Round Trip Energy executive discusses today's project hurdles in PJM

Round Trip Energy felt the squeeze of an overburdened RTO months before the announcement from PJM that it was proposing a pause and a plan to work through the more than 2500 renewable projects in its interconnection queue logjam.

At least two of those idled projects belong to Round Trip Energy, which is developing a pair of roughly 60 MWac solar projects in Kentucky, Benjamin Levy, Executive Director at Round Trip Energy, said in an interview with NPM.

Round Trip submitted the projects for PJM’s AG2 queue, which closed on March 31, 2021. The typical process would include about four months for a feasibility study, he said. All told, under normal circumstances, the company could expect a project submitted in March of 2021 to receive its feasibility study by that August, allowing it to receive an impact study and a facility study — “to confirm that we can interconnect, to confirm our costs and to confirm where we would interconnect” — by October of this year.

“Once you have your facility study … they will establish a timeline that you have agreed on with them. And you can try to push as quickly as you can if you'd like,” Levy said. “They almost hand it over to the utility at that point. … in Kentucky, the utilities, for example, are not as busy as the ones like in Pennsylvania or … Virginia. So, there may be something that could get done in a year, a year and a half.”

A few months after entering the queue, they were told the feasibility studies for the projects would not be ready until January of this year. Then, a few months before that deadline, PJM alerted the company that it would not be issuing them the feasibility studies until July of this year, Levy said.

Finally, on January 27, citing the backlog, PJM alerted Round Trip Energy that the feasibility study would not be complete until January 2023.

“That's a 17-month delay on something that should take four months,” Levy said.

PJM is proposing the prioritization of roughly 1250 “shovel-ready” projects, put a two-year delay on roughly 1250 less developed projects, and pause new applications entirely until 4Q25. A task force is currently working on the issue and plans to petition the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May.

Because PJM has so many states and a wholesale market that lets you sell power “in a very fair and calculable way,” Round Trip Energy, which is based out of Maryland, is not about to abandon the region because of the backlog, Levy said. But it does prompt more creative siting, like Round Trip’s work in Kentucky, which Levy described as “somewhat of a new frontier” with less competition and less renewable energy history (and incentives) compared to other PJM states.

Still, much remains to be seen as PJM prepares to bring its proposal, and the long shutdown of its queue that it would prompt before FERC.

“But needless to say, there are 50 states and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and Micronesia and … Samoa. So, there's a lot of places to go,” Levy said. “And you do need to figure out what makes sense for you and your investors and your time.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers in March.


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