What's Happening in Energy highlights the most interesting findings from public utility commission filings.
Hey there, it's Nat –
This week’s WHiE covers:
And much more!
Skim it, scan it, or go down the rabbit hole — every filing is linked and every query is yours to run. Start here with this Halcyon query:
What's Happening in Energy — May 8
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In Virginia, Dominion’s who’s-who of large load players (including Emerald AI, Google, Verrus, Tract, Amazon and others) dropped three days and 1,126 transcript pages in a hearing to approve large-load connection queue process standards. An interesting question from Commission Chairman Bagot on technical dependencies: “So are you saying that absent PJM developing a flexibility framework between now and January of 2027, the Company will not be able to comply with the legislation that requires the Company to comply with voluntary flexibility tariffs?” The hearing was held on April 28th, 29th, and 30th; Halcyon surfaced the following areas of disagreement.
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In New Jersey, the Board of Public Utilities issued a Request for Information (RFI) to implement a statewide VPP program (docket) and Phase 2 of the Garden Stage Energy Storage Program (docket). The RFI was issued pursuant to an Executive Order from the Governor in January to address the electricity affordability crisis and the PJM capacity crunch. RFI responses are due May 20th. The Board has 2 months left to commence the development of a VPP program.
Halcyon angle: Halcyon’s search capabilities let users to understand an RFI in the context of other proceedings. For example, to connect New Jersey’s proposed VPP program to PJM’s Reliability Backstop Procurement (RBP), a user can filter to PJM and New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, apply “Any of” keyword filters: “Reliability Backstop Procurement,” “Virtual Power Plant,” and “GSESP 2,” then ask a targeted question about how the RFI fits into the RBP. Check out the Halcyon response.
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In Southwest Power Pool (SPP), a presentation covering risks related to emerging large loads for an upcoming meeting of the Grid Transformation Advisory Group. The presentation provides a nice visual of what is causing North America load growth (see below) and details the resulting high, medium, and low-priority risks.
Rather than identify where data centers are a load growth factor, it’s easier to list where they are not: parts of the Southeast, New York, New England, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
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In Texas, investor-owned utilities filed annual reports detailing the implementation progress of resiliency plans (docket). Here is a Halcyon-generated summary for CenterPoint, Oncor, and and TNMP covering the biggest expenditures from the prior year and the upcoming year for each utility.
Halcyon angle: Halcyon built this summary in under two minutes. Utilities file giant annual reports to a state commission, and Halcyon users want to quickly understand key figures and highlight issues in each. Here’s what we did: once these filings arrived in our inbox, we opened the associated docket, selected the filings submitted on the report submission deadline (May 1st), and asked our question of choice. Keep this workflow in mind to stay on top of any regular reporting cadence that you may want to follow in the utility commission world.
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Also in Texas, Public Utility Commission Staff recommended the Commission eliminate the longstanding 4CP (Four Coincident Peak) methodology for allocating transmission costs in ERCOT during the peak 15-minute intervals in each of the summer months (Staff draft report). They recommended moving to a 12CP approach, where transmission costs are allocated to loads based on their average share of the system’s coincident peak during the peak 30-minute interval of the peak day in each and every month. Why? Because the state gets peak demand in winter now!
“Not only is the ERCOT region today experiencing peak demand in the winter months, which rivals the peak demand in summer months, but the ERCOT region is also experiencing unprecedented load growth. ERCOT’s load forecasts, which are used for transmission planning, will drive significant investments in transmission infrastructure over the next six years to reliably serve the load seeking to interconnect. Therefore, changes are needed to the Commission’s wholesale ratemaking practices and retail ratemaking practices to ensure that all loads appropriately contribute to the recovery of costs to provide access to the transmission system.”
The Staff’s modeling suggests that 12CP will increase the share of transmission costs paid by industrial users that are directly billed for their 4CP demand, and reduce the share of costs paid by residential and non-residential customers that are not directly billed for their 4CP demand. This would more evenly distribute transmission costs based on how they are incurred across customer classes. Here is a chart Staff produced that shows the different cost shares across customer classes for different transmission cost allocation methodologies, from 4CP to 12CP.
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In Iowa, Summit Carbon Solutions (SCS) is requesting the Utilities Commission to conduct a hearing on its permit for a CO2 pipeline from Iowa ethanol plants to North Dakota underground sequestration sites (SCS filing). SCS argues that it needs a hearing that could last a “couple of weeks, not days” as argued by other parties. Last year, after the Commission approved SCS’s permit for a route through North and South Dakota, South Dakota passed a law banning CO2 pipeline developers from using eminent domain. A district court then remanded the permit back to the Iowa Utilities Commission to reconsider in light of the ban. SCS is now considering new routes through Nebraska and within Iowa. Read Halcyon’s summary of the latest developments in this proceeding.
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In Tennessee, natural gas distributor Atmos Energy is responding to Consumer Advocate scrutiny over its Annual Rate Mechanism (ARM). The ARM allows Atmos to reconcile costs incurred according to pre-determined formulas without going through a rate case. At issue is Atmos’s claimed legal fees from injury and damages. Read Halcyon’s summary of the opposing sides’ stances.
And because nothing embodies utility regulation like a good line-item table, here’s a standout from this filing: billboard expenses for a pithy advertising slogan – “Home chefs agree, natural gas really cooks.”
Here are the line items in question, including a “Football ad: We go the extra yard to support the home team.”
Natural gas really cooks 🔥
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In Michigan, Indiana Michigan Power Company (I&M) submitted its 2025 Annual Report on Energy Waste Reduction (EWR) Plan Cost Reconciliation. Combined, the application, testimony, and report is 521 pages long (full filing). We asked Halcyon to break things down for us. According to the response, “Because the performance fell below the 75 percent plan target threshold (37,152,716 kWh), the company did not earn a financial incentive for the year.”
Halcyon angle: Halcyon query responses yield three different views: Analysis, Documents, and Figures. We clicked the three dots in the bottom right of the query response view and toggled to Figures. The figure that Halcyon zeroed in on quickly shows a very important takeaway in this long document: targeted energy savings versus achieved savings…none of which hit their target marks.
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At the FERC, we are closely following the proceeding on MISO and SPP’s request to suspend competitive transmission solicitations (follow along by clicking Alert in the top right of the docket). Over the past few weeks, many parties have filed to intervene in what will likely be a highly contentious battle over the future of FERC Order 1000, which addresses electric transmission planning and cost allocation.
Halcyon angle: With 51 motions to intervene so far, we queried the entire docket to get a sense of who has filed these motions and the rationales behind their intervention.
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In MISO, the results of the operator’s 2026 Planning Resource Auction are in. For all regions, the auction cleared at $33.92, $35.97, and $7.61 per MW-day for fall, winter, and spring. Summer prices cleared at much higher levels: $424.30 for the North/Central zones topped the chart.
“The Reliability Based Demand Curve (RBDC) framework ensures a reliability-focused pricing structure that accurately reflects the reliability value of capacity above (and below) resource adequacy targets, while helping with the price stability”.
Additionally, the accredited capacity cleared for the summer in this year’s auction outpaced reductions to accreditations and resource retirements.
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Halcyon Team Query of the Week
New Docket of the Week
In Hawaii, the Public Service Commission opened a proceeding to design and implement a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) grid-services program. Check out the docket and read through Halcyon’s summary of the program’s participation model, goals, and expected timeline. According to the response, the “program seeks to gather nearly all legacy and future DER into a single framework to maximize benefits and optimize performance for fossil fuel displacement”.
Public Comment Excerpt(s) of the Week
Most clicked item from last week’s WHiE