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RRC continues to move towards filing RCA certificate application
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
The Railbelt Reliability Council is continuing to move towards filing an application to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska for a certificate as the electric reliability organization for the Alaska Railbelt electrical system, Julie Estey, chair of the RRC implementation committee, told a public meeting of the RCA on Oct. 13.
The RRC anticipates bringing a more unified approach to the oversight and management of the Railbelt system by maintaining and mandating reliability standards for the high voltage electrical system; administering rules for open access to the transmission grid; conducting Railbelt-wide system planning; and investigating ways to share costs across the grid and to reduce power generation fuel costs for consumers. In 2020 the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 123, legislation that enables the RCA to regulate EROs in Alaska. And on June 29 of this year the commission issued regulations for the implementation of SB 123, setting the legal rules under which EROs can be certified and regulated. However, the new regulations still need to be approved by the Department of Law and the lieutenant governor before they can go into effect.
Estey said that the RRC implementation committee has hired additional staff to help ensure that the organization’s RCA certificate application meets the regulatory requirements, and to provide expertise in electrical system standards, tariffs and integrated resource planning.
A first of its kind The RRC application, the first application of its type, will set a precedent for ERO certificate applications, Estey commented. Given this situation and the resultant lack of a track record for this type of application in Alaska, the implementation committee is documenting questions to put to the RCA prior to the submittal of the certificate application. And once the regulations have been finalized through lieutenant governor approval, the committee plans a work session, open to the public and other potential certificate applicants, to discuss the questions that the RRC has raised and the essential elements of the application, Estey said. Uncertainty in interpreting the ERO regulations is presenting challenges in preparing the RRC certificate application, she commented.
The board structure One of the thorniest issues revolves around the question of ensuring an appropriately balanced structure for the RRC governance board, so that all significant stakeholders are appropriately represented in setting RRC policies. In its regulations the RCA has included a lengthy definition of what the agency would consider to constitute an appropriately balanced board structure. Stakeholders in the electrical system include, for example, electricity consumers, the electric utilities and independent power producers.
To comply with the regulatory definition of a balanced board, during the summer the RRC announced that it was going to add a representative from a large commercial electricity consumer to its board membership. Estey said that the implementation committee has since selected a representative from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to fill that seat. Other voting board members would consist of representatives from the five Railbelt electric utilities, Doyon Utilities, the Alaska Energy Authority, Cook Inlet Region Inc. (operator of the Fire Island wind farm), Alaska Environmental Power (operator of Delta Wind), and two non-affiliated members, one of which is Renewable Energy Alaska Project. The RCA and the State Agency for Regulatory Affairs and Public Advocacy would each have a non-voting seat on the board.
- ALAN BAILEY
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