Energy Exchange

I landed at San Diego International Airport at 4pm on Thursday.  Since I sat towards the front of the plane, I was one of the first people to walk up the corridor.  Suddenly, the lights went out.  “Perfect timing,” the woman in front of me said.

As I walked through the airport, the lights were off, the lines had grown long.  Cell phones weren’t working, and I was reminded of a zombie movie I had seen.  Waiting in the late afternoon heat, I tried to remember the exact words in my colleague’s quickly written agreement to pick me up and drive me to the event.

I hoped that it was just the airport, but as we inched our way through the traffic, it was clear that San Diego had ground to a halt.  Gas stations became crowded with people who literally ran out of gas and couldn’t get home.  As the sunlight waned, we rushed to buy provisions (water, protein bars, etc.) at an Albertsons – possible only because it had installed fuel cells or solar panels.  From the freeway we could see that University of California San Diego, which has its own microgrid, was also lit up thanks to distributed generation. 

We learned that a transmission problem in Arizona had caused a possible sequence of events that included the protective functions at the nuclear power plant turning the plant off and lead to extensive power outages throughout San Diego, southern California, and parts of Mexico.  The funny part?  I was with a colleague from San Diego Gas and Electric, traveling to speak about our collaborative smart grid planning effort.  We couldn’t help but think about how the smart grid could have helped here. 

Storage and advanced grid sensing and control technologies could have isolated the problem at its source and kept it from growing.  The smart grid’s ability to incorporate larger amounts of renewable energy could have kept electricity flowing.  Microgrids – with their own local generation and smart technologies – could have switched to an off-grid mode and remained powered through the outage.  Buildings with demand response capabilities and appropriately designed roof top solar or other forms of distributed generation, could have reduced their consumption and used smart technologies to share their power with businesses running critical equipment or with people who need air conditioning or medical equipment to maintain their health.

Source: AP Photo/Gregory Bull

Smart grids can play an even bigger role after an outage is over: Electricity production is a huge source of air and water pollution– emissions from U.S. electricity production make up 30% of domestic climate change pollution and over 6% of global emissions.  A thoughtfully-designed smart grid could reduce harmful emissions by up to 30% and fight against the tragedy of more than 34,000 deaths a year from power plant pollution – more lives than are lost on U.S. highways.

A greener grid will also put us at the forefront of the world’s competitive clean energy economy.  A recently released Duke University report commissioned by EDF identified smart grid companies already flourishing in 37 states at 315 locations—including headquarters, manufacturing plants and hardware/software development facilities.

All of this adds up: the green grid revolution will create as many as 180,000 domestic jobs per year while saving lives.  Now that’s worth standing up for.

But Missing Metrics and Milestones to Achieve Them

Over the course of the next 10 years, California’s electric grid is getting a 21^st century facelift. Last month, the three biggest utilities, PG&E, SDG&E and SCE (with more than 11 million customer accounts) released smart grid deployment plans outlining roughly between $2.4 and $3.6 billion of new investments to make the smart grid a reality.

These plans were required by a 2009 law passed by the State legislature (SB 17), and the investments they outline are critical to helping California meet new infrastructure, efficiency and environmental policies. The state policies of note include reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, increasing renewable electricity use from 20 percent to 33 percent by 2020 and installing 1,940 megawatts (MW) of solar energy by 2017.   

Last January, EDF began developing a framework for evaluation. The framework determines how close a plan is to achieving the full range of smart grid benefits. In particular, it looks at whether plans have clear visions, effective deployment strategies, meaningful metrics, accurate baselines, and demonstrable roadmaps for success.

After nearly 1,000 pages of smart grid plans were released by the utilities in June and July, EDF energy experts used the framework to evaluate them and filed comments to the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”).

What we found was dramatic. Most importantly, according to the plans, if California deploys the smart grid in an effective way, utilities are going to significantly reduce air pollution, eliminate massive inefficiencies in the system, dramatically increase California’s reliance on renewable energy (including “distributed” energy generated in communities’ own backyard), accommodate hundreds of thousands of zero-emission electric vehicles, and empower consumers to manage their energy use, footprint and bills.

These benefits, if realized, will be significant. PG&E, for example, estimated that it will cut costs by up to $2 billion and reduce up to 2.1 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. SCE estimated it will be able to charge 1 million electric vehicles by 2020 and avoid up to 1,900 (MW) of peak demand by 2014 (peak demand is typically the most costly to deliver and often the most polluting). SDG&E estimated that it will cut 6.8 MMT of different types of global warming pollution and cut fuel costs by $615 million.

Smart Grid Plan Evaluations and Scores

EDF evaluated plans on the individual pieces—their vision, strategy, metrics, baseline, and roadmaps—and also as a whole.  What we found was that while utilities are visionary and openly strategic about how the smart grid will be deployed, they are missing some key ingredients to overall success – such as quantifiable goals and numerous metrics which progress can be tracked. No utility plan scored above a B- because data was lacking.

EDF gave SDG&E and SCE the highest cumulative grades of a ‘B-‘; though SDG&E edged ahead of SCE with a higher overall points score (32.3 out of 40 for SDG&E compared to 31.8 out of 40 for SCE).  PG&E’s plan earned a ‘C’ (with 28.9 points out of 40). SDG&E earned the most overall points by working with numerous stakeholders and digging into ways to provide the full range of expected benefits.

From the beginning of this process, we advised utilities that these plans should be viewed as roadmaps that will guide a multi-year journey toward a modernized grid. The public, however, and the state’s elected and appointed officials need more information to gauge whether the state’s on the right track. 

EDF views the scores as mid-term grades, with room for improvement. Luckily, the smart grid planning process is still underway at the California Public Utilities Commission so utilities can improve their plans and raise their overall scores before they become final.

The piece was originally posted on EDF’s California Dream 2.0 blog.

Today, EDF released a tool that will be used next month to critically evaluate the smart grid deployment plans of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE).

As a bit of background, we’ve been actively engaged with the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) since the start of the state’s smart grid planning process. Our comments and suggestions were included as mandatory requirements in the roadmap approved by the CPUC last June, which these utilities must follow in developing their plans. Plans are due to the CPUC by July 1^st.

We’ve also been working with SDG&E on its plan, which was submitted to the CPUC earlier today. We advised the utility on steps it can take to empower customers to save energy and money, integrate large- and small-scale renewable energy projects and allow electric vehicles to charge when electricity is cheaper and cleaner.

The Evaluation Framework for Smart Grid Deployment Plans was generated by EDF energy staff and independent consultants. It was reviewed and critiqued by a diverse array of industry and consumer groups including the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), The Brattle Group and The Utility Reform Network (TURN).

The framework will help systematically peel back the layers of complex utility plans and help CPUC staff, policy makers and the public see whether they will deliver the envisioned benefits of a fully deployed smart grid.

Since these plans are the first of their kind by major electric utilities in the West, and are the building blocks that will help forge a new path for updating California’s grid, EDF expects there will be a certain amount of learning while doing.  

With utilities spending millions of dollars on everything from smart meters to automating new systems, it’s important to provide guidelines to help them get it right from the beginning. The framework will shine a light on the best ideas (with an eye toward establishing best practices) and identify where plans fall short.

Our goal is to guide all utilities on how they can deliver environmental and public health benefits to consumers and deliver returns on ratepayer investments in the form of cleaner air, improved public health, reduced energy costs and a stronger economy. Among other attributes, top plans should show how the smart grid will lead to consumers having more control over their energy use and better access to data – making it easier to implement new technology for clean energy and energy efficiency. 

EDF will put its framework to work over the coming weeks and months to evaluate these plans thoroughly and with equal rigor so that the best elements are adopted across the state and any weaknesses or gaps remedied.