Massachusetts Discos Mulling Moratorium on Interconnecting Certain Renewables

At a meeting held yesterday by the Massachusetts Wind Working Group, representatives of National Grid (NGrid) and NSTAR indicated that their companies, as well as Western Massachusetts Electric Company and Fitchburg Gas and Electric, are considering a moratorium on interconnecting certain renewable generating facilities. The moratorium would limit the facilities eligible to interconnect at 13 kV feeders to 2 megawatts (MW). In order for facilities greater than 2 MW to interconnect, NGrid and NSTAR indicated, in essence, that developers would need to interconnect at higher voltage feeders, install some form of on-site storage capacity or suspend projects until a project-specific power quality study could be conducted. The duration of such power quality studies has not yet been determined. The NGrid and NSTAR representatives indicated that the potential moratorium was being considered due to what they termed "an unexpectedly high volume" of requests to interconnect