POWER September 2016 - 75

GENERATION TRANSITIONS
and Central Maine Power. Rowe first served in 2000 as co-CEO with
PECO's Corbin McNeill as part of the merger deal (that didn't work).
He soon became the sole decider at Exelon.
Under Rowe's leadership-he retired in 2012-the company acquired
Baltimore's Constellation Energy, the nation's largest supplier
of commercial and industrial customers, as well as a large residential
load in Maryland, ranging from north of Baltimore, into the city itself,
and including large portions of the Maryland suburbs of Baltimore
and Washington, D.C. He also set in motion the successful acquisition
of Pepco Holdings, parent of the Washington, D.C., utility, which also
serves most of the surrounding suburbs, and utilities in New Jersey
and Delaware. That deal closed in 2016, under Crane's leadership.
" I do not see coal coming
back. The technology has not
advanced; the back end looks
cost-prohibitive. "
-Chris Crane, Exelon President and CEO
Crane took the top Exelon job after serving as Rowe's chief operating
officer. He joined the company (then ComEd) in 1998 and was named
chief nuclear officer in 2004. He assumed direction of all of the company's
generating assets in 2007. Before joining the Chicago utility, Crane
was Browns Ferry site vice president for Tennessee Valley Authority and
worked in new plant start-up at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant
in Texas and Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona.
Technology Is Changing, Markets Not So Much
As Exelon prepares for the future, Crane says he sees renewables
making a big impact. " Renewables will be a critical part, a larger part
in the future, " he said. " Technology is advancing faster in this sector
than I've seen in my career. " Renewables particularly make sense if
economic large-scale storage becomes available. " We really have an
eye on what life after lithium ion will look like. I don't know if it's
one decade or two decades away, but it is coming. "
Exelon is also betting on the smart grid. " We put in 7.4 million
smart meters, and that's had massive economic benefits, " Crane said.
Exelon will invest $18 billion in the smart grid by 2020, according
to the company's 2015 sustainability report, released last July. In a
message accompanying the report, Crane said, " During 2015 at our
legacy utilities-BGE, ComEd and PECO-we invested $3.7 billion
to make the grid smarter, more reliable and more resilient. These utility
investments will continue, with an estimated additional $18 billion
to be invested from 2016 to 2020. "
Exelon sees smart grid technologies working along with distributed
generation, particularly with community solar. The utility sees
community solar as much more cost effective than individual rooftop
installations, as well as offering a way to bring solar to customers who
are renters or where rooftop solar won't work.
Exelon is also bullish on microgrids as a way to provide reliability
of key services during both natural outages and possible hostile
attacks on the grid. The Illinois legislation approving smart grid
spending also included approval for ComEd microgrid projects, with
a price tag of $300 million. Among them are ComEd's 17-MW Chicago
Rockford International Airport microgrid, some 90 miles northwest
of Chicago, and a project to tie into an existing Illinois Institute
of Technology (IIT) microgrid, in the Bronzeville community. (For an
interactive view of the IIT microgrid, see http://www.iitmicrogrid.net/
microgrid/index_all.htm.)
Crane said the Bronzeville project would connect a local hospital,
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gasoline stations, food vendors, and a major police station into the
university's microgrid. He noted that the 2012 " Superstorm Sandy "
event in the Northeast crippled much of the response to the storm by
taking out electricity that served gas stations, so the pumps wouldn't
work. " We can't turn the whole grid into micros, " he said, " but we
can identify some critical areas that we can island. That's well worth
pursuing. " In a press release, ComEd said, " Microgrids help improve
grid resilience and security by lowering the impact of power outages
due to severe weather, security, or other disruptions. "
Coal is not on Exelon's future agenda. " I do not see coal coming
back, " Crane said. " The technology has not advanced; the back end
looks cost-prohibitive. " He noted that the pilot projects now under way
are not performing well, jeopardizing any future economic prospects.
In the future, said Crane, " Technology is changing and the desires
of customers are changing. We have to be in front of those changes. "
The challenge is " making sure the regulatory compacts continue to
advance " from their historical emphasis on volumetric rewards toward
more of an infrastructure-based regulatory system.
In a national market that is half competitive and half conventionally
regulated, is there any movement of market design in either direction?
Here, Exelon is not very optimistic. " I see some design changes in competitive
markets to support long-term resources, " Crane said, pointing
to Cuomo's plan and some changes in the PJM Interconnection's capacity
markets. In regulated markets, he said, " We are starting to see
some adjustments " to recognize the value of long-term assets.
Overall, Crane said he doesn't see " revolutionary " change in electricity
market designs " on either side. It's difficult to put the genie
back in the bottle. I just see enhancements going forward. " ■
-Kennedy Maize is a long-time energy journalist and frequent
contributor to POWER.
http://www.iitmicrogrid.net/ http://www.powermag.com
POWER September 2016

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