Strategy & Planning

A roundtable with NASUCA President Chris Ayers (North Carolina), Vice President Michael Moody (Michigan), Treasurer Tom Content (Wisconsin); the Executive Committee’s Michele Beck (Utah), Bill Fine (Indiana), Nanette Edwards (South Carolina), Patrick Cicero (Pennsylvania), David Lapp (Maryland); and Executive Director David Springe.

“The program can scale up to $250 billion of lending up to 30 years, depending on life of the asset, at a rate as low as U.S. Treasuries plus three eighths of a point. Those benefits have to flow through to regulated customers. An unregulated project, say a merchant coal plant being replaced with solar and storage, that low-cost financing benefit can accrue to the developer.”

“As a way forward, regulators and policymakers need to modernize the way they support the development, planning and operation of the bulk power system, which is beyond the certainty of resource capacity.”

In discussions with ten Commissioners from every end of the country, PUF’s Paul Kjellander asked what’s driving the energy transition in their states, their state’s policies, barriers for the transition to overcome, and risks, also the role of consumer-owned energy. Sponsored by Itron.

Exelon subsidiary ComEd began its Community of the Future program in 2016 with the Bronzeville Community Microgrid in Chicago. PUF journeyed there to see firsthand how ComEd is taking Chicago into the future with the first utility operated microgrid cluster.

“As we gather for the 139th time this month in Savannah, AEIC is still very much guided by our forebearers’ vision to work collaboratively, gather information, and exchange ideas to benefit all members.”

“All Fusion Centers have access to relevant threat information that gets pushed out by the federal government, so I would highly encourage every utility to reach out to their Fusion Centers and see if there are ways they could partner with them on physical and cyber threats, if they aren’t doing so already.”

“The Microgrid in a Box can be plugged in just about anywhere. You would need a step-up transformer for the utility connection. Normally, to try to serve a building with it, but also have it tied to distribution, you’d be between the utility distribution transformer and the building.”

“Power TakeOff has mastered measuring energy savings relative to a quantified, measured historical baseline based on AMI data.”

“There was a lot of focus post-Storm Uri on generation performance, and ERCOT made some improvements through some higher technical standards, although we must see how it performs. But no one has addressed the demand side at all. That’s one of the problems.”