- [Announcer] Live from your Public Media Studios, WVIA presents Keystone Edition Reports, a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone Edition Reports.

And now moderator Larry Vojtko.

- Hello, I'm Larry Vojtko.

Many of the comforts of modern life are those afforded by the wonders of electricity.

Without it, our world would be quite a different place.

As we move further into the 21st century, demand for electricity is set to grow, but is the electric grid that serves Pennsylvania up to the challenge?

How is the electric grid maintained to ensure we have the power we rely on each and every day?

Is it ready to withstand the increasing weather extremes we've been told to expect by climate scientists?

To fully understand the answers to these questions, it's helpful to have some understanding as to how the electric grid operates.

It's an elaborate system that is much more complicated than just pulling a lever or pushing a button.

And how it all comes together just might surprise you.

Keystone Edition Reports Tom Reese takes a look.

- [Tom] In the 21st century, electricity is almost taken for granted.

We flip a light switch for instant light, turn up the thermostat for increased warmth, and cook our meals with modern appliances.

But where does that electricity that powers our lives actually come from?

Much of it is generated from natural gas and coal with the transition to renewables like wind, geothermal, nuclear, and solar well underway.

All of these elements and more make up the electric grid, the complex system of generation, transmission, distribution and demand.

That electric grid is under heavier use with the changing climate and increased demand.

So is the power grid that serves Pennsylvania in good condition?

Is it ready for new weather extremes as the climate changes?

What about the rise in electric vehicles?

According to the journal Wilson Quarterly, 70% of power transformers and transmission lines are at least a quarter century old.

The journal says those components were expected to last 50 years or less.

So what does the future hold for the power grid?

What investments will need to be made in the future to continue to make it viable?

How do we power the world of tomorrow?

Time, construction, and billions of dollars in investments will tell.

For Keystone edition reports, I'm Tom Reese.

- Well, let's welcome our guests who are here to share their expertise on the topic.

And joining us here in the studio is Sal Salet, Vice President of distribution operations, PPL Electric Utilities.

Rachel McDevitt is a reporter for State Impact Pennsylvania, WITF, and she is joining us via Zoom from Harrisburg.

And Chris Pilong.

He is in southeastern Pennsylvania, not far from Valley Forge and the King of Prussia Mall, joining us again via Zoom.

He's the Senior Director of Operations Planning and Planning at PJM Interconnection.

Welcome everyone to the conversation.

Well, when I started looking into this topic, I assume that my electric company was a one-stop shop.

It generated power, sent it through the electric lines that reached my house and built and maintained the infrastructure.

But I learned that's really not the case.

What you probably think of as your electric company, be it PPL, UGI or some other corporation, in all likelihood, no longer owns generation.

That restructuring of the system into what we have today occurred in the 1990s.

And the goal was to give consumers choice, which would stimulate competition, keeping costs down for the consumer while still providing reliable service.

So in this program, we're going to explore how the system works and there's generally three functions served by companies independent of each other, but united in the effort to bring reliable, affordable electric service to us.

The main functions are generation, transmission, and distribution.

Now, I have to say, Sal and Chris, when I think about this, transmission and distribution, to me, they're almost synonyms.

So obviously there are some differences.

And Chris, I'll go to you first.

Could you explain maybe what transmission actually means?

- Sure thing.

It's a great question and obviously this can be a little bit confusing.

But you're right, just from a similarity perspective, it is all wires.

It's electricity moving through wires.

One of the analogies we like to use to sort of distinguish between transmission and distribution is to think about the roads and the highways.

So the transmission system is really more akin to the highways, the streets that have sort of those higher speed limits where you have many ways for cars to get on and get off as opposed to the road that probably leaves your house where if you're at the end of a cul-de-sac and maybe one way in or just one way in, one way out.

A lot lower volume of traffic going through there, but still important nonetheless.

So that's sort of the distinction between transmission and distribution from kind of an electric grid perspective.

- And Sal, could you expound on distribution, what that means?

- Yeah.

I mean, similar to the analogy that was used before, distribution is basically the last mile or the last piece of the grid before it connects to homes or industrial or commercial customers.

And it is just as important.

So power cannot get to the customer from the generation to the customer unless it goes through both the transmission system and the distribution grid.

So we're equally critical and important.

The only thing I would add at the end is the distribution grid is becoming more and more critical now 'cause we are seeing more of the renewable resources being deployed on a distribution side behind the meter on rooftop or behind in backyards.

So that makes the grid now two-way.

So distribution transmission is becoming more of a complicated.

- Oh, you're talking about when somebody has solar?

- Yes.

- And they are sending the power back into.

- A hundred percent.

So we're used to seeing the grid operator in a way where power comes from the generator all the way down to the customer and that's it, it's one way.

That's what we call a one way grid.

- Right.

- Now we're seeing it both ways.

So you can see power coming both ways.

- Well, a little bit later I wanna get into the different fuels and where we are.

But right now I just wanna give you the opportunity.

Tell us what PPL does.

- Yeah.

- You know, the whole, what its function is, its role, how it works.

- Yeah.

So I'll start by kinda describing a simple analogy of what we do.

Think of us as a UPS or a delivery company.

So PPL electric utilities in our territory that we serve, which is about 29 counties, about one and a half million customers, about 1300 or 1.3 million customers are residential.

And about 200,000 customers are commercial customers.

So in this area that we serve, think of us as a delivery company, QPS or FedEx.

We take the energy from the generation side, deliver it all the way to the customer.

And that's really our focus and our goal, our commitment to our customer is to deliver safe and reliable and affordable power to our customers.

That is our commitment, that's our role today.

It'll continue to be the role we play in the future when the grid changes and evolves as well.

- So PPL, other distribution companies like that, electric generators, PJM, these are private companies.

But Rachel, I'll go to you.

How does the government link into this system?

There must be some kind of perhaps mandates, perhaps linkage, perhaps just a, what would be like a suggestions from the federal government, from the state government?

What roles do the federal and state government play in this?

- Right.

So they have an oversight role whenever there is, the state can oversee businesses within its borders, the federal government can regulate businesses and the exchange of power, there are federal regulators that oversee interstate transmissions.

So when that power crosses state lines, then that has to be approved by something called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC.

So they can set some rules for planning or the process of connecting more power to the grid and delivering it across state lines.

When you're going down in levels, you know, you have the state can do some things.

They can certainly set their own energy mixture goals, like if you wanted to have more renewables on the grid or if you'd wanna have more natural gas or make it easier if natural gas to connect to, those types of policies can be set at the state legislature.

But if you are trading power through regions and over state lines, you do have to abide by federal rules regarding that.

- And Chris Pilong, PJM does just that.

It's across state lines and tell us more about how PJM operates and how it is making sure that we get electricity that's reliable and affordable.

- Yeah, great question again.

So I'll start with what PJM sort of is today.

So PJM right now we operate the power grid for 13 states plus Washington DC, so over 65 million customers, including the state of Pennsylvania.

Many of your viewers probably have not heard of PJM before, or as you had mentioned earlier, are more familiar with PPL as far as where the power comes from.

So to really kind of understand the background of that, to go well, back before the 1990s, actually back to 1927 is when PJM was formed and it was formed from three utilities coming together, PPL, Pico, and Public Service Electric & Gas in New Jersey.

And they realized at the time, similar challenges to today, customer demand was growing.

How do they make sure they can maintain the reliability of power supplied to those customers?

And they realized if they pulled their resources together, they had an increased level of reliability, an increased would increase ability for them to be able to coordinate the building and construction of new transmission.

But they needed somebody to oversee that, somebody neutral who does not have a stake in as far as making a profit, but is purely focused on that coordination and that reliability.

And that's the role of PJM, somewhat akin to the air traffic control of the power grid.

And we are every day, operators in our control rooms operating the grid to ensure that the generation is being moved up to meet the demand, moved down, the demand reduces, and making sure that all of the transmission elements that connect the generators to the customers are operated in a safe manner, but still operated by the equipment owners.

So PPL still has their folks out in the utility trucks, still owns and operates the breakers, the substations, the generation owners still turn their generators on and off, but everything is coordinated through PJM to make sure it's done in a reliable fashion.

- So does PJM negotiate with the power generators?

- So what PJM does is to ensure that we're actually delivering reliability at the least cost to our customers, is that we have created a power market and that's been in place since the 90s where every day we determine what the demand is going to be for the following day for electricity usage, and then we commit generators to meet that demand.

And we're telling generators, we need you to come online tomorrow at a certain period of time.

We make those determinations based off of the offers that they put into the market.

So we clear the market to make sure that that generation is able to be there for the customer at the least cost.

And while maintaining the reliability of the power grid to deliver that generation to the resource.

And we continue to perform that function throughout the day as generators are moved up and moved down to again, meet the changing in customer demands as people turn on the light switch or turn on the TV as they're going about their daily lives or as factories are beginning their various processes, stores are opening, closing, things of that nature.

- So Sal, how does PPL fit into this and provide that reliable service?

- Yeah.

So, as I said before, our role is focused on delivering safe and reliable power to our customers.

And that will always be our role.

Now we also know the grid is being challenged today we talked about newer resources being connected to our grid like renewables, solar or different types of technologies, electric vehicles in general.

So all these changes are making the grid more complex and dynamic, but that doesn't change our commitment.

So our focus for the last decade or so has been to be proactive looking forward, looking for the next 10, 15 years to seeing what the challenges of the grid will be and making investments today that prepare us for that.

Some of these investments we made include hardening the grid, making the grid stronger, you know, you could think of it simply as stronger poles, you know, stronger wires, better substations, but also making it more smart or automated.

And that basically goes down to the bottom of making it more self-healing.

So that is at the heart of hardening the grid using technology.

We made a lot of investments in that regard or in that area over the last decade.

And some of the results that we saw so far has been astonishing.

PPL electric utilities continually ranks in a top decile in the country in terms of reliability to our customer.

We have saved our customers about 2 million outages, our customer outages over the last 10 years from these systems that we deployed.

So these investments are critical for our success today.

They will also be more critical for our success in the future when the grid becomes more dynamic and more complex.

And I believe even more and more investments will continue to be needed in that regard.

So that's just kinda a simple or a quick way to describe hat we have been focused on.

- So we all know, we're all aware that the demand for electricity is increasing.

We're always looking to charge our phone or our device.

We're looking at perhaps EVs coming on.

And Rachel, you are the state impact reporter at WITF in Harrisburg.

Now in the last five years, there have been about a dozen and a half major power outages in the United States.

So as you're going about doing your reporting, have you detected concern on the part of consumers and/or industry about the reliability and dependability of supplying the ne necessary power?

- Whenever there's one of those outage events, I think that raises the profile of the electric grid and can cause consumers to be a little bit worried.

I would say overall, what I hear from sort of your normal people or consumers is they're not generally worried about it as long as when they flip the switch, their lights come on.

But in Harrisburg, lawmakers certainly have been discussing it.

They have held some hearings about the reliability of the electric grid in Pennsylvania and across the northeast.

We had winter Storm Elliot last year before Christmas, which caused a lot of outages and raised some concerns.

And so lawmakers called in PJM and others to sort of testify to the grid reliability and what needs to happen.

So there is concern and there's been a long time of, I guess underinvestment you could say at a national scale for our power grid.

And that's why the Biden administration is trying to pour some more money into it and we will need that investment and more connection between the different regional grids to move renewable power if we are going to reach those goals that the Biden administration has for the country.

- Well, we certainly have seen an increase in interest and marketing of generators, both on the consumer level and on the industry level.

I remember here at WVIA, we operated for decades without a backup generator.

We would have some UPSs and things of that sort, but we found it necessary to do that.

So there must be some realization that, you know, to be on the safe side, we should have some kind of backup powers are going.

I'm not quite sure where that to concern is coming from, but it is being addressed by, these generating these companies that buy or sell generators.

Chris, let's look to the future at PJM and how are you making sure that the reliability PJM is doing their best looking to the future?

And what I'd like to know about is, you know, the possibility of major weather events as climate scientists have indicated these are probably going to increase and the move from fossil fuels into renewables.

Okay, so right now let's start with the fossil fuels.

Right now most of the power generation that we use here in Pennsylvania comes from fossil fuels still, correct?

- That's correct.

It is, yes.

And as we start moving into the future, there's no shortage of challenges I think ahead of us.

And that's, to be honest, no different than in the past.

We need to be prepared for what is coming, what the changes are going to be.

We need to work with our state legislators, federal regulators where we can on the various policies that they may want to implement.

Because at the end of the day, the PJM role is really to make sure that reliability is maintained.

We know we are going through the process of a change of the generation fleet, as you mentioned, from fossil fuels to renewable.

A few years ago, we really went from a change in our fleet that was predominantly coal oil with a small amount of gas to a large amount of natural gas as we're all pretty much aware of the Marcellus shale.

We navigated through that transition safely and reliably.

We intend to do the same as we move towards renewables.

And what we need to make sure of is that whether it's renewables, new technologies that we haven't seen yet or is currently still being developed, that at the end of the day, no matter where the power comes from, that it's reliable and it's able to meet the needs of the customer.

And that's really the role of PJM and we continue to do that through our forward looking markets where we look at all those changes in the demand.

You talked about some of the electric vehicles, the need to charge all of our different devices that we have, we're forecasting, projecting how that demand is going to change, sending a forward market signal that indicates how much generation do we need to have, remain online, how much generation do we need to be built, and make sure that it's reliable to meet certain requirements and criteria to be online, to be available when our customers need it in the future.

In addition to also planning for the future transmission grid as well, making sure that it does get the investment that it needs.

New lines are built when needed to be built and we coordinate that with our partners such as PPL and the other transmission owners.

- Well, let's talk a little bit about how technology offers both challenges and opportunities in doing this.

For instance, trying to bring renewable energy, say wind and solar from the areas in which that is really dominated.

You have wind in the midwest, you have solar, perhaps a little bit more to the west, and yet those are energy sources that are immediate, you have to use them, there's a storage problem there.

So, can we spend a little time about how, Sal I'll give this to you first and Chris, maybe you could join in as well.

How, how is that enter into the calculus of trying to make these future plans?

- Yeah, so what you're describing is at the core of what the grid's go into, and that's what I alluded to in being more complex and I talked about one-way grid now becoming a two-way grid.

These resources that you mentioned, and I'll use the example of rooftop solar and batteries people are installing in their garages and all.

These resources, to your point, are intermittent.

They're not steady a hundred percent of the time.

When the sun is not shining, you're not really getting much solar and when the wind's not blowing, you're not getting a lot of wind energy out of it.

So that presents a unique challenge.

And you also brought up technology as a solution.

So some of the investments we made are right at the core of that, focus on at bringing more technology into the grid, mainly to help the operators see what's going on in the grid more quickly and more broadly.

Prior to these investments, our operators cannot see behind the meter, for example, what's going on.

If you have rooftop solar, you really could not see as an operator of the grid, how much generation is being put back on the grid.

What state is it that generator on.

So some of the investments we made brought this visibility back to the operators.

So we started deploying software platforms, sensors out in the field, and all of these technology investments we made between sensors and software platforms are enabling our grid operators to be more aware.

And when you're more aware, you're able to anticipate things, forecast them and operate the grid to be more reliable and safe.

At the same time, those same sensors and data we're getting back are enabling the grid to be more self-healing and automated.

So it needs less and less interference.

When you think about the grid being more complex and power flowing in multiple directions, we can't rely on humans making decisions all the time.

You need automated systems and that's where the self-healing part comes in.

Without sensors and data, you can't do that either.

So that's kind of the core of what we've been focused on for the last 10 years.

And some of the data, I'll throw out there, since we've started deploying some of these investments or software platforms, now we're able to connect more solar on the grid before we have to make investments.

We're able to react quickly to things when they happen, like weather events or even as simple as a pole hit.

Now we could see more of what's going on on the grid and we're able to react and get power to customers quickly.

So that's an example of some of the investments we're making.

- Chris, how does PJM respond to what Sal was just talking about?

- [Chris] Yeah, and he's absolutely right there.

With the changing resource mix with the new technology, things are getting more complicated, but we're also getting from a perspective of the resources becoming a bit more complicated.

Our technology's improving as well to help adapt to that.

I know that one of the things that people would say in the past, one of our biggest challenges used to just be forecasting what is the demand and power usage going to be for tomorrow, for the next day?

Well now we have to account for that, but we also have to account for what's the changes going to be happening to solar at both sort of the wholesale or the transmission level as well as what's happening at folks houses and that their individual businesses similarly with wind.

So there's a lot more complexities of the grid now.

So we need to make sure that we understand that and that we have resources that are able to respond.

If the sun suddenly goes behind the cloud or the wind drops down or vice versa, the sun comes out, we need other resources to be able to back down so we can maintain the balance of generation with the customer demand.

So the challenge is continue to increase and it's really from PGMs perspective, the key is having sort of the right balance.

Every generating resource has its sort of pros and cons if you will, as far as being able to serve demand.

There's no such thing as a perfect generator.

Every generator has its pluses, its minuses.

We need to just balance that out is what we're doing with our future markets to make sure that we're committing resources in the proper quantities so that we are again able to maintain that reliability for the customer at the end of the day.

- So Rachel, how do the policy makers, how are they responding to all of this?

And recently there was some news about RGGI, which is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Bring us up to date on that.

- Sure.

So the regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a cap and trade program among 11 eastern states from Virginia up to Maine.

Most of those Pennsylvania tried to join through a regulation under Governor Tom Wolf's administration.

And what the program does is, because it is a cap and trade program, so it's a cap on the amount of emissions that power plants can emit carbon dioxide emissions specifically,, that cap decreases over time.

Power plants have to buy something called an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide they are going to emit, that money goes back to the states and the states can use the money to invest in clean energy or bill assistance or energy efficiency or really anything they decide to, but those are the most popular areas.

Pennsylvania, because it tried to join through a regulation, has been prohibited from joining by the Commonwealth Court.

They said because it is a regulation and not a law that was passed by the general assembly, that the money raised through the program would be an unconstitutional tax.

So that's where we are at this moment.

The Shapiro administration is appealing that decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

So they just announced that recently and we will see how that plays out.

It'll probably take many months, at least before we have a final answer on RGGI in Pennsylvania.

But RGGI itself, I'll just say, would not have really addressed any concerns on reliability of the electric grid.

That's purely a pollution sort of issue that it was trying to tackle.

- Right.

But if that goes through right, that's going to Chris and Sal, that would be part of that calculus and what you're doing for the future and would actually be yet another factor or another spoke that you both would have to put into play for that, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, well, one thing, we're just about out of time and I'd like to thank you for participating in this conversation.

What we've learned is that this is really, really complex and complicated, but I think that we have proven that, you know, you guys are on top of it and that when we wanna put our lights on, when we want the microwave to work, it's going to work.

So thank you for joining us and for more information, please visit wvi.org.

You can rewatch this episode at wvia.org/keystonereports.

Thank you so much for watching and thank you for tuning in here at WVIA.

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