About this episode

The episode discusses the scrutiny of utility distribution spending and its impact on energy costs with Minnesota regulators Sydnie Lieb and Pete Wyckoff.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe Minnesota regulators Sydnie Lieb and Pete Wyckoff on why utility distribution spending — now a third of capital budgets and the biggest driver of rising bills — escapes the scrutiny the rest of the grid faces, and how to fix that. 00:00 - Introduction 04:23 - How distribution is regulated differently than generation and transmission 09:25 - Why distribution matters now: an aging system and the build-more incentive 14:00 - Contestable “mandatory” spending: undergrounding, DERMS software, capitalization 22:19 - Reliability standards and the cost of chasing 100 percent 28:42 - The MISO comparison: valuing a lost hour, and the scale of the numbers 35:12 - Non-wires alternatives: batteries, the Xcel project, and modeling gaps 40:31 - What regulators should require: AMI forecasts and beyond the prudence test 47:22 - The speed objection: does more analysis slow things down? 50:10 - Why spending caps and rate freezes are the wrong fix 52:40 - Spending more anyway, and recent Minnesota PUC disappointments 55:09 - Restructured markets: does the same…

People in this episode

Host: David Roberts

Guests: Sydnie Lieb, Pete Wyckoff

Topics covered

• utility distribution spending
• regulation
• energy costs
• reliability standards
• non-wires alternatives
• Minnesota PUC

Keywords

• distribution-system spending
• capital budgets
• aging system
• mandatory spending
• reliability standards
• non-wires alternatives
• regulatory process

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Minnesota PUC, Xcel, MISO

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