Renewable Energy Organizations Ask Commission to Enforce Interconnection Regulations to Ensure Transparency and Accountability
AUGUSTA – The Maine Renewable Energy Association (MREA) and the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA) on Friday petitioned Maine’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to enforce existing interconnection standards for transparency and accountability for Central Maine Power. In particular, the organizations are asking the Commission to compel CMP to complete interconnection studies in a more organized and timely manner, to prevent significant loss of investment that is directly tied to the utility’s apparent unwillingness to sufficiently resource and prioritize the reliability of study schedules.
The petition comes after a chaotic year-and-a-half that left dozens of potential solar projects delayed by up to 12 months, risking hundreds of millions of dollars of investment capital and jeopardizing the transition to clean, renewable power for tens of thousands of Maine electricity consumers.
“CMP’s continued inability to provide solar customers — residential and business customers — with reliable study schedules threatens the ability for Mainers to benefit from this burgeoning industry. Disappointingly, the lack of progress on these interconnection studies has again created a crisis for Maine’s renewable energy industry,” said Jeremy Payne, Executive Director of the MREA.
CMP is required to conduct so-called “system impact studies” of new energy projects, to ensure their safe integration to the power grid. Until these studies are complete, these projects cannot move forward.
MREA and CCSA laid out a comprehensive history of the cluster study/interconnection issue in their petition. Some key points from the filing include:
- CMP has completed only one (1) cluster study over a nearly 18 month period;
- 17 studies are still pending, delaying over 800 MW of renewable energy projects;
- Current estimates for the completion of these studies is now up to 12 months behind CMP’s initial estimates;
- CMP left solar developers in the dark about these delays for months, and left “grossly inaccurate” completion dates published on their website until February 2021.
The petition asks the PUC to hold CMP accountable regarding its role in the interconnectivity process by requiring CMP meet key transparency and performance standards, and to assess whether the utility has sufficient processes and staffing resources in place to meet their required interconnection obligations.
“The industry has made continued good-faith efforts to work with CMP to overcome these issues over a nearly two year period,” said Kaitlin Kelly O’Neill, Northeast Regional Director for CCSA. “It’s clear at this point that CMP is either unwilling or unable to complete these studies in a reasonable timeframe, and we ask the PUC to intervene on behalf of the tens of thousands of Mainers who are negatively impacted by these delays.”