How to Achieve NY REV’s Near-Utopian Goals for Our Energy Future

Everyone who works in the energy industry knows that once-in-a-century changes are coming in the way energy is generated, distributed and used by consumers in North America. What they don’t know is exactly how the energy landscape will look when those changes have fully played out. From New York to California to Hawaii, U.S. states and Canada are mandating accelerated adoption of renewable energy; inviting new generation, distribution and energy management technologies into grid systems; and encouraging formerly monopolistic and slow-moving utilities to reinvent themselves as smart, nimble player-coaches in a newly dynamic and pluralistic energy marketplace. Sunverge would never presume to predict the exact shape and complexion of America’s energy future, but the first prize we recently won at June’s NY Solar Summit, sponsored by the City University of New York, suggests we’ve got ideas worth considering. The contest was for thinking that will “best achieve the goals of the New York State ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’ [initiative],” also known as NY REV. NY REV, administered by the New York State Public Service Commission, is a closely-watched project designed to fundamentally re-architect the grid in light of opportunities presented by technology advancements and threats posed by aging infrastructure, more frequent extreme weather events, greenhouse-gas-driven climate change, economic inequality and security dangers. We see NY REV – and similar initiatives to come in other states – as an opportunity not only to build a stronger, safer, more reliable and cleaner grid, but also as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change the historically adversarial relationship between energy suppliers and consumers into a mutually rewarding partnership for a shared better future. NY REV has the potential to end the zero-sum game where one side of the equation must “lose” for the other side to “win.” NY REV promises to make energy a win-win…for the first time in history. The day may not be far off when people actually love their local utility (don’t laugh). Done right, redesigning the grid under NY REV’s principles will bring benefits to utilities and consumers. Utilities will enjoy:
  • Increased customer engagement and participation in their own energy consumption (and the increased revenue this engagement promises through value-added services)
  • Greater grid resiliency through well-managed integration of distributed energy resources (solar and wind, etc.) into grid operations
  • Broader opportunities to participate in the ISO market systems and monetize new value streams
Meanwhile, consumers will benefit through:
  • Potential elimination of power outages due to stored onsite backup power
  • Control of energy use through smart home systems, smart appliances, instant digital communication with utilities and service integration
  • Better management of billing, including savings generated by using electricity when it’s most economical, and payments from utilities for power generated in homes and sold back to the grid
The goals of NY REV are universal: to promote energy efficiency, grid security and resiliency, greater use of renewables (clean air) and wider deployment of distributed energy resources. Our CUNY-award-winning approach to accomplish these goals rests on two inter-related pillars:
  1.   Customer-sited (behind-the-meter) intelligent integrated energy storage and controls must be used to facilitate integration of renewables into the grid and maximize the value of these distributed energy resources, creating shared value for consumers, providers, utilities and society as a whole.
  2.   The focus in choosing the new technologies to accomplish NY REV’s universal goals should not be on the components – the old “bits and bytes” obsession of the PC-wars days – but, as it were, on the operating system and the apps. That’s where true intelligence lies.
Bringing Intelligence to Storage Intelligent integrated energy storage systems deploy utility-grade storage assets along with residential solar PV or other renewables to capture, store, reserve and dispatch energy when and where most needed by the grid. These needs include absorbing excess renewables generation (smoothing), providing capacity for demand management and enabling voltage/VAR support and other ancillary services, among others. Beyond complementing renewables, intelligent integrated energy storage offers additional benefits in the way of backup power for use during extreme weather, grid security or other grid outage events. Creating the Virtual Power Plant Enabling this type of grid-level functionality requires system intelligence as well as the capability to aggregate individual storage assets to scale to an effective level of storage capacity that can then be controlled. Which brings us to the operating system and the apps. Cloud-based controls and analytics, bundled as part of the integrated energy storage platform, installs the needed intelligence at the edges of the grid to animate the system and provide effective control. Detailed, real-time insights about the grid’s performance and customer distributed generation inform how storage assets are dynamically aggregated and controlled in an orchestrated manner by grid operators, and deliver energy to the grid as if from a single, fleet-level Virtual Power Plant (VPP). The VPPs created by intelligent customer-sited integrated energy storage systems will be vital contributions to the new grid not only in extreme cases of outage or disruption, but could save enormous amounts of money for utilities and their customers on a continuous basis. To cite just two of many examples, VPPs could: 1) reduce or eliminate some of the $75 billion projected to be spent for expensive “peaker plants” built – but very rarely used – to meet occasional peak energy demands, and 2) generate enormous savings from reducing the need for new grid infrastructure because stored energy would be put back on the grid at moments of peak demand. New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision initiative is a massively comprehensive, far-sighted project with near-utopian ambitions – cleaner air and water, more well-paid jobs, unheard-of levels of partnership between energy producers and consumers and economic fairness for utility customers. The amazing thing is that, in contrast to many near-utopian undertakings, NY REV will meet its lofty goals for one simple reason: given the stark threats to our shared future, there’s no alternative to success, not just in New York State, but in the U.S. and globally. Sunverge is honored to play a role, no matter how small, in shaping the energy future to create a better world for all of us. Ken Munson is CEO of Sunverge Energy.