter how much fluff and nonsense Invenergy tries to disseminate. This is the same reasoning the Eastern utilities use when rejecting GBE. It just makes sense.

And Invenergy has another problem with its new scheme. Investor owned utilities, like Ameren, are for-profit enterprises. Ameren is permitted by regulators to make a profit on the transmission it builds and the power it generates. If Ameren builds local renewables in Missouri, it earns a profit on them. If Ameren builds transmission in Missouri to transmit the renewable energy it generates, Ameren makes a profit. If, instead, Ameren buys capacity from GBE it is only reimbursed at cost of its purchase. There is no profit for Ameren. Likewise on the renewable generators -- if Ameren buys energy from Kansas there is no profit, they are only reimbursed dollar for dollar. So, why would Ameren sign a contract to use GBE to import energy when it could make more money owning local renewables and transmission. I might also add that local renewables don't need huge new transmission projects like GBE so they are ultimately cheaper than imports. In conclusion, why would Ameren buy the milk when it could own the cow? This is just another reason why I believe GBE's scheme won't work.

So much more malarkey to unravel. Next, let's look at Invenergy's media plan for this scheme. I challenge you readers to find any news story that mentions the new "Tiger Connector."

Until tomorrow...

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Invenergy Releases Paper Tiger on Audrain and Callaway Counties Missouri

7/11/2022

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Winston Churchill once said, "Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot." It's no surprise, then, that Invenergy named its Grain Belt Express add-on "Tiger Connector."

I've long written about the folly of buying easements and condemning private property for a speculative merchant transmission project, like GBE. Before a transmission project has customers and interconnections, its route is subject to change. The Missouri PSC made a terrible mistake when they approved a route for a speculative merchant transmission project without customers and awarded a private profit corporation eminent domain authority.

Public utilities use eminent domain sparingly, and only as a true last resort, when their route is set in stone and they are ready to begin construction. Public utilities normally condemn less than 5% of the easements needed for a project. But Grain Belt Express is not really a public utility. It's private money speculation. If they can build a transmission line between Point A and Point B using their own money, they bet that voluntary customers are going to find it so useful that they will contract to take service at negotiated rates. And Grain Belt Express began condemning land way before it had customers or an interconnection point in Missouri. GBE is now sort of obligated to the route it has spent all this money trying to purchase or condemn.

But, hey, guess what? Speculative projects often change plans. And now GBE actually wants to make its connection at a different point than originally planned. GBE now proposes connecting its project to the grid at a substation in McCredie, about 15 miles east of Columbia in Callaway County.

Here's a map of the new routes GBE wants to add to its land acquisition in Missouri:

Because GBE has begun assembling land on its original route, it doesn't want to actually re-route the project. No, it wants to ADD more transmission towers and wire to land that currently doesn't have that. Invenergy wants to add a "connector" spur to its project to connect from the original route in Monroe County to its new connection with the existing grid at McCredie. Instead of simply rerouting its project to McCredie and sparing Monroe County, Invenergy has come up with a cockamamie plan to build a DC-AC converter station in Monroe County, and then build a brand new 40-mile AC transmission line through Audrain and Callaway Counties to connect Grain Belt Express at McCredie. The project will also continue through Monroe County on its way toward Illinois, and eventually a connection with the Mid-Atlantic electric grid.

This is about the dumbest plan ever. GBE says it will pursue all required regulatory approvals for these "changes." These aren't "changes," this is a whole new project with a whole new route affecting a whole new area. GBE is trying to whip everyone along to comply with its "changes" before they think too hard about it. Public meetings for affected landowners and communities are in 2 weeks. Supposedly all landowners have been notified, but nobody seems to have actually been notified yet. GBE claims it will file this "change" at the PSC on August 1 and whip the Commissioners to approve it without thinking much.

What the..... This is insane! I could make a month of blogs out of what's wrong with this plan and all the requirements Invenergy seems to have skipped along the way. But, for now... HEADS UP, Missouri!

Invenergy has been so successful at buying and castrating state officials in Missouri that it's gone completely rogue. Are the steers finally going to step up and protect their people from the rich, urban liberals who are going to make a bundle plundering Missouri?

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FERC OPP Director Ought To Be Fired For Comments At Industry Shindig

7/6/2022

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I have to admit I've never been a fan of FERC's new Office of Public Participation. Created by Congress in the 1970's, the office was only recently funded and came into being. The idea of the office is that "the public" can use it as a liaison to learn how to "participate" in FERC proceedings. This part sort of makes my eyes roll back in my head a bit. I've been "participating" at FERC since before "public participation" was cool. It really wasn't that hard to figure out. I'm not sure an OPP would have actually been helpful, probably a bunch of misdirection and discouragement from participating. Anyhow, it's not like "the public" actually pushed to finally create this office because they needed an education about how to participate. It was the statute's language about intervenor funding that appealed to the advocacy groups who pushed the OPP into being. They saw a quick pay day for their bleary legal work at FERC advocating for special interests that have other sources of funding. It was all "belly up to the bar" old boys, we're going to get paid to file clueless, useless documents at FERC. It has never been about funding "public" landowners and communities adversely affected by FERC's actions. Instead, self-appointed "public advocates" and special interest and political groups have shoved their way to the front of the chow line to make sure there's nothing left for regular folks whose property or business is impacted by FERC actions. This is how intervenor funding programs have worked in individual states, where special interest groups intervening to support the utilities plan to build things have sucked up all the funding, leaving affected landowners with nothing.

But, anyhow, this crap office is already giving itself a crap reputation with "the public." The FERC Office of Public Participation Director, Elin Katz, was recently quoted during a webinar for WIRES (the voice of the electric transmission industry!) You might want to ponder why Elin was hob nobbing at an industry shindig and not in a tool shed gathering in your community.

Elin appears to have used the term "NIMBY" to refer to grassroots opposition to new transmission lines.

FERC OFFICIAL AIMS TO TACKLE NIMBYISM: Elin Katz, FERC’s director of the relatively new Office of Public Participation, is thinking about how to avoid more disorderly forms of public engagement that have plagued FERC and the power sector in recent years — such as demonstrations and lawsuits against new energy infrastructure, including pipelines. She also hopes to better educate the public about the benefits of electric transmission in particular to mitigate the “NIMBYism” often associated with the large-scale power lines needed to decarbonize the power grid.

“One of my main goals is to provide a constructive outlet for public concerns,” she said during a webinar hosted by utility transmission group WIRES. “We've seen a lot of what I consider more disruptive activities around when the public becomes concerned about energy or infrastructure.”

This is so horrifying, it's hard to know where to begin.

NIMBY? The FERC employee in charge of encouraging the public to participate in FERC proceedings has called the public "NIMBYs"? Does she know that's a pejorative insult to grassroots groups? I'm sure she'd never use a racial slur, but yet she thinks belittling and marginalizing public participation is okay? She ought to be fired.

Better education? Again, Elin insults "the public" by calling them uneducated. As if grassroots groups need to be "educated" about impacts to their communities by some woman who hates them, peering out from her ivory tower in Washington, DC. There are no benefits to communities impacted by transmission lines that can outweigh the detrimental impacts. Elin telling "the public" that there are "benefits" is not going to change anyone's mind. What a completely ignorant approach to interacting with "the public." Did she get that idea from the industries she actually works for? She ought to be fired.

And what about her apparent disconnect between gas pipelines and electric transmission? Somehow the landowners affected by pipelines matter, but the landowners affected by electric transmission don't? That's not about the landowners, it's about politically-motivated ideology related to energy source. It's not about the "public" at all. She ought to be fired.

Disruptive activities? That's called "mostly peaceful protest". It's a new thing invented during the pandemic. Transmission opposition is unlikely to engage in those kinds of things. Our protests are more along the lines of free speech, due process, and public participation. If she wants to squelch free speech and due process of "the public" she's not a good fit. She ought to be fired.

Elin is the WRONG person to be assisting "the public" with participating in electric transmission proceedings at FERC. It's obvious she believes that "large-scale power lines are needed to decarbonize the grid." She's already weighed in on the side of the utilities and environmental groups and against "the public" who would be affected by FERC's actions. She ought to be fired.

If I wasn't disgusted enough by FERC's OPP before reading this news blurb, I'd be pretty disappointed. What a disgusting creature. She ought to be fired.

4 Comments

How To Avoid Opposition To New Transmission Lines

7/3/2022

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I read a couple articles this week that demonstrate exactly how crucial host landowners and communities are to building the "clean energy" utopia. They can't do it without us, folks!

They say that recognizing your flaws is the first step in solving your problem, but I'm not so sure these folks get it yet. The solution is simple... don't cause impacts to land use and community values. If you don't cause impacts, nobody cares all that much, certainly not enough to invest years of valuable time, and years of personal savings, fighting transmission proposals. It's just that simple!!!

This vapid article on CNBC is not accurate. Here's just one snippet of its inaccuracy:

On June 16, FERC issued issued a first step — technically called a “notice of proposed rulemaking” — that it aims to amend laws making it easier to connect sources of electricity to the grid.

FERC doesn't make laws, nor amend them. It's an executive/administrative body. It carries out the laws enacted by Congress. Only a legislative body makes laws. Just how dumb is this reporter anyhow? FERC writes regulations, aka "rules, for how the laws Congress makes shall be carried out. The laws governing connection to the electric grid haven't changed. It's just that FERC wants to reimagine them to make them do something not written in statute. And maybe that's all you need to now about FERC's rulemaking... and this reporter's knowledge of the facts.

Another fallacy...

The most productive geographical regions for wind and solar are generally far away from urban centers where the energy is needed.

The article includes a map of wind energy potential in the U.S. The most productive places for wind are offshore, which is conveniently located near the most populated cities in the U.S. It doesn't even make sense. The reality is that the politically powerful people who live in those cities don't want wind energy infrastructure junking up their own back yard... the ultimate NIMBYs! They want to put it in rural America, far from their own home, so they can reap all the benefits without any of the impacts. The cities want to close all the "dirty" electric generators in their own back yard so that they can have a cleaner environment. They are poised to spend trillions doing so. If that's how they want to spend their money, have at it. But when someone from rural America objects to having new industrial energy facilities to serve the cities sited in their own community, they get villainized as hating "clean energy." They get accused of working for the Koch brothers, every armchair environmentalist's ultimate fossil fuel satan. And when rural communities ask to have new transmission connecting new generators to cities buried on existing rights of way, they get told that's "too expensive" or simply impossible.

There’s also the possibility of putting transmission lines underground, which, “is much more economic today than it used to be,” Gramlich said. But it’s still expensive, as much as ten-fold the cost, depending on the terrain you are trying to go through, according to Robb of NERC. In some cases, for example, putting a transmission line means blasting through granite. So, while “that’s a viable thing to do, it’s a very expensive thing to do,” according to Robb.

It's really not that expensive, especially when it is sited in existing rail or highway rights of way. Maybe double the cost, not ten times the cost. Buried HVDC only needs a narrow, shallow trench 5 feet deep. These guys need to break out of Thomas Edison's basement and read up on new technology... or better yet ask an engineer and quit trying to pretend they are experts.

So, the cost of cleaning up cities is not "too expensive" but the cost of avoiding impacts in rural communities is "too expensive." This is nothing more than a value judgement -- the cities are "worth it" but the rural areas are not.

What do any of these people (including the reporter) know about what motivates transmission opposition? Only Sandy Howard knows, and the reporter conveniently wrote little about why Howard has devoted many years of her life to stopping NECEC. Instead, the reporter focuses on the competing energy companies who poured money into stopping NECEC for their own reasons. The reporter tries to make you believe that transmission opponents are just figureheads doing the bidding of fossil fuel companies who want to stop new transmission. That's not true at all. In fact, in my 15 years doing this, I have not seen any energy interests get involved in a transmission battle, except that one. One instance does not make a trend. These people need to quit making excuses and stop underestimating grassroots opposition.

If they want to end opposition, they need to find out what's causing it, and there's no better way than to engage with transmission opponents. However, these self-congratulating chuckle heads prefer to insulate themselves and simply make crap up. Such as this lovely theater at a recent industry nerdfest:

Overcoming NIMBYism on TransmissionLast August, the Niskanen Center and the Clean Air Task Force released a report that called for adoption of the “5 P framework” to overcome opposition to clean energy infrastructure. The construct builds on the transmission concept of “planning, permitting and paying.”

“We propose adding ‘participation’ as a fourth ‘P’ and then ‘process’ as [the fifth]. Because one of the challenges of transmission [is that] every single project is unique, because every state in every region is different,” said Liza Reed, Niskanen’s electricity transmission research manager for climate policy. “The reason that we raise participation up to an equal level with the other Ps … is that groups are really siloed in each of those policies right now. There is stakeholder engagement in planning. There is stakeholder engagement in permitting. There is stakeholder engagement in paying. But different stakeholders get brought in at different points, and that’s when groups start getting frustrated. And I think when folks hear the word ‘participation,’ they think angry town halls and lawsuits. But the whole point of bringing participation into a consistent process is to avoid that.”
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Joseph Rand offered an observation from his analyses on the siting and community impacts of large-scale wind and solar.
“What the wind energy developers have learned over time is that we need to move away from a process that people call ‘decide, announce, defend,’ [to one] called ‘consult, consider, modify, proceed,’ so that you’re meaningfully engaging local stakeholders in that process and being open to actually modifying your proposal,” said Rand, senior scientific engineering associate for the lab’s Electricity Markets and Policy Group.

...said the people who have never opposed transmission or been involved with any group that has. In fact, these people LOVE transmission. If they have a "plan" to end transmission opposition, it's probably not a very good one. They don't understand the problem they're trying to solve. These are the people who are trying to use transmission opponents as figureheads on their battering ram. Niskanen needs to quit trying to pretend it represents transmission opposition groups. It has nothing to do with any group. Niskanen can take its 5 P's and turn them into one U. Underground. Simplicity is key, not years of ineffective policy-jockeying and "participation" that does not actually include any of the affected landowners and communities. Shut up already, Niskanen. You don't speak for us. We're perfectly capable of speaking for ourselves. You're just incapable of listening.

And if you thought their ideas were bad, how about these from the CNBC article?

To spur grid expansion, the federal government should consider a tax credit for large scale transmission investment in current budget reconciliation policy discussions and the FERC proposed rule for expansion, he said.

But yet in the same article, another guy says, "It’s not because there aren’t investors ready to fund it." So it's not a problem of lack of investment -- but let's give billions of our tax dollars to transmission investors? Why? Because they want to fill their pockets? That's the only answer to this contradiction. Investment tax credits for transmission are nothing but a give away. They won't actually help transmission get built. They will just help a handful of people to get rich trying.

And then there's this:

Congress needs to act to give a federal agency, either the Department of Energy or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), authority to site transmission lines. “They could pass a statute that’s about one page long,” Pierce told CNBC in a phone conversation at the end of May. “This is not hard to accomplish if you’ve got the political will.”
Pierce knows that there will be opposition to such a federal authority, to which he says: Too bad.
“You cannot allow the citizens of a single state to block actions that are imperative for the welfare of the citizens that the whole country much less can you can you afford to allow the citizens of one little town or one landowner to,” Pierce said. “It’s just frustrating."

Perhaps Pierce should ponder how frustrating it is for a farmer to have a portion of his business confiscated to build transmission lines from which he would receive no benefit when that transmission line could just as easily be sited on an existing road or rail right of way. I'm pretty sure Pierce's "frustration" would pale in comparison. Giving more power to the federal government has NEVER solved a political uprising, instead it exacerbates it. Having federal authority to site gas pipelines certainly hasn't stopped grassroots opposition to them. Too bad for Pierce... it's never going to happen. The federal government only has power where states don't. And states have power over electric transmission siting and permitting.

Again... why do this when the real solution is so much simpler? Several contemporary examples prove that siting transmission underwater or on existing rail or road rights of way does not attract opposition. SOO Green Renewable Rail. Champlain Hudson Power Express. Lake Erie Connector. New England Clean Power Link. Vermont Green Line. Clean Path New York. Need I go on? These are the transmission projects that are sailing through siting and permitting because they don't require new rights of way and they don't impact host landowners or communities.

We've been beating this drum for several years now by sharing this idea any place we can. Maybe some of these morons are starting to catch on, but prefer to pretend it was their own idea?

Also, Gramlich sees a potential path forward in upgrading existing transmission lines. There, you don’t have the siting battles. “Reconstructing or replacing the old lines with new lines is a is a major opportunity,” he told CNBC. “There’s very little public opposition to transmission over existing corridors.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ya think? However, this is from the same guy who thinks we need transmission investment tax credits. But, whatever. The basic kernel of an idea has managed to squeeze its way into Rob's brain after running into his wall of resistance to new ideas. Opposition doesn't form if you don't cause impacts.

Quit wasting time, energy, and money on stupid, ineffective ideas to quell opposition. The only way to avoid opposition is to bury new transmission on existing rights of way.

Now get crackin'. Time's a wasting.

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Grain Belt Express: Secrets Revealed!

Hiding Information in Plain Sight

Magic Math Is For Fools

Dropping Off Some Reality

Missouri PSC Hits The Brakes On Invenergy's Rush To Site and Permit 40 Miles of New Transmission

Invenergy Manufactures News

Where's the Customers, Invenergy?

Invenergy Releases Paper Tiger on Audrain and Callaway Counties Missouri

FERC OPP Director Ought To Be Fired For Comments At Industry Shindig

How To Avoid Opposition To New Transmission Lines

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