Navigating the TVA Market with Gil Hough, TenneSEIA

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So I'm really excited about the impact that solar for all in particular, but some of the other federal money reap and others are going to have in our distributed market, that has been the least, you know, action, because TVA doesn't pay very much for exported power.

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Most of our residential and small commercial has batteries, which is great, because they want to offset the retail rate.

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So we have an unusual high percentage of storage market.

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But that also means the numbers aren't that great, and therefore it's relatively small market, if an active market. So I think solar, for all in particular, is going to really change that. Are

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you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization. We do too.

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today on the Clean Power Hour Tennessee, the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association, I'm so thrilled to have Gil Hough, the director of Tennessee on the show today. Welcome to the show.

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Gil,

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great to be here.

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Joan, appreciate you giving me an interview today. And let me talk a little bit about some exciting stuff we have here in this market. Yeah,

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you know, most people have heard of the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, but they don't know a whole lot about it. So we're going to geek out on that first, because that is one of the foundations of Tennessee that get that gives you your geography, right? And it's a seven state area, so it's interesting. But Gil first give my listeners a little background on yourself. How did you come to Tennessee? And yeah, what is your background?

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Yeah, no, I actually worked as a clean energy advocate for about 10 years with the southern Alliance for Clean Energy, where I was a Tennessee director of renewables. So I was promoting renewables for a good long time, and then as the industry started to take off, I guess that would be around 2010 I got into the industry first stop telling people how to do renewables if I'd never actually done it myself, which is really the case. And so I started doing work with the company, RSI and tech, and we were focused on mostly like one megawatt to five megawatt area. Most of those projects are on restricted use property department of energy, you know, think the you know, had, had been cleaned up, but was never going to be residential. It has to be a lot of times flat land with a fence around it. That was perfect to put solar project, but you couldn't do anything else there again. So we did some really nice projects, break field one powerhouse six, working with partners to turn those brownfields into bright fields, if you will. And then, as part of that, I was one. We were one of the founding members of Tennessee in forming an organization to better represent us with other stakeholders here in this market, and I served as the first President, and then about five, six years ago, I became the Executive Director.

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So about 10 years in clean energy advocacy, 10 years doing mid scale development, and now about five years, serving as executive director for the business association for the solar and storage industry here in the Tennessee Valley.

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Right on, right on. Well you are. You're really making an impact on the energy and the world of clean energy.

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So thank you for your service.

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Absolutely, it's a very unique market. People come and tell me, tell me about the Tennessee market with. Is no Tennessee market is a TVA market because the feds, federal government has authority over the states and their part that is covered by TBA. But it's really a beautiful mission. It was part of the New Deal. This area was really suffering for lack of electrification, particularly the rural areas, were not being electrified. They were very poor, terrible flood management. So it's kind of unique needed. There was flood management for the Tennessee Valley. Tennessee River Valley was desperately needed.

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Electrification was desperately needed, and economic development was desperately needed. This very poor part of the country at the time. So as part of the New Deal, they kind of wrapped those various missions together and created a federal agency to do that, and TVA has been very successful. Of that. A lot of early hydro, then came coal. Now no nuclear, then renewables, but they do economic development, which was very different, I mean, compared to many other utilities, it is a key theme of there. So when Ford was looking to build a new EV truck factory here, that was a TVA site that they were used to to bring that in. They're very involved in economic development. They have, you

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said, form for it, for it. Oh, Ford, okay, I misheard you got it. Got it. The Blue Oval facility

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in West Tennessee is one of the hugest brand new EV manufacturing. It's still being built, but it is. That's where they make the lightning. It's actually the post lightning vehicle. They don't make anything there. Now it's gonna be their next evolutionary vehicle. I'm thinking they've got a name. They could probably call it the lightning too, but they're just calling it their next gen vehicle.

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Got it. Got it.

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So. So the TVA, though, as far as energy goes, it started with hydro. Is that right? Or was it coal? Or what were the first power plants? Lot of hydro,

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yeah, particularly around, some fertilizer plants they were doing, and around is part of their mission. But yes, they electrified a lot of early stuff with hydro. People often here still think that TVA is majority hydro. It's not. It's depending on how much it rains, which is a huge the big deal here how much it rains, because that means how much hydro you have. It's usually somewhere between 6% in a dry year and 10% in a wet year. Of power comes from hydro, and they do have a large number of dams throughout the valley. But then there was a lot of coal got built. We have a lot of old coal. All are set to be retired by 2035, they're very terribly inefficient old plants.

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So TVA is more than happy to retire with them, because they they're very expensive. They've helped cause a few blackouts here because, you know, because of maintenance issues, it's, it's, they're, they're not exactly cutting edge technology.

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Then they have a then they came out with a lot of nuclear, more recently, fair bit of natural gas. And in the last five years, they've been getting more and more aggressive with solar and storage, and it's bit of a booming market here in a couple different directions. As TVA really starts adopting more, they have some pretty strong and zero carbon aspirations by 2050 I'm on the TVA IRP working group that is helping add the kind of details of how we're going to get there, and I know TVA is very committed to a cleaner future. So it's a exciting market to be at, but one that doesn't get a lot of coverage.

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We are a kind of a new, exciting market. If you want

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to see a map of the TVA, I found that the Wikipedia page on the TVA is the best place to see that, and it it, you know, it does subsume the entire state of Tennessee, but then portions of many other states, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, so and Kentucky, yeah, so parts of seven states, but, but all of Tennessee. So it's much more than just Tennessee, so to speak. But it should be to be, I guess

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we talked about that.

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Just that Dave just does not flow. Tennessee flows very nicely. It does. So our little tagline is serving the Tennessee Valley. But we just go in Tennessee

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and and so let's talk about the segments of the solar industry, or or solar and wind and batteries. For, for for my audience, that that's my core audience, solar, wind and storage, how much utility and distributed generation on. In the wind and solar industries is happening now within the TVA,

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not too much wind. We have 130 megawatt wind project up on Windridge or Buffalo mountain, not too far from where I'm at no bridge. Frankly, there was some politics that have made that difficult. But I, I am hopeful that we will, after kind of a long pause on wind, that we will start adding some, whether it's in the valley or with nearby with a direct connection to the valley. I'm hoping soon we'll can start having some more wind. But it's it's been not a great start for wind. We have about a gigawatt of mostly large scale solar in distributed solar operating now, and there's about another three gigs that have been contracted recently by TVA in our under construction or in late stage development. And then I know TVA is hoping to add a couple more gigs here the next year to to that list. So the TVA goal is have 10 gigawatts of solar operating by 2035 and so a lot, it's not much historically, but a whole bunch of the pipeline, and

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what percent of of the power generation in the valley would that be if you got to 10 gig watts? Do you know approximately, we're

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about a 35,000 megawatt maxing system, so we're, it's like 2% right now.

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So very small. We've got a lot of room to grow. Okay? It's a big system. I'm frankly hoping for some big numbers coming up here, but right now, it's still a very small part of the system, okay?

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And I mean this, this is a very unique organization. It functions though, effectively as its own ISO as well. But so how do, how does the clean energy industry happen? Quote, unquote, in the TVA tell us a little bit about those that process. And there's

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two or three processes. We do cover the full market spectrum here. So we know Tennessee works with distributed we work with utility scale developers. We have manufacturers, professional companies, and we try to cover the full value chain in each market. And we have different committees focused on them, because the each one is very unique. So we have utility scales pretty much directly with TVA. TVA has a regular RFP process that they put out as we switch to FERC, 2023 it's probably going to be a resource cluster process that will start, you know, so that's directly that does trigger, by the way, because it is directly contracted with the federal government triggers NEPA, so we do have to do full environmental assessments for large scale utility solar. Now, the other big thing that started about two years ago now is something known as generation flexibility.

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That's a very different market.

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So TVA customers are not me and you and my neighbors. TVA is customers are what we call local power companies. That's the electric communities and Electric Co Ops that serve the valley. There are 153 of them, and all but four of those 153 have signed with those long term partnership agreement. It's tactical. The main thing you need to know is, if you sign that long term agreement, you can generate up to 5% of your load. If you're a Muni like net the city of Nashville, Nashville electric service 5% of their load. They can meet with renewables and so that that is a booming market. Here we get more and more of those local power companies who are working, you know, using my members to develop their own projects, and they can offset if the wholesale rate, so that's about seven cents. So obviously you can do a nice, you know, 1015, megawatt array get under seven cents, and that's a booming market right now.

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And then, do those Munis and co ops allow for sizable DG, let's say there's a factory that could use, you know, a couple of megawatts of solar. Is that allowed?

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I'll give you a great example when we're very excited about because it's performing fantastic. Is Toyota. Toyota in Huntsville, Alabama, has a 31 megawatt array. They had a commitment to do renewables.

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They really wanted it. TVA was taking a long time to meet that demand. So when flexibility came out Huntsville utilities so.

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Hey, let us do this. They got a project built. I love TVA. We're good friends at TVA, but they take a long time to get projects built. Huntsville, it's already built. It's operated. They have and they're seeing fantastic savings. Huntsville, you know, did the numbers, frankly, just on the energy sales, you know, offsetting at that seven cents built the 30 megawatt project, they were going to do great just with that, but there are seeing demand savings and additional savings that they did not count on that are generating incredible amount of revenue for them. So Huntsville utilities is a static. Toyota is a static it is just absolutely fantastic.

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And because it doesn't feed into the TVA system, Toyota uses all the power it didn't trigger TV is not involved. It triggered NEPA. So it didn't have to do the full NEPA studies or the long interconnection studies that TVA does when you're connecting to the TVA system.

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Absolutely fantastic project.

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And yes, every LPC can do that kind of project.

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So there's so if, if, if I was to visit with solar EPCs in within the TVA territory, they would generally be upbeat about DG, solar, large. DG, large. DG, gotcha,

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yes. Now, if you can work with the local power, if you're in a partnership with the muni and the Co Op, and they're very they're seeing great savings. They love the program.

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They're actually our co ops immunities, because they can directly benefit with this program. Are pretty positive about solar and storage, and so there's lots of opportunities there. Now our distributed market is our hardest market. I will not tell a lie. Great stuff happening, utility scale, great stuff happening, bed scale. The smaller stuff is a little harder. It depends a little bit on the muni and Co Op. Some are more friendly than others. They have a lot TVA doesn't really anymore deal with the little stuff. It's up to the co ops and the muties. And a lot of them don't have any programs or ease a couple do that. They make it easier for you, but our residential in small commercial market is is not booming, and I know that a lot of my advocacy work is trying to figure out a virtual power plan or other way that, you know, make make it that distributed market more of a win for the utilities and for TVA, so that they support that market better, but that's sure.

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I don't have such good news on small distributors. The

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And for our listeners, that event is November, 20 and 21st in Huntsville, Alabama, we'll have a link to the conference landing page in the show notes, but tell us about the conference and what people who attend could look forward to.

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Yeah, no. People really enjoy our conference, and partly it's because we're very narrow in our focus. So if you're interested in the TVA market, which again, includes a big chunk of Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky, addition to all of Tennessee or all but one county of Tennessee. It's a part, really a partnership with TVA. I have to say, they really engage with us. They're they're a terawatt sponsor. I just finished up an hour long call going over all their speakers.

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They turned out in force. It's not always easy getting face time with TVA staff, but they all come out to our conference, and they're on, I don't know how I got probably at least 30 speakers from TVA going into all their programs. And because the federal government has authority over the state, the state just deals with local siting and taxation issues. Everything else is set by TVA. The market is set by TVA. We're able to really get it so with like, flexibility that I was talking about, we have multiple panels with, you know, both the local power company execs and with TVA staff. The nitty gritty i. Our Solar for all members. You know, we're very excited by solar for all and we have multiple awardees covering this market.

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So we have, they're all going to be there, they're all going to be talking about their program.

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And, you know, in addition to saying here's where to apply, we're getting some of the regulatory detailed issues, because we're being very specific to this market. So it is a deep dive people. People used to go to conferences of hearing some sales pitches from members. Hey, this is why you should work with us. I don't allow very short sales pitches by my members. This is let's I we try to build the market. What are the key topical conversations that we really need to be having. We have TVA staff in the room who are running these programs. We have the muties and cops in the room who are a lot of times the the leaders in this market on these programs. What are the key conversations we we want to be having, and we try to move it forward. I mean, we have the folks doing the transition to FERC 2023 we got the folks doing the the new transmission planning and stakeholder processes. What do they need to hear from the solar and storage industry? What do we need to hear from them? What can we do better? So it's a very focused conference, but if you want a deep dive into everything happening on the solar and storage market, then I think this, it's a fantastic conference

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for that. And historically, how many people will be at this event?

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I think we had a little over 500 last year.

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That's very good for a regional event like that.

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Yeah, no, it's

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been growing every year in it's also just like key players. So I mean, it is the people running the programs, the key members of the industry and vendors that are working this market. So it's a great networking opportunity. We're also excited we do our welcome reception at the US Space Rocket Center in Huntsville. If you've never been to that, that's fabulous for doing our our award reception that we do our recognition at umco solar, new manufacturer, and showcasing that. Abby Hopper with national C is going to be joining us for the umco solar job. So we're excited to have Abby help highlight that story. We think we have a lot of positive stories to tell here, and we're excited to showcase a lot of those positive stories here.

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Yeah, omco is a new sponsor of the Clean Power Hour, so we're very we're very fond of omco. Oh,

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fabulous. I was just going they have a brand new facility. Literally 10 days ago, they put in their final line in Huntsville, and I was walking through it last week, and they're going to host us. And they're really excited about their new plant, Huntsville, Alabama.

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Is there? Is there anything else we should talk about, about the about the conference?

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Yeah, no. Just fabulous opportunity to really get a deep dive into the market.

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Know how the programs work, meet the people running the programs, and who you'll be applying to, because NEPA, one of the things that we do, for example, is, because it's a TVA trigger is a NEPA study. It's in TVA runs the NEPA here. So we have, you know, the afternoon we would have a workshop on NEPA and how that works for solar and storage projects here in the valley.

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Then we're going to have, you know, some of the lead consultants talk about giving hints and direction on how to get Vantage and and best run that project, so that we want to be doing things in parallel, we're really focusing our probably biggest challenges for this market right now is the length of the interconnection queue. That's a big challenge.

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And we're having some sighting where, as the market starts to take off, we are getting some pushback from NIMBYs in some of the rural areas. So we're really trying to do we've got a great partnership. We've worked really well with the foreign State Farm Bureau. We've worked really well with the state of Tennessee on educating. We have some partners like Calvert Street and energy right that we're working with on some of those local siting issues. So I said we, this conference is all about having those key discussions. We need to move the market forward. And I, you know, I'm bound by NDAs for my role in the TVA IRP, but I think is not going to surprise anybody if I say as booming as things have been the last few years of the TVA, I think it's, it's the rate is going to just be growing much, much faster.

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And I think I'm particularly excited by storage we don't have, we've got handful of small storage projects. Utility scale but small storage projects right now, both owned by some of the Munis and by TVA. But I really think storage is the next frontier. As we're starting to get a lot of utility scale projects and for solar built, I'm really excited about storage next 10 years. I really see that there's a lot of things happening there. I can't talk about them. I about my days by that, but I I do want to flag for people. I think as people have got excited about the TVA market for solar, I think there's a lot of reason to be excited to buy the storage market here as well.

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Yeah. But if folks wanted to look up like, the interconnection queue is there?

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Is there a public website that lists that the

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TVA website gives you a glimpse into the if you look up Oasis and TVA that should pop up. And so we do have a lot of projects in the queue, but TVA is also that pro process is changing from a serial process into a cluster process, but we're very hopeful that there's going to be an opportunity to really streamline and make the project more efficient. I know that's what the TVA staff are really focused on, is cleaning up the queue and making it more efficient for for their growing demand. Need for solar. As I said, we're seeing a lot of growth. Middle Tennessee in particular, there are LPCs growing 6% a year today, right now, already seeing 6% growth this year. Plus TVA is retiring all their coal plants. So if you, if you take off multiple coal plants with very large coal facilities, as you are growing very quickly, there is a huge need for solar. And why? Yes, they're building some natural gas. They need to have a lot of solar and storage projects. Come on. So it's,

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you said something, I didn't recognize LPC. What is an LPC is

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that that is a unique term that we the that's the electric municipals, Electric Co Op. So together there are local power companies, is TVA services, local power companies, the LPCs, and then they serve the commercial, residential load. Though TVA does also have, similarly, about 35 direct serves. Those are like Ford, Toyota, not Toyota. Toyota is served by Huntsville, but some of the large industrial loads are directly served by TVA.

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So let's step back for a second. In the solar industry writ large, we have the residential, commercial or CNI, and then community, which is small utility and then utility spaces. And it sounds like there is a decent mix, maybe less so at the residential scale and more at the utility scale happening in the TBA writ large.

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What about community scale.

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These are, you know, one to 10 megawatt projects. Is there any special legislation to incentivize these? These LPCs, to adopt community solar? And

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this is where we go.

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The states have no authority over energy matters, TVA, so the state can't do anything. I guess they could. They have, in the past, actually created some incentives and stuff so they can incentivize but they can't like city goals or targets that would be binding here. But the flexibility that I mentioned the elk, the beauties and co ops now can generate up to 5% of the load, and that number is expected to grow here in the next year or two, and that opens up community solar. And I have to say the state of Tennessee got a, you know, got a solar for all grant, very large one with the larger ones, but there is setting up a solar for all project that about half of that money is expected go for community solar projects. So that would combine problem with flexibility, generation, flexibility that the LPCs can do. There's a whole working group right now working on how to implement that. But next year, we do expect to see a lot of new community solar projects.

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A lot of the cities have, I know, like Knoxville has a one megawatt community solar program right downtown. Chattanooga, does Nashville, the big cities, all have done some community solar on the road using various TVA programs over the years, they've never penciled very well. Who had been very advantageous for especially low income people to do they didn't really make a lot of sense. I think solar for all in particular changes that that is good. You know, they have to benefit low income communities, and they provide the money so that they can benefit low income communities. So we're very excited. There's actually multiple ground swells actually also got money for our TVA region. The Texas Clean Energy Fund has money for our region.

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So part, one of the things our conference is doing is we're getting the various award winners. So if you're interested in doing solar for all but not sure of all the different processes now, they're being worked out right now. I mean, we're the state of Tennessee is hiring three people right now to run that program, but there is a lot of money coming. Won't come till next year, the formats in applications won't be finalized, but you'll have at the conference, we're going to be able to showcase a lot of that new community focus, and that is also multifamily housing and low income homes as well. So I'm really excited by the impact that solar for all in particular, but some of the other federal money reap and others are going to have in our distributed market, that has been the least, you know, action, because TVA doesn't pay very much for exported power.

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Most of our residential and small commercial has batteries, which is great because they want to offset at the retail rate. So we have an unusual high percentage of storage market.

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But that also means the numbers aren't that great, and therefore it's relatively small market, if an active market. So I think solar, for all in particular, is going to really change that.

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We're excited by multiple winners covering our market. You

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Well, first, if you're listening to this interview, check out Tennessee at their website, T, E, N, N, E, S, e, i, a solar.com and then there's a main link conference.

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That's how you find the conference. So check that out and but you mentioned early on that you work for the southern Alliance, and I'm checking out that website now, which is clean energy.org, which I'm totally unfamiliar with, but which covers the entire southeast.

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Tell us a little bit about the southern Alliance. Well, I worked

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for them 20 years ago. That was my start as an advocate. So I haven't worked for them for 15 years. Gotcha, just to be clear, that was kind of my start on this journey for for a clean energy but they still active. In fact, I was just talking one of their staff people a few minutes ago. We had some questions on some county ordinances, and wanted, needed some information. So they're kind of the more they're the aggressive voice out there, along with like Sierra Club and others, kind of pushing stakeholders in this market. At Tennessee, we have a more we're mostly a cooperative effort working with utilities on more detail. So,

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so it's an advocacy organization that covers the southeast. Say,

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Yes, organization working in the southeast. And

00:32:55.420 --> 00:33:02.819
I'm just curious, Gil, let's just be as transparent as you can. What would, what would the southern Alliance say about Tennessee?

00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:02.819
Oh,

00:33:03.839 --> 00:33:15.539
I think they would say positive things. We have a good relationship with them. I think they say we're very we're too nice to TVA. They they take a little hardliner approach.

00:33:15.539 --> 00:35:11.880
They are advocates, and we're Industry Association. We have to work with the utilities. Our projects depend on having a good relationship with utilities, so we spend a lot of time with the munis, the co ops and TVA is a constructive partner. So I think sure some of the advocacy advocates like safe probably say we cozy up in our two nice little utilities. And it's like, you know, I'll All right, we're trying to provide answers. I really my they might probably disagree with this. In my opinion, TVA is trying to add as much solar and storage as they can. They need the power, but there are some technical challenges. They kind of used to big, centralized generation, you know, gigawatt nuclear plants in this kind of distributed market is still kind of new. There, they were used to having 10 projects in the queue, and now there's hundreds of projects in the queue. And their system that was designed for just having a handful of active projects, you know, potentially generating power in the valley, to having hundreds is just it doesn't work. They would say it doesn't work either. There's for a large government bureaucracy. When you say, what does TVA think? TDA is 10,000 people? It's a large government bureaucracy coming a very large part of the southeast, yeah, so they think lots of different things. And so yes, our advocate friends, I think we've got a positive relationship that we try to keep with them. We're probably saying we are too friendly with the utilities. But I would say, you know, when I go out there and make the noise push you. That's a wonderful thing for doing that's not our job. We're not out there pushing and being aggressive. We're trying to provide the tools and solutions for the utilities to get better.

00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:35.269
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00:35:35.659 --> 00:36:03.559
Ready to supercharge your clean energy assets? Visit W, A, T, T, C, h.io, and power up your efficiency today. Please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. That is the best thing you can do to help others find this content. Please reach out to me. I love hearing from my listeners. You can find me on LinkedIn or at cleanpowerhour.com Gil Hough, Executive Director of Tennessee, how can our listeners find you?

00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:11.699
Yeah, you mentioned our website, Tennessee, of solar.com people connect there.

00:36:05.880 --> 00:36:21.300
I'm personally also on LinkedIn, so that's a great way to connect with me professionally. And if you're interested in the Tennessee value market, you want a deep dive, understand it.

00:36:18.599 --> 00:36:21.300
Come, come to the conference.

00:36:21.300 --> 00:36:43.420
Come join us. We love to meet you in person. I'm always happy to chat with people who are interested in the market. If not there, then set up a call and let's let's chat. And Tim, I really appreciate this opportunity to share a little bit a lot of the exciting stuff happening in this market and about our conference and thank you so much for having us.

00:36:43.780 --> 00:36:46.420
You're welcome.

00:36:43.780 --> 00:36:47.980
I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Have a great day. You.

Navigating the TVA Market with Gil Hough, TenneSEIA | EP234

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