What's Happening in Energy highlights the most interesting findings from public utility commission filings.

Hey there, it's Nat.

This week:

• Dealing with errors and uncertainty from large load forecasts across the Midwest and SPP,
• A proposal to develop and own a 4-hour 500 MW BESS project in the Mid-Atlantic,
• Dominion’s position on how to incentivize loads to procure capacity to meet incremental large load additions in PJM,
• And much more.
  

Let’s get into it.

What's Happening in Energy — July 31
Powered by Halcyon

____
McCloud Gas Plant CCN Amendment // City of El Paso | ERock | Meta // Texas

El Paso Electric (EPE) is planning a 366 megawatt gas-fired plant to serve the demand of Meta’s Wurldwide LLC data center. In a post-hearing brief on which party will bear the project’s costs, the City of El Paso calls EPE’s approach to the case “almost schizophrenic.” Meanwhile, the Commission Staff’s brief recommends the adoption of specific extreme weather reliability standards, but questions whether the project meets the system-wide need required for public interest (noting a lack of a formal Request for Proposal or cost-benefit analysis).

____
New 2,100 MW gas-fired plant // West Alton Project | Ameren // Missouri

Ameren Missouri requested a certificate of convenience and necessity (CCN) to build a 2.1 gigawatt combined cycle gas power plant with three Mitsubishi generators, located at the site of the nearly 70-year old Sioux Energy Center in West Alton, Missouri (application). This project is intended to satisfy "watt-for-watt" statutory requirements by implementing dispatchable resources that equal or exceed the capacity of the retired resources. The Commission set dates for the deadline to intervene (Aug 17, 2026) and the prehearing conference (Aug 20, 2026). Ameren requests the Commission grant a CCN no later than May 2027 so that construction can commence in June 2027. Under this timeline, the last unit would go into service by Q4 2031.

The benefits of this project come down to location, location, and location:

1. Readily available access to reliable fuel supply provided by a transmission gas supply pipeline that runs within approximately two miles of the site.

2. Significant 345 kV regional transmission system upgrades by Ameren’s transmission affiliate (Ameren Transmission Company of Illinois) in northeast Missouri, approved by MISO as part of its Long-Range Transmission Plan Tranche 2.1.

Notably, Ameren has partially in-housed the EPC work, not out of choice but because there were no other options:

“While the default approach would have been to utilize a traditional EPC structure, we learned through the conduct of a formal Request for Information ("RFI") process (and follow-up discussions), that most top-tier EPC contractors were either unavailable or unwilling to pursue the Project on the timeline needed. Specifically, of nine EPC firms contacted through the RFI process, only two expressed potential interest, and ultimately only one was willing to even consider a traditional competitive proposal, i.e., to submit and be bound by a bid in competition with others.”

____
Penalties for Large Load Forecast Errors // Market Design Change // SPP

Get ready for an acronym salad. Southwest Power Pool (SPP) stakeholders are considering Revision Request (RR799), which would modify the allocation of Reliability Unit Commitment (RUC) costs based on large loads’ forecast errors to incentivize accuracy. The affected loads are those >50 MW, classified as Non-Conforming Loads (NCLs) or High Impact Large Loads (HILLs). RUC payment distribution volume would now include the average forecast error from the day-ahead market to the real-time time horizon, spanning from hourly to 5-minute resolution at various submission intervals (read the specifics at section 8.6.7 Reliability Unit Commitment Make Whole Payment Distribution Amount A(2)(i) at the bottom of page 2).

Follow the revision request here.

____
Deferred Retirements on Old Coal // Evergy Kansas

Evergy Kansas has filed 2026 updates for the Central and Metro IRPs. Notably, it includes deferring retirements on almost the entire coal fleet in Kansas. Halcyon’s advanced math says that Evergy has taken its existing retirement schedules and punted them out by six years, with three exceptions that go further out:

Notably, these deferrals are not paired with delays in new gas generation. Evergy is seeking more new gas generation and trying to keep old coal generation online for longer. The IRP cites load growth, particularly from a Google data center, as a driving factor in planning changes.

Track the entire IRP process from the original 2024 plan here.

____
Incumbents vs. Merchant Transmission Developers // FERC Order 1000 Complaint

WHiE readers know we are semi-obsessed with following the FERC proceeding initiated by MISO and SPP’s complaint against the competitive solicitation requirements from FERC Order 1000 (EL26-58-000). Today, we are sharing just one of the weekday alerts we received from tracking this docket in Halcyon. The alert locates one of the many core tensions between the opposing parties in this proceeding: the capability of incumbents and competitive developers to procure long-lead time equipment. Check it out here.

____
Gas Line Extension Allowances // Washington Gas // Washington, DC

The Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia held a hearing over Washington Gas’s (WGL) strategically targeted pipeline replacement plan. WGL submitted an exhibit for the hearing which included a table of actions that regulators and legislators have taken across seven states to reduce or eliminate gas line extension allowances (LEAs).

Read Halcyon’s explanation of gas line extension allowances for context.

____
Share the Forecast // Cal Advocates v. PG&E // CPUC

The Public Advocates Office of the CPUC (Cal Advocates) wants Line 7. Cal Advocates moved to compel Pacific Gas & Electric to disclose its data center load forecast which it withheld from the table below. PG&E submitted this forecast of peak demand and energy usage to support its application for the rates needed to recover 2027 power costs under the Energy Resource Recovery Account.

____
Large Load Forecasts in PJM // AES Ohio

PJM’s summer and winter peak forecast nearly doubled by 2045, comparing the 2026 forecast (green line) to the 2025 forecast (blue line) for AES Ohio’s service territory (PJM Dayton Zone). There is a dramatic ascent of more than 5,000 MW between 2030 and 2035. This comes from the Ohio Energy Leadership Council, a trade group for industrial energy users, in its testimony expressing support for AES Ohio’s proposed Curtailable Use Reliability Benefit (CURB) program for C&I customers.

____
Dominion’s Take // PJM Resource Adequacy

Dominion submitted a presentation in the workshops to discuss PJM’s Powering Reliability Through Market Design white paper. The presentation outlines the utility’s thinking for how load (or, in Dominion’s words, “load entities”) should procure capacity. One bullet point sums it up:

"Encourage LEs to contract for, or bring their own, new generation required to meet their incremental load growth/restructure the capacity market so that the Base Residual Auction functions as a residual auction rather than a centralized auction”

Dominion proposes that load entities that do not procure at least 70% of the capacity needed to meet their incremental large load additions should be penalized. Check out their proposed formula on page 5, and track the materials from these workshops here.

____
PJM’s Decisional Letter // Critical Issue Fast Path (CIFP)

The PJM Board released a Decisional Letter directing PJM staff to include the following proposals from the Critical Issue Fast Path stakeholder process in an upcoming filing with FERC.

1. Establish a large load registry
2. Reliability Backstop Procurement
3. Interim Resource Adequacy Service (previously called “Connect and Manage”)
4. Compensation for Reduced Load

It’s short and worth a read. Check it out here.

____
New Dockets of the Week

• In New Jersey, Atlantic City Electric (ACE), an Exelon company, filed a petition with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to approve its proposed cost recovery mechanism and return on equity of 9.6% to develop a 500 MW, 4-hour, battery storage facility on company-owned property in Salem County. ACE will develop and own the project, and Invenergy will provide assistance and operate the BESS through an operations and maintenance agreement. ACE will offset the cost of the resource with revenues earned through PJM’s energy, ancillary services, and capacity market.
  

Excerpt(s) of the Week

• John Zakrasek, founding member and Executive Director of Linn Clean Energy District, filed a “Motion to Pause Application’s Proceeding and Require Integrated Resource Planning” in Interstate Power and Light’s request for a CPCN to construct the Morgan Valley Energy Center, 720-MW simple-cycle gas turbine in Linn County, Iowa. We’ve covered the magnitude of the data center load forecasts in this part of Iowa before, but this excerpt from the motion lays out the numbers in more stark detail.
  
  “The currently projected electrical requirements of all the proposed 19 QTS and Google data centers in Cedar Rapids and Palo are approximately 7.4X greater than the total utility electricity provided to all Linn County residential, commercial and industrial customers in 2023…Over the last 20 years, demand for electricity in Iowa has increased less than 2% a year. Now, in Linn County, it is increasing 740% (7.4X greater). This is equivalent to Linn County expanding its population by over 1.7 million people along with all the commercial and industrial businesses, homes, schools, hospitals and other facilities necessary to support such an expanded population.”
  

Most clicked item from last week’s WHiE

• Batch Zero Interconnection Study Scope
• Halcyon summary of Type 4 payments for transmission-level interconnection in CA