FERC Order 1920 Impact and Grid Infrastructure Deployment

Rich Glick initiated the proceedings that led to Order 1920 as Chair of FERC, he returns to Public Power Underground with experts Prof. Jacob Mays and Pamela Quinlan to reflect on its adoption

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Paul Dockery and Crystal Ball bring their curiosity to an in-depth discussion of transmission planning, transmission investment, and transmission policy with Rich Glick, Pamela Quinlan, and Prof. Jacob Mays.

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08:48 - Rich, What were you hoping for?

• FERC 2022 - 2026 Strategic Plan
• Joint Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission

32:33 - Pamela, Does this do what you wanted?

• Building for the Future Through Electric Regional Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation
• High-Level Summary of FERC Order No. 1920 on Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation published by Troutman Pepper (h/t Adrienne Thompson)
• “Plan for the future with the best available information, select the best plan for consumers and allocate costs according to benefits" - Rob Gramlich on Volts

1:05:15 - Jacob, What is missing?

• Shu, H. and Mays, J., 2024. Transmission Benefits and Cost Allocation under Ambiguity. arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.14803.

1:15:48 - Rich Glick’s Energy System Analogy: The energy transition is like the 1973 Mets.

1:17:55 - Jacob Mays’s Energy System Analogy: The 2005 Royals, never say it can’t get worse.

1:19:09 - Pamela Quinlan’s Energy System Analogy: The energy transition is like Game of Thrones.

BONUS: Ke Xin (Sherry) Zuo, a PhD candidate at Cornell University in the Mays Group, provided her reflections onTaylor Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, and its application to the Power System. My (Paul’s) favorite: the brilliant insight that “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” is actually about how the power grid has to be resilient during forced outages and extreme weather events. 

About the guests:

Rich Glick is a Principal with GQ New Energy Strategies – a consulting firm he co-founded with Pamela Quinlan. Rich is a former Chair of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). As Chair, Rich initiated several reforms to more efficiently and cost effectively accommodate the evolution of the electric grid. Before being appointed to FERC, Rich was General Counsel for the Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He has worked for Iberdrola, PPM Energy and PacifiCorp and is also known in the West for his current work with the Committee on Regional Electric Power Cooperation (CREPC) Western States Transmission Initiative (WSTI) and CREPC Transmission Collaborative (TC). Rich’s prior appearance on Public Power Underground can be found below.

Pamela Quinlan co-founded GQ New Energy Strategies with Rich. She is an expert in energy market regulation and policy. She started at FERC as a Senior Energy Industry Analyst in the Office of Energy Market Regulation. In 2017 Quinlan went to work in then-commissioner Glick’s office as a Technical Advisor and was appointed Chief of Staff in January 2021. As Chief of Staff, she was responsible for developing and implementing the strategy behind the Commission’s policy initiatives. Before leaving FERC in 2023, Quinlan advised Chair Willie Phillips on Energy Markets and Resource Adequacy. She has also worked for Consolidated Edison (ConEd) and Standard and Poor’s.

Prof. Jacob Mays is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University where his research focuses on the design and analysis of electricity markets. Jacob holds an AB in chemistry and physics from Harvard University, a MEng in energy systems from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in industrial engineering and management sciences from Northwestern University. His seminal work (Paul is editorializing by describing it as seminal) on the sequential pricing of electricity was the subject of a stand-alone episode on Season 5 of Public Power Underground, and his collaborations with Jesse Jenkins, Farhad Billimoria, and Rahmat Poudineh have informed our listeners perspectives on electric markets under deep decarbonization. Jacob’s prior appearances on Public Power Underground can be found below.

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