Great interview. At least there should be hope for improvement in CA! Maine is stuck with Avangrid/Iberdrola and they are at the bottom of the list with little hope for improving. :-(
Patti Poppe was encouraging the utilization of DER and specifically Vehicle-2-Grid charging two years ago. This is not something that PG&E can do by itself internally, but they can support it. So,...France has already adopted an enormous DER fix. France, a country that has a single nationalized utility, the highest % of relatively expensive nuclear generation, and very little oil & gas production. They have mandated solar canopies on ALL existing large (80 spaces) parking lots within 5 years, and within 3 years for ALL very large parking lots. That's FAST. And France is larger in both population & area than California, but their GDP is about the same.
Here in the US, there’s a glaring mismatch between the self interest of relatively wealthy owners of leased residential & commercial properties with large parking lots and their tenants, who pay the utility bills. We have already made generous investment incentives for solar development available to wealthy property investors with big parking lots. But we haven’t required them to use it, nationally or locally.
This policy failure is stalling the obvious micro grid DER synergy of solar canopies shading hot asphalt parking lots, with non-flammable on-site BESS and Vehicle-2-Grid chargers that generate, store & distribute the cheapest renewable energy right where most utility rate-payers live, commute & work. No new utility transmission, site acquisition, or other site improvement spending required. And no lengthy, expensive permitting.
These benefits are so obvious to the owners of new health care facilities in Sonoma County CA, like Kaiser & Sutter, they’ve already covered 80% of their parking with solar canopies. They get it. And for those who care, Gemini AI reports favorably on this rapidly deployed DER strategy. Gemini also indicates that tax credits for solar parking lots have not been eliminated by the new federal budget legislation. Wealthy investment property owners can still get free money from the federal government, of course.
I'm in PA, I am trying to educate myself on all things energy in light of two data centers moving into our 7 square mile city. Our state utility commission recently had an en banc hearing on interconnection and tariffs for large load customers.
I am concerned because the developers do not seem very innovative - air cooling, and 72 diesel backup generators. The air quality where we live is awful. With a 7 square mile city, residences, while not immediate neighbors, are close. I'm unsure if the data center will utilize any renewable energy, as PJM is only interested in gas or coal.
Everything I've read so far suggests that curtailment and load flexibility are helpful in reducing negative impacts on the grid, increasing energy efficiency, and protecting other ratepayers. Not sure if that is accurate.
In PPL's testimony to the utility commission, a Q&A struck me as the opposite of what PG&E is doing. Am I correct in that assessment?
"Would you be willing to trade off speed of interconnection in exchange for greater load flexibility commitments from data centers—and how would you quantify that tradeoff?
PPL Electric refers to and incorporates its Comments in Sections D.5 and D.13, above. As previously explained, the variables that dictate interconnection speed (i.e., supply chain, engineering requirements, ROW acquisition, and permitting) have little to do with flexible or firm commitments from a data center or other large load customer. Furthermore, it has been PPL Electric’s current experience that data centers have not been interested in flexible load commitments. So, while it is hypothetically possible that flexible loads would require fewer upgrades, a specific data center customer would have to determine that specific flexibility in load commitments were appropriate for its project. PPL Electric submits that, while there may be unique projects that justify this exchange, such projects will not be the norm."
Really interesting to get this very different perspective. I hope that the rest of the continent will learn from their experiences and not try to re-invent the wheel. I wonder to what extent PG&E took learnings from other countries that are more electrified.
I'm a PG&E customer, going on 35 years now, in the low foothills of the Sierras. I've never been a fan. Hit a real low when we endured 5 planned power outages, not to mention several unplanned outages in 2019 during the hottest period of the year. But, since then they have been on a sustained upward trajectory in our opinion and experience. They have become very aggressive on vegetation management, which I think has directly contributed to no further planned outages in our area since 2019. And they've been replacing old equipment, which has largely eliminated unplanned outages, such as the mysterious outages that always seemed to affect us and the same 80 households on sunny, windless, moderate temperature, scratch your head, why-did-it-fail days. Usually resolved within two hours, when they got to the misbehaving piece of equipment and gave it a kick to get it back online (or so I always pictured it in my head). Such outages are no longer happening, because of equipment replacement.
So, beyond the bigger issues discussed in the pod, just on basic blocking and tackling, if you will, PG&E has made a significant and sustained commitment to fixing things that frankly they ignored for decades, based on our experience.
Kudos to PG&E for the good work it is doing with EPIC.
I hope PG&E can also modernize their software infrastructure and processes. Modernization is both a technological challenge and an organizational challenge.
For example, AMI 2.0 may bring additional features but the original Smart Meters that we, the ratepayers, paid for years ago (over $4.5 Billion to the 3 large IOUs) have not delivered on their promises... because the PG&E infrastructure, still in COBOL, cannot handle it. Same applies to things like modern rates.
I wonder if I could get clarification on one number in the math section about the comparison between DER storage and feed-tied. The number was that a single battery would be about $10K, which sounded about right... from a customer's viewpoint. Does PG&E also incur $10K of cost to hook a customer's battery to the grid? If not, the comparison is a bit unfair.
Great informative interview. It would be nice to know how we get other states to back R&D for energy transmission and integration of VPPs and production. Thanks.
Great interview. At least there should be hope for improvement in CA! Maine is stuck with Avangrid/Iberdrola and they are at the bottom of the list with little hope for improving. :-(
Patti Poppe was encouraging the utilization of DER and specifically Vehicle-2-Grid charging two years ago. This is not something that PG&E can do by itself internally, but they can support it. So,...France has already adopted an enormous DER fix. France, a country that has a single nationalized utility, the highest % of relatively expensive nuclear generation, and very little oil & gas production. They have mandated solar canopies on ALL existing large (80 spaces) parking lots within 5 years, and within 3 years for ALL very large parking lots. That's FAST. And France is larger in both population & area than California, but their GDP is about the same.
Here in the US, there’s a glaring mismatch between the self interest of relatively wealthy owners of leased residential & commercial properties with large parking lots and their tenants, who pay the utility bills. We have already made generous investment incentives for solar development available to wealthy property investors with big parking lots. But we haven’t required them to use it, nationally or locally.
This policy failure is stalling the obvious micro grid DER synergy of solar canopies shading hot asphalt parking lots, with non-flammable on-site BESS and Vehicle-2-Grid chargers that generate, store & distribute the cheapest renewable energy right where most utility rate-payers live, commute & work. No new utility transmission, site acquisition, or other site improvement spending required. And no lengthy, expensive permitting.
These benefits are so obvious to the owners of new health care facilities in Sonoma County CA, like Kaiser & Sutter, they’ve already covered 80% of their parking with solar canopies. They get it. And for those who care, Gemini AI reports favorably on this rapidly deployed DER strategy. Gemini also indicates that tax credits for solar parking lots have not been eliminated by the new federal budget legislation. Wealthy investment property owners can still get free money from the federal government, of course.
I'm in PA, I am trying to educate myself on all things energy in light of two data centers moving into our 7 square mile city. Our state utility commission recently had an en banc hearing on interconnection and tariffs for large load customers.
I am concerned because the developers do not seem very innovative - air cooling, and 72 diesel backup generators. The air quality where we live is awful. With a 7 square mile city, residences, while not immediate neighbors, are close. I'm unsure if the data center will utilize any renewable energy, as PJM is only interested in gas or coal.
Everything I've read so far suggests that curtailment and load flexibility are helpful in reducing negative impacts on the grid, increasing energy efficiency, and protecting other ratepayers. Not sure if that is accurate.
In PPL's testimony to the utility commission, a Q&A struck me as the opposite of what PG&E is doing. Am I correct in that assessment?
"Would you be willing to trade off speed of interconnection in exchange for greater load flexibility commitments from data centers—and how would you quantify that tradeoff?
PPL Electric refers to and incorporates its Comments in Sections D.5 and D.13, above. As previously explained, the variables that dictate interconnection speed (i.e., supply chain, engineering requirements, ROW acquisition, and permitting) have little to do with flexible or firm commitments from a data center or other large load customer. Furthermore, it has been PPL Electric’s current experience that data centers have not been interested in flexible load commitments. So, while it is hypothetically possible that flexible loads would require fewer upgrades, a specific data center customer would have to determine that specific flexibility in load commitments were appropriate for its project. PPL Electric submits that, while there may be unique projects that justify this exchange, such projects will not be the norm."
Really interesting interview. I think that the EPIC program is key to achieving their goals.
UK here, Octopus smart meter, and KRAKEN software, :)
Really interesting to get this very different perspective. I hope that the rest of the continent will learn from their experiences and not try to re-invent the wheel. I wonder to what extent PG&E took learnings from other countries that are more electrified.
I'm a PG&E customer, going on 35 years now, in the low foothills of the Sierras. I've never been a fan. Hit a real low when we endured 5 planned power outages, not to mention several unplanned outages in 2019 during the hottest period of the year. But, since then they have been on a sustained upward trajectory in our opinion and experience. They have become very aggressive on vegetation management, which I think has directly contributed to no further planned outages in our area since 2019. And they've been replacing old equipment, which has largely eliminated unplanned outages, such as the mysterious outages that always seemed to affect us and the same 80 households on sunny, windless, moderate temperature, scratch your head, why-did-it-fail days. Usually resolved within two hours, when they got to the misbehaving piece of equipment and gave it a kick to get it back online (or so I always pictured it in my head). Such outages are no longer happening, because of equipment replacement.
So, beyond the bigger issues discussed in the pod, just on basic blocking and tackling, if you will, PG&E has made a significant and sustained commitment to fixing things that frankly they ignored for decades, based on our experience.
My interpretation of his answer on Distributed Capacity Procurement is that he's never heard of it. Never heard of it.
Kudos to PG&E for the good work it is doing with EPIC.
I hope PG&E can also modernize their software infrastructure and processes. Modernization is both a technological challenge and an organizational challenge.
For example, AMI 2.0 may bring additional features but the original Smart Meters that we, the ratepayers, paid for years ago (over $4.5 Billion to the 3 large IOUs) have not delivered on their promises... because the PG&E infrastructure, still in COBOL, cannot handle it. Same applies to things like modern rates.
A recent CPUC proceeding discusses the Meter-to-Cash system used by PG&E. If interested, check out https://pelegri.substack.com/p/that-pg-and-e-meter-to-cash-system
I wonder if I could get clarification on one number in the math section about the comparison between DER storage and feed-tied. The number was that a single battery would be about $10K, which sounded about right... from a customer's viewpoint. Does PG&E also incur $10K of cost to hook a customer's battery to the grid? If not, the comparison is a bit unfair.
Great informative interview. It would be nice to know how we get other states to back R&D for energy transmission and integration of VPPs and production. Thanks.
Quinn, always love hearing from you! Proud to be your coworker.
- Marian in the DC shop