Diversification of power grid necessary to aid disaster outages, experts say during hearing

Published on September 26, 2017 by Daily Energy Insider Reports


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A panel of electric power experts agreed during a congressional hearing Tuesday that a diversification of power sources will benefit hurricane-stricken Texas and Puerto Rico, where electric power has been out for more than a week and where it may be months still before power is restored.

“A grid that relies on a wide-variety of resources is a much more reliable grid,” Monica Lamb, director of regulated market for LO3 Energy, a company that uses the Internet of Things to rationalize home energy use, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee during its fifth hearing in a series on “Powering America.”

“Diversity allows certain assets to stay on line. These are the types of lessons we can apply going forward,” Arvin Ganesan, vice president for federal policy at trade group Advanced Energy Economy, told Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), who asked the experts how the next generation of the power grid could improve reliability during disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

The hearing, which coincided with National Clean Energy Week, was aimed at exploring how advanced energy technologies are giving consumers greater control over their electricity use, according to Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI).

“The electric grid,” said Upton, chairman of the panel, “is currently undergoing a significant transformation – changing fuel mixes, advances in energy technologies, and evolving consumer demands. These changes present opportunities for consumers to become active market participants and to have greater control over their energy usage.”

“State utility regulators have jurisdiction over distribution level or retail markets, while the FERC has jurisdiction over the wholesale markets,” Upton said. “However, the traditional jurisdictional lines are becoming blurred, in part, by the development and deployment of energy technologies, state energy policies, and the valuation of new energy resources such as demand response.”

“Looking forward the traditional utility model could operate more as a market ‘platform’ where consumers can find what they need to meet their energy needs. Ultimately, this platform could lead to a better optimized electric grid, where consumer demand is more responsive in real-time to price,” said Upton.

The panel of experts made several recommendations to lawmakers who are considering legislation based on the hearings.

Ganesan, of Advanced Energy Economy, urged Congress to refrain from actions that would favor any one or group of technologies and asked them to “embrace competitive models.”

“Make sure all models do not have a competitive bias,” Ganesan said.

“What policymakers can do is recognize and help streamline the integration of new community energy marketplaces with the wholesale markets,” said Lamb, whose company L03 Energy develops devices that enable consumers to tailor their own energy consumption to their individual needs using the Internet of Things.

“Federal support for R&D is absolutely essential,” Val Jensen, senior vice president of customer operations for Chicago electric utility ComEd, told the panel.

Karen Butterfield, chief commercial officer for Stem Inc., a company that makes energy storage devices for homes and businesses, told the lawmakers, “The federal government can accelerate the deployment of this technology by helping open energy markets to consumers that are using energy storage and by helping reduce the time and money required to install energy storage.”

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said the federal government needs to “incentivize” more technologies in order to make the grid stronger.

The experts explained some of the cutting-edge technology that is rapidly transforming the energy grid and changing its focus from centralized power suppliers like regulated utilities to alternative power producers and small users, like homes and businesses.

Stem installs energy storage systems (lithium ion batteries) in homes and businesses, and provides software that automatically charges and discharges the storage to produce the most efficient energy from the battery, rather than from the grid. They then network all these storage installations into virtual power plants and manage the networks with artificial intelligence for energy storage.

LO3 Energy applies tools from energy, finance, and computing to build a blockchain platform for a community-based, peer-to-peer, real-time energy market, according to Lamb. The blockchain platform activates a connection of Internet-connected devices within the local power grid, enabling it to generate signals that will govern and balance neighborhood loads, generation, and storage assets, and allowing them to coordinate with the broader interconnected transmission grid.

North America Distributed Energy & Power for Direct Energy provides real time energy monitoring devices that lets customers see exactly how their business uses energy, down to the device or circuit level, according to Todd Sandford, the company’s senior vice president.

Also appearing at Tuesday’s hearing was Bryan Hannegan, president and CEO of Holy Cross Energy, a rural electric cooperative in western Colorado.