The good citizens of Missouri peacefully protested outside the Public Service Commission this week.  The citizens are opposed to the plans of Chicago-based renewable energy company, Invenergy, to use eminent domain  to run the high-voltage electric transmission Grain Belt Express Tiger Connector line through their properties.

The successful protest attracted lots of attention from the media.

Such as this story on KOMU.  Maybe someone wants to ask Patrick Whitty at Invenergy who the other customers for 2500 MW of transmission capacity in Missouri might be, since his "39 cities" have only signed up to purchase less than 10% of the available capacity?  Those 39 cities aren't going to generate enough revenue to build a $5B electric transmission line across 4 states.  Can we apply a little common sense here?

And this story in the Fulton Sun.  Isn't that gracious of Invenergy to "thank the citizens for their feedback?"  What a bunch of lousy fakes!

And this one on KRCG.  Short and to the point, heavy on the pictures.

And there are plenty more. 

Too bad for Invenergy, who tried to hide or minimize the Tiger Connector project in recent press releases.... one of which got absolutely no media attention at all.

The cat is out of the bag now...

Bravo, Missouri citizens!

Said Missouri attorney Brent Haden about Grain Belt Express using eminent domain to acquire land in another great article in The Mexico Ledger:

Indeed they would.  Eminent domain is only good for thee, not for me.  My only question is... which home, and could the cows drink from the pool?  It looks like Michael Polsky has more than one home.  This is where your blood, sweat and tears is going to end up if Invenergy gets its way in Missouri... in a fancy mansion that is hardly lived in?

Alan Dale also wrote about a citizens' protest at the PSC in Jefferson City this week (more about that next blog).  Protest organizer Pat Stemme said:

That's a word of caution for the Missouri PSC.  Without an approved interconnection from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) Grain Belt Express cannot connect its transmission line to the existing electric system.  Without an interconnection, it's just an extension cord that's not plugged into anything.  Simply planning to connect somewhere is not good enough.  GBE was planning to connect to a transmission line in Ralls County for many years.  But when Invenergy bought the project, it filed for new interconnections in Callaway County.  If Grain Belt Express had connected as originally planned, the Tiger Connector would not be happening.  And who's to say that Invenergy won't change its mind again and decide to interconnect at a different place, and then run lines from Callaway to another point of interconnection?  Because it's not like Grain Belt Express re-routes its project when it chooses to change its interconnection.  Instead, it just adds more electric lines across private property.  When you've been granted the ability to simply TAKE private property from taxpaying citizens, it doesn't matter how many people you affect.

Another warning:  lack of customers.  Grain Belt Express WILL NOT BE BUILT if it cannot find customers to pay for its transmission line.  Unlike the rest of the lines in Missouri today that are ordered by MISO to meet a reliability or economic need, Grain Belt is strictly a voluntary project undertaken at the company's risk.  Invenergy is risking its capital on the project and betting that customers who need transmission service from Southwestern Kansas to Callaway County, and from Callaway County to Indiana (or SW Kansas to Indiana) will be willing to pay to use the project at a rate that is profitable.  However, even though GBE has been on the drawing board and trying to find customers for a decade, it only has one customer.  That one customer is the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission, or MJMEUC, a a joint action agency comprised of 70 municipally-owned, retail electric systems located across the state of Missouri.  After Grain Belt's first application was rejected by the PSC in 2015 because it caused more harm to Missouri landowners than it provided in benefits to the citizens, Grain Belt offered MJMEUC a fabulous deal.  It offered MJMEUC "up to 200 MW" of transmission capacity from Kansas to Missouri at less than cost.  MJMEUC still had to buy electricity generated in Kansas to transmit to Missouri, but it was a "free lunch" MJMEUC simply couldn't resist.  MJMEUC bought something like 135 MW of wind power from a wind farm in Kansas (contingent upon GBE being built) and claimed the deal saved millions for customers in 39 Missouri cities.  Of course, the devil is in the details, or in this instance in the math equation that produced the savings.  MJMEUC compared the cost of GBE + the cost of the Kansas wind power to an overpriced contract it was locked into to buy electricity from Prairie State in Illinois.  The new power would replace the Prairie State contract that would expire in 2021.

What year is this?  Oh, right, it's 2022.  That Illinois contract expired last year and GBE was not built and could not replace it.  So, what did MJMEUC replace that contract with?  Obviously the lights are still on in 39 cities, so it must have signed a new contract with a new supplier.  So, how much does GBE "save" when compared with that new contract, or even with any other existing contracts that are due to expire soon?  And where's the math for that?  Guess what?  MJMEUC and Grain Belt refuse to do the math.  They continue to cling to the previous "savings" calculated more than 5 years ago and claim that's how much utility customers would "save."  But it's now nothing but a BIG FAT LIE.  Show us your "savings" math, MJMEUC!

Instead of continuing this speculative gamble with the lives and fortunes of Missourians, the PSC must reject Tiger Connector's application and tell them to stay away until they have signed interconnections that firm up the route, and enough customers to finance the project.

I've watched a lot of transmission projects come and go, but never have I seen a project that has been so hidden from public notice.  Think about it:  If the public never finds out about it, then they won't form opposition, hire lawyers, and intervene at the PSC.  They also won't generate any negative media or political unpopularity.  A transmission project hidden from public notice is traveling a stressful road richly studded with hidden landmines.  In my opinion, it's a stupid idea headed for failure.

Grain Belt Express "Tiger Connector" transmission project was barely mentioned in Invenergy's press releases earlier this month.  It was hidden in plain sight on the second page of the release, a place reporters rarely go, especially if the "important" talking points are bulleted for them on the first page.  Local press didn't even mention it.  No story, no public notice, no participation, no opposition.

When the project was announced, the few maps that circulated were vague dotted lines on a zoomed out map that only included major roadways.  Transmission developers ALWAYS have detailed aerial photography maps available at Open House dog and pony shows, and increasingly these developers share their maps online well in advance of the "meetings".  Seeing a detailed map of their property with a new transmission line drawn in is often the trigger point for landowners.  But if Invenergy keeps these maps hidden until just two days before the Open House, then less landowners will have an opportunity to see them.  Less notification, less participation at the Open House, less opposition.

And speaking of those Open House "meetings" they are always, and I do mean ALWAYS, the subject of a well-circulated press release for local media, along with paid advertising in print, radio, TV and internet.  The idea of holding these meetings is to gather public input.  But if the public doesn't know about these meetings because the transmission developer has not adequately advertised them with plenty of notice, then the public probably won't attend.  No attendance, no maps, no participation, no opposition.

Invenergy mailed a letter to what it called "impacted landowners" notifying them of the Open House meetings just two weeks in advance.  Actual delivery of the letters was well within that two-week window.  And who is checking to make sure Invenergy's list of "impacted landowners" is accurate?  Even the best transmission developers miss large numbers of "impacted landowners" at this stage, which is why they also buy advertisements and press reporters for news stories.  They may actually want the public to find out and attend the "meetings."  But if a landowner doesn't get a letter, or has a scheduling conflict, then they miss out.  No notification, no attendance, no participation, no opposition.

Invenergy has performed a parody of "public notice" for its Tiger Connector transmission project by not using industry best practices for public notice and hiding "information" in plain sight in places landowners would never look.

The Public Service Commission should be very concerned about these shady practices.  Your elected officials should also be concerned about it.  Please let them know how disappointed you are in "public notice" shortcuts for this project.

You can submit an online comment to the PSC here.  The case number is EA-2023-0017.

Invenergy has created a "virtual public meeting" on its website.  According to earlier statements, it will only be available for a very short time.  You can visit it here.

Be sure to check out the aerial photographic maps all the way at the bottom of the page.  If you don't see them, or can't make them function (which has already been a complaint) you may need to change or update your internet browser.  Don't give up!  But, then again, if half the internet visitors can't access the maps because they are not designed to operate in a wide-variety of internet browsers, then less people see them (we're really developing a theme here!)

The rest of the page is what I call propaganda.  Let's review.

"New power delivery"  In fact, Invenergy claims 2 nuclear power plants worth.  Reality:  Grain Belt is a MERCHANT transmission project.  That means that it will only deliver power to an entity that has signed a contract to pay to use the power line.  Grain Belt cannot and will not just "deliver power" in general.  "Existing customers" have contracted for just 10% of Grain Belt's capacity, although 20% of its new capacity has been offered for years with no takers.  That's right, nobody has purchased 250 MW of service in Missouri that GBE has been offering for years.  All the propaganda and marketing spiel in the world cannot make electric distributors in Missouri buy something they don't need.  Missourians know the story about painting Tom Sawyer's fence very well.  If nobody wants it now, it's probably not marketable.

"New local jobs, spending and tax revenue!"  But selling 2 nuclear power plants worth of extra energy into Callaway County directly competes with the reliable sources of energy Callaway already relies on, such as Ameren's Callaway Energy Center.  The nuclear power plant currently provides thousands of good paying jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue and local community charities.  Which would provide more?  I think it is the Callaway Energy Center, hands down.  Absolutely no contest.  A bird in hand is worth more than the promise of two in the bush.

Invenergy's "experience."  They say, "Invenergy knowns (sic) how to build the right way and has relationships with over 12,000 landowners, more than 80 percent of whom are farmers and ranchers."  But reality is that nearly 100% of these "farmers and ranchers" signed voluntary agreements with the company because they were promised royalties or other payments that "share in the wealth" of Invenergy's land use.  Transmission lines make a one-time "market value" payment for the perpetual use of your land.  No matter how much money Invenergy makes from the transmission line, your compensation will not increase. Invenergy has recently begun condemning the land of folks who won't sign voluntarily.

The cheaper Grain Belt Express is to build, the bigger profit for Invenergy.  GBE is approved to sell its service at market rates.  The price GBE charges is set by market forces.  It is not reliant on its cost to build and operate.  While regulators can limit a jurisdictional utility's profit, the sky's the limit with Grain Belt Express!  Nobody can hold their profit in check.  And the cheaper the project is to build and operate, the more profit is in it for Invenergy!  Perhaps that why, after promising single structure "monopoles" to landowners for a decade, Invenergy recently changed the structures after it purchased the bankrupt project from Clean Line Energy Partners.  Invenergy says all transmission structures will now be cheaper 4-legged lattice construction.  Promising monopoles seems to be a Grain Belt Express bait and switch.

All this same information will be decorating Grain Belt's venue tomorrow and Wednesday on strategically placed poster board easels manned by perky but clueless company representatives.  But we all know that the only thing people come to see are the maps.

Make your plan to attend:

Don't let Invenergy get away with preventing you from getting information about a project that could have devastating effects on your home, your business and your community!

Winston Churchill once said, "Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot."  It's no surprise, then, that Invenergy named its Grain Belt Express add-on "Tiger Connector."

I've long written about the folly of buying easements and condemning private property for a speculative merchant transmission project, like GBE.  Before a transmission project has customers and interconnections, its route is subject to change.  The Missouri PSC made a terrible mistake when they approved a route for a speculative merchant transmission project without customers and awarded a private profit corporation eminent domain authority.

Public utilities use eminent domain sparingly, and only as a true last resort, when their route is set in stone and they are ready to begin construction.  Public utilities normally condemn less than 5% of the easements needed for a project.  But Grain Belt Express is not really a public utility.  It's private money speculation.  If they can build a transmission line between Point A and Point B using their own money, they bet that voluntary customers are going to find it so useful that they will contract to take service at negotiated rates.  And Grain Belt Express began condemning land way before it had customers or an interconnection point in Missouri.  GBE is now sort of obligated to the route it has spent all this money trying to purchase or condemn.

But, hey, guess what?  Speculative projects often change plans.  And now GBE actually wants to make its connection at a different point than originally planned.  GBE now proposes connecting its project to the grid at a substation in McCredie, about 15 miles east of Columbia in Callaway County.

Here's a map of the new routes GBE wants to add to its land acquisition in Missouri:

Because GBE has begun assembling land on its original route, it doesn't want to actually re-route the project.  No, it wants to ADD more transmission towers and wire to land that currently doesn't have that.  Invenergy wants to add a "connector" spur to its project to connect from the original route in Monroe County to its new connection with the existing grid at McCredie.  Instead of simply rerouting its project to McCredie and sparing Monroe County, Invenergy has come up with a cockamamie plan to build a DC-AC converter station in Monroe County, and then build a brand new 40-mile AC transmission line through Audrain and Callaway Counties to connect Grain Belt Express at McCredie.  The project will also continue through Monroe County on its way toward Illinois, and eventually a connection with the Mid-Atlantic electric grid.

This is about the dumbest plan ever.  GBE says it will pursue all required regulatory approvals for these "changes."   These aren't "changes," this is a whole new project with a whole new route affecting a whole new area.  GBE is trying to whip everyone along to comply with its "changes" before they think too hard about it.  Public meetings for affected landowners and communities are in 2 weeks.  Supposedly all landowners have been notified, but nobody seems to have actually been notified yet.  GBE claims it will file this "change" at the PSC on August 1 and whip the Commissioners to approve it without thinking much.

What the.....  This is insane!  I could make a month of blogs out of what's wrong with this plan and all the requirements Invenergy seems to have skipped along the way.  But, for now... HEADS UP, Missouri!

Invenergy has been so successful at buying and castrating state officials in Missouri that it's gone completely rogue.  Are the steers finally going to step up and protect their people from the rich, urban liberals who are going to make a bundle plundering Missouri?

I have to admit I've never been a fan of FERC's new Office of Public Participation.  Created by Congress in the 1970's, the office was only recently funded and came into being.  The idea of the office is that "the public" can use it as a liaison to learn how to "participate" in FERC proceedings.  This part sort of makes my eyes roll back in my head a bit.  I've been "participating" at FERC since before "public participation" was cool.  It really wasn't that hard to figure out.  I'm not sure an OPP would have actually been helpful, probably a bunch of misdirection and discouragement from participating.  Anyhow, it's not like "the public" actually pushed to finally create this office because they needed an education about how to participate.  It was the statute's language about intervenor funding that appealed to the advocacy groups who pushed the OPP into being.  They saw a quick pay day for their bleary legal work at FERC advocating for special interests that have other sources of funding.  It was all "belly up to the bar" old boys, we're going to get paid to file clueless, useless documents at FERC.  It has never been about funding "public" landowners and communities adversely affected by FERC's actions.  Instead, self-appointed "public advocates" and special interest and political groups have shoved their way to the front of the chow line to make sure there's nothing left for regular folks whose property or business is impacted by FERC actions.  This is how intervenor funding programs have worked in individual states, where special interest groups intervening to support the utilities plan to build things have sucked up all the funding, leaving affected landowners with nothing.

But, anyhow, this crap office is already giving itself a crap reputation with "the public."  The FERC Office of Public Participation Director, Elin Katz, was recently quoted during a webinar for WIRES (the voice of the electric transmission industry!)  You might want to ponder why Elin was hob nobbing at an industry shindig and not in a tool shed gathering in your community. 

Elin appears to have used the term "NIMBY" to refer to grassroots opposition to new transmission lines.

This is so horrifying, it's hard to know where to begin.

NIMBY?  The FERC employee in charge of encouraging the public to participate in FERC proceedings has called the public "NIMBYs"?  Does she know that's a pejorative insult to grassroots groups?  I'm sure she'd never use a racial slur, but yet she thinks belittling and marginalizing public participation is okay?  She ought to be fired.

Better education?  Again, Elin insults "the public" by calling them uneducated.  As if grassroots groups need to be "educated" about impacts to their communities by some woman who hates them, peering out from her ivory tower in Washington, DC.  There are no benefits to communities impacted by transmission lines that can outweigh the detrimental impacts.  Elin telling "the public" that there are "benefits" is not going to change anyone's mind.  What a completely ignorant approach to interacting with "the public."  Did she get that idea from the industries she actually works for?  She ought to be fired.

And what about her apparent disconnect between gas pipelines and electric transmission?  Somehow the landowners affected by pipelines matter, but the landowners affected by electric transmission don't?  That's not about the landowners, it's about politically-motivated ideology related to energy source.  It's not about the "public" at all.  She ought to be fired.

Disruptive activities?  That's called "mostly peaceful protest".  It's a new thing invented during the pandemic.  Transmission opposition is unlikely to engage in those kinds of things.  Our protests are more along the lines of free speech, due process, and public participation.  If she wants to squelch free speech and due process of "the public" she's not a good fit.  She ought to be fired.

Elin is the WRONG person to be assisting "the public" with participating in electric transmission proceedings at FERC.  It's obvious she believes that "large-scale power lines are needed to decarbonize the grid."  She's already weighed in on the side of the utilities and environmental groups and against "the public" who would be affected by FERC's actions.  She ought to be fired.

If I wasn't disgusted enough by FERC's OPP before reading this news blurb, I'd be pretty disappointed.  What a disgusting creature.  She ought to be fired.

The U.S. Department of Energy has finally allowed the public comments on its Transmission Facilitation Program to be available to the public.

After DOE stated that it wasn't sure about making them public, you responded by filing comments asking for the comments to be publicly accessible.

And here they are.  Click on the "Browse All Comments" tab.

Just imagine what would have happened without your participation?

Now just because the comments are public doesn't mean they're easily accessible.  The regulations dot gov website is a hot mess.  It's not like you can just go down the list and download the comments... for some reason their order gets scrambled every time you download one.  It wasn't easy, but I managed to devise a way to download them all.

Haven't had time to read them yet though... except for one that I simply couldn't resist peeking at after downloading.  Invenergy seems pretty eager to get to the head of the chow line doling out capacity contracts.  Invenergy says it needs an iron clad 25 year contract that DOE cannot weasel out of in order to get projects financed, but it doesn't mention any projects by name.  And a bunch of other weasely stuff that I will write more about later.

What merchant transmission lines that need capacity contracts might Invenergy be talking about?

Please share any good comment finds you make in the comments.

The federal government has no authority over electric generators, except for hydroelectric facilities.  Instead, authority over building new generators is an affair of state and local governments.  But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants to interfere by designating "resource zones"  for building renewable generators (industrial scale wind and solar installations).  FERC has no legal authority to do so -- it's overreach of the most egregious kind.

Over the last couple of years, FERC has issued several notices of a proposed rulemaking entitled "Building for the Future Through Electric Regional Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation and Generator Interconnection".  That's word salad for building a whole bunch of new transmission for the purpose of connecting renewable energy installations around the country.  Who says we need a whole bunch of new generation and transmission?  There isn't a real reason, it's just about pushing the green agenda.  Build it and they will come.

Except they won't.  Who is going to buy all this renewable energy?  Is it the utilities whose current generation has been shut down and may be facing blackouts?  That's a false narrative.  Current generation shortages stem from the intermittent nature of wind and solar.  It cannot be depended on to generate when needed.  Wind and solar only generate when nature produces their fuel.  Build a lot of wind and solar, price fossil fuel generators out of the market so they shut down, and suddenly you have shortages at the most inopportune times... like during extreme heat or cold.  Some geniuses believe they can import electricity from other regions when that happens.  Except those regions with excess generation are fossil fuel heavy.  What happens when all regions overbuild renewables and we're at "net zero"?  There's nobody to borrow from.  Then the lights go out.  This is a future train wreck from which we may never recover.

FERC is ignoring the train whistle in the distance, preferring to believe that if they force the building of enough new electric transmission, all the borrowing can happen between renewable generators.  To this end, FERC wants to encourage the building of new renewable generators by building new transmission to newly designated "resource zones".

What are "resource zones"?  In FERCenese, they are "geographic zones that have the potential for the development of large amounts of new generation, particularly renewable resources."  The designation is to be made by a FERC-jurisdictional regional transmission planner, after considering the following:

Where do you come in, little zonal landowner?  The planner is going to seek "stakeholder comment" where you will be able to voice your opinion.  FERC proposes to require "public utility transmission providers in each transmission planning region post on their OASIS or other public websites maps of the designated geographic zones and information related to the designation of those zones." 

OASIS?

No, not those guys.

Maybe this?

No, not that either. 

OASIS is an acronym that stands for Open Access Same-Time Information Systems used by the electric industry that provide information about available transmission capability for point-to-point service and a process for requesting transmission service on a non-discriminatory basis. OASIS enables transmission providers and transmission customers to communicate requests and responses to buy and sell available transmission capacity offered under the Open Access Transmission Tariff.

Say what?  You've never been to this oasis, and you're likely to spend years wandering through the desert before you find it, if ever.

FERC thinks "relevant federal and state siting authorities" and transmission and generation builders are the only "stakeholders" who shall be involved in commenting on a proposed zone.  You landowners at ground zero are not invited to the party.  Neither are your local governments, who have authority over zoning restrictions for siting new industrial electric generation facilities.  As folks on the ground have found over the years, zoning restrictions are what makes or breaks the siting of new generators. 

So, what happens when FERC and its preferred "stakeholders" designate a zone that the local government shuts down through restrictions or moratoriums?  There is no authority for these entities to override local government siting requirements, however, the zone designation requires regional transmission planners to plan and build new electric transmission to the zone in order to enable the generators that cannot be sited or built.  In that instance, the zone will be the desert where no generation oasis can be located.  We will have paid to build a literal road to nowhere.

Poor planning, FERC.  Get your head out of the sand.  Building transmission to zones that do not want to live in industrial energy generation facilities is pure fantasy.

Do you want the federal government to designate a "zone" to build industrial electric generation plants in your neighborhood?  Feel free to comment.  Comment deadline has been extended through August 17, although Federal Register has not yet caught up with that.  You may also upload your comments to FERC directly.  Instructions are here.

Tell FERC you don't want a zone in your backyard, community, or county.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  This quote's origin is murky, but its meaning is not.  A democratic government cannot operate in secret.  A government must be transparent to its citizens.  A government works for its citizens.  A government has no money of its own but collects the money it spends from its citizens.  There is never a good reason for a government to withhold information from the citizens it governs.

But yet the U.S. Department of Energy took a week to make a decision whether or not to publicly publish the more than 80 comments it received on its proposed rules/requirements for its new, taxpayer-funded Transmission Facilitation Program.

If you thought allowing the government to give 2.5 billion of your tax dollars to for-profit corporations owned by the political elite could be a bad idea... it's about to get a whole lot worse.

Noting that the DOE docket for TFP comments did not have the feature to browse submitted comments turned on, and being notified that

I emailed [email protected] to ask when comments would be publicly available.  I initially was told that they did not know if comments would be posted.  What?  What reason would there be to hide them?

Just today I was told that DOE had decided to make the comments available on the regulations.gov website.  However (there's always a fly in DOE's ointment) the comments would first have to be "reviewed" for personally identifiable information and "they need to be made 508 compliant."  DOE has no idea how long this may take.  I'm still waiting to see comments from a webinar last month that DOE promised would be posted.  *crickets*  It seems that this "review" and "compliance" is just an excuse to avoid posting comments while appearing to be open to the idea.

Don't tell me that the federal government's slicky regulations.gov website cannot perform this function but that the task must be manually performed by agency employees.  I'm not buying it.  This is nothing more than a bogus excuse to avoid transparency.

Even though DOE can't manage to publicly post comments, some of the commenters can manage to post their own comments on the web without all this bogus "review."

Such as RTO/ISO comments available here.
And PJM's specific comments available here.

The online comment receptacle says 86 comments were submitted before the deadline last night.  But yet you can't read any of them on regulations.gov, even your own.

Considering that DOE is poised to give away $2.5B of your hard-earned dollars to connected rich people to "facilitate" a bunch of new transmission we don't want or need, you'd think there should be a little sunshine within the program.  You'd think that the proposed application requirements and review criteria would be public information requiring independent evaluation.  Remember Solyndra?

Instead, DOE is keeping the comments of the potential recipients of your tax dollars hidden.  It's just the transmission merchants and the DOE employees.  No taxpayers or other commenters need to be involved.  In fact, if they don't post the comments, they could just delete yours with one click.

The inmates are running the asylum.

Drain the swamp.

Drag Dracula into the sunshine.

Who do these entitled little bureaucrats think they are?

If you want to help drag DOE Dracula into the sunshine, let them know you want to see the comments by emailing [email protected].

Remember Solyndra?  I mean really remember... how the U.S. Department of Energy gave away more than half a billion of your taxpayer dollars to a for-profit company that lived large for several years before defaulting on the "loan" it had received?    Perhaps we could all use a refresher, now that the DOE is poised to give away another 2.5 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a handful of elite rich guys who want to live large on it while it lasts... perhaps for the next 40 years.

Here's a good refresher article....

But it turned out that the company had puffed itself up on its DOE loan application and that it didn't have enough future revenue to pay off the loan.  It declared bankruptcy and its owners whistled Disney tunes off into the sunset.  No harm, no foul.  Worse than that, the government functionaries who furthered this scam also received no punishment.  The DOE Inspector General's report revealed just how much malarkey was going on, but ultimately nothing was done about it.

So why wasn't there due diligence at the DOE?

Well, guess what?  That same pressure is being used again to push new loans and revenue guarantees for speculative merchant transmission projects.  DOE has apparently learned NOTHING from Solyndra and its employees are having a grand time playing footsie with merchant transmission developers while sitting on a fresh pile of taxpayer money.  Your money!

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by a bipartisan vote last year is now being implemented by the good political drones at DOE.  The IIJA gave DOE $2.5 Billion for its new Transmission Facilitation Program.  The "program" makes available new loans, public-private partnerships where the government kicks in some of your money to fund for-profit merchant transmission, and capacity contracts for new merchant transmission.  DOE seemed pretend surprised at a recent webinar that the only provision of the program that anyone is interested in is the capacity contracts.

The DOE has authority to sign capacity contracts with new transmission projects.  The capacity contract will purchase room on the transmission project to transmit electricity, however DOE doesn't serve any electric customers and has no use for it.  It will simply pay for something it will never use.  This purchase is supposed to inspire others to also buy capacity on the transmission project.  However, if these others had any use for the capacity, they could purchase it themselves without DOE involvement.  The problem is that nobody wants to purchase capacity on speculative merchant transmission projects.  DOE is likely to be the only "customer" propping up an unused and unneeded road to nowhere... through your backyard and productive agricultural property.

A merchant transmission project, first and foremost, must accept all financial risk for its unneeded, speculative project.  There can be no captive customers.  A successful merchant may negotiate rates with voluntary customers who may find its project useful.  But what if nobody finds it useful?  Then it fails, and the merchant loses his investment.  But, not anymore.... the federal government is going to step in to financially prop it up using your money.  This means we're going to suffer a lot more greedy merchants, stuffed egos with childish hairdos who belong to the elite political party in power.  These new elite rulers will spend their capacity contract money however they like... ugly orange offices with pictures of dead rock stars, renovated fire houses, and a lavish lifestyle on a fat salary playing transmission make-believe.

Does all this make you furious?  It should.  Michael Skelly's next transmission brain fart will be perpetrated on your dime.  Fortunately, you can tell DOE what you think about their new Transmission Facilitation Program during a public comment period that only runs until June 13.  Submitting a comment is quick and easy using this online form (click the little blue "comment" box at the top).  You can even make your comment anonymous. 

Have at it, folks!  Maybe Skelly's new robots will come programmed with a funeral dirge for his new ideas.

Sharpen your pencils, transmission warriors!  The DOE is in the process of making good on the part of the "Bipartisan Energy Bill" that allows the federal government to prop up failed and unneeded transmission projects with your tax dollars.  It's quick and easy to drop them an electronic comment via the internet.  You can submit your comment here by clicking on the blue "comment" button at the top left of the notice and filling out the form that pops up.  It's really just that simple!  You'll be glad you did when an unneeded transmission line without any customers is planned to cross your property, and the federal government signs up to be a "customer" in order to make the project "needed" so that it may be financed and built.

As I wrote about extensively last year, greedy merchant transmission developers (hello, Clean Line) whose projects failed because they could not find any customers to sign up for service have set their bought and paid for Congress critters in motion to create fake "customers" for their unneeded projects so that they can be "needed", financed and built.

The DOE is seeking comment on how to implement this ridiculous, new "program" set in motion by the passing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.  They have written a rather short (in regulatory terms) plan on how they are going to carry it out.

What should you say?  There are certain questions asked in this RFI that you may want to address, such as:

This has to be my personal favorite question, based on the stupidity of the presumption alone.  If the government buys something with your tax dollars, will you then be inspired to buy the same thing?  Or maybe buy the thing from the government, who isn't really using it?

Maybe Tom Sawyer persuaded a bunch of little boys to white wash Aunt Polly's fence, but if electric companies want to purchase capacity on new merchant transmission projects, it's a business proposition based on need and cost, not an emotional moment where electric companies just want to keep up with the federal government's activities.  If there was a need for the service, the electric companies would purchase it from the transmission developer directly.  When they don't, it means the merchant transmission project isn't needed.  DOE is going to be stuck with that unneeded transmission capacity that it can't use because it doesn't serve any electric customers forever (or 40 years, as written in the law).  How do you think the government can persuade others to buy something they don't need just because the government bought it first?  This concept is going to end in complete failure... just a complete give away of our tax dollars to speculative merchant transmission developers.

Here's another you may like:

And here's something that's not really a question, but feel free to comment on it anyhow.

Yup, they really wrote that into the law, even though they have no authority to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act, which triggers a review every time an action of the federal government affects our environment.  Since this "program" is being carried out for the purpose of "facilitating" (financially propping up) transmission projects that would otherwise not be built, DOE IS affecting the environment with its decisions to shower tax dollars on unneeded merchant transmission projects.  Expect this to be challenged in court, but nothing says you can't get your licks in now and be right from the start.

And here's another topic that DOE pretty much ignores.  Merchant transmission is market based.  That is, there must be a market need for it.  Customers must be willing to pay to use it.  Merchant transmission has no captive customers who must pay for the project as part of their electric bill.  Merchant transmission is a completely optional, money-making endeavor and never necessary for you to get economic, reliable electric service.  Those kinds of projects are ordered by grid planners and recovered involuntarily as part of your bill.  Merchant Transmission is lightly regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because it does not have involuntary customers who must be protected.  FERC may grant what's known as "Negotiated Rate Authority", which allows the merchant transmission developer to advertise its service and negotiate rate contracts with voluntary customers.  FERC regulates whether this process is fair to all customers.  But if the DOE is required to purchase capacity on merchant transmission projects, then it no longer qualifies as merchant transmission because DOE is a captive customer who must be protected with regulated cost of service rates.  When a merchant with Negotiated Rate Authority advertises and sells available capacity, there are strict guidelines the merchant must follow.  But what about DOE?  Who's going to be regulating them to make sure their sale of transmission capacity to all those future fence painters, who just gotta have what the government already bought, is fair?  Is one branch of the government going to be regulating the other?  DOE and FERC need to address how this will be handled, even though the merchant transmission lobbyists who wrote the law did not address it (probably because... well... stupid... they don't know how rates work).

And for those readers who successfully battled the Plains and Eastern Clean Line at great expense of time and money, perhaps you'd like to share a little wisdom you gained from the experience of DOE "participating" in that project for the express purpose of using federal eminent domain when Arkansas said "no"?  In that instance, DOE required Clean Line to have capacity contract customers before building, and Clean Line never could find any, which was the ultimate reason DOE cancelled its "participation agreement."  With that knowledge, how could DOE do better this time around in order to avoid years of misery?

The commenting form is quick and easy.  Please use it.  Time is short.  Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.  And DOE's new program is about as offensive as it gets.  Don't wait to act until a transmission road to nowhere that doesn't actually deliver electricity anywhere because there are no real customers taking service is sited outside your front door.