A National Roadmap for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Since Thomas Edison threw the switch at the world’s first commercial power plant in 1882 to power 400 lamps, buildings have consumed the lion’s share of U.S. electricity, and today account for three-fourths of the total and even more at peak. Yet, buildings consume power indifferent to grid conditions, blind to the high costs and threats to reliability posed by high peak demand and grid stress; inflexible to opportunities offered by variable, carbon- free renewable power sources; and senselessly missing the smart and connected technology revolution.

Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) can remake buildings into a major new clean and flexible …

Building Back with a Cleaner Power Grid for America

Achieving energy decarbonization in America will require a power grid supplied by renewable energy and backed by ample energy storage. The challenge is that many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. To maintain grid reliability while working towards a nation powered by 100% renewable energy, the Biden-Harris Administration should accelerate adoption of distributed energy resources and expand transmission capacity to create a more unified national power grid. These efforts will increase equitable access to clean energy, accelerate investment in renewables, and create thousands of long-term, high-skilled jobs …

Changing Climate, Changing Utilities: Extreme Weather, Wildfires, Technology, and the Electric Grid

Electric utilities are facing new challenges in the United States. Here in the West, we are beginning to experience the direct impacts of climate change, through extreme weather, droughts, reduced snowpack, and wildfires. A hotter, drier climate intensifies wildfire risk and severity. Electric utility infrastructure—like high-voltage transmission lines—have always posed fire risks, but those risks are now much greater than when those facilities were initially constructed. This has led utilities to commence preventative emergency disconnection of electricity service as a tool to mitigate the risk of utility infrastructure sparking deadly and devastating wildfires. These interruptions in service, while reducing wildfire …

Data Access for a Decarbonized Grid: Policy Solutions to Improve Energy Data Access and Drive the Clean and Resilient Grid of the Future

California’s electricity infrastructure is entering a period of profound change. From a policy perspective, the state is moving toward goals of 60 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and 100 percent zero-carbon power by 2045, while state and local governments are striving to electrify more buildings and vehicles. At the same time, climate change is destabilizing these efforts, as extreme heat waves and record-setting wildfires are leading to electricity demand spikes, public safety power shutoffs, and questions about the reliability and resilience of an increasingly renewable-powered grid.

As the grid becomes more defined by flexible, distributed assets that generate, store, and …

Private, State, and Federal Funding and Financing Options to Enable Resilient, Affordable, and Clean Microgrids

In fall 2019, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) initiated a joint Microgrids State Working Group (MSWG), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE). The MSWG aimed to bring together NARUC and NASEO members to explore the capabilities, costs, and benefits of microgrids; discuss barriers to microgrid development; and develop strategies to plan, finance, and deploy microgrids to improve resilience. Based on member input, the MSWG developed two companion briefing papers to answer key questions about microgrids: (1) User Objectives and Design Approaches for …

Quality infrastructure for smart mini-grids

This report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlights the crucial role of smart renewable mini-grids infrastructure. Grid-connected mini-grids can increase power system resilience and reliability, while facilitating the integration of solar and wind power. Renewable mini-grids far off the main grid, meanwhile, can provide reliable electricity access for remote areas and islands.…

Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings: State Briefing Paper

In states across the nation, the electricity system is changing, presenting challenges and opportunities for the delivery of reliable, clean, and affordable power to America’s homes, businesses, and institutions. As variable renewable generation and distributed energy resources (DERs)—including energy efficiency, demand response (DR), onsite generation, energy storage, and electric vehicles (EVs)—grow, the management of electricity is becoming more complex.

Fortunately, advancing technologies open the prospect for more flexible management of building and facility energy loads to benefit occupants, owners, and the grid. Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) take advantage of these new capabilities to optimize energy management by using sensors, analytics, …

Non-Wires Alternatives (NWA) – Incorporating NWAs into Your Grid Modernization Program

Part One of the Grid Modernization Briefing Series

What’s in the brief?

There is a major paradigm shift occurring in the electric power industry around system planning driven largely by grid modernization and the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs). This paper outlines best practices for utilities and regulators for enabling a stakeholder-informed system planning process necessary to accommodate non-wires alternatives (NWAs) using DERs. SEPA’s experts have laid out an NWA planning approach that will establish a market for customers and third parties to work alongside the utility to integrate DERs onto the grid without sacrificing system safety, affordability and …

Maintaining Electric Reliability with Wind and Solar Sources: Background and Issues for Congress

The share of wind and solar power in the U.S. electricity mix grew from 1% in 2008 to 8% in 2018. Wind and solar are variable renewable energy (VRE) sources. Unlike conventional sources, weather variability creates uncertainty about the availability of VRE sources. This uncertainty could potentially result in a lack of reliability.…

Grid Vision: The Electric Highway to a 21st Century Economy

Electricity is the lifeblood of the modern U.S. economy, yet much of America’s electric grid is outdated and in dire need of investment and expansion to bring it into the 21st Century. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave America’s electricity infrastructure a mark of “D+,” and grid congestion and power outages cost American businesses billions of dollars each year.

To better understand the best way to update and invest in the grid, and any associated consumer benefits, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) undertook a literature review that examines building out the country’s transmission infrastructure. This paper finds …