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DOE unveils target to cut cost of solar energy by 60% within the next ten years

March 29, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 29, 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on March 25 announced a new target to cut the cost of solar energy by 60% within the next ten years, in addition to nearly $128 million in funding to lower costs, improve performance, and speed the deployment of solar energy technologies.

Lowering the cost of solar energy is essential to accelerating deployment and achieving President Biden’s goal of a 100% clean electricity grid by 2035, DOE said.

To reach that goal in the next 15 years, hundreds of gigawatts of solar energy need to be installed as much as five times faster than it is now.

To that end, DOE is accelerating its utility-scale solar 2030 cost target by five years — setting a new goal of driving down the current cost of 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 3 cents/kWh by 2025 and 2 cents/kWh by 2030.

Traditional solar panels convert sunlight into electrical energy using photovoltaic (PV) solar technologies, which by 2035 could represent between 30% and 50% of electricity supply in a decarbonized electricity sector, DOE said.

Funding announced March 25 through DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) will support advancing two materials used to make solar cells:: perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films.

Perovskites are a family of emerging solar materials that have potential to make highly efficient thin-film solar cells with very low production costs.

DOE is awarding $40 million to 22 projects that will advance perovskite PV device and manufacturing research and development, as well as performance through the formation of a new $14 million testing center to provide neutral, independent validation of the performance of new perovskite devices.   

DOE is also offer a $3 million Perovskite Startup Prize. This new prize competition “will speed entrepreneurs’ path to commercializing perovskite technologies by providing seed capital for their newly formed companies,” DOE said.

The federal agency is also offering $20 million for CdTe thin films. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will set up a consortium to advance cheaper CdTe thin-film solar technologies, which were developed in the United States and make up 20% of the modules installed in the U.S..

The consortium will advance low-cost manufacturing techniques and domestic research capabilities to increase opportunities for U.S. workers and entrepreneurs to capture a larger portion of the $60 billion global solar manufacturing sector.  

In addition, DOE announced $7 million as part of a new funding opportunity for projects to increase the lifetime of silicon-based PV systems from about 30 years to 50 years to lower the cost of energy and reduce waste. The aim is to improve PV system components, such as inverters, connectors, cables, racks, and trackers.

The announcement also supports several concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) projects. Unlike PV technologies that directly convert sunlight into electricity, CSP captures heat from sunlight and uses that thermal energy to spin a turbine or power an engine that then generates electricity.

Public power utilities in Southeast restore power in wake of storms, tornadoes

March 29, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 29, 2021

Public power utilities in the Southeast continued to make steady progress in restoring power to customers in the wake of recent storms and tornadoes that hit the region.

Nashville Electric Service

Nashville Electric Service (NES) on March 27 reported that severe weather had knocked out power to more than 16,000 customers.

Along with power outages, Nashville was grappling with severe flooding. The Nashville Fire Department on Sunday, March 28 said that Metro Nashville Davidson County continued to recover from flooding that claimed four lives and lead to hundreds of water rescues across the county.

Metro Nashville Davidson County had more than seven inches of rain fall, the second highest two-day rainfall ever recorded.

Huntsville Utilities

In Alabama, Huntsville Utilities Electric Operations crews on March 28 were working to restore service to approximately 100 customers still without power following a line of storms that moved through early Sunday morning.

At its peak, 4,700 customers were without power. Crews worked throughout the morning and afternoon on March 28 to restore service, which included replacing 10 utility poles brought down by the storm.

Huntsville Utilities Electric Operations crews made the last pole replacement and service repair at 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

City of Newnan, Ga.

The City of Newnan, Ga., was slammed by a tornado on the morning of March 26.

“We want to assure customers we will not rest until all power has been restored,” Newnan Utilities reported in a March 28 Facebook post. The utility said that more than 80 poles were lost during the storm.

Ten employees from the East Point Power Department in Georgia were helping to restore power in the City of Newnan, Ga., after the tornado hit.

They are working with electric crews from the City of Albany and the City of Monroe to restore power. They were scheduled to work throughout the weekend until power was fully restored, East Point Power Department reported.

Randy Griffith, Newnan Utilities Electrical Supervisor, provided an update on his role and the role of Newnan Utilities linemen during the repair process in a video posted on the utility’s Facebook page.

TVA

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on March 26 reported that its crews were hard at work repairing transmission lines in Waynesboro, Tenn.

lineone
Photo courtesy of TVA

“Last night parts of our service area experienced heavy winds and rain that in some cases caused damage to the grid. More rain and strong winds are forecasted this weekend,” TVA noted in a Facebook post.

Preparing for Mutual Aid

With spring storms here and the hurricane season right around the corner, it is important for all public power utilities to have signed mutual aid agreements in place.

For more information about the public power Mutual Aid Network, please see the American Public Power Association’s Disaster Planning and Response page or email mutualaid@publicpower.org for more information.

N.Y. stakeholders, including LIPA, adopt plan for power line for offshore wind farm

March 29, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 29, 2021

A group composed of the New York State Public Service Commission and more than a dozen stakeholders, including the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), last week agreed to and adopted a plan to build a transmission line that would link a proposed offshore wind farm to the state’s power grid.

The 7.6-mile transmission line would connect the proposed 132-megawatt (MW) South Fork wind farm sited 35 miles east of Montauk Point to a substation in the Town of East Hampton in Suffolk County on the east end of Long Island. The transmission line is due online by 2023.

On September 14, 2018, Deepwater Wind South Fork, the developer of the wind farm, filed for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need for the construction of approximately 3.5 miles of submarine cable from the New York State territorial waters to the south shore of East Hampton and approximately 4.1 miles of underground cable from the south shore to an existing East Hampton substation.

In addition to requiring that the cable will be buried at least 30 feet below the surface of Wainscott Beach, where the project is to make landfall, other conditions will limit construction periods to off-peak seasons to ensure construction-related impacts are minimized.

The joint proposal was agreed to by Deepwater Wind, staff of the Department of Public Service, the Department of Environmental Conservation, Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the Department of State, the Department of Transportation, the Town of East Hampton trustees, PSEG Long Island, which operates LIPA under contract with the state, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Group for the East End, Montauk United, Win With Wind, and others.

The South Fork wind farm and the transmission project were selected by PSEG Long Island through a 2015 competitive bidding process that sought new sources of power generation to cost effectively and reliably supply the South Fork of Suffolk County with electric power.

LIPA’s board of trustees in 2017 approved the project, which will the nation’s largest offshore wind farm and the first offshore wind farm in New York.

PSEG Long Island, in a statement, said the wind farm and transmission line will serve the public interest by contributing to the goals of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and Clean Energy Standard.

New York State has a mandated goal of achieving economy-wide carbon dioxide neutrality and a zero-carbon dioxide emissions electricity sector by 2040. The state’s energy plan includes a $3.9 billion investment in 67 large-scale renewable projects across the state, the creation of more than 150,000 clean energy jobs, and a commitment to develop over 1,800 MW of offshore wind by 2024.

Seattle City Light, agencies release clean transportation electrification plan

March 24, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 24, 2021

Seattle City Light, along with other local government agencies, has released a plan to transition the city to a transportation system with lower greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution while increasing electric mobility options and creating a pipeline of clean energy jobs and workforce diversity.

Along with Seattle City Light, the effort was co-led by the Office of Sustainability and Environment, the Seattle Department of Transportation, and the Office of Economic Development.

The Transportation Electrification Blueprint calls for Seattle to take immediate action to plan for the policy changes, infrastructure investments, and partnerships that will be needed to meet the city’s 2030 goals.

Those goals require that 100 percent of shared mobility, such as carshare services, have zero emissions; 90 percent of all personal trips are zero emission; 30 percent of all goods delivery is zero emission; 100 percent of the city’s vehicle fleet is zero emission; the city shall have one or more “Green & Healthy Streets,” areas where streets are closed to cars and goods are delivered by electric vehicles; and electric power infrastructure is in place to enable the transition to electric transportation technologies and vehicles.

“As the plan is implemented City Light will co-convene new internal working groups to coordinate progress throughout the City towards milestones that deliver towards the 2030 goals stated in the plan,” David Logsdon, director of electrification and strategic technology at City Light, said via email.

Specifically, Logsdon said Seattle City Light plans to develop entirely new program offerings for its customers; drive higher customer adoption with incentives, rebates, discounts and promotions; integrate demand-side management components into new program offerings to avoid or reduce the need for traditional transmission and distribution upgrades and optimize the grid and City Light’s resources; and explore opportunities to increase customer access to substantial private capital investments in electric vehicle charging services in the region.

Seattle City Light has already launched time-of-day rate pilot programs for residential and commercial customers and is working with King County Metro to support the adoption of battery-powered buses and with Washington State Ferries and the Port of Seattle to support electrification. Seattle City Light also is implementing several cross-sector pilots and demonstration projects to inform future program designs.

In addition, there already are 16 City Light-owned electric vehicle fast chargers in Seattle City Light’s service territory, and the utility plans to have more than 25 by the end of 2021.

Seattle City Light in 2019 began preparing a Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan outlining its approach to electrification and defining its framework to develop transportation electrification programs. The electrification plan was approved by the Seattle City Council in October 2020.

The plan “lays out the priorities for City Light’s Transportation Electrification efforts, the equity outcomes we intend to achieve via the portfolio, and what initial milestones we will achieve as we invest in the key sectors of public transit; commercial, government, and nonprofit fleets; and personal mobility,” Logsdon said.

The plan builds on the utility’s core mission to achieve a vision of the healthy future that our region depends on—one that is built in concert with our community stakeholders and delivers a grid that is equitable, carbon-neutral, modernized, and future-enabled,” Logsdon said.

APPA recognizes 129 utilities for outstanding safety practices

March 24, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 24, 2021

One hundred twenty-nine utilities have earned the American Public Power Association’s (APPA) Safety Award of Excellence for safe operating practices in 2020, APPA reported on March 24.

APPA said that 329 utilities from across the country entered the annual safety awards.

Entrants were placed in categories according to their number of worker-hours and ranked based on the most incident-free records during 2020.

Utilities’ incidence rate, used to judge entries, is based on the number of work-related reportable injuries or illnesses and the number of worker-hours during 2020, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

“Utilities that receive an APPA Safety Award have demonstrated that they have made the health and safety of their employees a core value,” said Brandon Wylie, Chair of APPA’s Safety Committee and Director of Training & Safety at Electric Cities of Georgia. “Designing and maintaining a top-notch utility safety program takes a lot of hard work and commitment. These utilities and their communities should be very proud.”

The safety awards have been held annually for more than 65 years.

A complete list of winners is available at www.PublicPower.org. 

Ditto says public power access to clean energy tax incentives is ‘low hanging fruit’

March 24, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 24, 2021

Allowing public power utilities to have access to clean energy tax incentives is “low hanging fruit” in terms of policy-related action that can be taken in the short term in order to incentivize not-for-profit utilities to build their own clean energy generation, said Joy Ditto, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA) on March 22.

She made her comments while participating in a panel at the Sixth Annual Sustainable Energy Week sponsored by The Economist. The panel discussed how utilities can prepare their business models for the future.

“U.S. electric utilities overall have actually done quite a bit to address climate change in the last fifteen years,” Ditto pointed out. “We have more to do, but we have reduced greenhouse gas emissions thirty percent since 2005,” which she said is attributable to a number of factors.

“One is there has been some form of incentive for clean energy production since the 1992 Energy Policy Act, and more was added in the 2005 act and subsequently, particularly related to clean energy tax incentives” that investor-owned utilities and independent power producers can take advantage of. This helps to explain why there has been “an exponential growth in wind, solar and other clean energy technologies,” Ditto said.

But the not-for-profit electric sector is not able to take direct advantage of those tax incentives. Allowing not-for-profit utilities to have access to these clean energy tax incentives is a “low hanging fruit that we could do in the very short term to incentivize not-for-profit utilities to build their own clean energy generation going forward.”

Meanwhile, Ditto noted that there have been technology improvements in terms of electrification.

She noted that there is “a very major focus” in the U.S. on electric vehicle deployment including among public power utilities that are putting in place programs to incentivize EVs and the infrastructure to support them.

Moreover, public power utilities are hearing from their customers that they want to decarbonize to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and they often want to contribute to that locally, Ditto said.

There has been an influx of community solar programs “particularly within our membership and other ways to improve the clean energy landscape.” Even in the absence of federal legislation “we’ve seen great strides made in this country.”

If federal policy does emerge in the short term under the Biden Administration, APPA believes that Congress should pass an economywide bill to address greenhouse gas emissions, “as well as to focus on the reliability and affordability of electricity as we move forward,” Ditto said.

City of Tallahassee Electric Utility, Heartland Consumers Power District earn R&D excellence award

March 24, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 24, 2021

Heartland Consumers Power District and the City of Tallahassee Electric Utility in Florida have earned the 2021 Award of Continued Excellence (ACE) from the American Public Power Association’s Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments (DEED) program.

The award recognizes continued commitment to the DEED program and its ideals, including support of research, development and demonstration, improving efficiency, renewable resources, and support of public power. The award was presented during the APPA’s virtual Engineering & Operations Technical Conference this week.

South Dakota-based Heartland has been a DEED member since 1987 and extends its DEED membership to all its utility members and actively promotes DEED programs to their customers.

Heartland has benefited from sponsoring four interns with scholarships, which included projects that ranged from performing customer research to evaluating the effect of economic development incentives to creating a renewable energy calculator.

Heartland won an Energy Innovator Award in 2020 for the renewable energy calculator created as a result of internships and participated in two DEED webinars to share how to use the calculator with others. 

Heartland launched its energy efficiency program, Power Forward, in 2009. As a wholesale power supplier, Heartland provides rebates to residential and commercial customers within customer communities for energy efficiency upgrades. Heartland also provides energy efficiency grants to customers who make energy efficient upgrades to city facilities. Heartland has assisted with the upgrade of more than 2,000 streetlights to LED.

Heartland continues to investigate new methods and systems to improve utility operations and help its utility members to operate more efficiently, such as by funding meter upgrades and investing in forecasting software and other tools to provide cost savings to its utility customers.

Tallahassee joined DEED in 1986 and has been involved in several projects, including a 1994 grant for a thermal mapping project, sponsoring and mentoring three DEED scholarship recipients, and earning two Energy Innovator Awards; one in 2012 for its Neighborhood REACH Program, a collaborative effort to improve livability in traditionally low-income areas, and a second in 2015 for its rebate program for energy and water conservation.  

Over the years the utility has been a partner in federal, state and local R&D initiatives. Most recently, it collaborated with the Department of Energy, its national labs, and Nhu Energy to carry out research critically important to expanding solar and energy storage, known as the Florida Alliance for Accelerating Solar and Storage Technology Readiness. In 2020 they shared lessons learned from that project with the wider public power community on a DEED webinar. 

The City of Tallahassee has committed to numerous sustainability goals and efforts including 100 percent clean energy by 2050, 100 percent clean energy for City Operations by 2035, development of a Clean Energy Integrated Resource Plan, electrification of City and Florida State University buses, and installation of fast charging stations. 

For more information about DEED, visit www.PublicPower.org/DEED-Awards.

NREL study outlines how Los Angeles can meet goal of reliable, 100% renewable electricity

March 24, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 24, 2021

Meeting Los Angeles’ goal of reliable, 100% renewable electricity by 2045, or even 2035, is achievable with rapid deployment of wind, solar, storage, and other renewable energy technologies this decade, according to a years-long analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The results of the study were released by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Cynthia McClain-Hill, President, Board of Water and Power Commissioners, Marty Adams, General Manager and Chief Engineer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a number of Los Angeles City Council members and Dr. Martin Keller, Executive Director, NREL, on March 24.

They participated in a virtual press event to release the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study, known as LA100. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm also made remarks during the event.

Three years ago, “we teamed up with NREL to figure out exactly what it would take” to move even faster towards the city’s 100 percent renewable energy goal, Garcetti said. “Together we’ve run over one hundred million simulations to answer that question,” he said.

“We worked with representatives of local communities, listened to our constituents to prioritize environmental justice and how we do this and to identify multiple pathways to get to one hundred percent and here’s what we found,” Garcetti said.

“First, one hundred percent renewable energy is absolutely achievable,” he said. “In fact, it’s within our reach. It can actually make our system more reliable than it is today and more affordable than it is today for Angelenos of all backgrounds.”

Second, “the more that we electrify other sectors, the more our capital investments will reduce costs and increase our health benefits, lifting a burden that too often falls on low income communities of color.”

And third, “We need to get moving on these investments right now. This study isn’t something in the shelf. It is a greenprint for us to jump into action.”

McClain-Hill said, “that we now have several viable paths to achieve 100 percent renewable energy for Los Angeles and maintain a reliable power grid, even in the most extreme conditions, has clear national implications.”

She added, “it is also a testament to the important role that our storied Department of Water and Power continues to play in manifesting the future of Los Angeles.”

The study “makes it clear that it’s possible to achieve our goal while remaining true to the core principles of reliability, environmental stewardship, environmental justice, resiliency and affordability. That’s critical because our challenge and our charge goes far beyond achieving 100 percent renewable energy,” said McClain-Hill.

“Our charge is to support our community by reducing carbon emissions in ways that build and uplift the quality of life for everyone,” she said. “LA100 shows we can do that by creating jobs and opportunities and engaging our customers in being part of the solution. For the Department of Water and Power, this is our roadmap for building a stronger and more vibrant Los Angeles.”

For his part, Adams said that with the completion of the LA100 study, LADWP “now has the tools and the roadmap to continue on the path to one hundred percent renewables and we plan to start right away by developing a set of next steps and the actions that are called for are actions that were in all the scenarios of the study.”

Details on study

“The combined effects of energy efficiency, electrification, and demand response yield large benefits to greenhouse gas reductions and public health and help cost-effectively manage the clean energy transition,” NREL noted in a news release related to the study.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.

In addition to identifying pathways for Los Angeles, the study illuminates the potential for other municipalities, large and small, to embark on similar analysis and contribute toward national efforts to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035.

NREL said that the study provides insights into how LADWP can meet clean energy targets established by Garcetti and the Los Angeles City Council in 2016 and 2017. LADWP currently generates more than half of its electricity from renewable and zero carbon resources.

The  analysis stops short of making specific policy or project recommendations but identifies “no-regrets” investments the city can consider now to reap potential benefits to reliability and greenhouse gas reductions in the coming decade: namely, deployment of new solar, wind, batteries, and transmission within and outside of the city, paired with upgrades to the local distribution system and smart-grid operational practices that make more efficient use of these investments, NREL noted.

“Unlike other forward-looking studies of high-renewable power systems, LA100 uniquely considered reliability as a fundamental requirement for the future grid,” NREL said.

“Reliability of the grid is paramount — especially in a future when more consumer products like cars are electrified. Our models subjected the grid to multiple stresses — from higher temperatures due to climate change, to wildfire risks that could take out transmission lines for weeks or even months at time,” said Jaquelin Cochran, manager of NREL’s grid systems analysis group and principal investigator of the LA100 study.

Quarterly meetings over three years with the study’s Los Angeles-based Advisory Group, comprising members representing neighborhoods, customers, labor, business, environmental, academic organizations, and institutions, tailored the research to constituents’ needs and concerns, “pioneering a new, more holistic approach to energy analysis that centers the community in the conversation,” NREL said.

The analysis showed multiple paths exist for the city to reach its goal. Each scenario follows a similar trajectory up to 80%–90% renewable generation. Wind and solar resources, enabled by storage, provide the majority of energy required to meet future load: 73%–92% depending on the scenario.

Where the pathways diverge is in how to cost effectively and reliably meet the remaining energy demand that cannot be easily served by wind, solar, and batteries, NREL noted.

For the last 10% (going from 90% renewable electricity to 100%), all scenarios rely on some type of renewably fueled combustion turbine built inside the city that can come online within minutes and run for several days when needed.

Such technology is still used infrequently, like peaking plants today, NREL said. Because there are few commercially available, near-term options for this type of grid service, meeting the challenge of the final stretch toward 100% “highlights future research directions at the local scale and beyond — such as developing the infrastructure required to produce and store hydrogen, or multi-day demand response programs that could provide a lower-cost alternative,” NREL said.

It noted that LA100 establishes a methodology that could inform other municipalities “similarly interested in a clean, equitable, and reliable energy future.”

Along with expertise from partners at the University of Southern California, Colorado State University, and Kearns & West, the study relied on NREL’s objective, holistic capabilities to analyze potential pathways the community can take to achieve Los Angeles’ goal, NREL said.

There is no single model that can perform a study of this scope, so the analysis combined dozens of them — spanning detailed electricity demand modeling, power system investments and operations, distribution grid modeling, economic impact analysis, and life cycle greenhouse gas analysis, among others.

Using NREL’s supercomputer, experts ran more than 100 million ultrahigh-resolution simulations to evaluate a range of future scenarios for how LADWP’s power system could evolve while maintaining its current high degree of reliability.

The study found that decarbonizing the power sector through renewable deployment helps create the enabling conditions for electrifying the buildings and transportation sectors.

“Together, these changes yield large reductions in carbon emissions and air pollutants, which lead to health and other benefits for disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged communities alike, compared with today. However, ensuring prioritization of environmental justice — per the Los Angeles City Council motivations driving the study — would require intentionally designed decision-making processes and policies/programs that prioritize disadvantaged communities,” NREL said.

Chelan PUD outlines potential new approach to energy sales contracts

March 23, 2021

by APPA News
March 23, 2021

Washington State’s Chelan PUD is evaluating its strategies to sell carbon-free, surplus power as long-term energy output contracts expire over the next decade.

Chelan PUD General Manager Steve Wright on March 15 presented a plan that would support more economic growth locally, while also allowing the PUD to capitalize on favorable market conditions, the PUD said.

“With the current long-term market, we’re seeing the opportunity to create revenue that could lead to rate stability for our customer-owners,” Wright said. “We believe the market sees value now in renewable hydropower that can support carbon emission reduction goals.”

Chelan PUD said that its revenue from wholesale purchasers is the reason its customer-owners enjoy some of the lowest rates in the nation, noting that it produces more than enough power to meet local demand for electricity.

 “We are heavily dependent on these revenues to maintain the low rates in Chelan County,” Wright said.

Chelan PUD currently sells the energy it produces based on a formula roughly calculated as 50-30-20:

Wright proposed that commissioners consider a new formula that retains the basic structure for wholesale transactions while creating room for local loads to grow over time.

Specifically, 40-50% would be sold as long-term slice contracts based on cost of operations and the value of hydroelectricity. These contracts could serve customers outside Chelan County, or new large-load customers in Chelan County.

Under the proposal, 20-30% of energy would be sold in fixed-price, market-based contracts over 5 to 10 years. This amount may be reduced over time to serve unanticipated local load growth.

In addition, 20-30% would be used to serve local customer-owners as local load growth occurs.

Chelan PUD Commissioners will consider the proposal over the next month.

Snohomish PUD is launching cloud-based residential DSM pilot

March 23, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 23, 2021

Washington State’s Snohomish County Public Utility District (SnoPUD), with its partner Virtual Peaker Inc., plans to roll out a cloud-based energy management system for its customers in the coming months.

SnoPUD expects to begin the FlexEnergy pilot program this spring and run it for two consecutive winters, concluding in spring 2023.

“The main goal of the program is to study how customers respond to a variety of incentives,” SnoPUD spokesman Aaron Swaney said.

The program is being launched in advance of the utility’s plans to install advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in 2023. SnoPUD hopes the FlexEnergy program will provide valuable data so that when the new metering system is installed, the PUD will have a better idea of what kind of incentives to offer to help shave peak loads.

SnoPUD, like other utilities in the Pacific Northwest, faces its highest peak demand during the cold winter months. That creates a challenge when it comes to keeping its fuel mix clean, Swaney said. SnoPUD’s fuel mix is now about 98 percent clean and averaged 95 percent over the last five years, he said.

Under Washington State’s Clean Energy Transformation Act, utilities must eliminate coal-fired generation by 2025 – SnoPUD has already reached that goal – must be greenhouse gas neutral by 2030, and by 2045 all utilities must generate 100% of their power from renewable or zero-carbon resources.

When launched, the Flex Energy program will be open to nearly all SnoPUD’s customers and, even though the program will make use of smart technologies, owning a smart device is not a requirement of enrollment into the program.

The program will test out three different types of incentive mechanisms, all aimed at shifting or curbing customers’ peak energy use. Two rely on rate design to influence customers’ energy usage. The third is behavioral and operates like a demand response program, offering incentive payments to customers for lowering their energy use during certain times. SnoPUD has not yet determined what kind of incentives it will offer.

The rate design mechanisms of the FlexEnergy program are a fixed rate option and a fixed peak pricing option.

The first will offer cheaper pricing during set times. The fixed peak pricing option will involve sending alerts to notify customers of opportunities to save money by reducing their energy use during expected peak periods. SnoPUD estimates there could be about six of those types of events per year, Swaney said.

Virtual Peaker will serve as the intermediary between SnoPUD and its customers. The PUD said it plans to leverage Virtual Peaker’s Distributed Energy Resources Management System (DERMS), which will be used to enable customer and communicating device enrollment, event scheduling and management, and pilot analytics.

Virtual Peaker, based in Louisville, Kentucky, is a cloud-based energy management platform that uses internet-of-things technology to connect household smart devices to allow utilities to run residential demand response programs.