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MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek are the SAME project!

8/27/2025

The companies assigned to build one of the components of PJM Interconnection's project B3800 have made an absolute mess of the public's understanding of the project. Congratulations, NextEra and FirstEnergy! This is all your fault!

PJM doesn't invent and assign cutsie-poo names like MARL or Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek to the projects it approves and orders. It gives them numbers. B3800 was assigned to this project when it was approved in December 2023. Names like MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek are inventions of the companies that PJM assigns to build the projects it orders. Different names do NOT mean different PJM projects. They're all B3800.

Here's the only thing you need to know about MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? If you study this one, you'll figure it out, despite the stupid stuff NextEra and FirstEnergy are saying right now. Block all their nonsense out of your mind. This is one continuous 500kV transmission line. It's all connected, just like a gigantic extension cord. Pay attention to the key on this map. There is a table called "Transmission System Enhancement" that lists the different color-coded line segments and the companies that PJM assigned to build each segment of this ONE 500kV line.

Starting at the top of the list is a dark pink/purply segment assigned to AEP. AEP stands for American Electric Power, who owns a section of existing 500kV line between the Kammer substation and the 502 Junction substation. AEP's part of this project was to study its existing line to assure it could pump more power from Kammer. Kammer is the name of the substation at AEP's Mitchell Power Generation station in Marshall County, WV. AEP is not building a new line here (at least not in this project).

Next the table lists yellow for Dom. That stands for Dominion. Dominion is the Virginia-based utility that will be building the last 3 miles of this 500kV circuit from Edwards Ferry to Goose Creek in Loudoun County, Virginia. It's really impossible to see the yellow part of this map because it's tiny compared to the rest of the line's mileage. Just know it's there, at the eastern end of the line.

Then we have red for Exelon. Exelon owns a short segment of existing line and easement in Montgomery County, Maryland that would be reconfigured to change a corridor containing one 500kV line and two 230kV lines into a corridor that contains three 500kV lines and two 230kV lines. One of those new 500kV lines in Maryland is part of B3800, the continuous 500kV line from 502 Junction to Goose Creek. You can barely see the red if you look hard.

And now we're getting to the real meat here... blue and peach. The blue part of the line is owned by FirstEnergy (FE) subsidiary Potomac Edison. The FE part of the line begins at a point in Frederick County, Virginia where the NextEra part ends and runs east through Jefferson County, WV, Loudoun County, VA, and Frederick and Montgomery Counties, MD to a point at Edwards Ferry where Dominion picks up the construction of the 500kV circuit. The blue part of the line is approximately 45 miles long. The blue part of the line plans to tear down an existing 138kV circuit on 65 ft. tall towers and replace it with double circuit 500/138kV lines on a new tower 185 ft. tall. FirstEnergy named this part Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek.

And last, but certainly not least, the peachy colored part of the line that is assigned to NextEra. This 105-mile long segment begins at 502 Junction substation and ends at a point in Frederick County, Virginia were FirstEnergy's segment of the project begins. We're literally talking about two adjacent transmission towers carrying one continuous 500kV circuit, except one tower is owned by NextEra, and the other is owned by FirstEnergy. These are not two separate projects physically. The separation only exists in legal documents and the balance sheets of competitors NextEra and FirstEnergy. NextEra named its peach MARL.

To put the parts of the map in order from west to east: dark pink (AEP), peach (NextEra), blue (FirstEnergy), red (Exelon), more blue (FirstEnergy), and then yellow (Dominion), which connects to a substation that serves Loudoun County's data centers.

PJM approved and ordered ONE 500kV circuit between 502 Junction and Goose Creek and then assigned the project to 3 different companies to build. Each company has made up its own name for its segment. NextEra calls its 105-mile portion of the project MARL. FirstEnergy calls its 45-mile portion of the project Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek. Dominion has not come up with a name for its 3 mile section in Virginia because it has not presented the project to the public yet.

This confusion about who owns what and what the project is called and what connects to what can be flung directly on the door step of NextEra and FirstEnergy.

NextEra has been playing pretend games that its 105-mile segment of PJM's 500kV circuit is a separate project not connected to anything else. NextEra says it begins in PA and ends in Frederick County, Virginia. The media has added the narrative that MARL connects with "a data center in Frederick County, Virginia" which is just false. There are no significant data centers in Frederick County. All the data centers are in Loudoun County. Loudoun and Frederick are not even contiguous counties. Jefferson County, WV sits between them. We need some basic geography here!

NextEra may have created this false narrative in the press because it thought that it could escape any bad data center juju being attached to its project. Didn't work. We all know MARL is a data center extension cord. All that narrative did was confuse the heck out of people when Jefferson County popped into the picture on Monday when FirstEnergy filed a Notice of Intent at the PSC.

FirstEnergy, for its part, contributed to this confusion by refusing to name its project, or to do any public relations about it until just recently (and still its attempts can be called anemic at best). The citizens of Jefferson County have been fighting FirstEnergy's part of PJM's 500kV circuit for 2 years now. Because FirstEnergy refused to acknowledge the project, we named it for them, and we called it MARL, adopting NextEra's name for this 150-mile long 500kV circuit.

So, when FirstEnergy's Potomac Edison filed its Notice of Intent at the PSC, it said the project was "also referred to as MARL". That is absolutely 100% true.

And the media circus began. The stories pumped out don't even make sense, and the confusion becomes deeper and deeper. Take a deep breath... just look at the map!

I'm guessing that NextEra got its corporate panties in a wad yesterday because FirstEnergy had used their MARL name in their Notice of Intent at the PSC. FirstEnergy tried to issue a retraction yesterday. This confused things even more.

And, using my best mom voice, here's some advice that NextEra and FirstEnergy should take to heart.

GET OVER YOURSELF, KIDS!

Stop your bickering and squabbling and not wanting to be associated with each other. It's going to come back and bite you in the butt at the PSC.

The PSC will have two separate applications for two different segments of the same transmission line. Are the companies going to keep pretending they have nothing to do with each other before the PSC? That's going to be a little uncomfortable for PJM's witness, won't it? You'll never get away with it. And it would serve you right if the PSC denied one of these segments because they didn't know the other was connected to it.

FIX THIS MESS!

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Is the Deep State Conspiring with Grain Belt Express?

7/28/2025

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It didn't take long for the deep state at DOE to "resist" Secretary Wright's cancellation of Grain Belt's conditional loan guarantee by spilling to some obscure fake news media outlet. In doing so, they really step in it... deeply! Secretary Wright ought to investigate these leakers... and fire every last one of them. They admit to breaking the law and conspiring with Grain Belt Express to hide the truth about the project in an attempt to fool President Trump and to push through a loan guarantee whose application process was not complete. The DOE never finished GBE's Environmental Impact Statement, which is supposed to guide its decision on whether or not to take an action (such as making a conditional loan guarantee). The admissions here are stunning. Is the DOE Deep State really that ignorant about energy laws? Or was this done arrogantly and on purpose with full intent? I'd like to ask these leakers some questions...

The Energy Department pulled the project's $4.9 billion conditional commitment against the advice of its attorneys — and without career staff.

You say that like it's a bad thing, but is it because they're the Deep State who issued that conditional approval as an attempt to guarantee the loan even though Grain Belt Express had not completed its EIS? And then the Deep State conspired with Grain Belt to hide the project's true purpose from the incoming administration!

When the second Trump administration took office, LPO staff worried that a requirement to secure wind and solar contracts for a certain portion of the line’s capacity could prevent the loan from moving forward — particularly after the publication of an executive order that made it much harder to build wind power. Right up until the last few weeks, sources told Latitude Media, both the office and Invenergy were discussing how to bring the Grain Belt Express agreement more in line with the administration’s priorities, by expanding offtakers beyond wind power.

So, let me get this straight... the DOE staff was advising Invenergy to remove all reference to wind (and solar) from its website and to leak that bogus story about building a gas plant and negotiating with coal-fired generators? And the DOE staff did this knowing Grain Belt's eligibility for a DOE taxpayer-backed loan is tied to Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)). When Grain Belt's "clean energy" premise went away, so did its eligibility for the loan. How was DOE staff planning to explain how a transmission line carrying gas- and coal-fired power was avoiding, reducing or sequestering air pollutants or greenhouse gases? Or was DOE planning to have two faces... one for Trump and his administration, and one for the public and the courts? How did they ever think they would get away with this? Fact is, they didn't.

But, even when their horrible duplicity could have been buried forever and forgotten, these same Deep Staters decided instead to parade it around like a virtue and thumb their nose at everyone, drunk on their own power. These are people who survive on your tax dollars, arrogantly doing whatever they want. It's time to clean house at LPO, and probably a lot of other places, too. It's not "resistance", it's insubordination and law breaking.

And what else here breaks the rules?

...LPO staff worried that a requirement to secure wind and solar contracts for a certain portion of the line’s capacity could prevent the loan from moving forward ...

That requirement by DOE VIOLATES GBE's Negotiated Rate Authority issued by FERC. In GBE's original Negotiated Rate Authority Order (which may or may not have been amended, extended, or renewed recently) the Commission was emphatic that Grain Belt Express could not use generation source as a factor when selecting customers.

Grain Belt Express has not proposed in its application, and we do not approve, selection or ranking criteria based upon the type of generation that a potential transmission customer might seek to interconnect.

If the DOE was requiring that GBE use generation source as a factor to select its customers, then that means that GBE has violated it's Negotiated Rate Authority and therefore has no authority to negotiate with customers. And without voluntary customers... there is no Grain Belt Express! So the DOE Deep Staters were also thumbing their nose at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. How arrogant can those little government functionaries be?

And here's another...

Notably, the agreement didn’t require the federal government to shell out direct funds; instead, LPO agreed to act as a guarantor for the project, reducing risk for private lenders, but not making any payments itself unless the project failed.

Let's go back to that same FERC NRA Order...

To approve negotiated rates for a transmission project, the Commission must find that the rates are just and reasonable. To do so, the Commission must determine that the merchant transmission owner has assumed the full market risk for the cost of constructing its proposed transmission project.

The federal government using American taxpayers as a loan guarantor for the construction costs of Grain Belt Express means that the risk of the project has been shifted to taxpayers. If the project fails, then the taxpayers will pay for it. Taxpayers are being used as the insurer of last resort for a 100% voluntary, unneeded transmission line whose only purpose is to make a profit for Invenergy. LPO doesn't have any of its own money, it simply plays Monopoly with OPM (Other People's Money).

That decision, Latitude Media has learned, was made against the recommendation of career attorneys inside LPO, who advised the agency that rescinding the conditional commitment would constitute a breach of contract, and would be illegal. It was also made without the involvement of career staff who worked on the deal.

Ya know what else might be illegal? Issuing a conditional loan guarantee before the EIS was completed. And completely ignoring a FERC Order that DOE was aware of. And conspiring to thwart the intent of Title 17 of the EP Act.

In the case of Grain Belt Express, DOE is asserting that the project isn’t going to meet certain milestones that are required to finalize the loan.
But Grain Belt Express, which has already gone through two years of due diligence with LPO, still had a window of at least four months to reach financial close. Indeed, in the early months of this year, LPO career staff believed the project was moving in the right direction.

Right... was that during the time when DOE staff thought their cover up of GBE's windy purpose was working with the Trump administration? Even if it had another four years, I don't think GBE could find enough customers to provide collateral necessary for this loan. Wait... what? Collateral? Something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default. Does this mean that DOE was planning to guarantee a loan using tax payers as collateral WITHOUT ASSURING THAT GBE HAD ENOUGH CUSTOMERS TO REPAY THE LOAN? Due diligence, my ass!

...when Energy Secretary Chris Wright stepped in to order the cancellation of the loan guarantee in mid-July, DOE’s general counsel didn’t seem to look to offtake numbers for legal justification at all.

What the heck? Offtake numbers? That means nothing! It's only signed contracts from customers obligated to pay for capacity on Grain Belt Express that matter, and GBE has exactly NONE of those. The one contract GBE has said it has is completely optional and the Missouri municipalities can get out of it whenever they want. Does this mean that DOE pretended that "offtake numbers" in the form of Memorandums of Understanding, or simply a utility's future renewable plans unrelated to Grain Belt Express, were used as a form of collateral? No bank would ever rely on such flimsy collateral, and neither should DOE. That's how DOE got into trouble before with Solyndra.

In the spring, the far-right Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri began to publicly take issue with the project and its impact on farmers...

Sorry, far-left reporters, but Senator Hawley has been concerned about Grain Belt Express for the past several years, at least. Don't make it sound like he just found out about it.

The International Energy Agency estimates that nearly 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) of power lines will need to be added or replaced globally by 2040 in order to meet climate and clean energy goals

Well, there's another Deep State agency waste of taxpayer money. The federal government doesn't currently have any climate and clean energy goals, therefore this statement is irrelevant.

According to Rob Gramlich, president of the transmission and power markets-focused consultancy Grid Strategies, federal support could be particularly impactful for interregional transmission lines “where it’s hardest to find any other way to recover costs.”

“It is very hard to find state regulators to approve cost recovery for a multi-state line like this,” Gramlich said. “I’ve always thought that DOE should have a big pot of money for interregional transmission, and that should be the main focus of DOE spending across all of its programs.”

Rob Gramlich is not the federal government. In fact, he works for dark money organizations pushing a political agenda. He continues trying to get "permitting reform" passed so that the federal government can control transmission permitting. Doesn't look like it's going to do him much good right now, is it? The Trump administration is intent on building power generation on site with those new data centers, not doing something as inefficient as trying to transmit it hundreds of miles from generation to load. There's really no use for these kinds of transmission lines.

It's time to clean the Deep State out of our Department of Energy. I'm betting Gramlich knows exactly who they are. Who knows? Maybe they're having cocktails right now celebrating their "resistance"?

That was a close call. Never think that your vote doesn't matter. It stopped this Deep State hustle in its tracks.

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Hark! Is That Grain Belt's Death Knell I Hear?

7/11/2025

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Yesterday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley announced a commitment from U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to halt the $4.9B taxpayer-backed loan that Grain Belt Express had applied for back in 2022.

Without a risky, taxpayer-funded loan to build GBE, can GBE get financing elsewhere? Maybe not, since GBE doesn't have enough customers to make the project financially viable. There's a reason GBE applied for a government loan and spent the past 3 years winding its way toward approval paying for an overly expensive Environmental Impact Statement process.

The bell tolls for thee, Grain Belt Express. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad. GBE's attempt to make its merchant transmission line into something President Trump needs is not working. I heard that the President was also at the meeting and so now he knows the truth about Grain Belt Express, too.

But Grain Belt is still selling their own brand of snake oil:

In a statement from the Grain Belt Express, it says, in part, that Hawley is attempting to kill the largest transmission infrastructure project in U.S. history.

“Senator Hawley is trying to deprive Americans billions of dollars in energy cost savings, thousands of jobs, grid reliability and national security, all in an era of exponentially growing demand. The project is the critical infrastructure needed to achieve America’s energy future and has support from the White House and House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans,” the statement reads.

“The project has also secured approvals from all four route states.”

Largest transmission project in U.S. history? You say that like it's a good thing, GBE. It's not a good thing, and it means absolutely NOTHING in the grand scheme of things except for the fact that it was always too ambitious to succeed.
Deprive Americans of cost savings? Cost savings how? There's no generation at the Kansas end of the project so there's no way to know how expensive that would be. It's also unknown how much extra it would cost to buy capacity on GBE to import that mysterious energy from western Kansas. There's no proof that it would save anyone a dime. And maybe that's why GBE doesn't have enough voluntary customers? If it was really a cost saver, GBE would have customers lined up around the block. The lack of customers speaks for itself.
Jobs? You mean that artificial jobs number that was spit out by IMPLAN's software? That really means nothing and the vast majority of any real jobs will be filled by out of state contractors. Tell me, GBE, how many of those new jobs are related to building new generation in Kansas?
Grid reliability. NOT!!! That's reliability nobody needs. If GBE was needed for grid reliability, it would be a project planned and ordered by SPP and/or MISO, and Grain Belt Express has never even been reviewed by the grid operators. These federally regulated grid operators are the sole determinant of what's needed for reliability. Because GBE is a merchant, speculative, voluntary project, there is no reliability need associated with it. Sure, my electric service would be more reliable if there were 6 or a dozen service lines coming off the street, but that's not "reliability" I need or want to pay for. GBE is the same... reliability we don't need and don't need to pay for.
National security? No. The military has its own back up power sources. It doesn't trust the grid or privately owned transmission lines like GBE.
Growing demand? Right. Growing demand requires growing generation. Not transmission. A transmission line is like an extension cord not plugged into anything.
Critical infrastructure? NO! If it was it would be ordered by SPP or MISO. Not critical. Voluntary. Speculative. Extraneous.
Support from the White House and Congress? Not really. You can't determine that earlier uninformed mistakes were some sort of actual support. GBE was able to fly under the radar earlier this year, but that's over now. The White House and Congressional Republicans know the truth.
Approved in all four states? NO! GBE's Illinois permit was reversed by the Fifth District Appellate Court in August 2024. GBE doesn't have an approval in Illinois!!! Quit saying that, GBE, nobody likes a liar.

Ding Dong!

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MO AG Investigates Changes to Grain Belt Express

7/8/2025

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has opened an investigation into "the misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty surrounding the Grain Belt Express transmission line project." He has issued a demand for documents and sent a letter to the Missouri Public Service Commission asking that they evaluate GBE's "at best speculative and faulty, or at worst intentionally fraudulent, information in their application, including in their impact analysis." He also reminds the PSC it has the authority to reevaluate the benefits of the project and request more information.

Looks like GBE's game of Permit Wack-A-Mole is back in full swing!

The Missouri PSC can snatch GBE's permit away and demand that they file a new application if there have been material changes to the project. What's a material change? It's anything the PSC wants it to be!

Maybe the PSC ought to take a gander at GBE's website and compare that to the project they thought they approved several years ago. Gone are the Kansas wind farms and solar panels. In fact there's no mention of any generation in southwestern Kansas, of any kind. Therefore, what's going to be "collected" on the GBE AC Collector lines the Kansas Corporation Commission recently approved? Without wind turbines or solar panels, what's there to collect? Is Kansas going to build five new large nuclear or gas-fired power plants there? What good is GBE's extension cord when it no longer plugs into anything?

Yeah, we all know that GBE is simply pulling on another sheep costume and trying to remake itself as an "all of the above" energy source transmission line so as to escape notice of the Trumpian sheep dogs. And maybe they'd have gotten away with it, too, except Missouri AG Andrew Bailey just hand delivered a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Energy yesterday, asking that the DOE rescind the "conditional" loan approval it was granted by Biden's goons on their way out the door.

Without the wind turbines, Grain Belt Express no longer even pretends to qualify for the loan it applied for, which was only for projects that "reduce greenhouse gases."

Grain Belt Express LLC, (the Applicant), applied for federal financial assistance via a loan guarantee from the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).

It never even qualified in the first place because GBE is just a transmission line. It can accept electricity from any source and therefore it cannot, by itself reduce any gases. I told the DOE this in my comments on the draft EIS.

GBE is gas lighting everyone now pretending to be an energy source for data centers. Since GBE won't be connected to any source of energy, I'm pretty sure they're not interested. If a data center is looking for cheap energy from Kansas, it can locate... in Kansas! It doesn't need to pay GBE a bunch of extra money to ship electricity to Missouri so it can locate in Missouri. As much electricity as data centers use they can't afford to pay extra for unnecessary transmission.

GBE is an idea that has long outlived its usefulness. It's not even logical anymore. It's just a giant extension cord that doesn't connect with anything on either end. No generation. No customers. Just a bunch of exaggerations and half truths. Let's hope AG Bailey can finally get to the bottom of it.

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Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

5/12/2025

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An out-of-state utility company hoping to build the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link, or MARL, has been telling local elected officials that its project will bring millions of dollars of new tax revenue to county coffers.

But, will it really? Or is this just a pig in a poke?

A pig in a poke is a thing that is bought without first being inspected, and thus of unknown authenticity or quality. The idiom is attested in 1555:

I wyll neuer bye the pyg in the poke
Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre cloke

I will never buy the pig in the poke
There's many a foul pig in a fair cloak

A "poke" is a sack, so the image is of a concealed item being sold.

Starting in the 19th century, this idiom was explained as a confidence trick where a farmer would substitute a cat for a suckling pig when bringing it to market. When the buyer discovered the deception, he was said to "let the cat out of the bag", that is, to learn of something unfortunate prematurely, hence the expression "letting the cat out of the bag", meaning to reveal that which is secret.

Has anyone bothered to ask the company to show you their math and verify that it actually agrees with the utility tax scheme of your state? I don't think anyone has. I've heard that when details are sought, the subject gets changed, or when pressed they say we will find out the details during the state PSC case. That's magic math, according to one of my elementary school teachers -- where the answer appears out of thin air without showing your work to calculate it.

How ARE utility taxes assessed and paid? If you don't know, it's time to find out. There's a whole lot of confusion and nobody at the local county level seems to know. Don't take some out-of-state company's word about how your own tax system works. Here's the skinny on how it works in West Virginia...

Although most real and personal property is assessed at the local level by county assessors with county commissions approving the final rates, the Board of Public Works approves the real and personal property values of public utilities whose properties stretch across two or more counties. Rather than have each of the 55 assessors determine the value, the property is appraised and assessed by the Tax Division.

Utility property taxes are not handled by local government. It's handled by a state office. Counties have no authority over the rate or the collection of these taxes. Once the state has assessed these utility taxes, the utilities appeal and negotiate these rates to have the tax lowered. Once a deal is reached, the state tax office apportions the utility tax it has collected like this:

"...the value of the property therein of every such owner or operator as valued or assessed hereunder and the relative value of such operating property within each county compared to the value of the total operating property within the state, to be determined upon such factors as the Auditor shall deem proper;".

Bottom line? Counties have no control over utility taxes on transmission lines and the tax rates can fluctuate. Counties only get a small portion of what is collected. Go ahead, check with your county clerk to find out how much utility tax revenue your county received last year, and then figure out how much of that was actually due to electric transmission lines that cross your county. Maybe you can buy a cup of coffee with it?

So, where did the company get the numbers it is using to entice local support? Did they sit down with the West Virginia Board of Public Works and the state tax commissioner and negotiate a deal? Did they calculate how the value of the utility property will depreciate over the years until it's nothing but salvage? Did they mention that transmission utilities don't buy real estate, they simply take an easement and the landowner continues paying taxes on his property, including the easement?

I doubt it.

Corporations are old hands at manipulating local governments to believe that there's a pig in their poke, and not a mangy alley cat, when the corporation is selling new development projects to us "locals." And so they have developed a computer program to help them out that would make P.T. Barnum proud. But, instead of calling it something fitting like "Circus Sideshow Software" its name is IMPLAN. IMPLAN calculates job numbers, taxes, and other economic development numbers that excite local elected officials based on the capital costs of a proposed project. If the utility company isn't using IMPLAN to come up with these pie-in-the-sky tax revenue numbers, it's using another very similar software company.

And you know what they say about computers -- garbage in, garbage out!

Economic factors calculated by a computer algorithm are not realistic. You'd get more tax revenue and jobs out of a new fast food restaurant than you'd get from a new transmission line passing through your county and delivering nothing of value on its way.

Job predictions are extremely inflated. I have seen transmission full-time jobs predicted over the long term that don't even make sense! Building high-voltage transmission is a highly specialized skill. Contractors from other states hired to do the actual build will import their own workers for the duration of the job in your community. IMPLAN and its computerized cousins calculate all the economic impact that such transient workers will cause and then try to sell it to local elected officials as a "benefit." Hotel rooms, fast food, and gas for their vehicles for the month or so they're onsite isn't really going to make a difference on a local level. In addition, IMPLAN will spit out some number of full-time, permanent jobs created in your community by the project. I'm sorry, but this just doesn't happen.

Local transmission workers discuss where to place their ladder so they can climb up and squeeze electricity through the new transmission lines in your community.

Once the line is built, there are no local jobs associated with it. Operation and maintenance of the line is handled by remote teams.

But, back to those tax revenue claims...

Ask the company how it has balanced the actual reduction in local tax revenue caused by the project with the fictional number spit out by IMPLAN. It hasn't done that at all.

New transmission lines across your county are going to devalue the real estate in your tax base. A property crossed by a transmission line loses value and the owner of that parcel can appeal his assessment because of the devaluation the transmission line has caused. In addition, the transmission line can impact many planned developments and future land uses. What development is currently going on, planned, or dreamed about by your county? Maybe you want to lay that out on a map to see how close it is to the proposed transmission line route? New subdivisions, business parks, commercial developments, or maybe just some community improvement like parks, schools, or community services, can all be impeded, or cancelled altogether, if the new transmission line interferes with the proposed development. Whittled down to its most basic level, it's going to harm local landowners and investors who planned to monetize their land in the future, whether it's for retirement or simple profit. New transmission lines cause a decrease in your county's current tax base and any future prospects that might increase it.

Also consider that the transmission company actually pays no taxes at all on the transmission lines it builds... you pay those taxes! A utility collects its cost of service from ratepayers (plus regulated profit). Everything the company spends on its transmission lines, including real estate, personal property, business and income taxes, is reimbursed to them by electric ratepayers as the expense is incurred. All persons in your county who pay an electric bill (including the county itself) are paying those taxes!

Think about that while you're comparing the transmission company's bulging poke with reality. The cat's out of the bag!

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Grain Belt Express Gets Dirty

5/10/2025

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For the past 15 years, Grain Belt Express has been all about exporting "clean" wind power from southwestern Kansas. Grain Belt Express begins there because of the area's past potential for new wind turbines.

No more. Grain Belt Express is now all about...

Grain Belt Express provides open access delivery for all energy sources based on competitive contracts between electricity buyers and sellers.

Grain Belt's application for a taxpayer-funded loan from the U.S. Department of Energy is based on this qualifier from the DOE's Draft Environmental Impact Statement:

The first paragraph of the Executive Summary states that in order to qualify for a loan, the
project must be eligible under Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program), which defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at
the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).
The DEIS makes this presumption: “The Project could also help reduce overall GHG emissions by allowing new renewable energy projects to access the electric grid, potentially leading to the replacement of existing fossil-fuel power plants, while providing additional power to expanding renewable energy markets.” (Table 3.1.1).
The DEIS further states that the No Action Alternative would not support attainment of the U.S. government’s established target to reduce GHG emissions by 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels economy-wide by 2030 (The White House 2021). (Sec. 3.1.3).

Grain Belt Express is no longer eligible for this loan, and its Draft Environmental Impact Statement is no longer valid.

When did Grain Belt Express stop being all about "clean energy"? November 5, 2024, when Donald Trump was elected to his second term as President. In fact, GBE parent company Invenergy's CEO Michael Polsky was a big donor for Trumps Inaguaration. And now Polsky has set out on a campaign to pretend Grain Belt Express is something it isn't. Check out this interview where the chameleon in chief convinces vapid Fox News personality Maria Bartoromo that his project is something new.

How stupid do they think we are?

Grain Belt Express is now attempting to attract energy slurping data centers to locate in Missouri and take service on Grain Belt Express. Why would data centers do that when they can locate in southwestern Kansas near the source of the energy that Grain Belt is importing to Missouri? If data centers built in Kansas, they wouldn't have to pay exorbitant fees to Grain Belt Express to supply energy from SW Kansas. I'm pretty sure the financial incentives to locate in Missouri over Kansas are not going to cover the cost of importing power on Grain Belt Express. Why would data centers buy the Grain Belt cow when they can get the milk for free in Kansas?

Furthermore, why is Kansas content to have the energy it produces shipped to Missouri so that data centers will locate in Missouri and so that Missouri can feast on all the tax revenue data centers provide?

“Kansans working to balance household budgets and run businesses want energy that’s affordable and reliable, and that’s what we are getting with Grain Belt Express, all without ratepayers being forced to pay for it,” said Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins.

Sorry, Dan, but Grain Belt Express does NOT provide any reduction in energy costs for Kansans. It ships energy produced in Kansas to Missouri and raises prices in Kansas by reducing the supply of energy available for Kansans. Supply and demand, Dan, supply and demand. Have I got a deal for Dan!!! Instead of Grain Belt Express, how about a whole bunch of new data centers in southwest Kansas that produce hundreds of millions of dollars a year in property and other tax revenue? You could have that if you reject Grain Belt Express! Wake up, Dan, they're bamboozling you!

New data centers want to locate in places where there is a vast supply of power, not places where they are dependent upon long distance transmission lines that may never come to fruition. And what about all those wind farms in southwest Kansas planned to feed Grain Belt Express? Are they all still proceeding full steam ahead under Donald Trump? Better take another look at that one!

Grain Belt Express touts its 39 municipal customers in Missouri in its recent press release:

“This announcement shows once again how much Missouri can contribute to big infrastructure projects like this transmission line, which will help bring energy savings and reliability to 39 municipal utilities across the state."

That seems to be the only customer Grain Belt Express has... still. Those 39 Missouri municipalities are contracted to take less than 5% of Grain Belt's capacity. Because Grain Belt Express is a merchant transmission project, it needs signed contracts to produce enough revenue to be financially viable. Less than five percent of its capacity is NOT enough to support the project's revenue requirement. Grain Belt has been trying to find more customers than the Missouri munis for ten years now and still hasn't announced any other customers. Grain Belt Express cannot be built unless it finds enough customers to cover its costs.

And now Grain Belt Express has morphed once again into a transmission line for new data centers who probably are not interested. How much more money is Michael Polsky going to drop into this dead dog of a project, trying to make it pencil out? He didn't get to be so stinking rich by making bad business decisions. Isn't it time to give up on Grain Belt Express?

Grain Belt Express is an albatross around everyone's neck. It's a project idea that has been dead for years. Let it go!

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Shady Surveys = Skewed Stories

3/18/2025

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Sometimes the special interests get a little carried away with themselves, especially when the young folks who work there think they're saving the world. The progressive left is still trying to find a way to make transmission lines "less bad" for landowners so that they will happily accept them.

NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

I was recently contacted by a gal representing shady far left groups who think paying bribes to community members unaffected by new transmission projects is going to be the solution to transmission opposition. Save your effort. It doesn't work. And... as if I would help

The World Resources Institute
and
Data for Progress

with anything at all.

And it went like this:

On behalf of research teams at Data for Progress and World Resources Institute, I’m reaching out to ask if you would be willing to participate in a 30-min or 45-min confidential recorded interview to answer questions about your experiences with community engagement and transmission infrastructure projects. The opportunity to learn from your expertise with the PATH project would be a particularly valuable contribution to our research.

We are inviting advocates both for and against transmission projects, policymakers, developers, community organizations, and other key stakeholders to these discussions. In the interview, we hope to learn about your familiarity with and views of community engagement efforts around transmission development, including what you view as working well or as areas for improvement.
These interviews are part of a larger research project designed to examine barriers and opportunities for transmission deployment, including a specific focus on community engagement and understanding the role that community benefits (and tools like community benefits agreements) could potentially play in addressing some of these challenges, or if not, what their shortcomings are. We plan to synthesize what we learn from these interviews into a report which will also include evidence from case studies, focus groups, and survey data.

We would be grateful for the opportunity to include valuable insights from your unique expertise in our research. Your interview responses will be confidential and nothing you say will be attributed to you or your organization. Please reach out if you have any questions about the interview format.

If you’d like to participate in this interview, please let us know, and we would be delighted to set up a 30-min or 45-min Zoom discussion in the next few weeks.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Does this deserve a response? Not really, but I wanted to have a little fun.

I’m not sure how I can help you with your project. How many actual transmission opponents are you interviewing? The fact of the matter is that once a transmission project is sited on private property, the impacted property owner will oppose it. It doesn’t matter how many “benefits” the government or the transmission owner want to shower on others in the community who are NOT impacted. For instance, if a transmission line is sited in my back yard and I will have to live with it in perpetuity, it doesn’t matter much to me if somebody wants to fund a new park across town, or in an adjacent community that is not impacted at all. Community “benefits” are nothing more than a bribe to buy the advocacy of unaffected persons. It doesn’t make the landowner whole. “Benefits” to people who are not impacted do nothing to change opposition and only create arguments and bad feelings in local communities. I wouldn’t throw my neighbor under the bus for my own personal gain, and I hope you wouldn’t either.

Maybe you should change your polling questions to ask people if they support a transmission line ACROSS THEIR OWN PROPERTY that will use eminent domain to take the land if the landowner refuses. Or if a landowner is willing to sacrifice his home for the “benefit” of people who are sacrificing nothing for the effort.

The only opinions that matter here are the ones of impacted persons.

Have a great day!

P.S. Transmission opponents are unlikely to give away our strategy to dark money transmission advocacy groups.

Perky young gal was undeterred.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I completely understand if you do not wish to participate in this research project. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I respect the time you spent writing this reply and wanted to provide more context to you about this work.

As an independent non-profit research organization, we hope to present a balanced view of challenges and shortcomings when it comes to how companies have approached transmission development, as well as opportunities to ensure that landowners have a meaningful say in these projects, including when that means organizing to stop them or to improve the conditions under which they do get built. We are representing a variety of perspectives across nearly 100 participants in our interview and focus group research, and have invited transmission opponents to participate in these interviews ranging from directly impacted landowners to county commissioners that have spoken out against projects. Our research included focus groups with rural landowners to understand their views on the important questions that you raise -- such as how they would feel about transmission infrastructure being built across their own property and their views on the use of eminent domain. You make valid points we've also heard during our research about the perceptions of benefits and their limitations, which will inform the analysis in our report.

In case it is of interest to you, we are also conducting 15-20 minute anonymous surveys as part of this project. We'd welcome your response if you would want to participate in this in lieu of an interview, but we also respect your decision to decline participation in the project.

Once again, I wanted to thank you for your time and the care you put into your reply. Have a wonderful weekend!

Their research included focus groups with rural landowners to understand their views on the important questions that I raised -- such as how they would feel about transmission infrastructure being built across their own property and their views on the use of eminent domain?

How many actual rural landowners went willingly to a focus group held by these far left groups? How much were they paid, and were they told the truth about who was paying for the focus group and how their participation would be used? I doubt it. It never is with focus groups. If there's so much lying going on at these groups, who could trust the results? The ones who paid for the focus group want to use the knowledge gained to skew public opinion.

Right. With another biased "report" that promises throwing money at the transmission problem will solve it. This problem can never be solved until transmission is properly buried on existing transportation rights of way and landowners are not victimized over and over again.

Do these groups know Biden isn't President any longer and they are not running the federal government anymore? Who are they going to convince with their bogus reports?

Nobody.

I suggest they redirect their grant money toward other important social dilemmas, like finding out why environmentalists are burning their Teslas and buying gas guzzlers. Well, if they have any grant money left that is... ;-)

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The Only Thing Reliable About GBE Is The Propaganda It Produces

9/7/2024

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Student reporter Mary McCue Bell is studying Investigative Journalism. Stay in school, girl, you've got a lot more to learn! Now I'm not sure what they're teaching in school these days, but a real investigative reporter doesn't approach a story with a preconceived agenda. Bless her heart, she actually interviewed someone with a different point of view, but then curated the actual information she received to fit with her own opinion. That's not investigative journalism, that's propaganda.

A fight across Missouri over transmission towers for reliable energy, her headline blared.

Reliable energy? She forgot to "investigate" that word. Reliability is a function of regional grid planners. In Missouri, that's managed by MidContinent Independent System Operator, or MISO. If a transmission line is needed to provide reliable energy in Missouri, it is planned and ordered by MISO. Grain Belt Express is NOT a MISO project. Instead, it is a speculative investment venture, an unneeded addition to MISO's grid. GBE's owners are speculating that if they can build the project that voluntary customers will pay separate fees to use it to transmit energy across the state. However, GBE only has one customer in Missouri for less than 5% of its available capacity. GBE is not for "reliable energy."

Miss Mary was also completely bamboozled by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) designation process, which claims to be creating corridors for the transmission of reliable energy. However, DOE also has no authority to plan the transmission system, or order transmission projects. Its role is advisory only. It can produce mind numbing reports, and designate corridors for private transmission developers like Invenergy, but it has no authority or jurisdiction to plan or approve the transmission system. Only the regional grid operators like MISO can determine that a line is needed for reliability, and MISO relies on its own deep knowledge of the system to make plans. It doesn't take orders from a silly, political agency like DOE. The only thing reliable about GBE is the propaganda it produces.

Perhaps Mary should have pondered the significance of the passage of time before declaring that "a nationwide plan to increase the reliability of electricity and reduce consumer costs" is playing out in Missouri. The idea for Grain Belt Express was hatched more than a dozen years ago, long before the government's recent "plan" that started with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. This battle started long before Mary recently discovered it.

Missouri citizens elected Senator Josh Hawley as their representative, no matter how disappointing that may be to Miss Mary. His job is to use his "bully pulpit" to protect their interests. Is the "bully pulpit" phrase just a sullen swipe at him because he refused to be interviewed by a student journalist with an agenda? She certainly loved the bully pulpits inhabited by clean energy pot stirrer James Owen and political gasbag Tyson Slocum.

James Owen is not insensitive to landowners? Ha ha ha. No landowner actually believes that. I don't either. I watched his arrogant dismissal of their concerns while testifying at the PSC. Maybe you ought to check his previous statements and videos.

Despite what the DOE told Miss Mary, the fact is that Grain Belt Express requested the Midwest-Plains transmission corridor to benefit its bogged down project with the ability to appeal state permitting denials, like the one recently ordered by an appeals court in Illinois. GBE also wants a corridor so it can score a federal taxpayer-backed loan guarantee to build its project that currently doesn't have enough customers to be economic. The Kansas Corporation Commission testified before a legislative committee just last week that GBE told them they requested the 5-mile wide corridor from DOE. Who's lying here? The DOE, or GBE, or the KCC? Why don't you investigate that?

And here's something else to investigate... transmission lines do not create electricity, so they alone cannot "keep up with the nation's increasing power demands." What we need is new baseload generation that can be depended upon to generate when needed, and it needs to be located near the increasing power demands, not imported hundreds of miles on unnecessary transmission lines.

What does Otto Lynch from Pennsylvania know about farming in Missouri, with his contention that farmers can easily farm around towers? Nothing at all! His views about farming are of no consequence and add absolutely nothing to this story.

Ditto on political gasbag Tyson Slocum, farming grant money in Washington DC for his half-assed attacks on the energy industry. His perception of the landowners within proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors comes from the smug satisfaction of someone who isn't impacted in the least. The real jackbooted thugs pretend that "meaningful consultation" with landowners before carrying on to a pre-determined conclusion somehow makes the stealing of private property okay. It doesn't. Would it be okay if I allowed you to cry a little about losing your purse before I forcibly took it?

Slocum's comments demonstrate a profound lack of knowledge about NIETCs. I honestly can't remember him ever once commenting or being involved in this process. He is inconsequential and his comments add nothing to this story. He's a non-entity who never misses a chance to display his ignorance to anyone who will listen.

Key word here -- "investigate." I give this project an F.

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How They Steal Your Power

9/2/2024

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What's scarier to greedy corporate interests than a grassroots movement against their industry? Your success! Corporate interests, whether it's the electric transmission industry, housing, data centers, or any other invasive and destructive industry are terrified of being thwarted by grassroots movements in the communities where they want to make money.

Last week, a grassroots group opposed to a new transmission line through central Maryland took their fight to the industry at a conference celebrating the data center industry in Frederick, Maryland.

But the well-publicized protest was anticipated by conference organizers, who met the challenge with attempts to steal the protestors' power.

Leaders of the Maryland Technology Council, which organized the daylong session, had anticipated the ruckus. They briefed conference attendees on protocols and strategies for coping with the protesters and insisted that the proposed power line project is not directly connected to the Quantum Loophole data center campus, which is in the early stages of development in Frederick County.

Let's examine this article using one of my favorite tools -- the seven common propaganda devices. This tool is one of the oldest in the propaganda handbook.

The device employed most frequently by the conference organizers was "Name Calling."

First example -- in the quoted paragraph above the demonstration was referred to as "the ruckus." Protestors were also referred to as "noisy", a "flashmob", and "outraged". A noisy, outraged, flashmob ruckus, a description that is intended to turn the reader against the protestors. It's an ad hominem argument... don't pay any attention to what those people are saying because they are members of an unacceptable group.

Protestors were also called uneducated.

While Quantum Loophole executives tried to talk to some of the protesters during the lunch hour, Rick Weldon, president of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce, later said some of the demonstrators at the community college Thursday didn’t have access to all the relevant information — and that some would be tough to persuade.

“Frankly, no matter what the subject, they’re going to hold up a sign and yell at you because they don’t want anything to change,” he said.

...another name calling technique to marginalize you and steal your power. I'm going to guess that Rick Weldon knows a lot less about MPRP than any one of the protestors, but he uses his position to create a presumption of superior knowledge. The "education deficit" model has been a long time favorite of transmission project proponents. They like to think that opposition to transmission only happens because the community doesn't have enough information to make a sensible decision. However the opposite is actually true, the more you know about a proposed transmission project, the worse it sounds. No amount of information or "education" can change the mind of a landowner threatened by new transmission ripping through his largest investment.

Uneducated outrage is how opponents were framed in order to make conference attendees see them as an unacceptable group who should not be acknowledged.

Meanwhile, conference organizers employed "Glittering Generalities" to boost their own position. Jobs, school funding, dramatic growth in local businesses, Maryland's economy, land conservation, hiking and biking trails, and the most vague of all... a bright future!

Conference organizers also tried to sever Maryland's data centers from the MPRP. Either they are uneducated themselves, or they are spinning a carefully crafted alternate reality. Although Quantum Loophole's power supply is being provided by upgrading a dedicated transmission line to the old Eastalco plant, that doesn't mean QL won't benefit from MPRP. Quantum Loophole's dedicated transmission line feeds power from the Doubs substation to Quantum Loophole. Doubs is also the endpoint for the MPRP. All power flowing through MPRP is delivered to Doubs, where it is transferred to the numerous lines feeding out of Doubs, including the one to Quantum Loophole. Power from MPRP will absolutely be used at Quantum Loophole. Could Quantum Loophole get as much power as it needed if MPRP was cancelled? PJM Interconnection planned MPRP as one of several new 500kV transmission lines to serve data center load in Virginia and Maryland. And since Quantum Loophole seems to support MPRP, it stands to reason they think they will benefit from it.

The public relations war is heating up. But what will they say when those same protestors put down their protest signs and go inside the PSC to defend their properties through the legal process? Will Quantum Loophole step up to defend MPRP? Or will it use proxies to do so, such as labor unions and local business groups? A different kind of war will break out at the PSC once the application is filed, and that's where the ultimate decision will be made.

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Digging Into MPRP

7/11/2024

2 Comments

Get your hip waders, folks, it's going to get deep in here!

Last night I attended the MPRP "Open House" in Brunswick. It made the guy from Assedo pretty nervous that we wouldn't sign in and give them our information, but he said we were welcome to look around. So, I did. I think maybe he changed his mind later when he spied us chatting with the reporter from Fox because he found it so intriguing he needed to document it with photographs. I saw you, dude. Somehow, I don't think PSEG is going to be using those photos for public relations purposes.

MPRP's "Open House" was right out of the utility playbook. Free food and beverage, free tchotchkes, and plenty of free propaganda from subject matter "experts" that sometimes couldn't stay within their specialties. Most of them were very nice, heck, they're just doing a job. A couple were quite snotty when they realized I knew they were blowing smoke. And I got so far under the PJM guy's skin that he started "m'am"-ing me. The sickest part of these open house meetings to me is always the Indoctrination Station for the kiddos.

Don't leave your kids here coloring propaganda under the watchful eye of strangers.

The first stop was the table with the PJM guy. Stu Widom had lots of helpful information, but didn't know much about the actual planning process, and it showed. Got himself all tweaked when I mentioned the precedent PJM has recently set by changing the route of a different project so it doesn't affect wealthy and politically connected people in Virginia's wine and horse country. Why don't you ask Stu about that tonight? He likes to pretend that it was for "environmental reasons" but it was nothing of the sort! The new route crosses the C&O Canal NHP TWICE. Environmental my foot. Of course, poking the rich and powerful might affect Stu's own personal environment as one of PJM's political schmoozers, so maybe that's what he meant? He obviously wasn't there to talk with citizens, but to use his bee smoker on any angry legislators or government officials who showed up.

Next I talked to one of the land agent ladies, who pretended that's not what she was. I asked her when they were going to release the land agents on the citizens impacted by this project and she acted all confused. I asked her if land agents would be calling on people BEFORE or AFTER the Maryland Public Service Commission approves this project. She assured me land agents would only contact you AFTER the MD PSC approves. We both knew she was full of it, and my investigation of regulatory filings this morning confirms

The Project is a greenfield project for most of the project route, which poses uncertainty and risk. With an in-service date of June 1, 2027, the Project faces an aggressive timeline to execute and complete all construction activities. The Project must manage ROW permitting and land acquisition risks associated with the greenfield line routes in a compressed period of time. For instance, PSEG RT will need to obtain ROWs, rights-of-entry, easements, and temporary access agreements, and in these efforts, may encounter local opposition from landowners.

Busted! Those land agents will be on your doorstep as soon as the routing is completed in September.

Next was one of the routing guys who told me this project was needed to supply electricity to the local area. I told him he was wrong, then he admitted that he wasn't the subject matter expert on that. He suggested I go over to Stu's table to find the answer to that question. I said I'd already been there and maybe HE should go talk to Stu. He refused, so I suggested that he not lie to people about that anymore,

I talked with a delightful young lady at the structure/electrical engineering poster. She showed me the selected H-frame structures and told me the poles were 40 feet apart and that it would be possible to drive farm equipment between them. I asked her what happens if someone tried that and accidentally clipped one of the poles and it fell over. Who would be liable? She didn't know. I didn't suggest that she volunteer for a farm machinery rodeo, where the power company person stands in a field with their arms outstretched and pretends to be a transmission tower while farmers see how close they can drive their gigantic pieces of equipment to the "tower" without knocking it over.

I talked with another routing lady who confirmed that paralleling existing transmission lines can actually be MORE destructive than cutting new greenfield lines. We talked about how homes and other structures are often sited right outside transmission rights of way that have existed for decades. Paralleling that corridor with a new 150-ft wide easement would destroy everything adjacent to the existing corridor. She said MPRP would go around homes rather than over or through them, but had to minimize how many times its line crossed the existing line. There was also a problem where a home stood on either side of the existing easement, preventing expansion on either side. She didn't know what MPRP would do in that instance. One of those homes would have to be sacrificed, that's what. Whichever side of the existing easement has more homes wins. However, when MPRP uses new easements, it can go around any home or other obstruction and won't have to destroy anyone's home.

And finally, I talked with PSEG's staff lawyer, who happened to be sitting at Stu's table.

Very nice person who pretty much told the truth and had the answers to my rather unique questions. She admitted that perhaps some of the other "experts" at the meeting may be making crap up and she had asked them not to do that. I grilled her on PSEG's federal regulatory filings and cost recovery system. This morning I found the documents and they mostly confirmed what she told me.

PSEG has applied at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to be granted three transmission incentives. The first is the Abandoned Plant Incentive. If granted, PSEG would be able to recover all its prudent expenditures on MPRP in the event that it is abandoned before being built through no fault of PSEG. This would include if cannot get the permits it needs, or if PJM's need for the project changes. The second is to set a preliminary debt/equity ratio of 55/45%. This isn't anything to get concerned about. The third incentive is recovery of PSEG's expenses related to this project once the project has an approved formula rate. PSEG's initial expenditures will be recovered over a 5-year period once it has a recovery method. This means that all the money PSEG has spent preparing this project for PJM, ushering it through PJM's competitive process, it's legal costs to make those FERC filings, the cost of all its contractors (routing, engineering, land acquisition, public relations), the food, the coloring books, even those cute little hardhat flashlight keychains (be sure to get one!). Everything PSEG has already spent will end up added to ratepayer bills once it has its formula rate established. The one made up fib the lawyer told was that PSEG was paying for all the current costs of the project out of the goodness of their hearts. I hope she knew as well as I did that those costs were being put in an account as a regulatory asset that would be recovered (with interest) at a later date.

First, PSEG is waiting for FERC to approve its incentives. Afterwards, PSEG will file for approval of its formula rate and rate of return. Bet your eyes glazed over just then, right? Stick with me here... A formula rate is a set of tables that calculate a yearly rate based on numbers that the transmission company plugs in from their ledger. As things are paid for, the costs get added to certain accounts, and the account totals get transferred to the formula rate on a yearly basis. The number that comes out the end of the formula is the amount that electric consumers pay for the transmission project on a yearly basis. A rate of return is how much interest the company earns on its capital expenses. That includes physical assets, like transmission lines, land they sit on, and it also includes the cost of building them in the first place. It's heady stuff, but anyone with a little accounting experience can handle it just fine.

Once the formula rate and rate of return is set by FERC, you can help PSEG look over its costs every year to make sure they don't include any costs in their formula rate that shouldn't be charged to ratepayers.

To wrap up... I urge you to download and read PSEG's application for FERC incentives. It may answer a bunch of the questions I have seen swirling around, such as where's the data proving need? Why was this project selected instead of upgrading existing lines? If you have questions, why not take them to the PSEG attorney at tonight's meeting? She's fun to talk to. Be nice.

Another utility "dog and pony show" in the books. Don't expect to accomplish much. MPRP isn't going to be stopped at any of these meetings, but attending is your first step. It's simply a networking opportunity. Come hungry. As one landowner remarked at one of these shows years ago... "We might as well eat. It might be all we get."

2 Comments

<<Previous

MARL and Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek are the SAME project!

Is the Deep State Conspiring with Grain Belt Express?

Hark! Is That Grain Belt's Death Knell I Hear?

MO AG Investigates Changes to Grain Belt Express

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Grain Belt Express Gets Dirty

Shady Surveys = Skewed Stories

The Only Thing Reliable About GBE Is The Propaganda It Produces

How They Steal Your Power

Digging Into MPRP

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