News Stories

MYIGP – Staff outlined the required elements the grid plan must have, including the following elements which may be of particular interest to retail suppliers and renewable energy developers:

• ensure coordination of the state’s renewable energy, climate, and environmental goals with the utility’s
• distribution system investments over a 5-year planning horizon to maximize the benefits of each while ensuring utility expenditures are cost-effective;
• optimize utilization of electricity grid assets and resources to minimize total system costs;
• support efforts to bring the benefits of grid modernization and clean energy, including, but not limited to, deployment of distributed energy resources, to all retail customers, and support efforts to bring at least 40% of the benefits to Equity Investment Eligible Communities;
• enable greater customer engagement, empowerment, and options for energy services;
• reduce grid congestion, minimize the time and expense associated with interconnection, and increase the capacity of the distribution grid to host increasing levels of DERs;
• facilitate availability and development of DERs;
• support existing Illinois policy goals promoting the long-term growth of energy efficiency, demand response, and investments in renewable energy resources;
• provide sufficient public information to the ICC, stakeholders, and market participants to enable non-emitting;
• customer owned or third-party DERs, acting individually or in aggregate, to connect to the grid, provide grid;
• benefits, support grid services, and achieve environmental outcomes, without necessarily requiring utility ownership or controlling interest over those resources, and enable those resources to act as alternatives to utility capital investments; seamlessly and easily.
• provide a detailed description of the current operating conditions for the distribution system including information regarding length and size of the system, location of interconnected DERs, distribution line loss, current and expected SAIFI and CAIDI data for the system, software and data management systems, and the utility’s most recent system load and peak demand forecast for the next 5 – 10 years;
• data regarding interconnected DERs;
• hosting capacity and interconnection requirements;
• an analysis evaluating the costs and benefits of incorporating DER into the distribution system;
• an identification of potential cost-effective solutions from nontraditional and third party-owned investments that could meet anticipated grid needs, including DER procurements, tariffs or contracts, programmatic solutions, rate design options, technologies or programs that facilitate load flexibility, non-wires alternatives, and other solutions; and
• a detailed description of the utility’s interoperability plan, which must describe the way the electric utility’s current and planned distribution system investments will work together and exchange information and data, the extent to which the utility is implementing open standards and interfaces with third-party distributed energy resource owners and aggregators, and the utility’s plan for interoperability testing and certification.

MYRP Rate Plan Tariff – The rate plan is implemented through tariff, rider PBR-R. The rate plan establishes the base rates that will be charged for each year of the 4-year period to be covered by the plan 2024-2027. The Rate Plan includes a 4-year investment plan and a description of the utility’s major planned investments (including all investments of $500,000 or greater for AIC).

Ameren Illinois is proposing a rate phase-in plan to smooth the overall delivery service rate impacts over the Rate Plan’s 4-year period. Under the rate phase-in, new rate plan delivery services rates are implemented in two steps. In the first step, 50% of the approved rate increase for 2024 (or approximately $87 million) would be reflected in rates in 2024. In the second step, 100% of the rate increase for 2025 would be reflected in rates in 2025. Ameren Illinois proposes that this deferred amount be collected over a 12-month period beginning in January 2026.

On May 7, 2024, parties filed draft orders/statements of position on rehearing. Of note, Joint Parties: (1) objects that “Ameren once more claims projects from 2023 are different than other Grid Plan projects, simply because of the year the projects were initially put in place,” but it is unreasonable to allow recovery for projects Ameren “admits were implemented for the Grid Plan”; (2) argues that Ameren’s inclusion of “at least four Grid Plan reliability related distribution plant investments in their rate base” defies clear ICC direction; (3) objects to Ameren’s failure to “use known and measurable, actual year-end 2023 cost data for its investment levels and associated depreciation”; (4) “agrees with Staff and recommends that the Commission remove the OPEB contra-liability from rate base and reject the inclusion of the OPEB in rate base in Ameren’s refiled rate plan” given that ICC found its proposed inclusion “inconsistent with Commission practice and law.”  Multiple party positions at docket link below.

On May 3, 2024, parties field reply to briefs on rehearing.

On May 2, 2024, Ameren filed testimony on refiled plan.  Multiple documents at link below.

The hearing is continued until 2:00 p.m. CT on July 25, 2024.

Testimony on Refiled Plan   (05/02/2024)
22-0487 and 23-0082 (Opened 07/21/2022)
(Consolidated Proceedings To Review Ameren’s Multi-Year Integrated Grid Plan (MYIGP) And Multi-Year Rate Plan (MYRP) consolidated respectively.)