30-04-2025
Amid rapidly evolving energy goals, Maine lawmakers seek more coordinated grid planning
An aerial view shows high voltage power lines on May 16, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by)
Energy policy has moved quickly in the past few years as Maine has sought to achieve climate and affordability goals with deadlines that are not so far off.
Rep. Gerry Runte (D-York) suspects there hasn't been sufficient time to take a 50,000-foot view to see how all the pieces of energy supply and demand could plan and work together. He's hoping the bipartisan bill he introduced during a public hearing Tuesday afternoon will formalize and increase collaboration between agencies involved in grid planning.
'I need to emphasize: the intent of this bill is not to interfere with the ongoing grid planning process,' Runte told the Legislature's Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee. Rather, its purpose is 'to refine how it interacts with other initiatives and give it a bit of a tune up for future planning.'
The grid is the system of transmission and distribution lines that bring electricity from where it is generated to the homes of ratepayers and other points of end use.
Last summer, the Public Utilities Commission concluded its process of gathering input on priorities for grid plans. The largest privately owned utilities in the state, Central Maine Power and Versant Power, are required to submit their plans next January, Runte said.
Meanwhile, the Governor's Energy Office completed the state's energy plan earlier this year that laid out pathways to achieve climate resilience and affordability goals. The portions of the plan that focused on electricity were based on a supply and demand forecast that considered reliability, emissions reductions, the role of emerging technologies and more, Runte explained.
As Runte understands it, that forecast in the state's energy plan looked circuit by circuit to develop a bottom-up analysis. However, the forecasting model used in the Public Utility Commission's grid planning looks at capacity and load data from the regional grid, ISO-New England, taking a more top-down approach.
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Given the connection between the state's energy plan and future grid needs, Runte said he believes the agencies involved in grid planning should use the same load forecast. While LD 1726 calls for using the forecasting model in the state energy plan, Runte said he expects robust discussion on which of the two may be more appropriate.
Public Advocate Heather Sanborn testified neither for nor against the bill, however, she raised concerns about limiting the forecast model over an uncertain amount of time because energy forecasting models are constantly evolving.
The bill also seeks to ensure that future planning considers grid enhancing technologies at the energy distribution level that could improve efficiency and reliability. To do that, the proposal would have the Public Utilities Commission consider adding incentives for improved data and grid monitoring of power quality reliability, the state of infrastructure, as well as capacity.
Runte's proposal also addresses the procurement of new energy sources. While the legislation covers multiple aspects of procurement, Runte said the bids for those new sources should be informed by the grid planning process to minimize the amount of new infrastructure.
Another aspect of grid planning is energy demand management and non-wires alternatives — or projects that use alternative technology to avoid new investment in the transmission system. Currently, those two components are spread between three different agencies in Maine. Runte's bill would ask the Public Utilities Commission, the Office of Public Advocate and Efficiency Maine to assess how those aspects of planning are shared among them and report back to the Legislature on how the process could be improved.
'The idea of this bill is to strengthen governance by establishing formal linkages to activities that have a direct impact on or perhaps should be subject to the findings of a grid plan,' Runte told the committee.
The Public Utilities Commission, as well as the Governor's Energy Office, also offered neutral testimony on the proposal. Though legislative liaison Caroline Colan said the Governor's Energy Office shares Runte's goal of enhancing coordination where feasible in grid planning processes, she said some parts of the bill could be overly prescriptive.
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