Advocates criticize bid by Illinois power grid operator to skip some federal reforms

Last year federal regulators approved a long-awaited set of reforms designed to ease waitlists for new power sources seeking to come online and deliver electricity to homes and businesses.

Such waitlists have emerged as one of the leading barriers to clean energy — including wind and solar power — and the federal reforms were widely viewed as an important step forward.

But now PJM Interconnection, the powerful but little-known company that runs the waitlist in northern Illinois, is pushing back, with requests for exemptions from aspects of the reforms, including a new timeline for key studies.

“PJM is dragging its feet on the clean energy transition and doing everything it can, instead, to create exceptions for itself,” said Clara Summers, the Consumers for a Better Grid campaign manager at the Citizens Utility Board.

CUB is one of seven public interest groups — including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists — that have filed a protest with federal regulators saying that PJM is resisting reform and should not be granted many of the exceptions it seeks.

PJM, a federally regulated private company that manages part of the high-voltage electric grid, said in a written statement that it started implementing its own reforms in July 2023, and the exceptions it seeks are “consistent with the … goals set forth” in the federal reforms.

PJM noted that those goals included streamlining the process by which new power projects connect to the grid and providing useful information to project developers.

PJM’s requests for exemptions come at a time when experts say the United States isn’t moving fast enough to cut planet-warming carbon emissions and stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Adding new wind, solar and battery power is central to state and national plans to reduce emissions and meet ambitious climate goals.

Among the concerns that critics lay out in their protest filing: PJM is seeking an exception to a 150-day time limit for a key study, which examines how a series of proposed projects will affect the electric grid.

PJM is asking to keep its 480-day timeline for the study and an additional facilities study, which compares with only 240 to 330 days allowed for both studies under the federal reforms , according to the protest filing by public interest groups.

“PJM is asking for really long timelines here, and that runs counter to the desired goal: to have a new generation coming online and connecting in a timely and cost-effective manner,” said Summers.

In its filing seeking the exemptions, PJM notes that its time frame for studies is longer but says that’s “appropriate for a large (grid operator) with a commensurate size and volume of Interconnection Requests such as PJM, given the complexity and number of Interconnection Requests PJM receives and expects to continue receiving, as well as the number of Transmission Owners with which PJM must coordinate.”

PJM is the nation’s largest grid operator, coordinating and directing the flow of electricity to more than 65 million people in 13 states and Washington, D.C.

Waits to connect to the grid in the PJM region are typically the longest in the United States, according to a 2024 report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And PJM received the lowest score among seven regions in a 2024 report prepared for the business association Advanced Energy United.

That report, the Generator Interconnection Scorecard , gave PJM a D-minus for its grid-connection process.

PJM has said that the scorecard report was based on outdated data and does not take into account reforms implemented by the company starting in 2023.

In the PJM region, the median time a new energy project had to wait before being allowed to connect to the grid was more than five years in 2022, up from just 20 months in 2005.

Among the other proposed exemptions that critics object to: PJM wants permission to impose lower penalties on utilities that fail to complete studies of new energy projects in a timely manner.

Critics are also concerned about PJM’s approach to energy storage, or technologies that capture energy for use at a later time.

PJM assumes that energy storage will draw electricity from the grid at times of peak demand, which critics consider “inaccurate” and “nonsensical,” according to the protest filing. Peak demand is when energy is most expensive, and energy storage operators would most likely follow economic incentives and charge when energy is least expensive, critics say.

Critics want PJM to follow the procedure set forth in the federal reform package and consider, in some cases, whether the energy storage system will draw electricity during peak demand.

That’s important, critics say, because adding energy storage can increase the reliability of the grid at a time when old power plants are retiring.

“It’s problematic for this one resource that could really be adding benefit to the grid (to be) treated like it’s going to be more of a drain than an addition,” Summers said.

Another key issue for critics is grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs, which increase the amount of electricity that existing power lines can safely transmit, using sensors, power flow control devices and analytical tools.

GETs are getting a lot of attention because the existing power grid is too small for today’s needs, and new high-voltage power lines are expensive. GETs are cheaper and easier to add.

The federal reforms include a requirement that GETs be considered systematically and consistently when new power projects apply to connect to the grid. Specifically, studies in which utilities determine the grid upgrades necessary to connect new power have to include an evaluation of the cost, feasibility and time savings associated with using certain GETs.

PJM doesn’t want to require that in all cases.

“The fact is that a broad spectrum of potential solutions, including GETs, are already considered as part of PJM’s (grid-connection) study process,” according to PJM’s filing.

In its written statement to the Tribune, PJM noted that it has its own grid-connection reform package, approved in 2022. As part of that package, PJM moved to a cluster study approach, in which projects proposing to connect to the grid are studied in groups, rather than one by one.

Cluster studies are widely used and considered to be an improvement over studying projects one by one.

PJM also said in its statement that it plans to process over 250 gigawatts of grid-connection requests by the end of 2026, enough to power millions of homes.

And PJM pointed out that 40 gigawatts of power that it has already approved for grid connection remains unbuilt, due, the company said, to factors unrelated to PJM’s approval process. In the past, PJM has argued that such failures to build are the real problem.

“This is the challenge we need to confront as an industry rather than looking back on problems that have been largely addressed,” PJM told the Tribune in April.

Critics counter that long waits under PJM’s grid-connection process can cause serious problems for a project, even after it gets approval to build.

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com