Wow. This one covers a lot of ground, and I think I'll have to listen to it twice!
I like the idea of building out relatively large-scale battery and solar installations on school buildings, which are in every neighborhood, have relatively high-capacity hookups and at least in Seattle, could use the income from serving as an energy resource. It also demonstrates a good lesson for the kids, doing what needs to be done.
School buildings are also mostly unused during summer peaks when hydro potential is at its lowest, locally. Seattle's utility has had to purchase power at high cost during the summer peak resulting in increased power prices.
Though it's a public utility, it owns the whole system from its dams to the distribution grid and has visibility and control of the whole system.
Just some thoughts this morning. Time to start work.
The one thing the Pierre Lafarge did not mention was that in many states there are aggregated (people owned) smaller "utilities" whom, in California, they are presently installing 18GW of solar, batteries, and wind power of their own. In this case, I don't think that the 3 California main utilities will have any say on any of these DERs.
This is one of your best ever. It’s exactly the stuff we talked about in my years on the board of Portland General Electric. I’m excited to see it happening.
Thanks for this posting; I'll be reading it later and I look forward to the transcript. Wherever we live - there is a 'safe capital driven' dynamic of regulated vs. unregulated transmission, provider and payers ... and whenever things whipsaw, it is the voiceless payers who pay and the 'administrative law' bureaucracies who tell everyone 'how it must be done'. Two things in my experience confound this: terrain and 'the greater good'. Those who 'have the gold' make the rules. If we liken the pipeline companies, and power transmission companies, to being 'the truck' that takes the goods to market, we should ask about the future roles everyone plays. LNG needs a pipeline first before it can get compressed and put on a ship. One might think of 'other examples where outside-the-box thinking is needed.' Demand drives supply. I like the idea of large data centres being built close to the power generation source (i.e. hydro dams), but you can't move the damn dam, can you? We build cars close to where the consumers and workers are. We produce factory goods close to large population centres, for the same reasons. I wonder, at the pace at which tech is reordering the world at a pace we are hard-pressed to adjust to, if there is a 'different solution' for where the data centre/data should be, should control over it rest with the 'truck owners' or the 'data owners'? Surely, it should not rest with the data centre owners/developers? They might own the real estate, own the development, which makes the users who own the data and pay to deliver the 'outcomes' of all that data processing the ones who should determine/design the business model, right? We are in a hurry to be in a hurry - but maybe we should slow down in finding a magic solution, eh?
As Ben skillfully avoided directly answering so many of Dave's questions, I kept thinking,"this guy is a really smooth talker", which usually concerns me. When he on multiple occasions cited Google's extreme concern about customer privacy, my trust dropped more.
I am thinking that this is a great opportunity for "Big Tech" to reap the lion's share of profits from what will likely be an incredibly opaque endeavor.
Oh, for a solution that we could know would correctly reward the electric consumer for the value that they provide... I know, it's far too complicated for almost any homeowner to understand. Competition between VPPs, with required labeling?
We surely need to seriously ramp up DERs in every way, VPPs being really important, but I have a serious trust issue with this one.
Pier mentions Minneapolis-St Paul as a great place to implement DERs and Xcel Energy is proposing doing some of the proposed ideas. I’m on a condo board and would love to bring the idea of getting paid for hosting a DER asset to our board - does anybody know who I would contact in order to implement this?
Good stuff. Thanks David. I just want clean electricity and electrification to actually happen which will only happen if the electricity costs can be kept at low American rates, and replacing the billion appliances is made easy for customers.
It's not a DER example, but offshore wind in Virginia is inside the IOU there. It is being delivered for half the $/kWh compared to the multiple IPP projects off the NE.
Thanks for giving this guy the time of day, even though it seems he challenges some of the things you and many progressive energy folks have been saying for a decade. Excellent questions from you.
I'm a little worried about Xcel CO as opposed to Xcel MN. I think our YUGE FF industry has waged an influence campaign and is winning the hearts and minds, and Xcel and the "moderate" Dems are about to "compromise" on various delays to renewable additions, grid improvements, etc., requests to "consider" nukes or CCS to preserve boiler operator jobs, fairness to "non-participants" and so on.
Other than mistaking "investor owned" for "vertical" utilities, spot on.
Public utilities (i.e. TVA, or most Canadian utlities) are perfect candidates for this as well.
Note also, this approach could apply to large scale plants as well, with long term contracts if the utility does not need to actually own and operate the facilites.
The thing missing from this is, if you're distributed capacity then what's the accreditation and how does that play in regions with a capacity market. I know in MISO at least where i work, we're really worried about demand response type resources and whether they're actually going to show up in real time. The specter of Ketchup Caddy looms large (sidenote do a Volts ep on Ketchup Caddy it's a hilarious story)
I think having the utilities (as opposed to the wild west of VPPs) as aggregators changes the politics. It also changes the value of the VPPs when there is a well-established aggregator with skin in the game and a regulatory requirement.
I also think that well-developed, utility-understood VPPs have capacity value for the utility that may well exceed the value to the ISO.
Distributed Capacity Procurement can create fractal reliability on the grid.
How that reliability is valued at each "depth" in the fractal is worth figuring out.
Most people in the US live & work in suburban & small metro areas, not dense urban core or rural areas. If you're looking for widely distributed available (sub)urban locations to rapidly deploy the synergy of stationary batteries + solar +Vehicle-2-Grid charging, it's solar shade canopies over all of the ridiculously under-utilized large hot asphalt parking lots. All of the large, new health care facilities in my county have solar on 80% of the parking, and NO rooftop solar. No new utility transmission, site acquisition, or other site improvement spending required, and no NIMBY opposition. Those modular canopy structures will last for 75 years with minimal maintenance & make cleaning solar panels cheap & easy.
I’d really like to know with the incoming administration do you think the chips act will still be happening?
I’ve had a very bad experience with a solar company using my address for their business name. Ughhh I’m so glad they have been denied. Shady people.
Is there anyway in a place like Maine where our elitric company is owned by a company from Spain ( CMP) I have the perfect place on my barn and house for solar panels. All sun. Is there anyway a low income person can get this? Is there a trustworthy company in southern Maine? We have a bit of solar paying for some electric bills ( a community solar farm that sells to CMP ) there is no transparency in how many or what credits you have and how they are spent. It’s extremely confusing.
The solar company using my address had a project CMP didn’t have a transformer large enough or something.
Why are we, as an industry, not visibly pricing everything in Tonnes (Avoided) Carbon? We have been including carbon footprint in our structural planning models (I am retired Henwood/ABB) for many years, and our models support alternative currencies.
How did the LADWP/Anschultz wind--and-transmission project get modelled. My guess: LADWP used Prosym with their own home-rolled interface, which is capable of catching the primary value proposition of the project, which is the different (wind-blown in some cases) price shapes on either side of the WECC donut...
Wow. This one covers a lot of ground, and I think I'll have to listen to it twice!
I like the idea of building out relatively large-scale battery and solar installations on school buildings, which are in every neighborhood, have relatively high-capacity hookups and at least in Seattle, could use the income from serving as an energy resource. It also demonstrates a good lesson for the kids, doing what needs to be done.
School buildings are also mostly unused during summer peaks when hydro potential is at its lowest, locally. Seattle's utility has had to purchase power at high cost during the summer peak resulting in increased power prices.
Though it's a public utility, it owns the whole system from its dams to the distribution grid and has visibility and control of the whole system.
Just some thoughts this morning. Time to start work.
I looked at the length of the episode and the headline, and didn't want to listen to it at all! 😄 But I will be listening at *least* twice.
The one thing the Pierre Lafarge did not mention was that in many states there are aggregated (people owned) smaller "utilities" whom, in California, they are presently installing 18GW of solar, batteries, and wind power of their own. In this case, I don't think that the 3 California main utilities will have any say on any of these DERs.
This is one of your best ever. It’s exactly the stuff we talked about in my years on the board of Portland General Electric. I’m excited to see it happening.
Thanks for this posting; I'll be reading it later and I look forward to the transcript. Wherever we live - there is a 'safe capital driven' dynamic of regulated vs. unregulated transmission, provider and payers ... and whenever things whipsaw, it is the voiceless payers who pay and the 'administrative law' bureaucracies who tell everyone 'how it must be done'. Two things in my experience confound this: terrain and 'the greater good'. Those who 'have the gold' make the rules. If we liken the pipeline companies, and power transmission companies, to being 'the truck' that takes the goods to market, we should ask about the future roles everyone plays. LNG needs a pipeline first before it can get compressed and put on a ship. One might think of 'other examples where outside-the-box thinking is needed.' Demand drives supply. I like the idea of large data centres being built close to the power generation source (i.e. hydro dams), but you can't move the damn dam, can you? We build cars close to where the consumers and workers are. We produce factory goods close to large population centres, for the same reasons. I wonder, at the pace at which tech is reordering the world at a pace we are hard-pressed to adjust to, if there is a 'different solution' for where the data centre/data should be, should control over it rest with the 'truck owners' or the 'data owners'? Surely, it should not rest with the data centre owners/developers? They might own the real estate, own the development, which makes the users who own the data and pay to deliver the 'outcomes' of all that data processing the ones who should determine/design the business model, right? We are in a hurry to be in a hurry - but maybe we should slow down in finding a magic solution, eh?
As Ben skillfully avoided directly answering so many of Dave's questions, I kept thinking,"this guy is a really smooth talker", which usually concerns me. When he on multiple occasions cited Google's extreme concern about customer privacy, my trust dropped more.
I am thinking that this is a great opportunity for "Big Tech" to reap the lion's share of profits from what will likely be an incredibly opaque endeavor.
Oh, for a solution that we could know would correctly reward the electric consumer for the value that they provide... I know, it's far too complicated for almost any homeowner to understand. Competition between VPPs, with required labeling?
We surely need to seriously ramp up DERs in every way, VPPs being really important, but I have a serious trust issue with this one.
There’s a place where this is happening big time—China. I just wrote a short essay about it before I heard this podcast. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GTjsUtUBtWu1rZK2YRkzFd1T-TkPxtAfWE0_GCVj9cg/edit
Let’s make it happen!
Pier mentions Minneapolis-St Paul as a great place to implement DERs and Xcel Energy is proposing doing some of the proposed ideas. I’m on a condo board and would love to bring the idea of getting paid for hosting a DER asset to our board - does anybody know who I would contact in order to implement this?
Good stuff. Thanks David. I just want clean electricity and electrification to actually happen which will only happen if the electricity costs can be kept at low American rates, and replacing the billion appliances is made easy for customers.
It's not a DER example, but offshore wind in Virginia is inside the IOU there. It is being delivered for half the $/kWh compared to the multiple IPP projects off the NE.
Thanks for giving this guy the time of day, even though it seems he challenges some of the things you and many progressive energy folks have been saying for a decade. Excellent questions from you.
I'm a little worried about Xcel CO as opposed to Xcel MN. I think our YUGE FF industry has waged an influence campaign and is winning the hearts and minds, and Xcel and the "moderate" Dems are about to "compromise" on various delays to renewable additions, grid improvements, etc., requests to "consider" nukes or CCS to preserve boiler operator jobs, fairness to "non-participants" and so on.
Other than mistaking "investor owned" for "vertical" utilities, spot on.
Public utilities (i.e. TVA, or most Canadian utlities) are perfect candidates for this as well.
Note also, this approach could apply to large scale plants as well, with long term contracts if the utility does not need to actually own and operate the facilites.
The thing missing from this is, if you're distributed capacity then what's the accreditation and how does that play in regions with a capacity market. I know in MISO at least where i work, we're really worried about demand response type resources and whether they're actually going to show up in real time. The specter of Ketchup Caddy looms large (sidenote do a Volts ep on Ketchup Caddy it's a hilarious story)
The idea is that the local utilities are bundling the VPPs. They are the aggregator. An already at scale solution.
That doesn't really change how they are or are not accredited for resource adequacy purposes.
There is a lot of politics in resource adequacy.
I think having the utilities (as opposed to the wild west of VPPs) as aggregators changes the politics. It also changes the value of the VPPs when there is a well-established aggregator with skin in the game and a regulatory requirement.
I also think that well-developed, utility-understood VPPs have capacity value for the utility that may well exceed the value to the ISO.
Distributed Capacity Procurement can create fractal reliability on the grid.
How that reliability is valued at each "depth" in the fractal is worth figuring out.
Most people in the US live & work in suburban & small metro areas, not dense urban core or rural areas. If you're looking for widely distributed available (sub)urban locations to rapidly deploy the synergy of stationary batteries + solar +Vehicle-2-Grid charging, it's solar shade canopies over all of the ridiculously under-utilized large hot asphalt parking lots. All of the large, new health care facilities in my county have solar on 80% of the parking, and NO rooftop solar. No new utility transmission, site acquisition, or other site improvement spending required, and no NIMBY opposition. Those modular canopy structures will last for 75 years with minimal maintenance & make cleaning solar panels cheap & easy.
Please talk to CMP . Maine has some of the highest cost in the states for electricity
I’d really like to know with the incoming administration do you think the chips act will still be happening?
I’ve had a very bad experience with a solar company using my address for their business name. Ughhh I’m so glad they have been denied. Shady people.
Is there anyway in a place like Maine where our elitric company is owned by a company from Spain ( CMP) I have the perfect place on my barn and house for solar panels. All sun. Is there anyway a low income person can get this? Is there a trustworthy company in southern Maine? We have a bit of solar paying for some electric bills ( a community solar farm that sells to CMP ) there is no transparency in how many or what credits you have and how they are spent. It’s extremely confusing.
The solar company using my address had a project CMP didn’t have a transformer large enough or something.
Why are we, as an industry, not visibly pricing everything in Tonnes (Avoided) Carbon? We have been including carbon footprint in our structural planning models (I am retired Henwood/ABB) for many years, and our models support alternative currencies.
How did the LADWP/Anschultz wind--and-transmission project get modelled. My guess: LADWP used Prosym with their own home-rolled interface, which is capable of catching the primary value proposition of the project, which is the different (wind-blown in some cases) price shapes on either side of the WECC donut...