NE Electric System is a Market Failure

Whether it is power plant builders or environmental consideration...they are all gaming the public to delay fixing our electric system. They are now creating a legal and acceptable California electricity crisis to boost profits.  

Well, the regulatory system set up saying no other entries and lower consumer cost welcome.

I say with some exaggeration, declare a dire national emergency and martial law, give an above fair price for the property taken...then immediately construct the pipeline or power line basically without any rights or appeals.  Make it a government project and eminent domain…

Basically every second we delay fixing this problem, we are making our lives harder and we are losing jobs. It contrast how weak government is with solving our greater problems.

They are now creating a legal and acceptable California electricity crisis to boost profits.

Maybe the rest of our nation wants a weakened NE?

Moniz: NE faces energy problem

By STEPHEN SINGER

Associated Press

Monday, April 21, 2014
(Published in print: Tuesday, April 22, 2014)

HARTFORD, Conn. — The nation’s top energy official delivered a blunt message Monday to a Connecticut audience of energy executives, regulators, environmentalists and others who already know that fuel heating and cooling homes and businesses and running power plants in New England is among the costliest in the nation.

Ernest Moniz, U.S. secretary of energy, stopping in Providence, R.I., and Hartford in a months-long federal review of energy issues, said New England doesn’t share the good news developing in the field of energy with the rest of the country.

“Out there, in much of the country the talk is about the energy revolution, the abundance of energy that we have, the way that we are in fact drawing upon new resources ... promoting renewables, at the same time reducing carbon emissions,” he said.

“But yet if we come here, it’s not a discussion of abundance. It’s a discussion of, in particular, infrastructure constraints,” he said.

Speaking to an audience of about 150 in Hartford, Moniz said that in New England, piping in natural gas and otherwise delivering heat or electricity is limited by a lack of delivery systems.

During the severe winter, natural gas prices soared to more than $120 per million British thermal units from about $5 in the summer. The spike was blamed on strong demand, a lack of pipeline systems, limited regional liquefied natural gas deliveries and inadequate storage.

Energy prices in New England often are “very volatile and much higher than other parts of the country,” Moniz said.

Moniz knows New England. A physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Moniz said even when fuel is available, it cannot be moved in emergencies, such as Superstorm Sandy in October and November 2012, because of power outages.

New England governors announced a plan in January to expand natural gas use. The governors of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont asked the region’s grid operator for technical help to seek proposals to build transmission equipment and public works to deliver enough electricity to serve 1.2 million to 3.6 million homes. The states also asked the system operator, ISO-New England, to devise a way to finance the project.

Gordon van Welie, ISO president, said Monday that because many non-gas-fired plants are to be retired beginning this year and public works improvements are scheduled to start years from now, New England’s power system will be in a “precarious position” for a few years.

Anthony Buxton, general counsel for the Industrial Energy Consumer Group, a trade association of industrial facilities, said he told Moniz in his visit to Providence that 2 billion cubic feet per day of more pipeline capacity into New England is needed to tame

natural gas price spikes.

Connecticut director William Dornbos of Environment Northeast, an advocacy group, urged Moniz and state policymakers to seek ways to cut demand via greater energy efficiency and to avoid major capital projects such as interstate natural gas pipelines or electric transmission lines.

 Why New England power situation is precarious

Quick Take: I sit on advisory boards with various executives from the electric power sector. Recently they've been telling me about a disturbing discovery from this year's Polar Vortex winter. The gating factor in the Northeast is not the number of power plants. Nor the capacity of the power lines. It is the capacity of the region's pipelines. And now the Secretary of Energy is out delivering the warning. – Jesse Berst

U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz delivered a blunt message to New England last week, according to a story in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “In much of the country the talk is about the energy revolution, the abundance of energy that we have," he told a Connecticut audience of energy executives, regulators, environmentalists. “But yet if we come here, it’s not a discussion of abundance. It’s a discussion of, in particular, infrastructure constraints."

The challenge is getting fuel to the region's natural gas-powered plants. Bringing in natural gas is constrained by the shortage of pipelines. During the severe winter, natural gas prices soared to more than $120 per million British thermal units from about $5 in the summer. The spike was due to strong demand, a lack of pipeline systems, and inadequate storage.

Why did natural gas prices jump to such extremes? A recent newsletter from Luthin Confidential Associates offers this explanation: "Federal regulations treat pipelines as common carriers and limit the profits of pipeline owners. But once that capacity gets "rented" by investors and speculators, the sky is the limit on what they can add to local gas pricing for the use of the pipe."

The problem will soon get even worse. Many coal plants are due to be retired soon. Meanwhile, pipeline improvements are years away, causing Moniz to warn that New England will be in a "precarious position" for a few years.

Indeed, those much-needed pipeline improvements may be delayed even further by protests from environmental groups. For instance, the director of Environment Northeast urged policymakers to cut demand via greater energy efficiency rather than approving new pipelines or electric transmission lines.

Jesse Berst is the founder and Chief Analyst of SGN and Chairman of the Smart Cities Council, an industry coalition.