AP Interview:

State Energy Chief Sees Lower Costs

HARTFORD — (AP) The head of the soon-to-be-established Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said Monday that Connecticut ratepayers should begin to see the cost of energy fall in six months to a year.

Commissioner Dan Esty said in an interview with The Associated Press that he expects a “measurable rate reduction” as a result of state legislation enacted earlier this month that brings the state deeper into the purchase of electricity.

Mr Esty did not say how much he expects rates to fall. A spokesman for Connecticut Light & Power, the state’s largest utility that serves 1.2 million customers, said rates for power generation will likely drop five to 10 percent in January 2012. Electricity rates already are lower this year from 2010 due to falling natural gas prices.

Mitch Gross, spokesman for CL&P, a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities, said the state procurement official will be able to take advantage of prices that may briefly be low on spot markets. Utilities now buy electricity three or four years in the future, he said.

“We believe this additional procurement position will help open more possibilities for immediate spot market buys when the price is very attractive,” Mr Gross said.

Mr Esty said rules governing the purchase of electricity have not worked well.

“Rather than protect us from higher energy prices, it shielded us from lower energy prices,” he said.

An electricity overhaul was vetoed last year by then-governor M. Jodi Rell, a Republican. However, the recent legislation was approved by the House 139-8 and by 36-0 in the Senate. The commissioner credited the lopsided margins to the Democratic majority and Republicans working together.

“I insisted we do this on a bipartisan basis ... that something as fundamental as redoing the energy foundation for the state couldn’t be done on a one-party basis,” he said.

Consumers and businesses have long said the high cost of energy in Connecticut proves that deregulation in 1998 was a failure. State lawmakers have said electricity costs are among the top complaints from constituents.

And businesses say Connecticut is uncompetitive with other states.

By merging the Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Utility Control to centralize state energy policy, legislators want the state to focus on energy efficiency and reduce rates. The bill, which is expected to soon be signed by Governor Dannel P. Malloy, calls for a new procurement officer to participate with utilities in the purchasing of power and requires the new agency, not electric companies, to assess future electric demand and how best to meet it.

The legislation also establishes an agency to finance zero-emission projects such as solar and wind power.

Mr Esty said the measure will encourage development of alternative energy, but he did not endorse the state’s first wind power project approved by the Connecticut Siting Council. BNE Energy is building three wind-powered turbines in Colebrook, less than a mile from where it has won permission to build three other turbines.

“I would like to see appropriate regulations in place,” the commissioner said. “I think it is always better to have a clear regulatory framework that provides some transparency on what will be approved and what will not and some predictability.”

Lawmakers enacted legislation requiring the Siting Council to adopt regulations for wind turbine projects and impose a moratorium on applications until regulations are adopted.

Power Grid Change May Disrupt Clocks

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — A yearlong experiment with the nation’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast.

“A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,” said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the US Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government.

Since 1930, electric clocks have kept time based on the rate of the electrical current that powers them. If the current slips off its usual rate, clocks run a little fast or slow. Power companies now take steps to correct it and keep the frequency of the current — and the time — as precise as possible.

The group that oversees the US power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press.

Officials say they want to try this to make the power supply more reliable, save money, and reduce what may be needless efforts. The test is tentatively set to start in mid-July, but that could change.

Tweaking the power grid’s frequency is expensive and takes a lot of effort, said Joe McClelland, head of electric reliability for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

No one is quite sure what will be affected. This won’t change the clocks in cellphones, GPS or even on computers, and it won’t have anything to do with official US time or Internet time. But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers — anything that flashes “12:00” when it loses power — may be just a bit off every second, and that error can grow with time.

It’s not easy figuring what will run fast and what won’t. For example, VCRs or DVRs that get their time from cable systems or the Internet probably won’t be affected, but those with clocks tied to the electric current will be off a bit, Mr Matsakis said.

This will be an interesting experiment to see how dependent our timekeeping is on the power grid, Mr Matsakis said.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp runs the nation’s interlocking web of transmission lines and power plants. A June 14 company presentation spelled out the potential effects of the change: East Coast clocks may run as much as 20 minutes fast over a year, but West Coast clocks are only likely to be off by 8 minutes.

In Texas, it’s only an expected speedup of 2 minutes.

Some parts of the grid, like in the East, tend to run faster than others. Errors add up.

If the grid averages just over 60 cycles a second, clocks that rely on the grid will gain 14 seconds per day, according to the company’s presentation.

Spokeswoman Kimberly Mielcarek said the company is still discussing the test and gauging reactions to its proposal, and may delay the experiment a bit. She said in an e-mail that the change is about making the grid more reliable and that correcting the frequency for time deviations can cause other unnecessary problems for the grid. She wrote that any problems from the test are only possibilities.

In the future, more use of renewable energy from the sun and wind will mean more variations in frequency on the grid, Mr McClelland said. Solar and wind power can drop off the grid with momentary changes in weather, and correcting those deviations is expensive and requires instant backup power to be always at the ready.

The test makes sense and should not cause too much of a hassle for people, said Jay Apt, a business professor and director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

But Tom O’Brian, who heads the time and frequency division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, expects widespread effects.

He said there are alternatives if people have problems from the test: The federal government provides the official time by telephone and on the Internet.                              —Seth Borenstein