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Glendale Water & Power RFP Seeks Distributed Energy, Capacity Resources

June 7, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 7, 2022

California public power utility Glendale Water & Power (GWP) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) that seeks proposals from contractors to develop and deliver distributed energy and capacity resources within the City of Glendale.

GWP is seeking up to 50 megawatts (MW) of reliable and dispatchable power capable of being incorporated into the city’s integrated resource portfolio. This capacity would be in addition to GWP’s existing local energy efficiency, demand response, and solar-storage hybrid programs.

This RFP implements the City Council’s direction to GWP to seek proposals for an additional 50 MW of distributed resources for the City’s energy portfolio while moving forward with planning for the replacement of the aging equipment at the City’s Grayson Power Plant.

The RFP seeks proposals in seven categories that would be connected to GWP’s distribution system or at a customer location(s):

1. Commercial and Industrial Solar Paired with Dispatchable Energy Storage

2. Residential Solar Paired with Dispatchable Energy Storage

3. Dispatchable Energy Storage to Pair with Existing Residential, Commercial and Industrial PV Solar Customers

4. Renewable Distributed Generation (DG)

5. Demand Response

6. Energy Efficiency

7. Any other clean DER solution not encompassed in the above categories

Responses to the RFP are due on September 30, 2022.

The RFP can be viewed at: https://www.glendaleca.gov/Home/Components/RFP/RFP/3082/2961

Biden Administration Moves to Boost Solar Manufacturing Capacity

June 7, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 7, 2022

The Biden Administration on June 6 said it would authorize the use of the Defense Production Act and leverage federal procurement to boost domestic solar energy technology production.

With respect to procurement, Biden directed the development of two tools:

According to a White House fact sheet, these federal procurement measures can stimulate demand for up to a gigawatt of domestically produced solar modules in the near term, and up to 10 gigawatts over the next decade from U.S. government demand alone.

To further increase the impact of these actions, the Biden Administration will also partner with state and local governments and municipal utilities in these innovative arrangements, increasing the potential market impact over the next decade to as much as over 100 gigawatts.

Defense Production Act

President Biden also authorized the Department of Energy to use the Defense Production Act to rapidly expand American manufacturing of five technologies:

24-Month Bridge For Solar Imports

President Biden also used his powers to create a 24-month bridge for certain solar imports, the fact sheet noted.

Specifically, the President is temporarily facilitating U.S. solar deployers’ ability to source solar modules and cells from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam by providing that those components can be imported free of certain duties for 24 months.

This will ensure the U.S. has access to a sufficient supply of solar modules to meet electricity generation needs while domestic manufacturing scales up, the White House said.

California Community Choice Aggregator Lines Up Geothermal Energy Supplies

June 6, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
June 6, 2022

California community choice aggregator East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) has entered into its first geothermal power purchase agreement with Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy company.

Supplies will come from a project that will dispatch 40 megawatts of geothermal energy from Churchill County, Nevada to California’s regional grid, with expected operation in the fourth quarter of 2026. 

Serving Alameda County and fourteen incorporated cities, EBCE offers a power mix of carbon-free and renewable energy sources including wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal, with a goal of providing 100 percent clean electric service for its customers by 2030.

DOE, National Labs Request NAESB To Set Standards For Distributed Resources

May 25, 2022

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
May 25, 2022

The Department of Energy (DOE), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have submitted a joint request for standards development to the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) seeking to harmonize grid service terminology and definitions supporting distributed energy resources offered by the organized markets and distribution systems.

The aim of the request is to create standardized, technology-neutral grid service definitions that can benefit both wholesale and retail electric market interactions.

The development of NAESB standards will promote more efficient wholesale and retail electric market operations while advancing market utilization of distributed energy resources, according to the request.

The parties submitted the request in support of the DOE’s Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium’s efforts to modernize the nation’s electric grid.

“A lack of common industry terminology regarding grid services can be a roadblock to the interoperability of distributed energy resources and the development of other standardized practices,” Richard Brown, principal investigator for the Grid Modernization Laboratory at LBNL, and Steve Widergren, co-principal investigator at PNNL, said in a statement.

“NAESB standardization of grid service definitions could provide a foundation for a common framework that would simplify distributed energy resource integration and enable the comparison of grid service usage across the markets, leading to improved accuracy and consistency of information concerning grid service performance and metrics,” Brown and Widergren said.

According to the request, it proposes to build upon existing wholesale market structures by standardizing common grid service names, definitions, and performance characteristics that align with the market product taxonomies and definitions identified in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Electric Quarterly Reports.

Having NAESB standards for distributed energy resources would enable wholesale market operators to associate or classify existing market products with common grid services and support more efficient communications between market operators and market participants, such as generators, distribution system operators, and distributed energy resource aggregators, the request said.

Once developed, the standards applicable to the wholesale market would provide a foundation for the development of similar retail electric standards that would serve to assist emerging retail markets to integrate, with greater consistency, the flexibilities that can be realized from distributed energy resources.

Development of wholesale market standards is expected to begin on June 14, and development of retail market standards is expected to begin later this year.

Palo Alto, Calif., Seeks Renewable Energy Supply Proposals That Can Include Energy Storage

May 25, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 25, 2022

The City of Palo Alto, Calif., is seeking proposals from qualified firms to provide electric power generated by renewable resources — with or without energy storage capacity — to meet the city’s long-term electric supply portfolio needs.

The utility will consider all California renewable portfolio standard (RPS)-eligible renewable resources.

 These resources include, with some limitations:

In addition, the city will accept proposals from zero-carbon resources that are not RPS-eligible (e.g., large hydroelectric).

If a bidder chooses to include an energy storage system in a proposal, the facility should have a duration of four hours, although proposals may include pricing for longer-duration configurations as well.

Proposals must be received by June 28, 2022.

The RFP is available here.

CPS Energy Reaches Agreement For 300-Megawatt Solar Project

May 24, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 24, 2022

Texas public power utility CPS Energy has reached agreement with Consolidated Edison Development Inc. for a 300-megawatt (MW) solar project that will be located in Goliad County, Texas.

The project, dubbed Peregrine Solar, is expected to increase CPS Energy’s total solar capacity to 852 MW once it comes online.

The project is the first part of the San Antonio-based utility’s “FlexPOWER Bundle” initiative. 

Construction is scheduled to begin next year and is expected to add 250–300 temporary jobs with priority hiring from the San Antonio area. As part of the partnership agreement, Con Edison Development will contribute $500,000 over a 10-year period to support one of CPS Energy’s community priorities of supporting customers and education.

Con Edison Development also will hire up to eight positions from Greater San Antonio and maintain $750,000 in annual spending with local suppliers and vendors through the life of the 25-year agreement. This will result in a $19 million local investment for Bexar and Goliad counties.

The FlexPOWER Bundle initiative aims to further diversify CPS Energy’s power generation mix, adding up to 900 MW of solar, up to 50 MW of energy storage and up to 500 MW of firming capacity.

Launched in November 2020, a request for proposals for the FlexPOWER Bundle resulted in over 650 proposals from 100 companies across the U.S. and ten other nations, including Japan, England and South Korea.

CPS Energy expects to finalize and award all FlexPOWER Bundle contracts within the next few months with the next solar selections expected in the coming weeks.

Consolidated Edison Development is a subsidiary of Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, Inc., which will be solely responsible for the construction, operation, and maintenance costs of the project.

CPS Energy will acquire the solar energy produced at Peregrine through a 25-year power purchase agreement.

DOE Study Sees 1,400 GW Of Economic Wind Power Potential

May 14, 2022

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
May 14, 2022

There are nearly 1,400 gigawatts (GW) of economic wind power capacity in the United States, an amount equal to more than half of the nation’s current annual electricity consumption, according to a Department of Energy’s (DOE) study.

The results of the Distributed Wind Energy Futures Study, which was conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), were detailed in two snapshots in time, 2022 and 2035, and done within the context of the Biden administration’s established targets of 100 percent carbon dioxide free electricity supply by 2035 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economywide by 2050.

In the 2022 scenario, the economic potential for behind-the-meter wind installations is 919 GW, compared with 474 GW for front-of-the-meter installations.

However, “the economics of distributed wind are highly sensitive to policies, especially those that impact project-level costs,” the study said. As an example, the authors said,

“If current tax credits and net-metering policies expire as scheduled, economic potential is estimated to drop between 2022 and 2035. However, if current tax credits and policies are extended and strategically expanded, economic potential increases by more than 80% for behind-the-meter applications and by a factor of nearly nine for front-of-the-meter application.”

With future policy support and “more relaxed siting conditions,” the economic potential of front-of-the-meter installations could increase to more than 4,000 GW and 1,700 GW for behind-the-meter installations in an “optimistic 2035 scenario,” NREL said.

There are currently about 1.1 GW of distributed wind capacity in the United States.

The study identified the Midwest and the Heartland regions as having the largest potential for behind-the-meter wind power because of a combination of high wind speeds and sufficiently high retail electricity rates. Six states in those regions – Texas, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Indiana – have a combined wind power potential of 500 GW, the study said.

The Midwest and Heartland regions also have strong potential for front-of-the-meter wind power, estimated at over 300 GW in the top six states: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota.

Agricultural lands make up 70 percent of the total 2022 economic potential for behind-the-meter wind power and 97 percent of the total 2022 economic potential for front-of-the-meter wind power potential.

In addition, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Kentucky each have more than 900 megawatts (MW) of behind-the-meter economic wind power potential in 2022 on commercial and industrial lands, the study said.

Behind-the-meter economic wind power potential in 2022 on residential lands is greatest in New York, Minnesota, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, the study found.

In general, California and states in the Northeast have less profitable distributed wind power potential, except in certain locations where there are significant wind resources and higher retail electricity rates, NREL said.

Conway, Ark., APPA-Funded Study Finds No Harmful Harmonics From Residential Solar

May 4, 2022

by APPA News
May 4, 2022

A study of residential solar power installations by Conway Corp. in Arkansas found that they did not generate harmonic patterns harmful to the public power utility’s electric system.

The study was done with financial support from the American Public Power Association’s Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments (DEED) program.

“Our staff became aware of solar system harmonics while working on a 1-megawatt distributed energy resource solar project in 2019-2020,” Ronson Smith, electric systems engineer at Conway Corp., said via email.

Irregular loads, such as computer and solar power equipment, can create harmonic patterns that interfere with the smooth sine curve of non-linear loads and can damage the distribution grid by causing equipment to overheat or by creating the risk of disruptions or fires.

The utility’s engineers and technicians began to wonder if residential solar installations would also produce harmonic distortion. In particular, they were concerned that a large number of grid-connected solar photovoltaic inverters on a distribution network could cause power quality problems, especially since utility professionals know little about the effects of harmonics-generating equipment when it is widely distributed on a power grid.

For the study, 2021-Case Study: The Presence of Residential-Class Photovoltaic Induced Harmonics on the Distribution Network, Conway Corp. worked closely with E2C Engineering’s Electrical Consulting Engineers and hired two interns from a local university to test the individual harmonic distortion and total harmonic distortion limits on single phase residential houses with solar panels, as well as residential homes with solar panels and LED lighting.

Monitoring equipment collected data at various net metering test sites at varying degrees of magnitude on the electrical network.

The workers measured the harmonics in the same conditions while the solar system was turned off and then, during a similar period under similar conditions, with the solar system turned on to determine whether the solar system was creating harmful harmonics.

“We found that the harmonics generated are within the limits of the national standards such as IEEE-519 no matter the size PV solar system installed,” the utility said in its DEED report.

More specifically, the study showed that the typical total voltage distortion level from a house with a solar system was around 1.5 percent while the same house without the solar system connected had total voltage distortion of about 1.3 percent.

APPA’s DEED program awarded $45,520 to Conway Corp. on Oct. 2, 2020, and the project concluded on March 31, 2022. Conway Corp. contributed $71,531 to the cost of the project.

“This study will be a foundational building block for our knowledge and approach to power quality related to residential loads, as well as solar projects in general,” and it “will serve as a template for other possible power quality studies if needed in the future,” Smith said.

Conway is a quickly-growing city where more and more homes are installing solar power systems. While the utility does not have any current plans to make any changes to its net metering program based on the study results, it said it would continue to monitor the harmonics produced in different circumstances, as well as the harmonics from existing and new solar farms.

The data and analysis that came out of the study “will be helpful going forward with planning and operations,” Smith said. “It also enhanced the staffs’ understanding of net metering, solar power, and power quality.” And, Smith said, “we were able to engage local university students with a valuable internship experience at a municipal utility.”

The APPA-funded study will also provide other utilities with insight into the operational characteristics of residential solar, Smith said. “It could also give them a leg up on data and analysis strategies for similar challenges they may encounter in their own parts of the power grid.”

Snohomish County PUD Partners With the City of Everett, WA on New Solar Project

April 27, 2022

by Vanessa Nikolic
APPA News
April 27, 2022

Washington State’s Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) and City of Everett are partnering on a solar project that will generate funds and assist PUD customers with paying their bills. 

The solar project will be built in south Everett and will direct solar generation benefits to Project Providing Relief for Individuals Dependent on Energy (PRIDE), the PUD’s customer-funded income-qualified program that currently serves 500 customers annually. 

Established in 1982, Project PRIDE is primarily funded by contributions from PUD customers. Funds are used to provide one-time grants for families and individuals who need help paying their energy bills.

In place of selling energy units to customers, Snohomish PUD will donate funds created by the new solar project to its Project PRIDE program. The program will receive an estimated additional $27,600 in annual energy credits through the community solar project.

The PUD was awarded a grant of $861,814 through the Washington Clean Energy Fund (CEF) 3 Low-Income Community Solar Deployment Program to help pay for the project. The CEF is managed by the Washington State Department of Commerce, which supports the development and deployment of clean energy technology. 

The planned solar array will have a capacity of 375 kilowatts, generating enough electricity to power approximately 40 homes. 

The estimated cost to build the array is around $1.5 million. Construction is scheduled to start later this year. 

For more information on the project, visit the PUD’s website.

New York Regulators Approve Renewable Energy Contracts

April 26, 2022

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 26, 2022

The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) recently approved contracts with Clean Path New York LLC for its Clean Path NY project and H.Q. Energy Services Inc. for its Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) project to deliver solar, wind and hydroelectric power from upstate New York and Canada to New York City.

Clean Path NY comprises a 175-mile state-of-the-art transmission line, 3,800 megawatts of new in-state solar and wind power, and New York Power Authority’s (NYPA) existing Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Plant, a hydroelectric facility that will strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the project.

“Together, these assets will dramatically increase the delivery of reliable, cost-effective renewable energy into New York City to drive a significant reduction in the use of fossil fuel plants that are currently relied upon to serve the city’s peak energy needs,” NYPA noted.

The project is a partnership between Invenergy, energyRe and NYPA.

The CHPE project involves the construction of an underground and underwater transmission line spanning approximately 339 miles between the Canada–U.S. border and New York City and is being developed by Transmission Developers, Inc.  and Hydro-Québec.

The PSC’s April 14 decision was bolstered by the City of New York’s confirmation that it will join in these landmark awards by agreeing to purchase a portion of the renewable attributes generated by the two projects, thus helping to make the scale of these projects possible while creating the opportunity to reduce the cost impact of these projects by up to $1.7 billion to all other ratepayers.

The New York State Office of General Services has also committed to entering into a contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for Tier 4 renewable energy credits (RECs) associated with the energy used by State agencies and departments located in the city.

NYSERDA will also offer renewable attributes from these projects for voluntary purchase.

With approval of the contracts, NYSERDA payments will commence for each respective project once the project has obtained all required permits and approvals, has completed construction, and is delivering power to New York City, which is expected to begin in 2025 for the fully permitted CHPE project and 2027 for the Clean Path NY project.