Latest / Clean Power Hour / How Illinois' Public Utility Commission is Speeding the Energy Transition with Carrie Zalewski |EP156

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How Illinois' Public Utility Commission is Speeding the Energy Transition with Carrie Zalewski |EP156 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Carrie Zalewski: When I think about the authority of the Commission in Illinois, it talks a lot about the distribution grid, you know, we have to build a grid correctly. If we build it, if we build it right, I believe in hope that it can absolutely increase clean energy, but also increase reliability. Also have downward pressure on costs,
• 1:14
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition. Here at the Clean Power Hour. Our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do too.
• 1:28
  intro: We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it.
• 1:34
  intro: Together, we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:42
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour why you should care about your PUC. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. I'm Tim Montague, your host check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. And check out our YouTube channel and give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel and tell your friends.
• 2:03
  Tim Montague: Like I said today on the Clean Power Hour why you should care about your PUC your Public Utilities Commission. My guest today is Carrie Zalewski. She is the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. The Illinois Commerce Commission is our PUC here in Illinois. It oversees the utilities. Welcome to the show. Carrie, I look forward to this conversation.
• 2:24
  Carrie Zalewski: Hi, Tim, really, really grateful to be here and I'm excited about the conversation to
• 2:27
  Tim Montague: the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by Denowatts. If you're a solar PV asset manager or performance engineer, you need better data and better business intelligence. With Denowatts digital twin benchmarking technology you get more accurate, efficient and faster performance measurement results.
• 2:44
  Tim Montague: The fourth generation Deno recently completed a technical review by DNV you can download the report at Denowatts.com That's D E N O W A T T S.com.
• 2:59
  Tim Montague: Now back to the show.
• 3:00
  Tim Montague: We met at the at the solar Expo in the Midwest solar Expo a few months ago. And you were on stage explaining to our audience there what's going on with the PUC in Illinois. But give our listeners a little background on yourself. How did you come to the to the PUC it's easier to say PUC than ICC? So we'll just call it the PUC. How did you come to the PUC? You've been there for four years. And this is your swan song. But give us a little background on yourself.
• 3:34
  Carrie Zalewski: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that. i Yeah, so I am. I went to school for engineering. I really like learning about technology. And when went straight into law school, and I found myself in roles working in environmental compliance, I served as the chief environmental compliance attorney for our state's DoD Department of Transportation.
• 3:58
  Carrie Zalewski: And then I got tapped to serve on something called the pollution control board in Illinois. So another acronym PCB, in the PCB is like the environmental court of the state. So if there's a violation of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act, or there's a change to the regulations, it comes before the PUC, or excuse me that the PCBs y'all heard it's getting. And we did a, you know, I did a lot of great things there that I'm proud of, we changed the water quality standards in the Chicago River to make it more accessible for recreational use, you see the water just getting better and better. But the last case, I want to, I want to point your attention to, we worked on something called the multi pollutant standard. That was the ability for fossil fuel generators to come together and determine how they wanted to admit their socks and docks. So if they had scrubbers on one unit, and they could control it really well, they might be able to like, you know, ramp it up and another unit, as long as overall, they were under the certain marks. Well, during that proceeding, there was this conversation about massage, run and miso and reliability. And that's kind of where I really cut my teeth on the energy markets. It was also there that I realised to make some of the biggest impacts and to help out and make change in environmental issues is a shift over into energy issues. There's certainly a Venn diagram overlap. But the energy space was really exciting and interesting and looked very challenging. So Governor Pritzker runs on a clean energy platform. He says, I hope in my first term to put forward this clean energy legislation, and so knowing he was That was his Land, I put my hat in the ring.
• 5:50
  Carrie Zalewski: There's an online process to apply for these sorts of positions, the governor picks in the Senate, you go through a Senate hearing, and they have to confirm and this is kind of a typical path. For a PUC Commissioner. I think it's something like 41 of the states have this path that's either legislative or gubernatorial appointee, where the other ones you actually run. It's an office you run for. So Governor Pritzker appointed me and you know, it's been a real roller coaster, but truly the challenge and the honour of a lifetime.
• 6:29
  Tim Montague: Very cool. And, you know, I love it that you were involved with the pollution control board. Because, you know, in the Midwest, we have a lot of coal and natural gas fired power plants. Illinois is a mix and unusual mix, okay, 40% of our grid power is nuclear.
• 6:47
  Tim Montague: And so that's a carbon neutral.
• 6:53
  Tim Montague: Once those plants are up and running, it's carbon neutral, but and they have their unique set of challenges. But then the rest of our grid power is a lot of coal, natural gas, and then starting about 15 years ago, wind, and now solar, you know, thanks to fija and Seija, the climate and equitable JOBS Act, which is what Pritzker was so excited about. So we, you know, the energy transition is about reducing the load of co2 pollution. There's other kinds of pollution that come out of these power plants, right?
• 7:31
  Tim Montague: There's particulates. There's mercury, which is a heavy metal, which is toxic to living things.
• 7:39
  Tim Montague: But so, you know, I just love it, that you're connected to that cleaning up the environment, and now really leaning into other ways of regulating the grid and encouraging the transition. To the extent that the PUC or the ICC, as you call it, can do that. I guess that would be very helpful, though, if you would explain for our listeners, what does the ICC do day in and day out? And what level of control?
• 8:11
  Tim Montague: Do you have over these things like the energy transition?
• 8:15
  Carrie Zalewski: Yeah, thanks for that question, too. It's a so just a level set. Every state has a PUC, like you mentioned, and the ICC, so it's called the Illinois Commerce Commission.
• 8:26
  Carrie Zalewski: But the ICC has been around for 100 years, in fact, even older because we had our roots in some regulation over the railway. So Rails was the first legal monopoly in Illinois. But now, these PCs have been created, because another legal monopoly in the United States are utilities. So utilities are allowed to be legal monopolies for a variety of reasons, economies of scale is one we don't want 500 entities building wires and everyone competing to use their wires, that doesn't make a lot of sense. So utilities have agreed to be monopolies or get to be monopolies rather, but in exchange, they agreed to be regulated, regulated. And so we are the regulators of the utilities. So, you know, there's different sorts of authorities in different states, Illinois, we have authority, actually, in some towing trucks, and interest rate movers. I obviously won't spend much time talking about that today. But we on the utility side, we balance the interests of the utility, we do not want to push them into bankruptcy. So we make sure that their books are solid, we balance the interests of the utility and the consumer to ensure reliable, least cost services and Gas and Water and Electric. Now, what does it have to do with clean energy? Well, a lot. So there's a really great article that that Julian spec, Spector wrote about and Canary media talking about, what is a Public Utility Commission, and why should you care? It's funny, I sent it to my parents, because I still don't think they understand what I do. But the reality is, is these conversations about things like net metering, and how renewables are interconnected to the grid, are being determined at PUC every day, certain PCs are vertically integrated, meaning that the regulators regulate the generation and they make decisions and they approve the ability to close coal plants, when and how that should be done. You know, whether there's what type of resources should be coming online, and when and how and how much all of us are paying in a socialised way. So these are big decisions that are truly happening not just in Illinois across the entire country. Because the reality is, is that the transition is happening. We I know your you, Tim and your listeners know this, the transition is happening for a variety of reasons. It could be state policies like Illinois, it also could be because of costs are coming down and is now competitive with these traditional resources like coal and gas. And so or consumer preference. There are no companies, as you know, that have a preference. Outside of state policy, they've indicated that they're moving to net zero, and they will only buy clean energy. And so this transition is happening. And it's it's the regulators that are approving all the spending by these utilities, and also making changes of rules and regulation of how D ers distributed energy resources, solar wind storage, interconnect to the grid, because the reality is the utility that has complete control of the grid, and there's a reason for that they're trying to protect their grid. So when anything tries to come to interconnect, they're, you know, they're protective, and they want to make sure that it's done in the proper way.
• 12:03
  Tim Montague: So we have three IOUs, in Illinois, comed, Amarin, and Mid American, and they cover what 70% of the population of the state a big a big percentage of the population. That's the big urban areas, Chicago, and the St.
• 12:20
  Tim Montague: Louis area, and then various metros in central Illinois like Peoria, and Champaign and, and Bloomington Normal. And then the rest is Swiss cheese with public utilities. These are municipal utilities and rural coops, which are in a different bucket.
• 12:39
  Tim Montague: Right? You're the the ICC is not regulating the public utilities, is that right?
• 12:44
  Carrie Zalewski: We do not regulate municipal and Co Ops, that's correct, yeah.
• 12:47
  Tim Montague: But in Illinois, Illinois is a deregulated state.
• 12:51
  Tim Montague: So there's the grid operator, let's just say comed, in northern Illinois, and then there's power suppliers or energy suppliers. These are 70 different companies that can sell kWh to consumers and business owners. And and are you regulating that part of the industry as well then,
• 13:20
  Carrie Zalewski: so we regulate the the wires that come in Amarin MidAmerican are building so that the electrons can move through it. And obviously, you I think you're touching a bit on the alternative retail electric suppliers. So another piece of this is that in being a retail access state, you as a customer can choose if you want your default utility to provide to be the server of the electrons. Or if you want an alternative provider, the Ares alternative retail electric supplier, right, and they go out and procure the energy on your behalf and then provide it to you. We have regulation over the areas, we don't have regulation on the price that they can, that they can impose on customers, but their business practices, how they get customers, how they make sure that their registration is up to snuff, things like that. We have regulation. And we have actually a newer enforcement team that we started, since I became chair to make sure that we're really going after the the bad actors in the airspace. So it's a different type of authority.
• 15:18
  Carrie Zalewski: Then the the utility, the the investor owned utility, because they ask us for things like how do we figure out what class a customer is like? Are they commercial or industrial? Is it low income, and they come to us and they file a proposal in an open forum where anybody can you know that different parties can intervene, and it's decided an open case, it's very like the robust process. That doesn't happen on the Aries side, the Aries is determined what their how much what the contract says you know how much they charge the customer, for example.
• 15:55
  Tim Montague: And now we're in the process of fulfilling Seija the climate inequitable JOBS Act, which is incentivizing community solar, large, DG, large commercial, industrial, and then small commercial, industrial and residential, solar. And these projects all have to connect to the grid, whether it's residential solar project, or a, you know, large, or large CNI or small utility, a community solar project, they have to get permission to connect their project to the grid operator, whether that's Amarin comment or made American.
• 16:37
  Tim Montague: And one of the one of the challenges that you know, developers and installers face is that the utility is kind of like God in that relationship, you have to fill out an application to interconnect your, your, your DR, your distributed energy resource to the grid, and then they will make some judgement, they'll do an analysis, let's just say it's a two megawatt behind the metre large industrial solar facility.
• 17:05
  Tim Montague: And the utilities say, Well, you know what, we're gonna bump this to a level three interconnection study, and then they take a little more time and of your money, you have to pay more money for the interconnection study. And then they'll come back and say, oh, you know what, this is going to be a level four. So we need three more months, and we need, you know, 1500 more dollars. And then at the end of that, they'll say, Oh, guess what, we're happy to give you an interconnection agreement, but you have to make an upgrade to the grid in the form of a transformer upgrade.
• 17:36
  Tim Montague: Because the transformer can't handle all the, you know, stress that you're going to put on it with this D er. And sometimes that's fine. It's no big deal.
• 17:49
  Tim Montague: It's some 10s of 1000s of dollars, but it's not a deal killer. Sometimes, it's too much money and the project falls apart. And this happens, I think, more more often with community solar than with behind the metre projects, but where in this world, so to speak, that we solar professionals work and live and breathe, actually, day in and day out? Where does the ICC come in, in the in that world?
• 18:17
  Carrie Zalewski: Ya know, it's a, it's a problem, we have these goals, you know, and we have a commitment by the FBI on behalf of the state. And we cannot have the utility being the barrier.
• 18:28
  Carrie Zalewski: And the story that you're telling me is something you know, I've heard both in Illinois and nationally, and it's something that CJ tries to address in a couple of different ways. And, you know, let me let me give you a couple examples.
• 18:41
  Carrie Zalewski: So first of all, we under Seija, were first of all trying to we did a grid audit. And so we took stock of how many interconnection agreements are being how many interconnection applications are filed with Amarin and comed, and how long it's taking. So we have some metrics of like, what's happening in you know, here's, we can hear something from the utility, but it helps to have information. So there was an outside consultant that took this information down, it's in a republic publicly available report, the grid audit does a lot of things it talks about where has money been spent in the last 10 years on these grids, and for the ability to move at the end of the first round is Seija to the multi year grid plan, which is open before the commission now, which I should mention, I'm not able to talk about open cases. But the language of the legislation says that it's required that the Commission look out for years, and make sure that the policies and goals we have in the state match where the utilities spending money. So the utility is building a grid that matches our goals. And our goals are stated in legislation to increase the ers for the purpose of meeting our goals. So interconnection, one really good tool we now have is a performance metric. So we talked a little bit about my time at the PCB and my time at the ICC.
• 20:05
  Carrie Zalewski: So being an energy regulator versus an end or excuse me, environmental regulator, the PCB. And being an energy regulator at the ICC, at the PCB, we were, you know, kind of chasing these entities with a stick the threat of a penalty, right that we can enforce. At the ICC, we do have some ability and complaint cases to assess penalties. But more than that, we hold the purse strings like the utility asked permission.
• 20:33
  Carrie Zalewski: And that's a lot that's a lot of authority. And one way that we can incentivize a utility to get behaviour that we want is through a performance metric.
• 20:45
  Carrie Zalewski: And these this idea of a performance metric is that, you know, we say okay, utility, right now, this is what you're producing, for whatever metric we want, you could have a metric on how long it takes for the utility to answer the phone when someone calls, this is how long it takes. Now, if you shorten the time, you can earn more money. This is how much you can earn. If you shorten it by this much. If you shorten it for even more, you can earn more. That's an example of a metric. And in Illinois, we have a metric of interconnection times. So how long it takes for an interconnection to happen. So removing that barrier, if the utility using the grid audit, they come back to us and they show that there are better results. The time is quicker, you know for a variety of reasons, then they can earn more. So they are now incentivized to do something through through money. I want to give you another tool so we changed some of the language and interconnection your whole point about the different levels of reviews. We were noticing that certainly utilities like it was default that were falling into these more complex reviews. And so we change language like the default is actually a lower level. And easier, I'm sorry, from getting the numbers transport trance transpose, but easier review unless they prove that the more rigorous review is needed. So there's been some, there's changes in the language.
• 22:02
  Carrie Zalewski: There's also an interconnection working group. And this is an example where developers can be involved and should be involved in in the process. I know that there are trade groups like I know, CCSA is very much involved in this interconnection working group. And let me explain how working group works. So the idea is that all entities are invited, you have the utility there, you have ICC staff, they're not commissioners, but staff. And then you got to have people in the industry. And they, they set an agenda. And it's an ongoing working groups.
• 22:36
  Carrie Zalewski: So there's an agenda for, you know, this month, next month and keeps going. So you decide what topics you're talking about. And you just start kind of opening up the conversation and you look for consensus. There may be times where you see actually quite a bit of consensus with a group and that's good. It kind of quickens the process, you use that consensus to like move that idea forward, then of course, you're going to have major difference, major contention, like they're on opposite ends.
• 23:01
  Carrie Zalewski: So in a situation like that, they can agree to send it up to the commissioners to decide their dispute. How should this be resolved? Because the the reality is him like this example of a developer having a major issue with the utility is one I've heard. And the only way that I can actually do something about it, besides some of these processes I just explained is that they file a complaint with the Commission. Do I can resolve it if someone files this information in a docket, and then all parties can see and then I can rule at the end what should be done. I do know developers worry about it that takes time and lawyers. And oftentimes they have to continue to work with the utility. And so they don't want to like burn a bridge in one place. So I appreciate what you're saying.
• 23:50
  Carrie Zalewski: But we're hoping some of these new tools will help remove the barriers for interconnection.
• 23:57
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• 24:34
  Tim Montague: I love that example. I guess I would, you know, love to see somebody do a before and after, you know, from when these incentives came into force, so to speak. And, you know, because that's what really matters, right? Is that we shorten the period of interconnection. And and we are going to talk about electrification of transportation because you do oversee transportation to some extent. And that's a very important transition that we're also going through, while we're making the transition to wind, solar and battery storage, but what else do energy professionals need to know about the ICC? You mentioned, filing a complaint. And I myself did that one time, because my customer was getting the runaround from their Aires, about net metering.
• 25:26
  Tim Montague: And so I was just like, This is not cool. And I filed a complaint. And lo and behold, we got an immediately response.
• 25:34
  Tim Montague: They claimed that they were doing nothing wrong, but they were responsive, at least, and got things moving forward in a timely manner. So I know that this works, and that the utilities will pay attention to the ICC, you have real authority, which is a wonderful thing. But if you're an energy professional or a consumer, at integrating clean energy into your world into your residence or your business, or you're participating in community solar, what else should we know about the ICC and clean energy?
• 26:12
  Carrie Zalewski: Yeah, so I think, you know, when I would think about the authority of the commission, you know, Illinois talks a lot about the distribution grid, you know, we have to build the grid correctly. If we build it, if we build it, right. I believe in hope that it can absolutely increase clean energy, but also increased reliability. Also have downward pressure on costs. And let me explain why. So it's kind of like red 1.0 In grid 2.0, if you picture I used to I like this graphic, when I speak about this, I often refer to the idea that your your grandfather's grid, you had the centrally located, generation source transmission steps down distribution feeds into a house.
• 26:56
  Carrie Zalewski: And it's a one way flow just goes into the house, people turn their lights on. And that's the end of the story. Now, we know it looks very, very different.
• 27:07
  Carrie Zalewski: Different, it brings a lot of complexities it has, if so you go to that house that the image of the house, you now have a house that's feeding two ways you have, first of all increase load, you have your IDI plugged in, and you're taking more energy from the grid. But also you can feed it back into the grid with a two way flow. You also have things like micro micro grids that can add reliability. I'm really excited about this concept of virtual power plants. So we want all the solar online, we want the wind, we want the storage, and it's great for reducing carbon. But wouldn't it be great and wouldn't it be really interesting if when the grid goes down in another place, you almost have like a little micro grid in an area that's feeding and like healing the grid in another place. So these entities are already online, we just need to send the right price signal the right market to make sure that they're participating in the market. And so our main job is to build that grid to make sure there's enough wires, but not too many wires were needed.
• 28:11
  Carrie Zalewski: Because we're all paying for wires. Every time we add wires or substations or smart inverters. It shows up on all our bills. So we had to make sure we're not spending too much. We were building enough to support these renewables and then use it in his really smart way. And I you know, we talked a bit about generation and how we don't regulate generation. So we spend a lot of time at the ICC advocating on behalf of consumers in Illinois, at our two regional transmission organisation or to markets we're in to so comed, we're in PJM, in mice in Amarin, word miso. And these are large markets, my soul has 15 states that this kind of swath of the Midwest, and PJM shoots out East northeast, and has about 13 states. And these are good, it's good that these markets are large, what that means is diversity brings the ability to access cheaper, and have more of the ability to purchase on behalf of customers.
• 29:13
  Carrie Zalewski: So we spent a lot of time in Illinois, advocating at these two RTOS. And make sure the markets are working as they should, that they're properly valuing clean energy. For example, in miso, or something called a seasonal construct, meaning that acknowledging that capacity that solar is worth more in the summer and should be paid more in the summer than in the winter, which because the sun's out more. And so getting these pieces, right and making sure that the grid is working as it should as the renewables come online. Oh, and that ensuring that clean energy is getting its fair share in the market, it's getting what it deserves, is another really important thing that we're doing at the ICC.
• 30:03
  Tim Montague: Well, since you mentioned, miso and PJM. You know, this brings up the project, I think called Green Belt Express, which is a project to build out large scale transmission lines from I think Nebraska, all the way across Illinois. Mostly impacting myself, but but also interconnecting to PJM. Do you have any purview into what's going on with projects like that?
• 30:42
  Carrie Zalewski: Yes, because it's a sighting review. So another really important thing that states do is they approve siting to make sure that you know, it's when you put down a transmission line, we know that there's a social good, we know that it's important for reliability, bringing on renewables, but it also impacts landowners, not just the the landowner that the line is running through who are often who are compensated. So they do get that benefit, but it's the landowners adjacent. And so it's on the commission to determine that it's done correctly, that everything's been considered and that everyone you know, is everyone in that picture has been considered. So Greenbelt was a case before us that we had to do a final review. Just generally I can speak about transmission. I think that I think most of the nation agrees that we need more transmission to make sure we can move. Like when from the Dakotas when it's very windy into the population set. enters in Chicago and out to New York and out to these other places. And transmission is the key, it brings reliability, it decreases costs.
• 31:48
  Carrie Zalewski: But it also allows for renewable entities to move electrons quickly. And so we advocate for more transmission, but making sure that we don't build too much because we all pay for it.
• 32:01
  Carrie Zalewski: And that the cost allocation is done properly. So how much we pay for it is, is fair. So it's kind of two ways. So we advocate for these transmission stances at PJM, and miso, and then also when the transmission line, it comes time to build it, we review to make sure the footprint is properly considered with all the different actors.
• 32:26
  Tim Montague: And what is the status of that project, in particular, because it is a very important project carrying huge amounts of wind energy primarily, but now increasingly solar energy to long distances from where the resources are to the population centres. You know, there's 1900 Plus gigawatts of clean energy in interconnection queues. Around the US, that's a huge amount of clean energy projects. The total grid is around 1200 gigawatts of power plant capacity. And, and so as we green the grid, we are having to make modifications, right, because we're going to a, a decentralised model, right, where the power plants are many more numerous and disparate than before where we had big central gigawatt scale power plants. So I don't know, is there Do you have any more comments about project this project in particular, or projects or or similar, you know, upgrades that are being made?
• 33:36
  Carrie Zalewski: I mean, I could tell you that we did approve the review of Greenbelt. Obviously, the status is something I don't I just don't know why you'd have to check in with Invenergy and see what the status of that is.
• 33:48
  Carrie Zalewski: And then I, you know, I don't know if there's additional like filings and different courts about it. But I can just speak to the fact that, you know, we did ultimately approve it this last spring.
• 34:01
  Tim Montague: Very good, very good. Other Other aspects of this energy transition before we talk about transportation, electrification of transportation, which is a big deal, because that's 40% of our carbon footprint, in the US anyway. But anything else related to your work at the ICC that you want to highlight for our listeners around clean energy?
• 34:25
  Carrie Zalewski: I think I'll add that, you know, we're trying to figure out storage, we know that we need it, we know that there's this whole we're getting signals from the the operator, the miso crud operator, that there's a resource adequacy issue. And that's a technical term, meaning that it's the generation. And the signal in the understanding that we're getting is that fossil fuel entities are retiring, which is expected and sometimes prompted by some of these policies, but they're not being replaced quick enough. And this goes to your point, Tim, about interconnection cues, and transmission issues and supply chain, as you know, is wreaking havoc on this process. So there's a shortage. There's a in my so they call it mine the gap, it's like, off the London tube.
• 35:14
  Carrie Zalewski: So the idea that we have this, we have renewables that are trying to get on and trying to work their way through the queue. And we have fossil fuel generation that's retiring. But it's but there's a gap of like five years. And so what do we do? And so there's a lot of conversations that can be done with your price signals, but to make sure that we're getting storage on and maybe even if it's some of the socialised costs under siege, or there was a bit of ability to build out some storage on retiring fossil fuel plants, because infrastructure is already there.
• 35:47
  Carrie Zalewski: That's one good example. There's a lot of look on demand response. So just bring it back to that conversation on performance metrics. Another performance metric is peak demand. So shaving, decreasing the peak demand because we know that prices are set, and the worst things happen on the hottest days or the coldest of days. And so making sure that we have all the things that can avoid, first and foremost major outages and deaths, we saw that in winter storm URI, we saw that in Elliott, things like demand response are the things that could come in and save the day.
• 36:27
  Carrie Zalewski: So making sure that we are valuing them in the market so they can be there when needed.
• 36:32
  Carrie Zalewski: We know storage is a really important part. We actually did a storage study where we looked at, you know, cost benefit analysis. says different types of storage, how much storage we might need. There's a conversation in the General Assembly this last spring about setting like an RPS for storage that has to go through legislation. I think that's another important like peace finding a revenue stream for resources that we want to see.
• 37:00
  Carrie Zalewski: Come on, come on quickly.
• 37:03
  Tim Montague: I mean, you're an engineer by training. When you think about storage, doesn't it just kind of make sense, right?
• 37:11
  Tim Montague: That storage is really good for the grid, right? Because it's like a sponge, right? He can absorb instantaneously extra power, and he can discharge instantaneously or virtually instantaneously extra power. So it's like a, it's like a power plant. But it's too it's bi directional. It's, it's way more valuable than solar or wind, or coal or gas, for that matter.
• 37:36
  Tim Montague: Now, is it cost effective, that's another matter, right?
• 37:39
  Tim Montague: And that calculus is being done and, and society is now incentivizing the adoption of batteries. An example of this is the coal to soil solar legislation in Seija. The clean and the climate inequitable JOBS Act includes a whole section called coal to solar, which was a standalone bill previously, this draw, the utility from Texas owns a fleet of coal plants that it is going to sunset, some of them are already sunset, and replace those coal plants with batteries and solar plants. This is about 300 megawatts. So it's not a huge amount of power, but it's non trivial. And bistra. For anyone who doesn't know, this is one of the largest, if not the largest owner of storage assets in the country. They own the Moss Landing project in California.
• 38:29
  Tim Montague: So they're they're no, they're no noobs to grid storage. But doesn't it just make sense? Like this is going to be really good for the grid to instal a lot of storage?
• 38:43
  Carrie Zalewski: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think we all agree that the storage is needed, and it's needed in a big way. You're absolutely right, Tim, I think it's cos I'm really excited. And I love learning about the different types of storage, the four hour long duration, we know that form energy, just open up its manufacturing plant, which is exciting news. We know the multiday is really interesting, and will certainly I think be used on the grid for different purposes. There's a lot of look at these RTO markets of how, okay, so solar only gets you so far. But if you every time you connect solar with storage, if you pair it, it's gonna get a whole different value, for obvious reasons. And we're creating the market for that so that we make sure that we incentivize. So yes, it is.
• 39:31
  Carrie Zalewski: It's, it's obvious, it's needed.
• 39:39
  Carrie Zalewski: It's needed quickly and seen it tomorrow, we need the diversity of the types of storage. The answer is unequivocally yes.
• 39:47
  Tim Montague: And just for our listeners who don't know, included in Seija are incentives for distributed storage to under$50 per kWh. So storage is cash positive in you know, less than two years for commercial industrial scale, or small utility scale storage. So, storage is coming. Let's talk about transportation in our last few minutes together. Carrie, I really appreciate your time here. We are, you know, slowly but surely, electrifying the transportation networks and infrastructure in the United States? What is your purview?
• 40:30
  Tim Montague: And what is your perspectives on what's going on with electrification of transportation?
• 40:34
  Carrie Zalewski: Yes, the goal in Illinois is 1 million EVs by 2030. We have a long way to go.
• 40:39
  Carrie Zalewski: Admittedly, I thought I checked it were like 60,000 registered EVs were at one hand, just a couple years ago, we were at 20.
• 40:49
  Carrie Zalewski: So it's moving in a nice like, you know, nice curve, but so far to go. So see, just speaks to this in a variety of ways. And I should mention that CJ, gives authority to, you know, different agencies. So for example, EPA runs a rebate programme. So under Seija. Yeah, if you, if you qualify, and you purchase an Eevee, you get a rebate like $4,000. That's EPA, not ICC, but that's one way to increase the numbers. Now from the ICCs perspective, again, we go back to the grid, we're always talking about how, first of all, how can we build the grid or support, building out the grid the way we want to support EVs? And also, we make sure that the utility can charge in a way that when people are charging their EVs, they they're incentivized to charge properly.
• 41:41
  Carrie Zalewski: Let me kind of break the As to things down. So first building the grid out to ensure that EVs are ready. It's all of this, the wiring that goes up to the charging station is very expensive, right? Sometimes you requires the substations, inverters, and that all costs.
• 41:58
  Carrie Zalewski: And so if we want to build off this charging infrastructure, and we see it as a social good, we can allow the utilities to socialise, the costs, not for all build out, but for particular places. In in our beneficial electrification docket. We talked a bit about this. And we determined that one place to make sure there was equity from the equity part of Seija is to support public transportation. So building out these charging stations for CTA buses is extremely expensive.
• 42:28
  Carrie Zalewski: And so we determined that there could be support through socialised costs. So that that the CTA can more cost effectively build charging stations to use for their buses so that everyone can use public transportation. And these buses that run through the communities. Sometimes environmental justice communities benefit from the clean air. So that's one example. That's the grid side of it. Now on the price signal side, how much a utility can charge a customer is something we review as well. So you know, one good way to incentivize an Eevee owner, for example, we want them we know we want them to come home, and would be great to have a smart charger, put it and have it set for like a time of use rate. And ideally that that Evie would charge middle of the night when no one is using very little people are using power, it should be cheap, that'll be cheap for the owner for the user, it will also not harm the grid, because the worst thing that an Eevee owner could do is come and plug it in at 5pm. On like the hottest of all days, when the ACs are cranked up, they just add to the problem. And so through things like a time of use rates, they will be disincentivize, they will have to pay extra money pay more per kilowatt hour to charge at that time. So those two pieces together not only build the grid out to support EVs, but also when people are charging their EVs, they can actually help the grid not harm the grid.
• 44:06
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, when we, when we eventually make the transition to electrified transportation, we're going to need a lot more kWh on on the grid, we're going to double or triple the amount of electricity on the grid. And so it is completely non trivial, that we need more substations and wires, and et cetera. So that we have access to these charging stations, and ultimately, the kWh that we need to charge those batteries.
• 44:36
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• 44:54
  Tim Montague: The fourth generation Dino recently completed a technical review by DNV, you can download the report at Denowatts.com.
• 45:02
  Tim Montague: That's D E N O W A T T S.com.
• 45:02
  Tim Montague: Now back to the show.
• 45:07
  Tim Montague: It's been wonderful having you on the show. Carrie, I wonder if you have any parting comments.
• 45:11
  Tim Montague: And if you can say anything about what the future holds your term has now ended or coming to an end? I think this is your last week at the ICC. So what are your closing comments?
• 45:25
  Carrie Zalewski: Yeah, thank you. i That's right. The June 16 is my last day I transit transition off. It's been incredible. I and I've been reflecting a bit of a bit upon the last four years. You know, and I'm really proud of what I've been able to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time, four years, in some ways is very short. In other ways it feels like a lifetime, you know, having gone through COVID. But implementing CGI, I think is the thing that I'm most excited about is you know, Tim, it was nearly 1000 pages of legislation and it put a lot of new authority and a lot of new workload on our tiny commission of about 200 people and if you take away the just the rail side transportation side, it's about 115 people working on this stuff. And we got we were asked to meet really strict statutory deadlines really tight with limited staff. And we did it we you know, we we worked really hard to make sure you had a plan in place. So we executed the plan. And we you know, I'm not saying it's perfect, but we met all the deadlines got through these incredible amount of workload. So as I reflected I'm walking out the door, I really love what I was able to do and help and support and Seija. I also believe that I'm leaving the commission better than I found it really was, I would have been really working on accessibility for the public and for people in the industry, of all all perspectives in the industry accessibility and mean, that's why I'm speaking to you today trying to educate and explain that we're here. And we want to hear people speaking at the commission. So that was another thing I worked really hard on. And I think I've moved the needle, there is always more work to be done. But it's something that I have been really proud of. So to answer the question, I'm not going to answer the question. I am not, you know, I there's obviously a lot of revolving door considerations. And so I am transitioning off the commission, and then we'll, you know, make decisions on next steps. So please stay tuned for announcements. But I am taking a month off, that's for sure. And just hopefully just get some time to unwind. It's been quite, you know, it's it's been, it's been quite busy four years.
• 47:56
  Tim Montague: Well, thank you so much for your service to the great state of Illinois. And thank you for coming on the show. That was a wonderful discussion. Thank you. Carrie Zalewski, chairman of the ICC.
• 48:05
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, please check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify and tell your friends about the show. I also love to hear from our listeners, reach out to me at clean power hour.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Take care. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here.
• 48:39
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• 49:23
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• 50:05
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• 50:50
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