FERC commissioners tell senators of major grid reliability challenges, with some blaming markets
R Street, NRDC respond
Danly’s criticism of subsidies for renewable energy was off base, according to Devin Hartman, director of Energy and Environmental Policy at the R Street Institute, a free market-oriented public policy research group.
“Capacity markets secure sufficient levels of capacity irrespective of subsidy levels, but they cannot procure resources that governments prevent from being built or retained,” he said.
Also, utility integrated resource planning in RTOs can cause reliability problems, according to Hartman.
“The only region to suffer a capacity shortfall has been [the Midcontinent Independent System Operator,] where over 90% of demand is met by cost-of-service utilities,” he said.
It’s a “dangerous myth” that MISO’s capacity framework was the cause of last summer’s capacity shortfall in its region, according to Hartman.
