Forcing utilities to justify their distribution-system spending

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/subscribeMinnesota 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 - Introduction04:23 - How distribution is regulated differently than generation and transmission09:25 - Why distribution matters now: an aging system and the build-more incentive14:00 - Contestable “mandatory” spending: undergrounding, DERMS software, capitalization22:19 - Reliability standards and the cost of chasing 100 percent28:42 - The MISO comparison: valuing a lost hour, and the scale of the numbers35:12 - Non-wires alternatives: batteries, the Xcel project, and modeling gaps40:31 - What regulators should require: AMI forecasts and beyond the prudence test47:22 - The speed objection: does more analysis slow things down?50:10 - Why spending caps and rate freezes are the wrong fix52:40 - Spending more anyway, and recent Minnesota PUC disappointments55:09 - Restructured markets: does the same logic apply?58:38 - The vision of a well-functioning process and scaling it nationally