New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has signed a law requiring the state’s utilities to report to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities how they voted on matters decided by grid operator PJM Interconnection.
In addition to reporting their votes, New Jersey utilities must describe the meeting’s purpose and the role they played at the meeting. They must also explain whether each vote taken furthers the state’s goal for affordable electricity, and accords with the state’s Global Warming Response Act.
Earlier this year, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed a law that the trade group Advanced Energy United characterized as nearly identical to the New Jersey law.
Among decisions made by PJM, some affect how quickly it conducts the interconnection studies that solar and storage developers need before beginning construction.
PJM began collaborating with the consultancy Tapestry this year to speed developer requests to begin interconnection studies, and Tapestry’s General Manager Page Crahan said that “ultimately, the vision for this project extends” to a suite of tools that could “dramatically improve the transmission planning process.” Added transmission within PJM could make it easier, faster and less costly for new generators to interconnect.
New Jersey Assemblyman Robert Karabinchak, one of the bill’s 16 sponsors, said that “for too long utilities have operated in the shadows at PJM, making decisions that directly impact our energy bills and clean energy progress. This law changes that. If a utility votes against New Jersey’s goals, they’ll have to explain themselves. Transparency is the new standard.”
Besides New Jersey and Maryland, five other states are served in their entirety by PJM—Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Under PJM’s governance structure, the votes of the electric utilities served by PJM have a combined vote weighting of 20%, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remaining 80% vote weighting is shared equally by four other groups: generation owners, transmission owners, other suppliers, and end-use customers.
The New Jersey law passed both houses of the state legislature with vote margins of nearly 80%. The text of the law fits on one page.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.