On September 8, 2022, FERC convened a forum in South Burlington, Vermont, to discuss the electricity and natural gas challenges facing the New England region. According to FERC's public notice for the September 2022 forum, its purpose was "to bring together stakeholders in New England to discuss the challenges faced historically during New England winters and discuss the stakeholders’ differing expectations of challenges for future winters. The objectives of the forum are to achieve greater consensus or agreement among stakeholders in defining the electric and natural gas system challenges in New England and identify what, if any, steps are needed to better understand those challenges before identifying solutions."
At the September 2022 event, lead-off speaker Charles Dickerson, President and CEO of reliability organization Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) described the regional context for New England's gas-electric relationship:
The problem in New England is in the wintertime there are only so many gas pipes feeding natural gas into the New England area, and those gas pipes can be constrained. They're going to be constrained for two reasons.
One, they're going to be constrained because of the physics. There's nothing we can do. The pipe is only so big no matter how big we make it, and we're not going to be changing the price of the existing price any time soon I don't believe. So, there's a physical limit to how much gas can flow through those pipes.
The other constraint that's on the operators is a policy constraint which made sense, that basically says in periods of very low temperatures, commercial and industrial users of gas needs are going to be supporting it into residential people who need fuel for heating, which makes sense. So if we have a generator that's using natural gas, and we have a pipe constraint, and even if we didn't have the constraint, we would have to curtail the usage of generating facilities that use gas from those pipes, so that residential customers can use them.
It begs the question what must be done? I would submit through our review that liquefied natural gas is probably a good path for that until we get through the transition. ...
The next speaker, a director of Operational Performance and Training for regional electricity grid operator ISO New England Inc., continued the discussion:
So in terms of close calls we've had a number of close calls over the past couple of decades, primarily as a result of the region's constrained natural gas system, its reliance on imported fuels, and vulnerability to correlated contingencies. So nearly 20 years ago, back in January of 2004, the events first shed light on New England's constrained pipeline and the risk associated with that.
Only 10 years later during the polar vortex we saw similar events: constrained pipelines, operational challenges, and in this case reserve deficiencies. Moving forward a little bit closer to today, we've seen more recent issues particularly during the winter of 17-18 where we were only days away from running out of useable fuel in the region.
Anybody that was in New England at that time, or had interests in the region, probably remembers this winter.
Another speaker, Commissioner Patrick Woodcock of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, described reliability concerns arising under the status quo including these constraints:
I do think however, what is in my mind is on ISO's description of the 2017-2018 cold snap. And I remember that very well. I remember the frostbite that I got as I was talking to ISO about the depletion of our energy reserves. That was a one in 100 year event and I really do not see market arrangements really being adequate to ensure that generators will make arrangements for that event.
And we were really on the cusp if there was another N minus 1 event lost to nuclear power plant. We were at the point where we were going to have to really start talking about contingencies and rolling blackouts in New England. That's what we need to prepare for.
In a follow-up request for public comments, FERC summarized the September 2022 forum's scope as including "the historical context of New England winter gas-electric challenges, concerns and considerations for upcoming winters such as reliability of gas and electric systems and fuel procurement issues, and whether additional information or modeling exercises are needed to inform the development of solutions to these challenges."
To continue the discussions, FERC has now scheduled a second forum to be held this June. According to Commission chair Willie Phillips, the June 2023 event will focus on what he calls "the Commission’s primary job: ensuring reliability of the grid to continue safe and secure delivery of energy services to consumers."
Reliability is Job No. 1. Each winter, natural gas supply constraints during extreme weather places the New England electric grid and its nearly 15 million residents at risk for rolling blackouts ... I believe addressing this risk is urgent and I am hopeful that we can continue the productive discussions from the last forum as we shift our focus to having stakeholders propose potential solutions to address the winter reliability challenges in the region.
The Commission has also described the objective of the upcoming June 2023 forum as "to shift from defining electric and natural gas system challenges in the New England Region to discussing potential solutions, including both infrastructure and market-based solutions."
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