Category: Marketing To Mayberry

Landowners Are Not a Problem That Needs Solving

6/16/2024

Academics who have never had a transmission line proposed across their property are at it again, writing their idiotic "reports" that claim to find the reason why transmission projects draw opposition and are not successful. I've seen many versions of this "save the transmission world" report, and exactly none of them have gotten it right. I think it's because they are inherently biased to think that transmission is "good" and "desperately needed." They believe, deep down in their highly educated souls, that impacted landowners are simply speed bumps on the road to transmission "progress" and that they can figure out new ways to make landowners either acquiesce, or advocate for new transmission to cross their properties. It's nothing but a psy op.

Nobody likes new transmission across their property. NOBODY! Anyone who said transmission was a great idea is either not affected, or their advocacy is being purchased with favorable treatment and ego-stroking (and cash helps, too!).

This new report (see "How Grid Projects Get Stuck" at the bottom of the page) makes conclusions about why the Grain Belt Express stalled out for so long and thinks it has now been successful. Complete lack of accuracy! GBE is in as much trouble now as it's ever been. It's got its corporate head shoved too far up the Biden administration's rear end, hoping for government favors to pull itself out of the dumpster. How much of our tax dollars will the federal government waste on a project that has never been needed?

And, speaking of need, the researchers did not seem to understand what they were told about lack of need for GBE, no matter how much people tried to educate them. GBE, as a merchant transmission project, has not been found needed by regional transmission organizations for reliability, public policy, or economic reasons. If it had any of those benefits and its cost was less than the benefits it offered, a RTO would have ordered the project. No RTO ordered GBE because there was no need for it, not because they are biased against outsiders. If it's not found needed by an RTO, it is not needed. Everyone (but the researchers) understands that. GBE was a speculative venture, a value proposition that never could find any customers who thought it provided enough value to sign a contract. When a project is not needed by a regional transmission planner, and it can't find any customers that think it's an economic value, then it's a completely unnecessary project. It is like McDonald's eyeing your front yard -- GBE wants to take your front yard so it can build a transmission project for one simple reason -- PROFIT. Not because it's needed, or because it provides economic value. Incumbent utilities may be for profit, but they are also public utilities with an obligation to serve. GBE is not a public utility. GBE is only trying to create profit, not serve consumers who need electricity.

The researchers honed in on the disrespectful way Clean Line treated landowners, even mentioning the "Marketing to Mayberry" episode. Skelly gets faulted for his approach to local governments and elected officials before landowners were even notified. That pretty much set the tone, didn't it? How different things might have turned out if Skelly approached landowners first and actually paid attention to their desire for the project to be sited along transportation corridors and buried. It would be operating right now, if it had attracted customers. Instead, Skelly and then Invenergy, just kept dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a plan that was badly conceived from the beginning. GBE didn't listen to landowners.

The things the researchers think GBE did wrong ultimately don't mean anything though because they picked up on the wrong things, things that wouldn't have made a difference in the long run.

Regulatory institutions are stacked against new players.
Public and regulators' understandings of public interest and public need enable parochialism.
This case highlights a fundamental mismatch between the scale of costs and benefits for long-haul transmission infrastructure.
The traditional model of community engagement, centered around mass meetings and evaluation of alternatives, failed to satisfy either the developer or the community.
Community members are aware of alternative process models and technologies, and they anchor their judgments to their knowledge of these alternatives.
Public opinion favors incumbent entities and processes.

What? Poor, poor, rich little Michael Skelly. Everyone was against him! As they should have been! He was only interested in plundering for profit. Landowners have no use for him, and sent him packing back to Houston. And did our slick willie friend learn anything from his failure? I doubt it, judging from this article about his new company trying to build a transmission line through Montana. SSDD. You can almost smell the failure wafting its way from that article,

State regulators have a duty to consider the public impacts of new transmission. That's not parochialism, that's doing their job. State regulators don't work for merchant transmission companies, or electric consumers in other states. They only work for the public in their jurisdiction.

Projects without benefits will never be accepted by impacted landowners. Even projects with some supposed benefit for "the public" don't matter when it's your home and your money on the line.

Yes, the utility model of keeping the public uninformed until the project and its routes are set in stone is unhelpful. Transmission developers that operate in secret fail in public. But what's the alternative? Would developers approach communities and ask them upfront what kind of project they should build? That is unlikely because the whole public engagement process is built on an enormous misconception. Developers (and researchers) believe that if they can only "educate" (propagandize) impacted communities, that they can turn opposition into support. That is NEVER going to happen. Nobody wants a transmission line. NOBODY. Self preservation is always stronger than bullshit.

The road to success is staring transmission developers, big green transmission advocates, and their government flunkies right in the face. It's a transmission project that does not need any new land. No new land, no eminent domain, no impacts, no opposition.

First of all, we should build new power generation near the power load. When new transmission is needed, it must be routed on existing linear easements, such as road, rail, or underwater. Building a gigantic network of transmission lines for the sole purpose of connecting wind and solar projects to load in distant cities, and trying to use transmission to make up for the intermittent nature of these unreliable sources of electricity is not going to save them. Remote wind and solar is an infeasible money pit. The only thing it's been successful at is making the rich richer.

Landowners who don't want new transmission lines on their property are not a "problem" to be solved.

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Nobody Asked Me

9/7/2023

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...and I'm betting nobody asked you either, but Big Green has now proclaimed that

If care is taken to make sure that host communities benefit in the short and long term from the energy projects in their backyards, they will be less inclined to oppose them, leading to faster timelines for clean energy and transmission projects.

Of course, this is a baseless statement. There has never been a transmission project where "communities" received so much benefit that they dropped their opposition (or never started opposition in the first place).

Nevertheless, these Big Green blowhards are courting Congress to pass more legislation greasing new transmission, wind and solar projects. And they're pretending they speak for impacted landowners. Their bold new plan has been issued as another tedious "report".

The report says the craziest stuff, like:

Community opposition to large-scale wind and solar projects is growing across the United States. There are many reasons for this trend, including misinformation about renewable energy, concerns about project impacts, and concern that most of the benefits flow outside of the community while the burdens fall within. Communities often see hosting renewable energy projects and transmission (which touches multiple communities) as an impediment to their goals, such as preserving community identity, land preservation, and in some cases ensuring ecosystem conservation. While some landowners see these projects as a potential source of revenue from leases, others worry that the projects will reduce the value of their land. Finally, in many communities, while there may be both supporters and opponents of clean energy projects, the opponents are often more vocal, better resourced, and more passionate than the supporters. Because of all these factors, an alarming number of communities are adopting restrictive zoning and land use ordinances that effectively ban the siting of clean energy projects.

This rise in opposition highlights the importance of ensuring that developers and local officials disseminate accurate information about potential projects and that the permitting process allows engagement from a broad range of voices so that decision-makers can accurately assess the environmental impacts as well as benefits of projects. Furthermore, it is important to ensure that host communities share in the benefits of projects in their own backyards.

Misinformation you say? All the misinformation is coming from project developers and proponents. Nobody trusts them because they are in hot pursuit of the almighty dollar, not local interests. The "information deficit" ploy has never worked. Minds are never changed no matter how much nonsense the developers spew. We're not stupid, uninformed bumpkins that just need to be "educated." Is this going to become a free speech issue where "misinformation" is outlawed and the developers are judge, jury and executioner of misinformation?

We're NOT better resourced than deep-pocketed developers. We're just speaking the truth. Truth still matters in rural communities.

Several states, including New York, California, Illinois, and Washington, have enacted laws that improve the siting process for large-scale renewable projects and provide potentially powerful models for similar legislation in other states. Among other things, these laws modernize the permitting process and explicitly provide benefits to host communities via mechanisms like utility bill discounts. States should be encouraged to adopt model siting and permitting laws that expand community engagement while limiting the ability of localities to unreasonably ban all wind and solar projects.

The LAST thing rural states want is to be like California or any of those other states. We live here for a reason... because it's NOT California.

But the best part of this idiotic paragraph is the statement that we can EXPAND community engagement while LIMITING the actions the communities can take. That's not engaging the communities... it's oppression.

Bringing communities from opposition to support—or at least to open-mindedness—is a major challenge to renewable energy growth that needs sustained effort, engagement, and thought. Our recommendations provide a starting point.

And also an ending point because rural communities aren't going to fall for any of your B.S. It is IMPOSSIBLE to undo opposition to big energy projects that benefit far away cities. Build your own power plant in your own backyard, you sanctimonious morons.

Coalitions should work together to build support for well-sited projects that benefit the host community. In cases where developers have done their due diligence as outlined in the preceding recommendations, environmental and conservation groups, labor groups, local landowners and businesses, and other stakeholders—including, where relevant, environmental justice and tribal groups—should form coalitions and work together to support the project. A key part of this support should be highlighting the community benefit agreements, payments in lieu of taxes or other mechanisms for benefit sharing, the creation of local jobs, and addressing other ways to compensate local landowners for any perceived or actual diminution in property values.

Coalitions of the unaffected? Utilities have been trying this for decades without success. These coalitions have always been outed for the greedy, paid off schills that they are. We don't need these idiots to advocate for "benefits" for us because these "benefits" are really for them. There is no benefit that can outweigh having a new transmission line in your back yard or across your prime farmland. What these coalitions actually try to do is simply outshout community opposition and collect benefits for themselves. It's a tactic that never works. Regulators aren't stupid, you know, and they've seen this a thousand times.

This new report is complete garbage. However it has now been made crystal clear exactly which idiots are writing all the new clean energy legislation. It's not your elected representatives. It's private interests.

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How the Community Consultation Sausage is Made

8/23/2023

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Utilities, regulators, elected officials, grid planners, environmental groups, and pretty much everyone else not personally affected by a new transmission line or substation tell us that "early consultation" with impacted communities makes projects better. You're supposed to go away happy with the new infrastructure clogging up your backyard because you were "consulted."

Consultation is a chimera. It's an act. They make a big deal out of pretending that your input and concerns matter, but they really don't. You don't matter one bit and nothing you say, or any suggestions you make, have even a ghost of a chance of changing their predetermined plans. Oh, sure, they give you a bunch of busy work to do, maybe a committee or other place to be creative, or just vent, but nothing you produce will ever be good enough to pass muster. Why is that?

It's because utility planning is done behind closed doors. The utilities and the grid planner, like PJM, create a fully-formed project before informing the public and beginning their fake "community consultation." The community is approached with a fait accompli and the only options for the community is where to put it. This is intended to cause community clashes between neighbors over siting, while the real enemy, the utility, gets no pushback at all. Don't fight with your neighbors over where to put new transmission, direct your ire toward the real enemy.

When utilities finally roll out their set-in-stone proposals to the community and pretend to "consult", the community will set to work finding new routes, new ideas, new sources of energy, new ways to build transmission without community impact. The community is industrious, creative, and usually right. But when the community's suggestions are presented to the utility, the utility has 1,001 excuses why none of these solutions can ever work. Where's the "consultation"? It's a one-way street and the utilities simply bat away any new ideas. They don't have to accept, or even consider, your ideas. They're betting they can convince regulators that their ideas are better than yours because they are "experts" and you're just an uneducated peon.

The utilities then present documentation of their fake "community consultation" to regulators and say that the community prefers their plan to other alternatives. The conclusion is that, after consultation, the community is on board with the utility's original plan and therefore regulators should approve it.

This exact scenario is played out in this recent article about a new substation in Fayette County, West Virginia. The utility planned a new substation along Rt. 60 at one of two sites. One of these sites was the desired site all along, but to pretend to give the community a choice, a second dummy site was added to the mix. The community didn't want a new substation at either site. It wanted the utility to put the substation somewhere away from the highway. But, "...the company determined the other suggestions were not viable for the scope of what the project needed to house." Gee, imagine that! None of the other suggestions were viable at all. There was absolutely no way to make them work, or for the utility to compromise at all with what the community wanted. The utility's community consultation consisted of "...outreach and providing simulations of the project’s infrastructure." The utility showed the community photoshopped representations of how the project would look next to the highway if they built it their way. That is not "consultation." It's propaganda. The utility pretended that its picture show made the community happy.

“I think that sort of input that we got from the community and then also doing that modeling to show folks what it was going to look like when it’s constructed both helped along the project,” he said.

And the PSC said that the utility's preferred site was favored by more community members.

The commission observed that while many residents were still opposed to both the Garage Site and the Post Office Site, which is adjacent to the Victor Post Office on Route 60, they seemed more accepting of the Garage Site over the Post Office location.

Oh, they "seemed" more accepting? Was that finding based on some hard evidence? That's like asking the community if they would rather be flooded or burned. Neither one is an acceptable option. The community wants to be left alone and not put in "pick your poison" position. The community actually chose neither of these options, but how would they prove the PSC's conclusion was wrong?

Community consultation is a performance. Unfortunately, it's one in which the community must participate. But a smart and cohesive community knows how the sausage is made and plays their own games with the utility during community consultation simply to document the community's road to victory in the regulatory process. The utilities are not your friends. The regulators are not your friends. The only ones you can trust are your fellow impacted landowners, your friends, and your neighbors. That's where grassroots action starts and succeeds.

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Swamp Creature Skelly Uses Government Committee To Score Cash

2/4/2023

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The DC Swamp has gotten bigger than ever. There are literally billions of dollars in taxpayer funds being tossed around like Monopoly money. If you're part of the "in" crowd it's time to belly up to the bar and fill your pockets.

Case in point... our old pal Michael Skelly, who has created a new transmission company after he drove Clean Line Energy Partners into the ground. The new company is called Grid United and has created a suite of five new above ground transmission projects. Deja vu, anyone? Now, I'm not sure what kind of an idiot would give this man money to play a new round of "transmission developer" but I think it's a very special kind. Maybe even a fawning government bureaucrat with your money in his hands?

Michael Skelly seems to have learned absolutely NOTHING from the Clean Line failure, except to avoid the Midwest. Unfortunately for him, Mayberry is everywhere. His new "project" brain farts don't stand any higher chance of success than the last ones did. Nobody wants Skelly's electric obstructions on their land and he's probably in line for a large Deja Vu Daiquiri himself.

But here's something a bit different this time around. Skelly was rewarded for his Clean Line failure with a choice appointment to a special government committee. The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

The Board provides advice and recommendations to the Secretary of Energy on the Administration's energy policies, the Department's basic and applied research and development activities, economic and national security policy, and on any other activities and operations of the Department of Energy, as the Secretary may direct. The duties of the Board are solely advisory.

The Secretary of Energy, of course, is the political figurehead at the top of the U.S. Department of Energy. And who is giving out all those billions in "infrastructure" and "clean energy" funds provided by taxpayers? The U.S. DOE. And what has Michael Skelly and his committee advised the Secretary to do lately?

For all aspects of DOE transmission funding, prioritize projects which will enhance the interregional ties that will help regions support one another during times of extreme load or generation shortages(e.g., extreme weather events and challenging market conditions).

Prioritization of interregional projects will help compensate for lack of interregional planning, though such projects should not be seen as full substitutes for robust planning.

Ensure that interregional transmission and distribution solution projects are meeting Justice 40 Initiative (e.g., community engagement) and Just Transition (e.g., community benefit agreements) priorities (e.g., preferential weighting criteria within RFP).

Screen all projects against interregional criteria, in part to ensure that there are no interregional projects which would create similar benefits at a lower cost.

And what is Grid United trying to build? Interregional interconnections, such as North Plains Connector, "...an approximately 385-mile, up to 600 kilovolt high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line connecting the Eastern and Western Interconnections in Montana and North Dakota." Or perhaps Pecos West, "...an approximately 280-mile, 525 kilovolt HVDC intertie line stretching from Bakersfield in Pecos County to El Paso, providing a valuable link between ERCOT and the Western Interconnection." Etc., etc., etc.

Skelly seems rather eager to cash in.

After years of development, the United States is poised for a boom in long-distance transmission, Skelly said, pointing to projects such as Champlain Hudson, SunZia and TransWest Express.

The long-term expansion and extension of renewable energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act led to increased certainty that has flowed through to transmission development, according to Skelly.

“The easiest job in America right now is selling HVDC equipment,” he said.

So, to sum it up, Skelly sits on a federal committee that just recommended DOE prioritize giving money to just the kinds of transmission projects Skelly's new company is building.

You'd think there should be laws against that kind of corruption.

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Wishful Thinking Won't Get Transmission Built

1/16/2023

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If there's anything our government is good at these days, it's bad ideas and making crap up. For instance, I recently watched a replay of a U.S. Department of Energy webinar I missed back around Thanksgiving. The supercilious dweeb reading the power point slides with absolutely no interest or elaboration, and certainly no enthusiasm, actually said this in response to a question around minute 26 of video:

Proactive engagement with all of these stakeholders can lead to stronger projects and better outcomes, increase transparency, and the reduction or elimination of associated risks that can often stall transmission projects before they can be constructed.

The "stakeholders" he's planning to engage with to create transmission utopia?

Labor unions
Local governments
State energy offices
Tribal governments
Community based organizations that support or work with disadvantaged communities.

Sorry, Utopia Wish Man, but those are NOT the groups that create the risks that stall transmission projects before they can be constructed. The groups that delay and cause the cancellation of badly planned transmission projects are composed of affected landowners. Affected landowners are not necessarily members of any of those groups, and I've never seen any of those groups become engaged with the transmission opposition groups that cancel transmission project ideas. Those groups simply don't care unless somebody pays them to wave signs and recite canned speeches at public hearings. It's landowners who hire lawyers, intervene in the regulatory process, file appeals, and cause public relations sh*t storms. Only proactive disengagement with landowners can ameliorate the risks that stall transmission projects.

Proactive disengagement? What's that? It means designing new transmission projects so they don't affect or engage landowners in the first place, like routing them on buried existing linear rights of way or under bodies of water. If you don't engage landowners by threatening to condemn their properties and place a dangerous, ugly obstruction on it, then you will proactively prevent the risks that stall transmission projects before they can be constructed. I guarantee it! You won't need any of those peanut gallery folks who are not affected by the transmission project.

What won't work is pretending you care about "community impacts" when you really don't. That whole equity thing just doesn't work with electric transmission, whose victims are usually large rural landowners who use their land to make a living farming. Agricultural land is targeted over and over again simply because it's cleared land that has existing pipelines and transmission lines. When will these folks have done enough? When their entire property is chopped up and useless for farming?

How about this vapid quote:

It’s thus critical that Congress pass permitting reform legislation that will add to America’s capacity to transmit clean electricity and speed up the approval of clean energy projects that are waiting to be built, while preserving communities’ ability to make their voices heard on the environmental and other impacts of proposed energy projects.

You can't have both these things... adding new transmission while allowing communities to make their voices heard... unless the only thing you want to hear is some screaming and bad words. I'm not even sure how this is logically supposed to work... speed up approvals for projects that will use eminent domain to condemn private property and then making it all better by allowing these people to "make their voices heard?" What good is that if nothing changes? Isn't the whole point of speaking out to effect beneficial change? What good are community voices when nobody is listening? Stop saying stupid things like that! You sound like an idiot!

But here's the thing... no matter what silly things these virtue signalling morons say, affected landowners will continue to stall and cancel transmission projects before they are constructed. Only proactive disengagement can stop opposition. Anything else is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Like showing up on the battlefield with a squirt gun. Like not knowing your ass from your elbow. What a complete waste of time and tax money.

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Urban Special Interest Groups Pretend to Represent Rural Landowners

12/23/2022

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It takes real audacity to claim to speak for people you've never met, never talked with, and know absolutely nothing about. But that never stopped a well-funded, urban, special interest group before. They think they know everything about everything because they wish it to be so.

It's almost comical -- a bunch of urban special interest groups got together and wrote a letter to their oracle, Joe Biden, and told him what rural landowners affected by new transmission want.

Now more than ever, we need strong environmental review and public engagement processes to avoid harming communities while effectively speeding up development of much-needed infrastructure to enable a rapid clean energy transition.

"Public engagement". What does that mean? Simply giving landowners "notice" and allowing them to blow off steam with "input" doesn't solve the problem.

A recent study from MIT concludes that a significant hurdle in developing clean energy infrastructure projects is local opposition --and early community engagement can avoid delays or cancellations. To address this major slow down and to ensure that our new transmission is developed in an equitable manner, we must work with the very communities that our infrastructure is supposed to serve and not against them.

But yet these special interest groups are working against rural landowners by creating some "public engagement" fantasy that did not "engage" the landowners in the first place. Hypocrite much?

About that MIT study... it's pure garbage. The study makes up a completely unsupported conclusion for why certain transmission line projects studied were abandoned:

Public Participation: Local residents (their legislative representatives and public agencies) oppose projects in which they believe their worries are not adequately being attended to by the developer.

These projects were stopped because of opposition. There is no education deficit that can quell opposition by "adequately attending to worries." The only thing that stops opposition is to stop bad projects. Landowners impacted by new electric transmission towers and lines across their working land and adjacent to their homes aren't deterred from opposition by being told that their worries are unfounded. That just makes the landowners even more angry and determined to stop the project.

The only thing that can end opposition to a transmission project is not to engage the landowners in the first instance. If you don't site overhead transmission across private property, then landowner opposition never forms. Planning new projects buried on existing highway or rail rights of way, or underwater, is a guarantee that no landowners are affected in the first place.

Of course, a bunch of special interests that live in the big cities and think they should be provided with "clean energy" produced elsewhere have absolutely no idea what people that live and work in rural areas want. If the cities want "clean energy" then they need to find ways to produce it themselves. Build a new nuclear power plant in your own city. It is not the responsibility of rural America to provide for all your needs. Self-sufficiency is highly valued in rural areas. You should try it sometime because rural folks will continue to resist.

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Invenergy Trips Over Its Grain Belt Lies

8/24/2022

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Investigative journalism is not dead! It can still be found digging away at the Mexico Ledger in Mexico, Missouri. Managing Editor Alan Dale smells a story and he's determined to tell it. This week, he asked Invenergy nine questions about its project, and then several follow-ups, one of which caught Invenergy in a lie (surprise! surprise!)

Here's how Dale caught Invenergy in its own lie:

Have you entered any new agreements with any potential partners or “customers” who will use the Grain Belt and the connector?
We have an existing contract with a consortium of 39 Missouri communities to take power from the Grain Belt Express at an annual savings for $12.8 million, and we see very strong market interest in transmission capacity from the line, which is one factor in the recent announcement to expand local delivery capacity.
Will you move forward prior to an agreement or wait until you get enough before beginning construction?
Kuykendall: “We will begin construction after acquiring the necessary easements and approvals from regulators.”

Because that answer was obviously baloney, Dale asked a follow up:

So, to clarify customers that pay into Grain Belt Express through money or service, who, if anyone, have you entered into an agreement with? If you have no one paying into the line - a customer - you are saying you would build anyway? Or do you want to expand on this?
Kuykendall: ““Grain Belt Express will be bringing power to 350,000 electric consumers across Missouri through a signed transmission service agreement with the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission (MJMEUC) representing 39 Missouri municipal utilities. Grain Belt Express has seen strong interest in the market and expects to secure additional customer agreements prior to construction beginning.”

Oh, that's right... Grain Belt Express *DOES* need customers to pay for the project before it builds. Why? Because Invenergy is claiming that the project will cost $7B. They're going to need a construction loan for the project, and the lender is going to need a reasonable expectation of being repaid, such as the project having paying customers that would produce a revenue stream to make timely loan payments. Duh. How dumb does Invenergy think we are anyhow?

Grain Belt also admits that it will need additional customers, in addition to the MJMEUC customer. That's because the MJMEUC contract is for "up to 200 MW" of capacity. GBE is planning to make available 2500 MW of capacity in Missouri. MJMEUC is less than 10% of the capacity offered. In addition, MJMEUC got a sweet, sweet deal because they were used by Grain Belt to show the Missouri PSC that there was some "benefit" to Missouri. Grain Belt witnesses testified at PSC hearings that MJMEUC received a "loss leader" contract price that was actually less than it cost GBE to provide the service. Invenergy isn't going to be making any construction loan payments with its proceeds from MJMEUC.

So, where are the other customers? They do not exist!! Despite all the overly optimistic blather about the customers GBE "expects", the customers are just not there.

So you might wonder... what's the rush to get Tiger Connector approved? What's the rush to acquire land? What's the rush, Invenergy, when you don't have enough customers to make your project economic?

And, let's check out some of the other prevarications in Invenergy's answers.

What measures will the company actually take to minimize negative impacts for affected landowners?
Kuykendall: “Missouri stakeholders have urged Invenergy to develop solutions to deliver more power to Missouri from the Grain Belt Express project. The Tiger Connector is necessary to meet that request, and in doing so provide billions in energy savings to Missourians.

Wait a tick... who are these "stakeholders?" Do they have names? Do they even exist? I'm thinking they do not because who, other than a customer, would urge GBE to make more capacity available in Missouri? And we know GBE doesn't have any customers other than MJMEUC. If the "stakeholders" are real, Invenergy should name them. If not, they don't exist.

And then there's the matter of eminent domain:

What will the company do to avoid condemnation, which is likely the biggest issue?
Kuykendall: “This is always a last resort for us. We’ve already acquired 84 percent of the parcels needed along the Phase I portion of the Grain Belt Express HVDC route, with nearly all of them coming through voluntary easements.

Oh, look... "nearly", my favorite weasel word! "Voluntary" is an inappropriate description of acquiring easements through threat of condemnation. I'd even go so far as to say that none of the easements are voluntary since they weren't offered before Grain Belt Express land agents came calling. Kuykendall also forgets to mention that Invenergy has already filed a number of condemnation lawsuits that are currently working their way through the Missouri court system. Why must Invenergy condemn land NOW for a project that doesn't have enough customers to get built? Will Invenergy surrender these easements when it can't find enough customers? Grain Belt's current permit from the MO PSC requires that Grain Belt give back any easements it has acquired through condemnation if it doesn't use them within 5 years. Which brings us to the next bit of propaganda...

Can you confirm that Invenergy intends to honor the 7-year Sunset revision on easements as stated in the law?
Kuykendall: “The company is still reviewing that provision of (House Bill 2005) and expects this issue to be addressed in any regulatory filings before the Missouri Public Service Commission. As you know, HB2005 does not apply to Grain Belt Express and any commitment to comply with portions of the law would be voluntary in nature.”

That's right... Grain Belt only gets 5 years, not 7. But since the Missouri ag organizations generously gave 2 years away to Invenergy in HB 2005, perhaps Invenergy can add another two years? No wonder they're being cagey. But, never fear, dear landowner, Invenergy says:

We will engage further with the Missouri Farm Bureau, other ag groups, and the Missouri Public Service Commission to implement these commitments to balance energy affordability and reliability and landowner interests in Missouri.”

What landowner rights do you suppose they will give away on your behalf next? Only YOU can look out for YOU, not some special interest group that has other issues to pursue.

And let's end with Invenergy's complete and utter nonsense about burying transmission:

Will Invenergy move lines from the middle of fields? Bury lines?
Kuykendall: “We will propose a route that takes the input gathered from these public meetings into account. We understand the desire for some or all parts of the Tiger Connector line to be buried. Undergrounding the Tiger Connector would require burying two separate transmission systems to meet safety and reliability requirements. This makes undergrounding a non-starter.

“The Tiger Connector line will have one circuit for MISO and one circuit for AECI.
“Overhead line maintenance can be performed by shutting down one circuit while the other continues to deliver power.
“This is not possible underground because workers cannot work with a live circuit present, and federal reliability requirements prohibit a system design that would shut down power delivery to multiple markets at once. This would require two separate buried systems.
“Undergrounding would also have much greater impacts on ag operations, including:
Eight times as much land permanently taken out of production.
Over 80 times the excavation that can reduce yields from compaction and soil mixing.
Permanent “call before you dig” requirements for landowners in easement areas.
Ag impacts result from:
Excavating two buried cable trenches across the entire length of the line – with the trenches separated sixty feet from each other. Recent studies of other buried infrastructure projects have shown reduced yields for corn and beans between 15-25 percent due to compaction and the mixing of topsoil and subsoil caused by trenching.
Installation of permanent access bunkers which are like U-Haul trucks parked in the ground every 2,000 feet in pairs, one along each set of buried cables. Crops cannot be grown over these, and each set would be farmed around.
“In addition to the significant land impacts, this request could set a precedent for other future transmission lines in Missouri, representing billions of dollars in added costs for Missouri electric consumers over time.
“Stakeholders have cited the importance of balancing energy affordability and reliability while also serving landowner interests. Burying any part of Grain Belt Express would fail both of these goals.”
Kuykendall added these statistics to the response:
1.3 acres permanently out of production, vs. 0.16 acres
484,853 total cubic yards of soil excavation for undergrounding, vs. 5,759 cubic yards for monopole foundations

You need to bury two separate systems? Why? Are there two separate transmission lines? Workers can't be near a live circuit underground, but they can be near one above ground? If you can shut off the current to an aerial circuit, why can't you shut off current to a buried circuit? Point us to these "safety and reliability requirements" you quote. Or maybe you're simply making the whole thing up? I think Invenergy is trying much too hard to repel the idea of undergrounding the lines. None of this makes actual sense. It makes my logic bone ache.

Burial would have greater impacts on agriculture? Only if you buried the line on new rights of way across agricultural land, but that's not necessary at all. Buried transmission can be sited alongside existing road and rail rights of way, where they can bury the U-Haul truck vaults that allow faults to be repaired without digging up the entire line (something Invenergy recently claimed elsewhere). The beauty of buried electric cables is that they can go on existing linear easements. Nobody condemns a new right of way in order to bury a cable for some sort of infrastructure, they use the ones that already exist.

Oh, God forbid Invenergy set a precedent for building a transmission line that does not cause permanent impacts for farmers! What a horrid thing! Because it's really not that much more expensive when you consider the millions of dollars Grain Belt has spent over the past decade fighting landowner groups, buying influence, and pumping out the propaganda. Add to that the cost of 10 years of delay, and it probably costs the same as burying it on existing rights of way from the get-go.

And hey, look, there's those mysterious "stakeholders" again. Who ARE these people? And why should they speak for what landowners want? Only landowners should determine how the project affects them. It's their land, not mysterious stakeholder's. Mysterious stakeholder has not been out there alongside the landowner over the decades, pouring his mysterious blood, sweat, and tears into the land. Mysterious stakeholder needs to shut his pie hole... if he's anything more than a sock puppet being used by Invenergy.

I really can't wait for Alan Dale's next article!!! Please let him know how much you appreciate his reporting on Grain Belt Express!

2 Comments

Hiding Information in Plain Sight

7/25/2022

1 Comment

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:

Audrain County
Tuesday, July 26
Knights of Columbus
9584 State Hwy 15, Mexico, MO
65265
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00p.m. to 7:00p.m.

Callaway County
Wednesday, July 27
John C Harris Community Center
350 Sycamore St, Fulton, MO
65251
Meeting 1
12:00 p.m. to 2:00p.m.
OR
Meeting 2
5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

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!

1 Comment

Magic Math Is For Fools

7/21/2022

0 Comments

In case you missed it last week, Invenergy posted an "Analysis Summary: Impact of Grain Belt Express on Kansas and Missouri Ratepayers." It goes something like this:

Low-cost modeling process market consultants assuming estimated wind generation projected average reduce expected potential forward-looking wholesale market impacts revenue requirement controllability assessment aggregates combined impacts lower inclusion utility investment the collective partial revenue requirement average approximately production capacity factor flat production profile evening peak electric demand SPP MISO regions wholesale electric costs region spanning prices price spread opportunity arbitrage nodes average annual basis off-peak price differences translate Kansas and Missouri. Billions.

That was my take away. It really is that obtuse and meaningless. I don't think it's meant to be understood. I think maybe it's meant to be held by well-fed, middle-aged "economic development" big fish in small ponds while they slap each other on the back and bloviate knowingly about "savings" from Grain Belt Express. You know these guys as well as I do... they've got a finger in everyone's pie and they trade in "Do You Know Who I AM?" Jack of all trades, master of none, small government sycophant who likes to pretend he knows everything about energy and his opinion is gold.

Except... if you quizzed these guys they'd quickly find something more important to do than talk to you, or simply get angry at you for implying they are a know-nothing waste of flesh. They're probably on their way to find out what Invenergy can do for them. Quid pro quo, you know.

First of all... GBE is just a transmission line. It doesn't sell power. Power purchased separately. How in the world did this variable get handled in the opaque report? Notice how the variables are not identified, much less the equation shared? My 8th grade Algebra teacher would give Invenergy an "F" and send it to the principal's office for not showing its work.

Fugheddaboutit. Here's all you need to know about electricity prices in Kansas and Missouri.

See that? The price of electricity in Kansas is 10.38 cents per kWh. The price of electricity in Missouri is 9.64 cents per kWh. So if we export electricity from Kansas and make it available for use in Missouri, it will RAISE electric prices in Missouri, not lower them. In addition, Missouri ratepayers would need to add the $7B, that's BILLION, dollar price tag of Grain Belt Express to their equation, since Invenergy claims it necessary in its report.

There, wasn't that simpler and a whole lot more logical?

0 Comments

Where's the Customers, Invenergy?

7/12/2022

4 Comments

When I said I could make a month of blog posts out of Invenergy's "Tiger Connector" scheme yesterday, maybe I was only half joking. Today, we're going to concentrate on the reality of merchant transmission. Grain Belt Express is a merchant transmission project.

A merchant transmission project is strictly a financial proposition. A company proposes that if it builds a transmission line between two points that load serving entities will find it so useful and economic that they will voluntarily negotiate a contract to use it. Just because Invenergy offers new transmission does not mean anyone will use it.

We need to separate Invenergy's false bravado about "energy" from the reality of merchant transmission in order to think logically about Invenergy's scheme. A transmission line is only a transmission line. It does not produce energy. It's strictly a roadway to get energy from one place to the other. Invenergy is only selling capacity on its transmission line (road), it is not selling energy. It is aptly compared to a toll road -- customer pays to use the roadway to transport something it finds useful and economic. If Invenergy had customers for Grain Belt Express, the only thing the customers would be purchasing is use of the transmission line. Any energy transmitted over the line would have to be purchased from an electricity generator under a separate contract at a separate price. In order to actually take electricity over the line, a customer would have to buy electricity from a point near one of the converter stations and then ship it to their point of use. GBE is a direct current (DC) transmission line. In order for electricity to use the line, it would first have to be converted from alternating current (AC) before being loaded on the line for use at its destination. When the DC electricity gets to its destination, it will once again have to be converted back to AC before being offloaded from the line. The conversion process wastes a considerable amount of energy. If you purchased AC energy from, say, Kansas, you'd lose a considerable portion of it in the two conversion processes before it arrived at your destination in, say, Missouri. If you were the customer, you'd eat the cost of that lost electricity you paid for.

As mentioned, a merchant transmission project is strictly voluntary. A merchant project is not vetted or planned for reliability, economic, or public policy purposes by regional transmission planners. Electric customers don't "need" it for reliability, economic or public policy purposes. It's simply something extra that customers would volunteer to purchase if they found it financially lucrative. And this has been the problem with merchant transmission in the Midwest. It's not attracting customers. Customers in the east are looking at offshore wind and other local renewables, like solar, to meet their renewable energy needs. Eastern utilities have NEVER looked at importing electricity from half a continent away using toll road transmission projects. The cost of the transmission to get it there must be added to the cost of the supposedly "cheap" energy from the Midwest, and the result is often equal to or more expensive than buying local renewables. Another factor for Eastern utilities (and states) is that building renewables locally provides an economic bump to the locality. Eastern states do not want to export all their energy dollars to a generator and transmission company thousands of miles away when they could create jobs and economic development at home. This is why merchant transmission for export has never worked.

First Clean Line Energy Partners, and now Invenergy, have previously claimed in Missouri PSC testimony that Eastern customers in PJM Interconnection will make up the vast majority of the customer base for Grain Belt Express because they can sell the capacity for more money there. Clean Line even offered a below-cost contract to a handful of Missouri municipalities in order to get the project approved as "useful" to Missouri. Clean Line purported that it would make the loss up in its sales to Eastern customers. Except we've never seen any evidence that those customers exist, and with Invenergy's big announcement yesterday that it will only construct the first "phase" of its project from Kansas to Missouri for the time being, I believe that demonstrates that those Eastern customers don't exist. If they did, GBE would be decreasing its offering in Missouri and increasing its offering to PJM.

So, what's left? Invenergy thinks it can maybe find enough suckers, err customers, in Missouri to buy service for importing 2500 MW of electricity for use in Missouri. Except, do those customers even exist? GBE has been offering "up to 500 MW" of service to Missouri customers since the Clean Line days. It has only secured a contract for "up to 250MW" with the municipalities. That extra 250MW has been for sale for years and it appears that nobody has purchased it. But yet Invenergy now thinks its service is so popular it will suddenly be able to sell ten times that amount. Does this even make sense? Where's the customers, Invenergy?

In media quotes yesterday, Invenergy tried to play coy about customers.

Invenergy did not disclose which Missouri entities it expects will buy the additional power, but it is “confident that the customer base is there,” said Sane.

The line is a so-called merchant line, meaning its costs wouldn’t be spread broadly across the region like most intrastate transmission lines. Instead, only utilities and other consumers that buy capacity on the line would pay.

Among those customers are more than three dozen small cities and towns across Missouri, which estimate they will save more than $12 million annually compared with coal plants that supply power under existing contracts.

So the only customers it has are the loss-leader priced ones it has had all along. If there were new customers, Invenergy would have been pushing them to the front of the quote line. Instead, the only advocates singing GBE's praises in yesterday's news coverage were business groups who don't buy electricity. Those aren't customers. Customers are load serving entities who buy electricity wholesale and sell to others at retail.

There is no indication that any new customers are eager to purchase capacity on GBE. Maybe Invenergy is trying to paint Tom Sawyer's fence to attract customers, however Missourians are wise to that game. Duh.

In another self-flagellating talking point yesterday, Invenergy claimed GBE would sell the equivalent of the output of 4 nuclear power plants to Missouri electric utilities. That electricity will be produced in Kansas, not Missouri. If Missouri is going to increase its electricity imports by an amount equal to 4 nuclear power plants, then it must decrease the amount of electricity currently produced in Missouri by the same amount. This is the death knell for 4 (or more) Missouri electric generation plants that currently employ thousands. Importing electricity over GBE isn't going to provide an amount of good-paying jobs equal to those lost. In addition, localities will lose the tax revenues they currently enjoy from those plants that will be shut down without an equal replacement from GBE. GBE is an economic loss to Missouri, no matter how much fluff and nonsense Invenergy tries to disseminate. This is the same reasoning the Eastern utilities use when rejecting GBE. It just makes sense.

And Invenergy has another problem with its new scheme. Investor owned utilities, like Ameren, are for-profit enterprises. Ameren is permitted by regulators to make a profit on the transmission it builds and the power it generates. If Ameren builds local renewables in Missouri, it earns a profit on them. If Ameren builds transmission in Missouri to transmit the renewable energy it generates, Ameren makes a profit. If, instead, Ameren buys capacity from GBE it is only reimbursed at cost of its purchase. There is no profit for Ameren. Likewise on the renewable generators -- if Ameren buys energy from Kansas there is no profit, they are only reimbursed dollar for dollar. So, why would Ameren sign a contract to use GBE to import energy when it could make more money owning local renewables and transmission. I might also add that local renewables don't need huge new transmission projects like GBE so they are ultimately cheaper than imports. In conclusion, why would Ameren buy the milk when it could own the cow? This is just another reason why I believe GBE's scheme won't work.

So much more malarkey to unravel. Next, let's look at Invenergy's media plan for this scheme. I challenge you readers to find any news story that mentions the new "Tiger Connector."

Until tomorrow...

4 Comments

<<Previous

Landowners Are Not a Problem That Needs Solving

Nobody Asked Me

How the Community Consultation Sausage is Made

Swamp Creature Skelly Uses Government Committee To Score Cash

Wishful Thinking Won't Get Transmission Built

Urban Special Interest Groups Pretend to Represent Rural Landowners

Invenergy Trips Over Its Grain Belt Lies

Hiding Information in Plain Sight

Magic Math Is For Fools

Where's the Customers, Invenergy?

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