Massachusetts Clean Peak standard regulations proposed

Acting under a 2018 law, Massachusetts energy regulators have proposed a Clean Peak Energy Portfolio Standard regulation that is designed to provide incentives to clean energy technologies that can supply electricity or reduce demand during seasonal peak demand periods.

Last year, the Massachusetts legislature enacted An Act to Advance Clean Energy. The law requires the state Department of Energy Resources to develop a program requiring retail electricity providers to provide a minimum percentage of kilowatt-hour sales to end-use customers in the commonwealth from "clean peak resources." This newly defined category of resources includes qualified renewable portfolio standard resources, qualified energy storage systems, or demand response resources that generate, dispatch or discharge electricity to the electric distribution system during seasonal peak periods, or alternatively, reduce load on the system. Retail suppliers would procure "clean peak certificates", similar to RECs, representing the attributes of qualified generation.

The law requires DOER to establish seasonal peak periods, defined as “the daily time windows during any of the 4 annual seasons when the net demand of electricity is the highest; provided however, that a seasonal peak shall be not less than 1 hour and no longer than 4 hours in any season, as determined by the department.” It also requires DOER to establish a metering and verification protocol, as well as a value for clean peak certificates for each megawatt hour of energy or energy reserves during the seasonal peak period, through the imposition of an alternative compliance payment rate and other possible approaches.

The law also required DOER to establish a baseline minimum percentage of kilowatt-hours sales to end-use customers that shall be met with clean peak certificates in 2019; after DOER determined that "approximately 0 MWh were being served by existing clean peak resources during peak load hours as of December 31, 2018," DOER established the Minimum Standard percentage requirement for retail electricity suppliers in the 2019 compliance year at 0%.

Following two stakeholder meetings, three public hearings, presentation of a straw proposal, and a consultant report presenting modeling of the effect of the clean peak standard market design changes, on September 20, 2019, DOER filed its proposed Clean Peak Energy Portfolio Standard regulation with the Secretary of State. DOER has requested public comment on the proposed regulation by 5:00pm, October 30, 2019.