42 U.S.C. § 18842 — Model guidance for combined heat and power systems and waste heat to power systems

(a) Definitions. (1) Additional services means extra power a utility provides a customer — backup, standby, maintenance, or interruptible power. (2) Waste heat to power system means a system that makes electricity by capturing waste energy. (3) Other terms: (A) terms from the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act — "electric consumer," "electric utility," "interconnection service," "nonregulated electric utility," and "State regulatory authority" — keep their meaning from that law; (B) "combined heat and power system" and "waste energy" keep the meanings given in section 6341 of this title. (b) Review. (1) Within 180 days after November 15, 2021, the Secretary, working with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and others, must review the rules for interconnection and additional services nationwide — for generators up to 150 megawatts, connecting at either distribution or transmission voltage — to find what's blocking combined heat-and-power and waste-heat-to-power systems. (2) This review must cover the rules for figuring out and assigning interconnection costs, and for making sure utilities can recover those costs. (c) Model guidance. (1) Within 18 months after November 15, 2021, the Secretary, again working with FERC and others, must issue model guidance for states and utilities to consider, aimed at reducing the barriers found in the review. (2) This guidance should reflect current best practices for encouraging these systems while keeping the grid safe and reliable — including relevant IEEE standards and existing state model codes. (3) In writing the guidance, the Secretary must consider: (A) whether interconnection rules should vary by unit size, fuel type, or similar factors; (B) whether to create fast-track approval procedures; (C) staying consistent with FERC's existing interconnection rules; (D) best practices for modeling outages to set fees; (E) how long and how large "demand charge ratchets" should be; (F) alternative ways to buy additional services, such as individual contracts, competitive market purchases, or fee waivers for small customers; and (G) benefits like better reliability, fuel diversity, power quality, and fewer electric losses.