[Graeme]

Smart Grid Service Revenue To Reach $11.2 Billion By 2023

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')mart grid as a service (SGaaS) solutions allow utilities with financial constraints to spread the cost of their projects out over a period of several years, and according to new research from Navigant Research will see strong growth over the next 10 years.

According to the Navigant Research report, revenue from SGaaS solutions will grow from $1.7 billion annually in 2014 to $11.2 billion in 2023, attracting IT professionals to utilities with limited budgets and providing managed services to utilities to help in their smart grid initiatives where before only the largest utilities could effectively afford to initiate such a development.

“Traditionally, utilities have shied away from outsourcing operations beyond back-office functions like billing or payroll,” says Richelle Elberg, senior research analyst with Navigant Research. “But the tremendous growth in cloud-based services for business of all types has increased utilities’ awareness of and comfort levels with cloud-based solutions.”

Smart grids, and microgrids specifically, are enjoying a time of impressive investment opportunity lately. Navigant Research released two separate reports earlier this month investigating both initiatives — finding that nearly $600 billion will be spent on smart grid technologies over the next decade, and another $31 billion will be invested into Asia Pacific microgrids by 2023.

Navigant Research outlines several potential advantages for Smart Grid as a Service solutions over conventional, in-house smart grid deployments:

[Graeme]

Microgrids Are Coming, and They Could Change the World

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s the cost of solar energy has fallen, it has opened up new markets that were once unimaginable in energy. Five years ago, it seemed impossible that a million homes in the U.S. could be powered by solar energy, but that's the goal of just one company -- SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY ) -- and it hopes to accomplish this goal by 2018.

As the cost of solar energy falls and new technologies like energy storage, smart meters, and demand response advance, new opportunities open up, like microgrids, which can create a self contained energy ecosystem. If designed right, microgrids can produce more renewable energy, cause less strain on the grid, and even provide technology that could change energy around the world.

What's a microgrid?

A microgrid is an electric grid that is much smaller than a city, state, or national grid and contains both generating assets as well as energy demand sources.

It may contain distributed solar on rooftops, ground mounted wind and solar generation, smart meters, energy storage, and even demand response. The main electric grid would then feed into a central point that would control all points of the system and communicate with the main grid, which would still provide a feed of energy to the microgrid. Below is a graphic from Siemens, a large grid supplier, that shows what a microgrid may look like.


So, how does this change the world?

The revolution of the microgrid will be noticed here in the U.S., but it could also transform impoverished nations with little access to energy worldwide. There are currently 1.3 billion people worldwide who lack power, and most of them live in locations far from a traditional energy plant or electric grid. It's also often infeasible to build a fossil fuel plant or run transmission lines from the central grid to these locations. So, creating a microgrid with local energy sources is a logical solution.

It just so happens that many of these communities in Africa and India are also home to tremendous solar energy potential. If these communities had the ability to build their own grids, produce energy, and store energy, they could improve life immensely. It's possible the improving economics of solar energy, energy storage, and microgrids could improve the lives of billions of people.

[Graeme]

World Is Moving to Distributed Energy: 165 GW by 2023

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hether utilities, ALEC (and their coal/oil backers) like it or not, the world is moving to decentralized electricity.

Because of Western Europe's supportive renewable energy policies, utilities there have been struggling the most, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization. In the US, a battle is underway from the threatened industry trying to hold onto its centralized business model.

But change is underway, with distributed energy installations expected to grow from 87.3 gigawatts (GW) in 2014 to 165.5 GW in 2023, according to Navigant Research, with worldwide revenue growing from $97 billion in 2014 to more than $182 billion by 2023.

"One of the most important issues for the energy industry is striking a balance between distributed generation growth and fairly compensating utilities for the ability to effectively use the existing electrical grid as a backup service for onsite power at higher concentrations in the future," says Dexter Gauntlett, senior research analyst with Navigant Research. "Utilities that proactively engage with their customers to accommodate distributed generation - and even participate in the market themselves - limit their risk and stand to benefit the most."

By 2018, Navigant expects new distributed capacity additions worldwide to surpass new centralized ones, and by 2023, it will eliminate the need for at least 321 GW of new large-scale power plants. Extremely efficient diesel engines will dominate in the short term, followed by solar PV and natural gas.

[Graeme]

Transmission Investment Times Five: Will the Grid be Secure?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that investments in electricity transmission infrastructure have increased by a factor of five since 1997. This is promising because prior to the late nineties, grid infrastructure investments declined for three decades, and electric grid reliability deteriorated along with them.

[Graeme]

2030 Outlook: A Trillion Dollar Taxpayer Bailout for Electrical Utilities

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')fter bailing out Wall Street in 2008, are Americans ready to provide a one trillion dollar bailout to our electric utilities in 2030? Even though worldwide demand for energy is estimated to rise 41 percent by 2035, Barclays recently downgraded their outlook for utilities. The question we should ask ourselves is what does it mean when you downgrade a trillion dollar industry? Will this mean that billions of dollars invested in utilities today through pensions, stock holdings and your bank’s investments will be lost? And can utilities, and the country, prevent this value destruction from occurring?

Renewable generation such as solar power is being produced at costs that are rapidly decreasing. Solar systems are becoming so simple that, with a little instruction, my accounting team was able to install a solar power system. This is good for the world, but not necessarily good for an established industry, like utilities.



While some utilities like Southern California Edison have implemented strategies to capitalize on this shift, most haven’t. Instead, they’ve tried to fight it by appealing to regulators to add additional fees to solar or persuade legislators to overturn renewable portfolio standards.

How can utilities win?

First, utilities can embrace solar and benefit from the fact that they have a low cost of customer acquisition because they have a captive audience. Utilities can also be the broker of all energy services for the home if they decide to expand their product line. If they invest in providing the funding behind solar financing and owning the generation and storage assets installed in homes and businesses, they are right back in their utility role, but now using a new generation of asset class.

Second, they can continue to secure revenue through grid connection charges for infrastructure use.

Third, utilities don’t have to be innovation leaders; they can use their current asset base and low cost of capital to either partner with or purchase companies who can innovate for them.

[Graeme]

What is the Potential of Distributed Generation?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ighlights
Solar PV is the flagship technology of the distributed energy philosophy due to its modular nature and low maintenance requirements.
However, distributed PV has numerous disadvantages relative to utility-scale PV:
Higher installation costs
Lower capacity factors
Power density limitations
The potential for distributed PV to displace conventional generation, transmission and distribution capacity is also limited by several factors.
Introduction
Distributed generation has been around for a very long time, but has recently received a new lease of life thanks to the very impressive price reductions of solar PV. The reasons why affordable solar PV is commonly deployed in a distributed manner are obvious: solar PV is highly modular, can be installed on rooftops and requires little maintenance.

The alternative to distributed generation is the standard utility model that delivers the vast majority of our electricity today. Large generators are built to take advantage of economies of scale and the generated electricity is transmitted to population centres over a high-voltage transmission network. The majority of generators in this system are dispatchable, thereby allowing the system to follow load.

This article will take a closer look at the comparison of distributed vs. utility scale with a special focus on solar PV. Since solar PV is the flagship technology for distributed generation, but utility scale offers a myriad of attractive alternatives, this comparison should provide an optimistic view of the potential of distributed generation.

Cost
The first and most obvious factor to consider is cost. It can be intuitively understood that building a 100 MW utility scale solar park will be substantially cheaper than installing 2 kW of solar on the rooftops of 50000 unique homes. Equipment can be transported to the site in bulk, the installation process can be standardized to a greater degree, the hazards and challenges of rooftop installation are avoided, larger inverters and lower-efficiency panels can be used, and O&M activities can be carried out more efficiently. Another important consideration is that utility solar does not consume any of the time and initiative of the customer.

[Graeme]

Taming The Smart Grid Beast

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you’re familiar with that old saw about the Tower of Babel, you already know the key to the Smart Grid. It’s all about finding a common language for people and devices to talk to each other as quickly and efficiently as possible, from right across the room to thousands of miles away. Now throw renewable energy, distributed energy, mobile controls and real-time monitoring devices including data-driven thermostats and “smart meters,” advanced energy storage, and millions of electric vehicles into a landscape that was formerly a one-way street dominated by conventional power plants, and you know what the the Smart Grid really is: a beast of epic proportions.

It’s also clear that “what is the Smart Grid?” doesn’t really get to the nut of things. The real question is, “who is the Smart Grid?” In other words, who is our beast-taming energy equivalent of L. L. Zamenhof?

[Graeme]

5 States Leading the Distributed Energy Revolution

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e’re going to need some sophisticated software to integrate distributed rooftop PV, behind-the-meter batteries, plug-in EVs and smart-metered, energy-savvy homes, office buildings and factories into the grid. We’ll also need some sophisticated policy-making.

GTM Research will soon release a comprehensive report on the global market for distributed energy resource management system, or DERMS -- the software that’s connecting grid-edge generators and loads to grid sensor and control networks in projects around the world. Along with a detailed analysis of existing projects and a vendor-by-vendor breakdown, the report highlights which states are pushing the regulatory boundaries on the grid edge.

[Graeme]

Taxes, fees: The worldwide battle between utilities and power generated by solar panels

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') year after Spain, the sunniest country in Europe, issued notice of a law forcing solar energy-equipped homes and offices to pay a punitive tax, architect Inaki Alonso re-installed a 250 watt solar panel on a beam over his Madrid roof terrace.

"The government wanted people to be afraid to generate their own energy, but they haven't dared to actually pass the law," Alonso said as he tightened screws on the panel on a sunny summer day this month. He had removed solar panels from the roof last year.

[Graeme]

A New Approach to Valuing the Benefits and Costs of Distributed Energy Resources

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n a recent post, we updated you on the status of the “Reforming the Energy Vision” (REV) proceeding in New York State, through which the Public Service Commission (PSC) is seeking to fundamentally reshape the electricity sector to meet a range of challenges, including the need to replace aging infrastructure, make the system more resilient, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Tackled separately, addressing each of these needs would impose new costs that would lead to higher rates for customers and put at risk a basic tenet of utility regulation: provision of safe and reliable electricity at just and reasonable rates. At the same time, electricity sales in New York are flat to declining (due in part to increasing levels of efficiency and wider deployment of customer-sited solar), which limits the revenue growth available to utilities with which to finance modernization of the grid, unless rates go up.

But with challenges come opportunities. The success of REV rests upon taking advantage of important technology and business developments, namely, the potential for distributed energy resources (DER) to make the system more efficient, customer-focused, clean, reliable and resilient. By DER we mean:

Energy efficiency (doing more with less by using efficient technologies and helping customers change behavior to reduce energy use)

Demand response (controlling when electricity is used, to make much better use of existing assets instead of building more power plants to meet peak demand)

Distributed generation (small-scale electricity generation, including rooftop solar, fuel cells for uninterruptible power, small wind power and other options for generating power close to load)
Energy storage (advanced batteries and other options for storing and delivering energy to optimize system operations and integrate increasing levels of variable renewable electricity generation, from small-scale solar to large-scale wind)

DER technologies, products and services have the potential to transform the way electricity is generated and used, but widespread DER deployment poses significant challenges for current utility business models, regulatory frameworks and electricity system design and operation. In some sense, DER is both the problem and the solution. Hence REV.

[Graeme]

The Only Grid-Independent Village In The World?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') little village in Germany, Feldheim, claims to be the only 100% grid-independent village in the world. It is a rural community that switched to renewables for financial reasons, but is now visited by thousands and thousands of people. The tour guide who showed us around noted that his most interesting group was when he had government officials from North Korea on one side of the tables and members of the US Republican Party on the other side*.

[Graeme]

Australia’s 1st Community-Owned Energy Retailer On The Way

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') new consortium hopes to become Australia’s first community owned retailer, with big plans to build, generate and sell renewable energy in the northern rivers region of NSW around Byron Bay and Lismore.

Northern Rivers Energy, a company being formed by a consortium of “forward thinking citizens” in the area has won a $54,000 grant to develop a business plan and conduct a feasibility study.

The plan includes creating a company with both retailing and generation, and an asset management arm that could invest in generation, help finance rooftop solar and distributed generation for poorer households and, maybe some time down the track, even help buy back the grid.

Community owned retailers are common in Europe and the US, particularly in Germany where it is common for retailers and local network operators to be owned by local councils. In recent years, many of the network management contracts have returned to community ownership out of frustration with the actions – or lack of them – of major utilities.

A similar theme is running through Australia, with renewable energy popular with the community, solar penetration running at the highest in the world, and growing frustration with energy retailers.

NRE spokesperson Alison Crook says community owned retailers are needed because the major utilities are not delivering what the community wants.

“There is no interest whatsoever in getting more renewable energy used in the area. All sorts of disincentives are being put in place … and we are told we have to use gas, and other stuff that we don’t need.”

[Graeme]

Kiss Your Power Company Goodbye--This Killer App Can Set You Free

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he amazing thing about solar energy -- and rooftop solar energy in particular -- is that it's flipping the power of the electricity industry, turning consumers from rate takers reliant on utilities for electricity to power producers. This dynamic has upended not only how consumers can look at energy, but also how utilities look at consumers.

Today, a company like SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY ) , SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR ) , or a number of others can offer a solar lease to homeowners or building owners for less than the cost of electricity with $0 down. That means that distributed solar costs are now below $0.15 per kW-hr and falling fast, as you can see below.


No matter how you look at it, solar energy has shifted the energy landscape by making power generation a commodity that's available to all of us. The scary thing is that solar energy has only begun to scratch the surface of its potential, which can literally be measured in trillions of dollars.

Energy storage -- the game changer
The downside of solar energy and even wind energy is that it's not around all of the time. These intermittent energy sources need energy storage to provide electricity 24/7.

In recent years there have been great advancements in energy storage, and it's been done using traditional lithium ion batteries. Tesla Motors' (NASDAQ: TSLA ) Gigafactory in Nevada is earmarking about one-third of its battery production for SolarCity's (NASDAQ: SCTY ) energy storage solutions, which are already being rolled out to customers.

SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR ) has also been testing energy storage and recently launched a home energy storage product in partnership with KB Home.

[Graeme]

What is the Potential of Distributed Generation with Storage and Demand Response?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ighlights
Distributed storage and demand response has limited potential to enhance the value of distributed solar PV.
Distributed battery storage remains far too expensive for broad deployment.
Distributed demand response has limited potential for solar PV integration and will also be very complex to implement.
Utility scale solutions offer greater versatility, better economics and much greater deployment potential.

As discussed in the previous article, distributed solar faces a number of fundamental challenges relative to utility-scale PV (and the wide range of other attractive utility-scale generation options): high installation costs, low capacity factors, and power density limitations. In addition, the value of distributed solar is strongly affected by the simple fact that it only works when when the sun is shining.

To address the problem of intermittency and extend the applicability of distributed solar, we can implement solutions such as distributed energy storage and demand response. While solar PV is the flagship technology of distributed generation, batteries and smart meters/appliances are the flagship technologies of distributed storage and demand response. The reasons are the same: highly modular nature and low O&M requirements.

This article will take a fundamental look at the potential of distributed storage and demand response to enhance the potential of distributed generation. Similar to the previous article, utility scale storage and demand response will also be assessed for comparative purposes.

[Graeme]

How to Value Distributed Solar Energy: The Net Metering Debate

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')tilities, consumers, solar installers, and others stakeholders are having a hard time agreeing on how distributed solar energy should be valued. The question is: how should the owner of distributed solar, for example a residential electricity consumer, be compensated for their electricity production? I will assume many of the strong claims made reflect the vested interests of the parties making those claims, but what are those interests? Where the friction points in this conversation occurring?

To take a first look at this we can simplify the issue into one where the points of contention between pro- and anti-net metering parties be illuminated. I do this by visualizing the dispute as trying to balance being fair to the owner of the distributed energy generation and being fair to all consumers of electricity. My definition of fairness is that the utility should compensate the consumer for the reduction in utility costs when the consumer uses less electricity or returns electricity to the grid, which I believe minimally depends on which side of the net metering debate you fall. We will use this as our starting point.

[Graeme]

Transforming the Utility Sector with New Business Models

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he “utility death spiral” is a term that is becoming all too familiar as distributed energy technologies expand. But how real is it? Are regulated utilities going way — or are they on their way to new business models?

According to a new study by Berkeley Lab, distributed solar photovoltaics (PV) are the most immediate threat to investor-owned utilities and their shareholders, by depleting revenue from demand growth and need for capital investments in traditional power plants. A recent New York Times article highlights the effect solar and wind industries have had in Germany, a leader in renewable energy technologies and business models, with utilities now finding themselves unprofitable. In the U.S., as policies that encourage distributed energy models — such as net metering — increase and PV prices decrease, utilities are starting to push back. But they are just the start. Policy makers — and customers — are putting pressure on the utility system to address environmental, sustainable, resiliency, and customer control issues.

Is this really the death of the utility sector? Or is it the beginning of a utility of the future?

According to the Lisa Frantzis, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, at Advanced Energy Economy, “there is a tidal wave coming over the utility sector.” There is tremendous opportunity for the utility sector to reform and recreate a business model that will work for them and for a growing distributed energy resources industry.

About 40 percent of the carbon emitted in the U.S. is from stationary power generation, Frantzis points out. New regulatory and business models can help to foster environmental sustainability, resiliency, greater customer control, and more customer service options.

Modeling after Proactive States

Three states — Massachusetts, Hawaii and New York — are at the forefront of activity making changes, encouraging a transformation of the utility sector that will keep all parties alive and thriving.

[Graeme]

How Utilities Can Embrace Solar Energy

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here's never been a greater threat to the utility industry than solar energy. It allows for the transfer of power-generating assets from the utility to consumers, stretches the grid by making homes both demand sources and power suppliers, and may even allow consumers to cut ties to the grid altogether.

One key component challenging utilities is energy storage, because solar energy is an intermittent power source. It can be a threat to their business model if homeowners and businesses install storage to reduce their reliance on the grid. But it could also be a boon to utilities if they can make energy storage their new revenue-generating asset. That's exactly what Peter Rive, SolarCity's (NASDAQ: SCTY ) chief technology officer, thinks will happen long-term, and it could be good for everyone involved.

The solar conundrum
To understand why energy storage is a big deal for utilities, you have to understand how utilities see an individual solar home. In the image below, I've shown an example supply-and-demand chart for a solar home. In the example, the home uses 2 kWh of energy 24 hours per day and has a 5 kW solar power system that provides varying levels of energy throughout the day.

[Graeme]

How Microsynchrophasors Could Keep Solar-Saturated Grids Stable

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he electricity zipping around neighborhoods that have lots of rooftop solar PV is very different from conventional electricity. Not only does it sag and surge in response to the pattern of clouds crossing overhead, but it is also provided by lots of inverters, which creates electrical conditions very different from the alternating current supplied by big spinning generators.

The technology being applied to managing this distributed energy landscape includes smart inverters, advanced power electronics and other grid edge devices, as well as the communications networks and software platforms that make use of it all. Now, courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, we’ve got a new contender: the microsynchrophasor.

The “synchrophasor” part of this term comes from the core technology that LBNL and its partners are using. DOE’s smart grid stimulus grants included hundreds of millions of dollars for phasor measurement units (PMUs), also known as synchrophasors, to be deployed on transmission grids across the country, in order to record and correlate data at millisecond speeds, with the goal of providing the kind of real-time insight that could help avoid another 2003 blackout.

Now it’s doing something similar, only at the distribution scale -- thus the “micro” part of the new project’s name. Under the $4 million ARPA-E grant, LBNL and the California Institute for Energy and Environment have installed the microsynchrophasor devices at one of the lab’s transformer substations, as well as with four as-yet-unnamed utility partners in the state.

Each deployment includes about ten of the devices, made by Alameda, Calif.-based Power Standards Lab (PSL), over one or two distribution feeders. “We’re trying to demonstrate the value of having another variable measured on the distribution system that’s not normally measured,” said Emma Stewart, an engineer in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Labs.

LBNL and its partners are trying to measure things that can’t be measured in normal ways.

Take the challenge of measuring phase angles -- the shifts in the sine-wave patterns made up of grid power that’s delivered in three phases at higher voltages, then split into single phases for lower-voltage distribution. Getting accurate phase-angle data at any one point on the grid is a challenge, one that requires super-fast and super-accurate data capture.

Distribution grid fluctuations require even more fine-tuned measurements than the comparatively larger changes recorded by transmission grid PMUs -- something PSL’s device tackles with its 512 measurements per cycle, compared to a typical twenty-four times per cycle for PMUs.

[Graeme]

Rooftop solar is just the beginning; utilities must innovate or go extinct

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y now, most people are aware that solar power — particularly distributed solar power, in the form of rooftop panels — poses a threat to power utilities. And utilities are fighting back, attempting to impose additional fees and restrictions on solar customers. These skirmishes generally center on “net metering,” whereby utilities (forced by state legislation) pay customers with solar panels full retail price for the power they produce, which can often cancel out the customer’s bill entirely. That’s lost revenue for the utility.

Net metering, however, is largely a distraction, a squabble over how long utilities can cling to their familiar business model. Larger reforms are inevitable, because the threat to utilities goes far beyond solar panels and demands a response far more substantial than rate-tweaking. Sooner or later, there must be a wholesale rethinking of the utility business model. And if utilities are smart, they’ll do it sooner.


So what should utilities do? Graffy and Kihm suggest a pivot to value creation. Instead of viewing ratepayers as passive sources of cost recovery, utilities ought to view them as, y’know, customers. Offer them products and services that satisfy their evolving preferences. That might mean following Comcast’s lead and offering unique bundles like solar panels with energy storage and management.

[Graeme]

Net Energy Metering Debate Distracts From Bigger DER Opportunity

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')undled, Block, Volumetric Rates are the Barrier to Unleashing DER Innovation

It’s no secret that net energy metering (NEM) is a controversial topic in the electricity world these days. Customers love the way it helps solar PV offset their utility bill and adds clean energy to their home or business. Some solar advocates argue it is foundational to the continued growth of rooftop solar (as an early-market mechanism, it’s been tremendously successful). And many utilities loathe it, seeing NEM as a “free ride” for solar customers (since a rooftop solar customer could, for instance, net to zero over the course of a month and have a $0 utility bill, thereby avoiding paying for the value of being grid-connected), while also arguing that they can add more renewables to the grid at a lower cost through utility-scale projects than can customers through individual distributed systems on residential rooftops. Then there’s the issue of the benefits that distributed solar brings to the grid, which is a whole other can of worms.

But the debate around the continuation, expansion, reform, or abolishment of NEM distracts from a much bigger opportunity to unleash innovation and investment in distributed energy resources (DERs) in ways that are better for everyone: customers, DER providers, and utilities alike.