Generac Grid Services Blog

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: Utilities deliver three things: voltage, frequency and reliability. The first two items impact the third. And, frequency – at least in an interconnected system with plenty of inertia like what we have in continental North America – is pretty easy to manage because it’s the same throughout the power system. Here in the Western interconnection where I live, that means the frequency is the same in Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego and Vancouver, BC.

This past March, Chinese energy regulators put the brakes on further deployment of wind-energy projects in Mongolia during 2016. Why? Call it too much of a good thing. China, now the world leader in solar and wind installations, doesn’t have the transmission infrastructure necessary to transport electricity from the windswept Mongolian steppes to the power-hungry cities that need it.

During 2015, China installed some 33 gigawatts of wind turbines, which was more than half of new wind installations worldwide. But, in the same year, government statistics show “33.9 billion kilowatt-hours of wind-powered electricity was wasted … equivalent to the electricity consumed by 3 million American households a year,” according to an article published by InsideClimate News. ”That was about 15 percent of China's total wind power generation, up from 8 percent a year earlier.”

This past Earth Day, plenty of power system participants celebrated our lovely planet. PECO used the date to launch it’s new Solar Stakeholder Collaborative. Louisville Gas & Electric sponsored a do at the Louisville Zoo. First Energy held EarthFest, Ohio's largest environmental education event, for some of its six million customers. Even California’s Independent System Operator (CAISO) used the date to push eco-friendly living. It issued its summer power supply forecast via a press release that sported the headline, “Energy Conservation: What’s Good for the Planet is Good for the Power Grid.”

Ultimately, that’s true. Ironically, a recent survey by the consultancy West Monroe Partners found that most utilities treat DERs -- like customer-sited solar -- as a threat. The same survey shows that only 3 percent of executives who responded view the growth of DER as an opportunity.

Here’s something that’s not so smart about smart inverters: Many people assume we can’t take advantage of the voltage and frequency benefits they could offer grid operators because regulations get in the way. But, even in jurisdictions where regulations hamper autonomous operation of smart inverters, there’s still a way you could gain benefit from them. Just hook them up to a DER-management platform like Symphony by Enbala.

What could be could be

For those who don’t know much about smart inverters, here’s a quick look at what they are and what they can do.

INTRODUCTION:

Do you remember that outage that left some 50 million people in the dark on August 14, 2003? It took down 61,900 megawatts of load in eight eastern U.S. states and the Canadian Province of Ontario. The financial impact was as high as $10 billion in the U.S. and $2.3 billion up north. When government researchers from the U.S. and Canada examined the event, they reported that insufficient reactive power was one of the factors leading to it.

So, here’s the big question: When rooftop solar installations start causing localized voltage headaches for utilities, will there be enough local reactive power to bump that voltage up? There will if we get smart inverters along with new solar deployments.

When it comes to planning for distributed energy resources (DERs), the State of California is one to watch. In 2015, major electric utilities submitted extensive plans for integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), with special focus on how such technologies will change planning for the last-mile distribution system and what process changes will be necessary.

Anyone who’s seen the California ISO “Duck Curve” knows south-facing roof-top solar is not particularly good for utilities. The problem, which appears so clearly in the eloquent graph below, is that daily peak continues to grow, so utilities still have to build out new generation, transmission and distribution facilities. But, household solar reduces overall energy sales, and this is where most of the money comes from to pay for the new capacity. Some utilities are referring to this as the “death spiral.”