PJM breakthroughs efforts to clear renewables stockpile with affiliation reform procedure

• US power grid operator PJM Interconnection is advancing with initiatives to shift to a brand-new affiliation process as it aims to clear a stockpile of projects including more than 136GW of solar capacity.

The regional transmission organisation's planning board has actually extensively recommended a brand-new change proposal developed to obtain projects with the preparation pipeline quicker.

Ken Seiler, vice head of state of preparing at PJM, claimed the organisation is prioritising more than 1,200 projects in its backlog, a lot of them renewables, which stand for greater than 100GW of nameplate capacity.

" We are concentrated on moving those with the system and improving the process as much as feasible, as well as obtaining genuine projects interconnected to the queue," Seiler claimed, including: "We are visiting a much better, much faster, extra efficient method to integrate projects right into the system as well as enable states to satisfy their renewable portfolio objectives."

The PJM presently has more than 288GW of clean energy capacity in its affiliation queue, consisting of over 136GW of solar as well as 34GW of hybrid plants, according to market organization Advanced Energy Economy (AEE), which claimed all the projects in the queue have been waiting for one year or even more.

Over the past five years, AEE said that renewables programmers have withdrawn more than 1,000 clean energy projects from the PJM affiliation queue, including more than 77GWMW of solar, wind and also battery storage space projects.

As part of the shift plan, Seiler stated that while projects that got in the queue prior to 2021 will be prioritised, the organisation is "not closing the door on new projects".

The planning board has actually already recommended a streamlined process that would certainly enable certain projects that don't contribute to the demand for network upgrades to complete a new service study procedure early. On the other hand, the new change plan would prioritise about half of the 2,500 projects in the queue, consisting of fast-tracking concerning 450 plants, with the brand-new procedure being related to projects starting in 2024.

Pending authorization from 2 even more committees, PJM expects to file the interconnection modifications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in May, with the reliable date of the transition readied to be Q4 2022 or Q1 2023.

The renewables sector in PJM was boosted by a rule adjustment introduced by FERC last year that amended the minimum deal cost rule (MOPR), enabling certain sources that receive state support to take part in PJM's capacity auction without going through the rule.