Fairness for Renewables
What's it all about? We are on constant watch to make sure power grid operators employ rules that treat clean energy sources fairly. An example of a recent consumer battle is the Minimum Offer Price Rule, MOPR (pronounced MOE-pur).
In 2020, fossil fuel interests at PJM proposed changes to the "capacity market rules" that would have discriminated against clean energy resources. The capacity market is how PJM determines the price for reserve (a.k.a. capacity) power. These payments go to electricity generators in return for the promise that they will have enough power on hand when demand is highest--think a hot summer afternoon, when everyone is cranking up air conditioners and power plants are working hardest. Customers pay these prices through their electricity supply charge on their power bills. If the MOPR had been implemented, clean energy resources such as wind and solar would have been artificially priced out of participation in the PJM capacity market.
Why should consumers care? Customers could have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in higher electric bills to support dirty energy and slow the transition to clean resources, under these proposed changes. Fortunately, the MOPR changes were shot down. But we have to maintain vigilance because fossil fuel interests are constantly working to engineer rule changes that favor them.
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