Last week, I spent two and a half days at the Mid-America Regulatory Conference (MARC). This was my third consecutive attendance at the annual MARC. Each conference has featured substantially different, new, and engaging content. Last year’s conference in Minneapolis featured many discussions on data-center load growth, nuclear power development, energy storage, workforce development, and my favorite quote, “We’re not going to build our way out of this [soaring load growth scenario].”
This year’s conference in Indianapolis featured an amazing presence of utility executives and their visions for their companies, a little chatter about energy efficiency, load management, and demand response, some discussion on load growth, and a lot on economic development. Indiana Governor Mike Braun, an entrepreneur in his own right, showed up for an hour-long fireside chat (although we didn’t need the fire in steamy Indianapolis) in person! Who does that? Usually, we’re lucky to get a recorded video. Major kudos to the planning committee and the Governor for pulling that off!
Utilities in the News – Press Coverage
Starting in no particular order, I found much commonality with the press covering complicated utility-industry news in a session titled “What Are They Talking About? Utility Regulation and The News.” I discovered that credentialed members of the press, including Mirror Indy, RTO Insider, Indianapolis Business Journal, and Indiana Public Broadcasting, get gratis passes to the conference. What? Where’s my stuff?
The commonality I share with the journalists is that they want to get it right, which requires asking many “stupid” questions, said Leslie Weidenbener from the Indianapolis Business Journal. I ask my stupid questions to old-timers and geeks, and sometimes old-timer geeks. One of the three or four bits of feedback I’ve gotten from supervisors in my career included, “You have a lot of confidence because you’re not afraid to ask [stupid] questions.” Thank you, sir. Leslie noted, If you try to demonstrate you know what you’re talking about, you’ll get the story completely wrong.”
Sometimes, I turn the tables on stupid things, like why capacity auctions are priced in MW-days, and load management resources, which bid into the capacity market, are priced in kW-years? And customers pay for capacity by the kW-month. Confused? That would be like advertising the price of gasoline per ccf (hundred cubic feet) and selling it in dollars per gallon. It makes perfect sense.
As I’m sure journalists know, I sometimes find that my sources are like the retired fishing guide who owned a resort on Lake of the Woods, Minnesota/Ontario, where we used to spend our annual fishing trip. He was protective of his former brethren and wouldn’t offer much by way of helpful information. I get it. It’s like the four free articles you can get from RTO Insider every month. Use them wisely, or pay up and get it tall. However, human news sources sometimes only allow a certain number of answered queries, and it’s up to the “reporter” (me) to know when they’re about tapped out.
Ms. Weidenbener described what makes a good front-page story—the same thing that makes any good story: conflict! If there is no conflict or tension, there is nothing to report—100%. The Energy Rant is the No Pander Zone. I am always on the lookout for conflict, irony, and pointing out how favored policies work against one’s larger objectives, like the administration’s disdain for the ITC, which, if eliminated for storage, would endanger grid reliability and stunt the greater purpose to be the world-leader in artificial intelligence.
Sampling from Utility CEOs
Now I’m jumping to the utility CEO roundtable on day three – a session that had me scribbling notes as fast as possible. Last week, I mentioned our first Upper Midwest heatwave was a non-event because it was accompanied by a lot of wind, but will that resource show up during a heat wave in the least windy month of the year, August?
Kelcey Brown, MidAmerican Energy’s impressive CEO, confirmed the first part of my “forecast,” noting MidAmerican’s 7.x gigawatts of wind resources handled all their customers’ 6.x gigawatts of peak load over the weekend.
Impressive facts about Ms. Brown include ten years working for PacifiCorp in Portland Energy in energy supply management, energy imbalance market analytics (something RTOs handle in other parts of the country), and load forecasting. She served as a senior economist with the Oregon Public Utility Commission. That’s all conference championship stuff. What I found to be national championship credentials was her clarity in Warren Buffett’s vision and perspective that utilities are in the competitive space, despite being regulated monopolies. They compete for new customers and economic development by keeping rates low, not just for today, but for the coming decades. As for world championship credentials, Ms. Brown, served five years on the aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz, CVN 68. Go Navy!
Although Ms. Brown didn’t say this, it appears MidAmerican/Berkshire Energy used the same playbook as NextEra, taking advantage of a decade of low interest rates and lucrative tax credits to build their fleet of wind turbines, which President Trump hates, ironically. MidAmerican relies on 2.7 GW of coal-fired power, plus imports from power purchase agreements, I would say, when the wind isn’t sufficient to power their customers’ loads. That is their secret sauce for low rates.
Figure 2 MidAmerican Energy Company Generating Capacity 2024
Ms. Brown said their peak load has increased 34% in the last ten years, and she noted that energy efficiency has helped to keep a lid on load growth since the late 1970s. Lighting and HVAC efficiencies are nearly maxed out. I would add that not only did these technologies save energy, but they also reduced peak load because they operate coincidentally with peak grid loads.
For decades, I’ve wondered if utility executives think about efficiency and load management. I welcome and leverage any insights I can get. Thank you, MARC!
Next Up
I likely have enough material for four more posts from this conference. As someone mentioned in the press coverage session, there is always more news than time and space to report it. But I will commit to discussing economic development next week and playing the long game to draw in major energy users with massive electricity loads.
