Episode #145: ‘Advocacy, Energy, and Ensuring Resource Adequacy in the Wholesale Electricity Market’ with Todd Snitchler, President and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

Listen in as Todd identifies the complexities of the energy sector that drive the need for EPSA and how the organization coordinates and advocates for market solutions and collaboration towards critical stability and progress. In this episode, Todd shares with podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester unparalleled insights on the trajector of the power industry, EPSA’s focus in the coming years, and how the industry as a whole must constantly be shifting to attain balance between supply, demand, and market dynamics.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, the show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today’s show. Now let’s talk energy.

I am Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. And with me as always, from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester. Today we’re going to be talking to one of the influential voices when it comes to the competitive wholesale electricity markets in the United States. Matt, can you give us a background about where those regulated markets lie across the country?

Matt Chester:

No problem, Jason. So the competitive wholesale electricity markets in the United States, they’re overseen by regional transmission organizations, or RTOs, and independent system operators, or ISOs. These entities can coordinate, control and monitor multi-state electric grids to ensure the core tenets of reliability, competitiveness, and non-discrimination, making sure those are all met. So across the country we have seven major RPOs and ISOs, the PJM Interconnection, the Midcontinent ISO, otherwise known as MISO, the New York ISO, the California ISO, ISO New England, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, and the Southwest Power Pool. Each of these entities serves a distinct geographic region, has its own set of rules and its own challenges, but their overarching missions remain ensuring that the efficient and reliable market persists for all stakeholders in those areas.

Jason Price:

Thanks for the context, Matt. And as I mentioned, our guest today has great interest in these markets and he’s the president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association or EPSA. EPSA has been around since the mid ’90s and serves as the advocacy voice for competitive power suppliers in those markets you mentioned. Collectively, EPSA members own and operate about 150 gigawatts of generation capacity, representing the whole spectrum of gas to wind to solar to coal to nuclear energy. Their membership boasts claim to the largest battery storage projects currently connected to the US grid as well as major strides in carbon capture and storage development. And we have the pleasure of welcoming the president and CEO Todd Snitchler today. Todd has held the role since 2019 after an already impressive career in and out of energy, which I know he’ll share more about it with us. Todd, welcome to today’s episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

Todd Snitchler:

Thank you, Jason. It’s great to be with you today.

Jason Price:

And we’re thrilled to have you. So Todd, EPSA plays a key role in the utility sector, but some of our listeners may not be familiar with the ins and outs of your organization, and I know that Matt gave a good background, but can you start by giving an overview of how EPSA fits into the utility industry?

Todd Snitchler:

Sure, I’m happy to lay out the contours of the industry and where we fit. First, we’re the only national trade association that represents independent power producers. And an independent power producer is a power generator that doesn’t have captive customers. So we’re not like our utility cousins or public power or the rural co-ops where you may own the generation and the transmission wires and the distribution wires all the way to the customer’s light switch. Our members instead own the generating resources and sell that power into wholesale power markets like Matt described, those ones around the country. And our members have assets in all of the markets from California to Texas to the mid-Atlantic to New England. All across the country, we’re actively participating in those.

I think it’s important to note we’re different because our utility cousins and others typically recover their costs from their captive customers. So if you make an investment, you amortize it over 30 years and you collect it from your rate payers or your customers over a period of years. Instead, the risk for our members has shifted off of consumers and onto shareholders and investors so that if we make a bad investment decision or a project runs over cost or is no longer profitable, customers are shielded from that exposure and our members wear that as part of their investor or shareholder risk. So we’re a fundamentally different business model with the same objective of providing power to customers who ultimately need it.

Jason Price:

I appreciate that, Todd. And Todd, in our planning session you had described yourself personally as a recovering lawyer, a recovering regulator, and a former legislator. So share with us, how has your background impacted your leadership style at EPSA and perhaps guided your approach to what the organization goal should be and how they might be best pursued?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, I have worn a number of hats in my career. The ones that you mentioned are the ones perhaps most relevant to the role that I have today. I think I look at it from a couple of perspectives. The first of which is I have the privilege of representing a lot of kindred spirits and that our members support competition in markets. They think that that’s the most cost-effective and efficient way for consumers to receive the benefits of the power that they provide. And that’s a personal and professional position I have held for a very long time. So it makes it easy to advocate on behalf of people who are similarly situated from your perspective.

I think secondly, and the other side of the coin is, having had to be in the role of a legislator and a regulator and to understand how you have to work with and try to accommodate differing views and perspectives while trying to achieve a common outcome is exactly what a trade association is responsible for. Members have varying perspectives and I think it’s important to note our members are competitors. While we all strive to achieve a well-functioning competitive marketplace, all of our members are competing to be the least cost unit that’s dispatched and allowed to sell their power into the market. And that means somebody else may not have the benefit of selling their power.

So these are folks who are committed to the principles of competition and to doing the job well. And so navigating through some of those challenges requires the ability to see the issue from multiple perspectives. That’s something that you’re trained to do as a lawyer and as a legislator and certainly as a regulator. So being able to combine that background to navigate both internally with members but then externally as we interface with our regulators at the federal level or with policy makers who are making informed decisions about public policy, I think it helps us try to be in a good spot to provide solutions as opposed to simply saying no to certain ideas or to being an obstacle to the passage of public policy choices that maybe we don’t agree with. We try to strive to improve them and make them work for the majority of customers and market participants.

Jason Price:

Well, it’s an important mission, no doubt. So we brought you in to talk about resource adequacy. And I want to get a little personal for a moment. So my parents who were never historically early adopters of technology, and for the most part would still be using a flip phone if it was up to them, are currently driving around in an EV. So talk to the audience about what is meant by resource adequacy and what this means for people like my parents who live in Florida, retired and on a fixed income and drive an EV.

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, you’ve described a lot of the consumer base in a lot of ways. There are very few early adopters and a lot of folks who come along either later on or there’s even some like my mother that would maybe come along kicking and screaming. So what’s resource adequacy and why do they care? At its very base level, resource adequacy means that you can have sufficient power to achieve the peak demand of the system at a time when it is required. So it could be on a Monday morning when everyone’s getting the kids ready for school and mom and dad are getting ready to go to work. It could be at the end of the day when people are coming home and energy use spikes because people are leaving the office and coming home and the kitchen gets turned on and kids start doing their homework, the TVs come on, the dishwasher gets done, the laundry is done. But ensuring an adequate amount of power at a time when it is most needed at its simplest is what resource adequacy is.

I like to boil it down to three things. The consumer wants their lights on, their beer cold and their water warm. At a really base level, that’s what people want. I think the issue then becomes how do we most cost effectively deliver that reliability or that resource adequacy to them? And that’s where our business model is different than that of utilities or public power or the rural co-ops. As I noted a moment ago, we have every incentive to be the least cost most efficient unit because if we’re not, we don’t get called to run. And that’s I think particularly beneficial for customers because they are very price sensitive. And in my experience when I was the chair of the Ohio Commission, consumers always paid their utility bill, it was the same as it was last month. So they have a very short memory about how prices may have varied over time.

So that creates challenges when you’re trying to ensure that customers both accept what is happening and their responsibility to pay for it. We help minimize some of those costs. I think some of what we’re bumping into, however, Jason, in response to your question is that we’ve got real problems in dealing with how we’re going to continue to ensure resource adequacy from a couple of perspectives. The first of which is certain policy choices and timelines are very aspirational and are not necessarily consistent with what’s achievable from the physics or the engineering of the system. Certainly not on a timeline. And I think the second part of that is there are a lot of members of the public, and it goes in both directions, who have moved past NIMBY, or the not in my backyard, to the BANANA category as I describe it, which is build absolutely nothing anytime anywhere. And when you need to ensure there is sufficient supply, that means you’re going to have to build additional resources, especially as we look at where things seem to be going with more electrification. As you note your parents are driving an EV, that’s a new load that didn’t exist a few years ago. And so that’s going to require additional resources be constructed and the inability to build them because of permitting and citing challenges is another layer of that resource adequacy challenge that we’re having to wrestle with.

Jason Price:

Okay, that’s very helpful. But I want to remind you that our audience at Energy Central are utility professionals. So take us down the path of what happens or what are the concerns around cases where we may be facing resource adequacy and how frequent do we face this and what this means when we’re reaching an inadequacy issue and how it’s addressed. Could you help us with that?

Todd Snitchler:

Sure. I think your point is a good one about how real are some of these resource adequacy concerns? And I’ll take it away from the EPSA perspective because oftentimes people will say, “Well, that’s your perspective. Of course you’re going to talk about your book and what your members stand for and who they are and how they would benefit.” But we have multiple RTOs and ISOs around the country, including California, New York, PJM, New England, to name a few, who have made it very clear that they are concerned about the pace of retirements and the pace of replacement generation being built and added to the system. And that misalignment on timing of dispatchable resources and the deployment of intermittent resources is creating system conditions that are jeopardizing reliability. And I don’t just look to the RTOs, but the North America Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, they have published reports now for several years. But the last two years in particular, it seems to have gotten the attention of policymakers that NERC is concerned about broad parts of the country having reliability concerns that are based in many ways around resource adequacy.

So in the end, it’s the timing issue between retirements and additions to the system. It’s the type of resources and the power that they generate. Renewable resources are a great energy resource, but they’re not a terrific capacity resource. And so you see retirements of traditional baseload or dispatchable plants that are retiring and going offline, that provided system services that ensured the system stayed in balance and that the system could respond to those peak demands and do so in a way where if the system operator called for a plant to run it would, where you have a different set of concerns with regard to intermittent resources and even battery storage that’s added to the system. If it’s not sufficient in duration, which at this point really it’s not much beyond four hours, you run into potential reliability shortfalls. So those are some of the engineering and policy challenges that have to be met. And if we don’t meet them, we’re going to create more reliability concerns than we’re solving.

Jason Price:

Okay. Well, if I were to paraphrase, basically what you’re describing here is that the core mission at EPSA around resource adequacy is a reliability issue. Did I get that right?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, 100%.

Jason Price:

All right, so then share with us then, what are some of those reliability angles that are pertinent to EPSA and your organization, your members, and how do you balance perhaps not 100% of the aligned views on resource adequacy between the various organizations that you represent? How do you balance all that?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, we take a look at it from a couple of perspectives. At the highest level, all of our members are focused on system reliability and doing our part to ensure that we do what we can to make sure that the system operates reliably, and that means producing electrons and putting it on the system. And we do our level best to try to do that. As we look at what requirements are and how the system is evolving and changing, we have a couple of perspectives that we have to balance. The first of which is there are certain members who are, I would call them legacy owners, so they own some of the existing resources and they’re trying to figure out how to make sure that those plants can operate profitably and continue to put power onto the system, but they’re not actively developing new projects.

Then we have some other members who they’re owners of assets, but they’re also actively developing different types of projects. And that might mean that they’re developing a combined cycle gas plant or they’re deploying carbon capture as we look at where we’re going in the next decade or so, or they’re investing money in renewables and in battery storage. So you have a different set of concerns around how folks that are more active in the development space may be than those that are purely in the maintenance and operation of existing resource space.

Some of the issues that we’re having to deal with and where there may be various perspectives that we have to try to navigate is around capacity accreditation. So what is the value of your certain resource? So is your gas plant 100% available or are there periods where it’s not going to be available and so your capacity accreditation isn’t 100%, it’s something less than that? How do we accredit properly intermittent resources like wind and solar and should they be accredited at their nameplate value or should it be their actual performance value and how does that impact the revenues that they generate and how they supply resources to the system and how they’re compensated?So I think some of those issues are important.

Then there’s also the issues around ELCC and there are a number of approaches to how people are looking at the effective load carrying capacity and how we would value that. And that’s part of accreditation and I think that is where you continue to see some of the difference of opinion amongst members about what is the right approach and what are the right valuations. And it’s not exclusive to EPSA members. I mean, we see folks in the renewable community that are also focused on this issue because it has a profound effect on how their assets will be compensated and how they will be valued when we look at system planning.

Jason Price:

Sure. Well then let’s talk about policy makers. We’re seeing policy makers at all levels of government get more involved in the mandates and incentives when it comes to various types of energy resources. So can you highlight what are your top priorities when it comes to advising on these types of policies? What role do you play? What role does EPSA play? And what would be the optimal approach from the government on how to benefit your members and what would be examples of perhaps where it’s being counterproductive or counter beneficial to your members?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, Jason, you ask a very loaded question there, so I’ll try to break it down and answer it as best I can. I think at base, we are firm believers that if you create a level playing field and allow all technologies and market participants the equal opportunity to compete, then we will let the chips fall where they may and then some resources will survive and thrive, others will find themselves uneconomic and have to retire. And it will also impact investment decisions. What we are finding, of course, is that as you note, there are mandates that states in the federal government have put into place that change how resources are procured or what is a preferred resource as opposed to a resource that maybe isn’t as preferred as others, and that has market distortive effects, and that becomes a problem when it comes to keeping resources on the system because they need adequate revenue, right? If you don’t make enough money to keep the lights on at your own facility, you’re certainly not going to continue to run and try to make it up on volume that just doesn’t work.

The other issue that we bump into that has had distortive effects is subsidies. And the independent market monitor in PJM, at least two years ago, made a pretty profound statement that seems obvious in hindsight, but subsidies beget more subsidies. And what we have seen and observed over the last several years is there were initially state level subsidies for preferred resources, and now of course with the passage of the IRA at the federal level, there are subsidies for all kinds of technologies that are preferred that are having distortive effects on the market. What that does is it disrupts how the market actually functions and how resources are paid. And so there’s been a significant amount of disagreement at FERC, I’ll say politely, about how we want to approach that, which has resulted in litigation appeals to try and get a better answer around how that outcome has to be implemented and what it means for market participants.

In the end, we think that the reduction or elimination of subsidies would’ve been the best approach. That’s not where we find ourselves as a matter of public policy. So as a result, it’s important for us to talk and to figure out with other stakeholders how markets need to be adjusted to account for the conditions that we find ourselves in. We’re not going to get the preferred outcome because the ship is sailed in many ways. So how do we mitigate the effects on other market participants while ensuring resource adequacy and reliability as we were talking about a moment ago? So that’s where we focus a lot of our time these days, is on trying to correct market distortions in a way that allows the system to operate both reliably, but also ensure adequate compensation for the resources that will be needed to keep the lights on going forward.

Jason Price:

Todd, share with us concepts of conservation, energy efficiency and smarter use of energy resources, how those principles impact basically or play a role in your membership. What do you discuss around those topics with your members, if you even do?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, our organization was involved actually in a Supreme Court case a couple of years ago that dealt with questions about demand response. And demand response and energy efficiency are a part of the system and they are not going away. There are questions about how much and how it’s compensated that have to be addressed. But certainly there is an interest, especially on the part of industrial and consumer customers that have bigger loads than say you and I do at home, where they’re willing to participate in a program where they will reduce their consumption at a time when prices are high or demand is high so that the system can remain reliable and they’re paid for not using energy. That’s the demand response piece. I’m not aware of a single industry that hasn’t looked for ways to operate more efficiently because typically, especially in heavy industry, behind the costs for the people who actually run the plant and make the widgets or do the work, it’s energy costs. So there’s every incentive for industry to try and operate with the greatest level of efficiency that you can, and so I think you’re seeing more and more of that happen.

My only caution is that I am somewhat concerned when states have to use Amber Alert Systems to call for reductions in the general public’s use because they haven’t adequately prepared and have a resource adequacy challenge because it may work one or two times, but people become desensitized to those types of requests and it really isn’t a great way to run an electric system. So that suggests to me that we need to do a better job of planning for the resources that are needed to keep the lights on. Even when we use efficiency and demand response, there still has to be enough energy to power the system at that time of peak demand. And asking consumers to alter their behavior on a one-off basis may work, but making it a regular course of how people live their lives I think is less and less effective.

Jason Price:

This past week, Todd, I was in Orlando attending the EEI conference and a lot of discussion was around interconnections and the backlog of interconnections, just sort of the demand that’s trying to connect to the grid. So let me ask you about that. Is it a common concern with your constituency and what are the ways that EPSA is trying to help clear up some of this backlog and overly extensive queue that’s forming?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, I think you asked one of the next questions kind of down the, “How do we fix this?”, line, which is queue reform is critically important, and we have been vocally supportive of getting queue reform right. Certainly for those members who are in the development space, it’s vitally important that it be adjusted to account for the projects that are real, and I say that with air quotes that you can’t see. But the ones that have got financial decisions and are ready to go, there’s got to be prioritization of those projects to ensure they can actually get onto the system and not have the thousands of projects that appear to be clogging up the system. If you look at the number of projects and virtually any of the major RTOs or ISOs, there are hundreds of thousands of potential megawatts, and the ability to sort through those and find the ones that are ready for investment decisions or have made final investment decisions and are ready to construct and moving those up in the queue process, I think will be fundamental to making sure that we can move projects from the drawing board to construction.

But I think the part of that is not just queue reform because yes, that’s important, but if we don’t address permitting and citing challenges that are happening both on the natural gas pipeline side, but also on the transmission wires side from the electric industry without resolution of some of those outstanding questions, all of these things may be terrific ideas, but the ability to execute and deliver them is going to be hampered, and that’s not going to help us do the things that policymakers say they want, which is deploy greater amounts of renewable and battery storage generation or some of the new technologies if hydrogen comes to fruition or small modular reactors. And it’s also not going to allow the supply for the much needed natural gas infrastructure that will be the baseload or the dispatchable plants going forward that will help to enable the greater deployment of those renewable resources or those non dispatchable resources.

So you have to have both sides of that equation achieved or you’re going to end up out of balance and that’s not going to help solve the problem. And we were cautiously optimistic until very recently that Congress was interested in trying to address some of these, but it appears Congress is focused on other things at the moment as we record this. And so we’ll see if the second round of permitting reform gets any attention or if that is something that we’ll have to wait for the next Congress to focus on. But clearly it is vitally important because without it, I don’t know that we can achieve the goals that policymakers have set.

Jason Price:

Yeah, agreed. It was quite a focus this past week at EEI. So Todd, I’ve thrown a lot at you and I really appreciate your thoughtful responses. I have a question around how you prioritize.

Todd Snitchler:

Sure.

Jason Price:

I mean, there’s a lot going on and your mission is really around addressing issues of reliability and the energy transition. Can you talk about why that principle is so ingrained in your approach?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, I think reliability has become ever more important. We’ve unfortunately had a couple of events over the last three or four years that have really shined a light on the importance of electric system reliability. And by that I’m referring of course to the unfortunate events in Winter Storm Elliott, and then of course winter storm Uri before that in Texas, which really showed if things go wrong, what the bad outcomes could be. And we do not want to be on the wrong side of that equation. In fact, we want to continue to deliver as best we can to help achieve outcomes that would make that an impossibility as much as possible.

So I think that’s really why we keep it front and center on how we’re thinking about things. And if we do that right, does a couple of things, selfishly, I mean. Let’s be very candid. Our members are for-profit entities that want to have the ability to earn a rate of return and have the opportunity to make money for doing what they do. So certainly making sure that the system is reliable and that we are able to deliver the electrons and the power that’s needed to keep people’s lights on at home or in the businesses that are our customers or the utilities customers, that’s front and center. And reliability first helps achieve all those objectives that come behind that, whether it’s affordability and it is the questions around the reliability of the system and cost-effectiveness. All of those things flow from being reliable first because if the lights go out, the public has zero tolerance for those situations and it has gotten worse, not better for system outages.

Sometimes things happen if there’s a storm and the lights go out or the wires come down because of a hurricane or an ice storm, the public will give you about 24 hours. But after that, there is a rapid decline in the amount of time the public is willing to not have power. And as we move towards electrification and towards one single way that we’re going to power the economy and not use some of the other sources that are out there, that single point of failure problem becomes all the more important to ensure reliability. So we are laser focused on it because the public support or the public disapproval for problems that could result is simply too great for us not to keep it in first position.

Jason Price:

Todd, another common discussion that came up at EEI was this concept called the crystal ball, and I’ve never come across a crystal ball that actually worked. However, if I were to ask you, given the dynamics in this industry and how much is changing so rapidly, changes in load demand because of electric cars to energy mandates and so much more, highlight for us where do you think the initiatives will be and where will EPSA be say in the next five years?

Todd Snitchler:

I think we will continue to be focused on proper market design to ensure system reliability through resource adequacy. But I think you’ve hit on a couple of key issues that I think bear a little further discussion. And I just saw a note this morning that the EIA data that was published yesterday said that our demand in July was the second highest since 2016, and this is before we’ve done a lot of the electrification of the system. That is numbers that have happened before we’ve seen rapid deployment or significant demand of electric vehicles that are going to have additional impacts to the system. It’s before massive amounts of electrification of buildings and urban centers or in industry or just in homes more broadly around the country. That tells me that we’re going to see the demand curve grow like it hasn’t grown in decades.

That’s going to result in the need for additional generation, both renewables, battery storage, but also the dispatchable resources, at the moment, principally natural gas in order to power that system. And so we are going to continue to advocate for the ability for those who own and want to develop and build all of those types of resources to be able to do so in a way that allows them the opportunity to make a profit, but also will shield customers from having to pay for any of those developing projects. We are committed to the business model that says we bear that risk and investors and shareholders should bear it and consumers should not. That’ll put some market discipline in place where bad decisions won’t be made and really expensive projects that maybe don’t pencil are going to be the ones that are left on the wayside. And we’re going to focus on the projects that actually deliver value and ensure reliability for consumers. So I think we’re going to be focused on that for the next five and probably more years after that.

Jason Price:

Well, we’ve been very generous with your time, Todd, and we really appreciate the insight. And I’m impressed that Energy Central was able to book you to join this call. So we really appreciate your perspective and your members’ perspectives. At this point in our show, we have what’s called the lightning round, which is an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you the person rather than you the professional. So we’re going to ask you a couple of questions and we ask you to keep your response to one word or phrase.

Todd Snitchler:

Sure.

Jason Price:

Okay. If you could pick a superpower, what would it be?

Todd Snitchler:

Mind reading.

Jason Price:

What’s your comfort food?

Todd Snitchler:

Lasagna.

Jason Price:

What are you bringing with you to a deserted island?

Todd Snitchler:

My wife, my books and my music.

Jason Price:

If you were not in the field representing power suppliers, what would you be doing with your career?

Todd Snitchler:

I would probably be doing something in the wine world.

Jason Price:

What are you most motivated by?

Todd Snitchler:

Solving problems.

Jason Price:

Nicely done. And by successfully navigating our lightning round, you earn the final word. So for those listening to our conversation today, what’s the most important message you hope they take away from this episode?

Todd Snitchler:

Yeah, Jason, thanks for that. I would say that reliability is the most important item now and will be going forward, but it has a cost. And market forces are the way we can keep those costs as low as possible, but they have to be allowed to work.

Jason Price:

Fantastic. Well, Todd, I surely expect that our listeners will have questions to follow up on today’s conversation, and we invite those listeners to log into energycentral.com and leave them in the questions and comments section and we’ll be sure to follow up. So until then, thanks again, Todd, for joining us on today’s episode of the podcast.

Todd Snitchler:

Thanks, Jason. Really enjoyed it. Had a lot of fun.

Jason Price:

Yeah, appreciate it. Same here. And thanks to our sponsor. Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe works with the nation’s largest electric gas and water utilities in their telecommunication, grid modernization and digital and workforce transformations. West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility, operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure, advisory on transportation electrification, ADMS deployments, data and analytics and cybersecurity. And once again, I’m your host Jason Price. So plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com. And we’ll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

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