Utility Integration

Thanks for your flexibility: New integration techniques expanding interconnection options

Thanks for your flexibility: New integration techniques expanding interconnection options
Nexamp added energy storage to two existing community solar farms in the grid-constrained ISO New England market. The Clark Road community solar farm (pictured) has 7.1 MW of solar capacity and 3 MW/6.1 MWh of storage. (Courtesy: Nexamp)

(Newport, RI) – It’s a simple question, albeit one rarely posed to adults. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X) co-lead Ammar Qusaibaty asked a panel of his peers at GridTECH Forum Northeast what they’d choose. 

Rather than waffle over the perks of invisibility and immortality, those facing the daily challenges of interconnection selected more practical options. 

Todd Wall, a mechanical engineer at Pacific Northwest National Lab chose time travel. “I would go back and set things in a certain way to figure out the problems of today,” he laughed. “Maybe start with Edison, Tesla. It’s their fault!” 

Benjamin Piiru, director of grid integration for developer Nexamp, instantly went with “mind reading,” noting plenty of utility partners were happy to collaborate on issues. “(But) some just say no, and there’s no insight,” he lamented. 

Justin Woodward, principal engineer at National Grid, would eschew the superpower and go full-Harry Potter. “From a utility perspective, I want to wave a wand and allow interconnections where I really want, for however much they want.”

Alas, we live in a world in which superpowers and spells are saved for fiction. 

But the real challenges around interconnect persist. Thankfully, those very same wishful thinkers have practical solutions too. 

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Enable faster, simpler, fairer interconnection 

Qusaibaty laid out a simple goal early in the discussion. But how do we achieve faster, simpler, fairer interconnection? It’s not purely a technological or engineering challenge.

“The obstacle was never technology,” PNNL’s Wall said. “It’s always about liability and indemnification. If something happens, what are you going to do to make me whole? Utilities are always going to be mindful of that. Interconnectivity isn’t dangerous, but it’s a direct interface with their customer, so they’ll see that as a threat.”

“Quality is where the difficult part begins,” said Wall, who insisted the future of interconnection must be load-following. “Load always comes first. It’s an independent factor. The source has to follow the load.” 

“If your demo is nutcrackers, your end product should be cracked nuts.”

– Todd Wall, PNLL

In order to earn the trust of utilities, Wall thinks it would be useful to set up a massive demonstration – a complete substation with feeders and implements downstream. “Let utilities come, hook up their stuff. You demo it, gauge the effects and risks, then you’re off and running,” he proposed.

Piiru found such a suggestion useful, after taking part in various interconnection pilots in Illinois and throughout the Northeast. “The hurdles came around business case, not technology,” he agreed with Wall. “But as long as we can model it, we can make it work. It’s not easy but it can be done.”

Flexible interconnection is still new enough that we “don’t know what we don’t know,” but Piiru argues it’s still a no-brainer for most developers to be pushing for it. He referenced California’s net metering cap of five percent, which allows residents to sell renewable energy back to their utilities at retail prices. “As long as we have those structural things in place, I would imagine the ends would justify any type of means,” he posited. “For many developers, it would be: ‘Count me in.’”

“How much flexibility is going to be allowed?”

Justin Woodward, National Grid

National Grid’s Justin Woodward keyed in on the importance of the word “flexibility” in this discussion. Flexibility may imply a use case without the need for system upgrades like new thermal resources, but it also might mean flexibility in curtailment. A National Grid pilot in Massachusetts is targeting five percent annual energy curtailment to start.

Woodward addressed the “last in, first out” approach, in which one or two projects will sign on but a third or fourth faces too much curtailment to make business sense of connecting to the grid. He suggests a pro-rata approach in which all DERs in an area would be curtailed by the same proportion to address a fault or grid constraint. 

Piiru summarized the discussion, and its importance, with a reminder. “Interconnection is a tool in the toolbox for achieving policy goals,” he said. “It’s not the end all be all, but it’s a better way to think intelligently about the way we’re using the grid and increasing the amount of megawatts we put on the grid while reducing their cost.”

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