City of Boulder issued the following announcement on Sept. 18.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) declined to compel Xcel Energy to allow Boulder to interconnect at their substations “because Boulder does own or have a reasonable expectation of owning the facilities.” The order confirmed that the city is entitled to interconnection service under Xcel’s Open Access Transmission Tariff and that it can do so separately from seeking transmission service.
According to the city’s municipalization engineering plans, the city would operate a local, lower-voltage electric distribution system and connect to Xcel’s higher-voltage transmission system at six substations throughout Boulder. After receiving partial state approval in 2017 to separate Xcel’s system to facilitate a Boulder utility, the city and Xcel worked together to study how to interconnect the two systems. First, the city and Xcel developed system impact and facility studies. Then, the city planned to use these studies as the basis for formal interconnection agreements with Xcel.
As spelled out in the city’s filings, after the studies were completed, Xcel indicated that it would decline to finalize the interconnection arrangements as studied at two substations. In response to this development, the city filed an application at FERC in February to interconnect to Xcel’s transmission system at six substations, consistent with the city and Xcel’s joint engineering work.
In its Sept. 3 ruling, FERC declined to order the interconnection, saying that it could not meet Boulder’s request until the city owns or reasonably expects to own the electric distribution infrastructure it seeks to interconnect.
Original source can be found here.
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