Energy Literacy: Why utility commissions take forever to do anything

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission opened Formal Case 1050 on July 31, 2006 “to consider the implementation of interconnection standards … to allow electric consumers with on-site generation facilities to connect to [Pepco’s] local distribution facilities.”

At the time, according to the PSC, D.C. lacked a uniform set of criteria for getting new solar online, and the notice initiating the formal case was a first step in developing the needed regulations for Pepco, the city’s main electric power utility.

Almost 20 years later, FC1050 is still running — the public record on the case now includes 531 documents — and D.C.’s lack of standards means that solar installers and Pepco customers may experience delays and high costs in getting their projects online. 

For example, a city resident identified only as “Allen” cancelled his rooftop solar installation after Pepco said he would have to pay $35,000 for upgrades to the wires connecting his home to the grid, according to a recent report from Electrify DC, a local nonprofit.  

The report and some of the reasons D.C. residents and businesses continue to face such challenges were the focus of a PSC technical conference I attended Oct. 20. Technical conferences are public meetings a utility commission holds to gather information on specific issues from various entities with expertise or other economic, social or political interests in any decision the commission might make on a case like FC1050. 

(Note: Technical conferences differ from public hearings or other meetings where members of the public can sign up to speak, usually for short, two- or three-minute time slots. Rather, only specific groups or individuals are invited to speak or even ask questions, and members of the commission may or may not attend. The public can listen, but not speak.)

If your eyes haven’t already glazed over, I am telling you all this to give you a taste of why utility commissions take forever to do anything. Commissions are, in theory, supposed to protect consumers from imprudent, unreasonable and unfair rates or related utility policies or practices, which sounds fairly straightforward. 

On the ground, however, regulators often prefer to reach some kind of consensus or settlement among the “stakeholders” — the aforementioned entities with various vested interests.

Hence, once a commission initiates a formal docket, or case, they schedule various hearings and technical conferences. Along the way, they may farm out subissues or wonky technical questions to working groups, again made up of relevant stakeholders, who schedule their own meetings, hearings and technical conferences, resulting in recommendations sent back up the chain to the commission. 

Every stage involves getting some level of stakeholder review and consensus, all of which can take months or longer. The commission may then release a proposed decision or plan, which goes back to all the stakeholders for review and more feedback, hearings and technical conferences before a final decision is made. Requests for rehearings to revise the decision may follow, leading to more hearings, etc.

The people who do most of the work across all these different stages are not the commissioners themselves, but their staff members — a small army of lawyers, engineers and policy and technical experts who do the complicated and intensely detailed heavy lifting. 

Let me just say that I am using the PSC technical conference not to single out or criticize the D.C. commission, only to use it as an example. The PSC is one of 53 public utility commissions that regulate electric, gas, water and telecommunications utilities across the United States and its territories — one in each state and D.C., plus Puerto Rico and Guam. 

Dig into the records of any one of these bodies, and you will likely find similar, years-long proceedings attempting to resolve complex issues that affect utilities, consumers, project developers and other businesses, from small, local enterprises to national giants. 

The Oct. 20 technical conference is a case in point — one episode in an ongoing saga related to something called a hosting capacity map, which is a key tool for helping D.C. residents prepare to install solar on their rooftops. 

“Hosting capacity” is industry-speak for how much room any one power line or a local network has for the additional electricity a rooftop solar project might run through it. Many utilities now provide hosting capacity maps on their websites — some very technically complex, others more user-friendly. 

Pepco is required to have one (see below), but the Electrify DC study found it’s not providing the detailed information residents and solar installers need. 

The D.C. Council first called for a study of the city’s hosting capacity in 2022. The Department of Energy and Environment awarded a grant for the project to Electrify DC, which worked on the report with Synapse Energy Economics, an industry analyst, and Redwood Energy, an installer. It was released a few days before the technical conference.

The meeting itself included a high-level review from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council on what a thorough and useful hosting capacity map should look like, a presentation on the Electrify DC report and Pepco’s rebuttal.  

Clocking in at 2 ½ hours, the session was heavy on wonk and jargon, but underneath it all was a very immediate and pressing concern — getting more solar on more D.C. rooftops to help more D.C. residents cut their rising electric bills. 

The Electrify DC report contains other stories of local homeowners who were slapped with high fees for connecting projects to the grid, resulting in one case in lengthy negotiations with Pepco and the installer and in another, with a project cancellation. 

Now the tricky thing about hosting capacity — and any maps tracking it — is that the available room for more solar on any one line can change very quickly. Let’s say you live on a street where three or four homes already have installed solar with no problem whatsoever. But those projects could mean that when you decide to go solar, the line may not be able to take any more new power without an expensive upgrade, which you are going to have to pay for by yourself. 

(Yes, it’s not quite fair, but that’s the way these things work.)

So, if a hosting capacity map isn’t updated regularly or doesn’t provide sufficient detail at the street level, you and your installer might plan your project thinking that, like your neighbors, you would have no problems connecting to the grid.

Which is pretty much the situation with Pepco’s map — not enough detail and updated only quarterly even though the PSC ordered monthly updates in 2020. 

Pepco’s rebuttal was fairly predictable — an extremely technical argument aimed at showing why the utility can’t map the hosting capacity of D.C.’s electric system with as much detail or frequency as Electrify DC and IREC are recommending.

One example, Pepco can’t automatically update its hosting capacity map with the latest information. The update process remains at least partly manual. The engineers who track any changes at the street level have to get that data to the team that maintains the map, who then make the update. 

However, Electrify DC’s report was based on a new open source program — which Synapse developed for the study — that can drill down to the street level and provide the information needed for automatic updates. It has been offered to Pepco for free, but the company only said that it is moving toward a more detailed process for its D.C. map.

In other words, three years on, D.C. residents and solar installers are still waiting for standards that will provide a hosting capacity map that will help them install their projects efficiently and cost-effectively. 

What happens next? The Electrify DC study and other presentations from the tech conference will become part of a larger report on the current state of solar installations in the District, completion date uncertain. Commission staffers are now working on an interim report for the D.C. Council, which has not been released to the public.

In all fairness, it is important to note that utility commissions can move at a fairly fast clip in some instances. For example, the Georgia Public Service Commission has approved six rate increases in the past three years for Georgia Power, the state’s main corporate or investor-owned utility.

Big utilities have the lawyers, time and money to monitor and participate in utility commission proceedings, like requests for rate increases, contributing to the wall of legal and technical jargon that intimidates and alienates consumers who are affected by commission decisions. Further, depending on the state, individuals coming onto commissions — whether elected or appointed — may have little or no expertise in the issues they will consider. 

Which is why, first, we need commissions to be more transparent, user-friendly and accessible to everyone; so, consumers can ensure their voices are heard. Most states have an Office of People’s Counsel — a state-level consumer advocate — that represents consumer interests before utility commissions.

We also need more reporters who follow what their commissions are doing and can explain clearly and in plain language the key issues their regulators are considering and the potential impacts on their audiences. Unfortunately, very few local media outlets have dedicated energy reporters.

Now more than ever, people need to understand that, underneath the jargon, the decisions of state utility commissions may affect their day-to-day lives, and they can and should have a voice in those decisions.

The thing about utility commissions – as wonky and occasionally mind-numbing as they may be – is that if you go to meetings and really listen, you can learn a lot. 

At the PSC meeting, Electrify DC noted that the city’s Office of the People’s Counsel had received 102 complaints over the past five years about the delays and high costs of getting solar projects online. Pepco disputed the figure, saying it had only received two such complaints during that time.

Both were correct, exposing a major lack of communication between OPC and Pepco, with consumers on the losing end, per usual — a story just waiting for an enterprising reporter or consumer advocacy group to investigate. 

This story is the first part of an E/lectrify deep dive into utility commissions. Next week I’ll be providing an overview of how commissions are structured, how they have become deeply politicized and their critical role in a range of issues related to rising electric bills.