The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) formally accepted a report, entitled Grid Modernization Study: New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, which included a comprehensive set of recommendations, and authorized the public release of the report.
In recommending the board’s acceptance of the report, staff indicated that the report lays out a framework for modernizing the grid, and its recommendations would greatly improve interconnection rules in New Jersey.
The state grid modernization initiative includes research on both state programs and new technologies, organization and implementation of a comprehensive series of stakeholder meetings, and data requests for specific information. from New Jersey’s Electric Distribution Companies (EDCs), all of which ended with the report’s recommendations to change some interconnection standards. Changing these standards will enable the greater adoption of clean energy resources needed to meet New Jersey’s clean energy goals by improving how they are connected to the electric grid.
“This report and its recommendations are essential to the process of modernizing the grid so that our many new sources of clean energy such as solar, as well as energy storage, can be more easily connected now and in the future, ” said NJBPU President Joseph L. Fiordaliso. “I want to thank the board staff and our consultant Guidehouse for their hard work on an important topic, and our stakeholder community who provided valuable feedback throughout the process.”
In addition, the board directed staff to release for public comment a draft of the proposed rule changes necessary to implement recommendations 1 through 4 of the report that would revise the interconnection rules. . These changes will provide near-term relief from issues that have hindered higher interconnection approval rates for distributed energy resources (DER), such as storage of solar and energy.
Staff is also directed to begin the analysis and stakeholder input process necessary to begin the rulemaking process for recommendations 5-9, which are longer term recommendations. These recommendations are often more complex and will require further analysis and stakeholder input before being incorporated into the second ruling process. Some of these longer-term developments may require legislative action.
The final report was created by Guidehouse Inc., which developed the document through a robust public process, which included five stakeholder meetings over the past 12 months.
Nearby recommendations from the report include ensuring that New Jersey complies with the latest grid interconnection standards of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It recommends streamlining and automating the interconnection application process including the interconnection dispute resolution process. It also drives the improvement of the method of hosting capacity, hosting capacity and granularity of map data, minimum update intervals, and consistency of presentation. This will include electricity distribution companies (EDC) providing a consistent cost data guide for system upgrades.
The recommendations call for the design and implementation of an EDC pre-application process in accordance with NJBPU requirements, which will provide an opportunity to accelerate renewables and storage interconnection. The process should enable key information affecting the live project to be exchanged between the EDC and the customer before a standard interconnection review begins.
The long-term recommendations from the report include the NJBPU developing a steering committee and convening working groups and task forces to further improve the interconnection and grid modernization process. The steering committee should recommend tools and a method for a “regulatory sandbox” to test the “fail or scale” of new technologies and processes.
Informed by the stakeholder process initiated by the NJBPU, NJ EDCs must implement a streamlined flexible queue process across EDCs that will include a prioritization mechanism in a “first ready, first through” approach. This will support more viable projects and avoid queue congestion for Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 projects, while ensuring fairness and equity in the queue.
The NJBPU should establish a steering committee and working groups to research and recommend more cost recovery options beyond the legacy cost-causer approach. Alternatives, which adhere to the concept of prudential costs and do not systematically favor private, unregulated developers at the expense of ratepayers should be explored.
The NJBPU shall direct EDCs to prepare integrated distribution plans (IDP) per NJ Energy Master Plan (NJEMP) and shall provide direction to EDCs regarding the information to be included as minimum requirements for filing their IDP/IDER (integrated distributed energy resource) plans . The NJBPU should provide a rule that non-renewable fuel sources should be separated from renewable sources, and not combined for net metering purposes. This will allow owners of renewable generation to receive full credit without penalty for co-located non-renewable sources, and without sacrificing resource sufficiency.
Proposed rule changes for recommendations will be submitted to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for publication in the New Jersey Register. The board will consider public comments received before adopting final rule changes and publishing them in the New Jersey Register. The proposed rule for near-term recommendations will be submitted to OAL after receiving public comment on the draft rule language. The proposed rule for long-term recommendations will be developed following a robust stakeholder engagement process and submitted when the proposal is developed.
