1 2 3 4 5 6 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 7 NATIONAL ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION CONGESTION STUDY 8 WORKSHOP 9 10 11 12 13 St. Louis, Missouri 14 Thursday, December 8, 2011 15 16 1 1 PARTICIPANTS: 2 Welcome and Presentation: 3 4 DAVID MEYER 5 U.S. Department of Energy 6 7 Panel 1 Regulators: 8 9 KEVIN D. GUNN 10 Missouri Public Service Commission 11 12 JERRY LEIN 13 North Dakota Public Service Commission 14 15 OLAN REEVES 16 Arkansas Public Service Commission 17 18 TOM SLOAN 19 Representative, Kansas Legislature 20 21 GREG WHITE 22 Michigan Public Service Commission 23 24 Panel 2 Industry: 25 26 MAUREEN BORKOWSKI 27 President and Chief Executive Officer 28 Ameren Transmission Company 29 30 JAY CASPARY 31 Director of Transmission Development 32 Southwest Power Pool 33 34 LAUREEN L. ROSS McCALIB 35 Manager, Resource Planning, and former 36 Manager, Regional Transmission Regulation 37 Great River Energy 38 39 DALE OSBORN 40 Transmission Planning Technical 41 Director, Midwest Independent System Operator 42 2 1 DOUG POWELL 2 Director, Transmission and Distribution 3 Planning, Entergy 4 5 DAVID TILL 6 Transmission Strategy General Manager 7 Tennessee Valley Authority 8 9 Other Attendees: 10 11 ALAN BAX 12 Missouri Public Service Commission 13 14 LOT COOKE 15 U.S. Department of Energy 16 17 PHILIP FEDORA 18 North East Power Coordinating Council 19 20 TERRY JARRETT 21 Missouri Public Service Commission 22 23 JULIA KAYNE 24 Consultant, ICF International 25 26 JEFF KEEVIL 27 Missouri Public Service Commission 28 29 ROBERT KENNEY 30 Missouri Public Service Commission 31 32 ANANT KUMAR 33 Consultant, ICF International 34 35 DENNIS LAWLOR 36 Project Manager Ecology & Environment 37 38 DAVID LINTON 39 David C. Linton, LLC 40 41 SAM LOUDENSLAGER 42 Arkansas Public Service Commission 43 3 1 JIM McGLONE 2 U.S. Department of Energy 3 4 ADAM McKINNIE 5 Missouri Public Service Commission 6 7 PATRICIA POLI 8 Michigan Public Service commission 9 10 BRIAN ROUNDS 11 South Dakota Public Utilities Commission 12 13 ALISON SILVERSTEIN 14 Consultant 15 16 CURTIS STEPANECK 17 Principal Engineer, Transmission Planning 18 Ameren Transmission Company 19 20 JANET WHEELER 21 Advisor to Commissioner Jarrett 22 Missouri Public Service Commission 23 24 LAWRENCE WILLICK 25 Senior Vice President, LS Power 26 27 28 * * * * * 29 P R O C E E D I N G S 30 (8:57 a.m.) 31 MR. MEYER: Ladies and gentlemen, if you will 32 take your seats we will get started with our workshop. 33 Good morning, and welcome. I'm David Meyer 34 from the Department of Energy, and I have 35 responsibility for the 2012 Congestion Study. I'm 36 going to lead off with an introduction, some context 4 1 about this study. I'll give you some perspective on it 2 before we go into the discussions with our panelists. 3 The Federal Power Act, as amended, requires 4 the Department to conduct transmission congestion 5 studies every three years, and we did studies in 2006 6 and 2009, and so now we're initiating the 2012 study. 7 I've got definitions here and other information about 8 congestion, but you folks know those things already, so 9 I won’t go through them. 10 We recognize that not all congestion merits 11 mitigation, that any of the solutions to congestion 12 have costs, and so it's a question of determining where 13 it is economic to mitigate congestion and if so what's 14 the most appropriate means of doing so. And we 15 recognize that frequently a combination of approaches 16 is really the most desirable. 17 The Federal Power Act directs DOE to show 18 where congestion is occurring, but it does not 19 authorize or direct us to prescribe the solutions or to 20 undertake mitigation. So, we see our task as saying 21 here's where it is, collectively let's see if we can 22 figure out what are some of the most appropriate 23 solutions. 24 In the 2006 and 2009 studies, we used a 5 1 conceptual framework that involved three kinds of 2 congestion areas: Critical; areas of concern; and then 3 conditional congestion areas, areas where congestion 4 was certainly not presently acute but where there was a 5 potential generation located in these areas that if 6 developed without associated transmission would produce 7 significant congestion. 8 I want to say a few words about what we call 9 national corridors. The full legal term is longer than 10 that. There is an acronym that goes with these 11 corridors that I try not to use, mainly because a lot 12 of people don't know how to pronounce it and they don't 13 know how to spell it, and so we've just kind of gone 14 over to the term "national corridor," which is, really, 15 a much classier term anyway, so. 16 The national corridors may be designated only 17 after the issuance of a congestion study and after the 18 review and consideration of public comments on the 19 study. But the identification of the congestion area 20 does not necessarily lead to designation of a national 21 corridor. 22 And as you may already be aware, the 23 designation of a corridor has some very specific facts. 24 I mean, first, it emphasizes that the government 6 1 believes that it is important to mitigate this 2 particular congestion problem. 3 And it enables the Federal Energy Regulatory 4 Commission in very specific circumstances under 5 specific conditions enumerated in the Federal Power Act 6 to exercise backstop siting responsibility, siting 7 authority with respect to siting transmission in a 8 national corridor. 9 And, thirdly, if the proposed transmission 10 facility in a national corridor is also within the 11 footprint of these two power marketing administrations 12 that are shown here, those entities may then exercise 13 their third-party finance authority with respect to the 14 proposed facility. 15 So, let me turn now to the process for the 16 2012 study. We're holding four regional workshops, two 17 in the east, two in the west, to explain our study 18 process and to seek data information and perspectives 19 that you think are relevant to this endeavor. It's 20 important to emphasize that we're interested in a wide 21 range of possible kinds of information about historic 22 congestion and about projected congestion or 23 conditional congestion for that matter, and we don't 24 intend to, to the extent possible, we don't want to be 7 1 dependent on a single kind of information. It's very 2 helpful for us if we get a sense of, yes, there seems 3 to be a problem here based on this dataset; if we turn 4 to other datasets do we get a similar, do we get 5 corroboration? So, it's important not to be dependent 6 solely on one kind of information. 7 We do intend to use only publicly available 8 source material. We think that transparency is 9 essential. Unlike 2006 and 2009, this time we will 10 issue a draft report for public comment, and then after 11 reviewing the comments received we will issue a final 12 report. And if people have comments and suggestions on 13 how to improve this process, we welcome those comments. 14 So, in today's workshop we are seeking 15 especially fresh information about congestion-related 16 conditions in this part of the country, and that is you 17 folks know your neighborhoods, this region, far better 18 than we; and so we wanted to get your views on what's 19 happening, or what do you see on the horizon that in 20 this part of the country that is especially relevant to 21 congestion. 22 So, we will have two panels. First, we will 23 hear from state officials, and then we will have an 24 industry panel, and after those two panels there will 8 1 be an opportunity for anyone else who wants to offer 2 input to do so. And so if you're interested in 3 commenting on that basis, please let Sheri, from ICF, 4 know. 5 We look forward to a wide-ranging discussion, 6 and we are having a transcript made, and this is so 7 that we have a record so that we can go back to it and 8 be sure we are accurately interpreting what people said 9 and to be sure we haven't missed anything. 10 Before we get started, I want to introduce 11 some of my colleagues to you. We have Lot Cooke from 12 DOE's General Counsel. We have Alison Silverstein, who 13 is well known to many of you as a very capable analyst. 14 We have Jim McGlone, Jim is an electrical engineer from 15 the Office of Electricity at DOE. We have other 16 staffers who are not here today who are going to be 17 helping us on this project also. And from ICF we have 18 Sheri Lausin. 19 MS. LAUSIN: Julia. 20 MR. MEYER: Sorry, I apologize. And we have 21 Anant Kumar, also from ICF. 22 Thank you all, and let's go on to the first 23 panel. The panelists we have here, I will introduce 24 them only by name and affiliation. We have Kevin Gunn, 9 1 chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission.