Latest / Not Another Energy Podcast / Just A Simple Chat: What's Going On In Our Own Backyards And Beyond
Transcript
- speaker-0: to your new favorite show, not another energy podcast. I'm Bethany. speaker-1: And I'm Teresa. speaker-0: And together we are Bloom Advisory Partners. And we got a little bit of a treat for you today, guys. Teresa and I, we're just gonna do a little free-flow conversation. We're gonna talk about a couple things. ⁓ you know, we're we we're gonna talk about some some topics that we talked about on previous pods, some things that are going on in in you know the media right now, some current events, and maybe even like what's going on right in our own neighborhoods. Teresa, what's going on in your neighborhood? Let's start with you. speaker-1: So first I mean FERC has been cranking out orders. Right left. Yes, I do. I do. I think we're just saying things and then FERC does it. speaker-0: Do you think it's because they listened to our podcast? Furk is on on our pod listening. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean several of the stuff that we've talked about. So they issued an order on grid growth, which is that huge transmission line that's gonna run through Ohio down to West Virginia, Virginia. We've talked about that in our data center episodes. We've talked about it in my, you know, sort of skepticism epis episodes, but I don't know what we call those. Res is just angry and raging about ex excess cost. speaker-0: I just call that an episode. ⁓ yeah. It's just treat. It's not a bug, it's a feature, yeah. speaker-1: Yes, yes. ⁓ but then they did it. They did a couple of cool things. They've done interconnection workshops around PJM. And now they're gonna take comments on interconnection, which hey, we all know I don't think Monopoly utilities should own generation ever again. And we also know that the competitive markets have just been waiting in line. They they are literally ready to build. It's the interconnection that's holding everybody up. So good job, FERC, and looking at what the actual issue is and trying to create. Corrected. And then they did an order on data access. So super timely. Again, good job, not another energy podcast, because we were just talking about this. it's not necessarily an order that says release it. So there were a couple of entities, Voltis and Mission Data, who filed it for C and said, look. We are trying to follow the rules. We're trying to run our programs for residential customers. The data access rules aren't working for us. Fix them. And FERC said, yeah, cool. back in 2015, we kind of said that we didn't need to touch it, but now we have FERC 2222. They didn't talk about that part. That's just me throwing that in. but then on top of that, they're like, you know what, you're not wrong. The world has changed and residential demand response is a contributor to the grid. So So again, good job FERC of saying here's where the problem is, here's where we're gonna fix it, we're not just gonna throw money at people and pretend like a competitive industry doesn't exist. So speaker-0: So but what does that mean like practically? Like so they said that. What does that look like? I mean, how much closer is it getting us to being able to use the technology and use the data to do what we want it to do? speaker-1: Yeah, so t two things on it. One, it still has to finish going so basically they said, Yes, we'll take this up and everybody can file comments. So it's not done, but FERC at least has said we acknowledge this as an issue, let's see if we can at least have a conversation and fix it. At that point though, you still have the problem we talked about before, which is states still have to release the data in the right ways. So hopefully a FERC order saying PGM fix your rules will trickle down to states going I have to comply with PGM rules and we will actually finally get real residential programs that pay for response and help the grid. speaker-0: Okay. moving beyond FERC, what else what else we got going on? What else is kinda on your mind in the media? I'm trying to think if I have anything and you know, I'm gonna go back to our guest that we had on last week, Z Sean, because I have not been able to stop thinking about the unintended consequences of climate change and the novel solutions that people are coming up with on their own because they're not getting what they need from their utility or from their government. ⁓ how do you think something like that would fly here if if we had like a whole like solar revolution, you know, what what would that look like if somebody tried to do it in the United States? Because it was funny when we were off camera, he's like, you know, America's supposed to be the land of the free. And you can't do here what we did in Pakistan. So how free are you really? speaker-1: Yeah, I mean it was it was it was a great point. I wish we would have ⁓ kept it in our record. speaker-0: But hey, we're saving. speaker-1: Is one of those things where we actually prevent like so the whole thing that happened in Pakistan is people's bills were high, so they installed solar because they were like, I'm getting bad service and the high bills, I'll just do it myself. In America, ⁓ in the United States, there's lots of places where we straight up prevent that kind of thing from happening. And that's because we have monopolies. So it is a weird thing. We're supposed to be land of the free, but you're only free as long as it doesn't deal with electricity, right? speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. I I I I don't remember seeing that caveat like on a dollar bill or any copies of the constitution, but yes. speaker-1: Your dollar bill says pay the monopoly cost. It's funny because ⁓ the other big thing is ⁓ all the utilities are signing the rate pledge, right? Our our pledge is we're gonna keep rates stable or whatever that hell it means, which is this very suspicious marketing campaign where come on, seriously, your bills are up 85%. You're not saying you're gonna take them down, yeah, right? speaker-0: Yeah. And the monopoly we trust. speaker-1: Yeah, you know my feeling on people are like, ⁓ we had savings but my bill didn't go down. I mean, can we stop your customers aren't dumb. They know what they're paying every month. You saying I signed a rate pledge is not an action to help them. So stop with the words and can we actually just do something? speaker-0: Yeah, and actually it pisses me off even more when they do stuff like that because it's just so performative. Like I I mean that that is whether that them doing that and like, you know, and hey, I do public relations, I get it. That was just a PR stunt. You know, and I I think and it was a very tone-deaf one if you ask me, considering how high people's energy bills are right now, and considering how affordability is a problem that so many people are having, I think their timing sucked. speaker-1: Yes, I absolutely agree. I think something if you were if you really meant to do that, you should have said, Hey, I'm gonna take out of my CEO pay this year, and all of our executives are going to take a I don't know 10% pay cut or our bonuses aren't being paid out, and every single person going forward gets X amount lower bills. And I'm taking it out of my pocket because I see you. Now, to be fair, a lot of the utility customers companies missed their earnings, right? By a lot, except for Duke, who exceeded theirs. But it is one of those things where it's like bills are up, reliability's down, and you gave me a rate pledge. Words are words, man. I I I still have a bank account that's being drained. Help me there. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. ⁓ yeah, good luck with that though. ⁓ why do you think Duke exceeded their earnings, Teresa? And I I know, like listen, listeners, if you don't know this about Teresa, I'm gonna tell you. Nobody loves an earning call more than this woman, okay? speaker-1: She's speaker-0: He fullippin loves them. So if you listen, you know, if you want to hire Bloom to listen to earning calls for you and translate them into into actionable items, I got a gal. I got a gal that can do that for ya. So yeah, so you know what what what's your take, what's your hot take on why Duke did so much better? speaker-1: ⁓ honestly I haven't listened to Dukes yet. I just read the headline which ⁓ maybe we'll do a a future episode and we'll talk through each of ⁓ because it is one of my things that yeah, I like to do my daily walks where I fight with that shitty fucking rude corgi. speaker-0: So that's ⁓ that battle's still going on, huh? speaker-1: It is he's such a jerk. anyway, I do listen to the earnings calls on that. So in the future we can go through one. But I do think it's interesting as I'm listening to these earnings calls where they're talking about how we need to build more wires and do all these things. I noticed in my neighborhood a lot of my neighbors have these generac generators. These natural gas fired generators that I I'm in a co op, you you and I talk about all the time. We love our co-ops. Yeah. So we don't really have reliability issues. Our power rarely goes out. Actually, funny enough, our power only goes out when Duke or First Energy or AES are working on some of the wires that connect into my co-op. Yeah. So it got me thinking, why are people in my neighborhood investing in backup generation if our power never really goes out? Isn't that a waste of money? And then, you know, I'm walking, I'm walking, and I realize there's probably like 20 houses in my neighborhood that have these generac natural gas fired generators. And then I also have a section that I walk through where they're building new houses and all of the new houses are putting solar on. Which I also thought let's like wow. Okay. So I think it's not just about backup reliability anymore. I think a lot of them are probably using it to actually bring down their bills. Okay. speaker-0: I was I was gonna say Doomsday Preppers, but okay, I could see bringing down your bills as another motivating factor. speaker-1: I live in a very rural part of Ohio so that's not that far off. speaker-0: Everybody trees his neighborhood as go bags. Trust. Yeah. speaker-1: Pretty much, pretty much. ⁓ the the whole like diarrhea lettuce right now, my friends in Cleveland are like, what do we do? I'm like, just go to your farm down the road and buy it. And they're like, We don't live where you live, we live in a city. And I'm like, ⁓ too bad for you. speaker-0: Yes, I guess you're gonna get diarrhea. Sorry, Cleveland. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, better find a farmer. But it also made me think, you know, we've talked about this before, with all the stuff that FERC's working on and releasing the data and all the stuff with this like bullshit rate guarantee stuff and all these other things. it feels like people are sort of fed up and just saying, I'm gonna do it myself again. And the the cost to do it is so much lower that that barrier that used to be there where the utilities could step in and say, No, no, no, no, no, we got you because it was just too expensive, so you kinda gave up. That barrier, if it it if it isn't gone, it's definitely eroded to a point. It's no longer something that people aren't afraid to step over. speaker-0: Yeah, but what does that tell you about people's confidence and energy prices ever becoming manageable again that they are outfitting their houses with gas generators and solar just to keep their bills down and not because of reliability issues? I mean to me that speaks volumes about people's confidence in the utilities ever being good stewards of their of their bills. speaker-1: That yes. I I I I think you're spot on. I think bills have reached a point a tipping point where that standard I still love my utility is now gone. They're yeah. And I don't know how you come back from that. I don't think low income programs are going to because low income people have always gotten help, right? And I'm not saying that they shouldn't, but this has gone beyond low income. So when people are th thinking about groceries and having to buy, you know, hydroponic lettuce so that they don't shit themselves or you know, the the guests is expensive. It it all starts squeezing them in a way that at some point they're gonna break and say, Then I can't deal with you anymore. I'll just do it my myself. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I don't know. It's it's a interesting place. Hopefully it it fixes itself. I think the flip side of that though, because I know I'm like I can be anti-utility, but there are a lot of utilities and a lot of states that are now actually focused on forecasting. And good forecasting means less of a build and more focus on the distribution grid the right way. And that could drive bills down. So I think there are good utilities out there who are saying, Look, let's fix our forecasting let's do that right and once we get that right then we can see where maybe we can start bringing bills down not everything is about capacity prices and PJMs some of it is just the basics of the grid speaker-0: Yeah. Well, and let me ask you this, and then I do want to get a little bit more into forecasting so I find that very interesting. Do you think that energy prices are one of those that kind of when they go up to a certain point, they're never gonna come back down to a certain point, right? Like once people have proven that they will pay up to X, like that threshold has kind of been set. And or do you think that energy prices in general I'm asking you to be an energy psychic here again? you know, do you do you think that we will see a tipping point and things are gonna start coming back? down for a multitude of reasons. speaker-1: ⁓ I think on your generation side, definitely, absolutely. I've said this a million times. We're in a build-build-build mode, and eventually we're probably gonna overbuild. And we've seen this happen before. We overbuilt, gen prices plummeted, and people start selling off their assets. That it it's a natural wave of the market. The part that concerns me right now about energy bills is there's a a flip that's happening where your wires and transmission charges are exceeding your generation charges. So the things that are not market-based are going much higher. And when you start seeing that, that's a harder thing to bring down. Because to your point, if you're a holding company of a utility, you're not likely to start taking less money. Yeah. Right. And so you have grid growth that we talked about, giant transmission line. It's gonna get built. I mean, I I realize they have local sighting stuff and whatever, but that's probably an eight year driver of transmission rates going up. You have distribution, which if you wanna fix reliability, you gotta fix your grid. That's just a hard fact. So I don't know if it will ever go down. Hopefully it'll level out at some point. ⁓ But that that's the part because it's not market-based. It doesn't operate like another market. It's a monopoly. And when you have monopolies that control one thing, you don't really have real control over your cost and pricing. speaker-0: Okay. Well that's that's encouraging. Thank you, Teresa. It's like a cry into my DK life bill. I know. so going back to forecasting, because this is interesting and we've got a bunch of friends ⁓ who are who are working on some really smart stuff in forecasting. You know, what do you think the underlying issue is? Is it just bad technology, bad data? You know, are th we were talking about, you know, if you go back to something that was set, let's go back to the beginning when FERC was saying, Well, we did this in twenty fifteen. What's twenty twenty-six? Literally everything is changed. Right. Do you think forecasting is just kind of in that umbrella or do you think it could be different from sort of place to place? speaker-1: I think the guys inside the utilities ⁓ know that their data isn't great and they would like to have better forecasting tools and systems. The problem is the issue with forecasting is bumping up against higher bills. So when they try to get that investment, they're part of, you know, a regulated monopoly that says, Well, I can't raise bills more or a regulator that even if you explained it to them is gonna say, Well, I can't raise bills so that you can have a a better software. package. So it's a combination of all these like weird factors pushing on the very need that should drive the bills down. And how do you get there? The politics of keeping regulators not approving rate cases or rate increases, I should say, at the same time that the utility guys are like, I can fix it, but I need an investment to be able to fix it. Right. They're th they're just not not lining up in most places. There are a lot of places that are sort of doing things a little bit differently or have passed laws that said we need to have better forecasting. And once you have that it actually ironically would actually help the regulators too because they're gonna have better more accurate data so they know what they're approving and it's not this sort of black box of that's cool, go do some tree trimming. speaker-0: Now is there any way to get it implemented where you're not asking the utility to pay for speaker-1: for it. I mean it it is the utility that's responsible for the forecasting. So I I don't know how you would get it get around that. maybe I'm not answering your question correctly. I don't know. Maybe there's somebody out there that has sort of created something that's like, hey, I watch the grid for you. speaker-0: Yeah. Or, you know, like just have Jeff Bezos pay for it. He probably can he has enough money, he could probably pay for every utility to get better forecasting data and programming than they have now. which would be fitting because Amazon has caused so many ⁓ issues that we are facing today. I know not all of them, I know d I know data centers aren't the super villain that everybody makes them out to be. ⁓ you know, it just it sucks that the reality is is that for the grid to get better, it's gonna cost money and the money that it's costing is gonna come back in higher bills. I mean there's no other cur there's no other way currently to to fix it. speaker-1: Yeah, but you did touch on something that states are looking at, which is, you know, if you're a data center and you're just speculatively looking, that can't be included in your forecast utility. You need to get your data center to either commit or they can't go into the forecast because we can't have these overloaded forecasts because a whole bunch of data centers showed up and said, Hey, I might show up. And the utilities are sort of in a rock and a hard place, which is, well, if if I have to build something for you, I have have to put it in my forecast. So a lot of states have sort of implemented these new laws or rules or tariffs that say no more speculation data centers. If you're not willing to sign on the line, then get the hell out. speaker-0: Yeah, and I think Indiana kicked that off, didn't they? Weren't they one of the first? speaker-1: To do that? ⁓ to everything? I don't know. I know Ohio did one speaker-0: Yeah, I think Ohio modeled theirs after Indiana though. ⁓ But but I could be wrong and I probably am, 'cause that's not my side of the horse. That's Teresa's side of the horse. But I don't know. I thought that was speaker-1: Maybe I mean it's not it's not necessarily a a a bad thing, right? I mean you know, at the end of the day it does have an impact and that impact of forecasting trickles all the way up to whether or not we need transmission lines or more generation. So getting it right is important across the board. speaker-0: I unfortunately I don't think we solved any of the world's energy issues today, but I sure did have a fun time talking with you about it. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. There I mean there's a lot happening. It's very exciting. It is exciting. When you open your Duquesne light bill, but speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that's like the opposite of exciting. And it's actually an email now on paperless because I care about the environment, Teresa. I don't know about you. You do you still get yours in the mail? Why do you like why you hate the No. Yeah. ⁓ okay. Then sorry. Sorry that I said speaker-1: Yeah, I do get I I I get my gas bill, not paperless. I it's a whole thing. Enbridge sucks at making sure that they send you a bill or take it out o I I I gotta keep control over that one. They you know Enbridge get a better billing system. speaker-0: Well, I have a feeling that this will come up in a future episode. So stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, for Teresa's raging on gas filling in our next episode. Just kidding, but it probably will come up. But until then, guys, thank you so much for joining us. This was this was a really fun chat, Teresa. I kinda like the just me and you just sitting here spitballing, just gal to gal, energy gal to energy gal. Yeah. So thank you guys. Tune in next week. Who knows what we'll be talking about? And we'll probably ⁓ it'll probably have an update on Teresa's Corgi beef. speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: So until then, thank you for listening. And remember, ⁓ wait, I'm Bethany. I forgot. I was so excited about our conversation. We got to end this the right way, as is tradition. I am Bethany. We are Bloom Advisory Partners. Thank you again. And remember, energy is never just about energy. speaker-1: I'm Teresa.