Looking Back and Looking Forward
Lee Ragsdale is SVP – Grid Infrastructure and Compliance for the North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.
PUF: Why did North Carolina Electric Cooperatives come to Electrification 2018 and have an exhibition booth?
Lee Ragsdale: This electrification conference is a great opportunity for us to see what others are doing in the industry. But more important, we think that electrification is beneficial to our consumers.
We want to learn how we can be part of that conversation, bring those benefits home to North Carolina and implement some of these opportunities. We're already doing work at the edge of the grid that we're showcasing here, but we also want to learn from the greater industry.
We see beneficial electrification as an important part of how electric cooperatives across our state can work together to build a brighter energy future for our consumer-members.
PUF: What are some things you've started to do or are doing for customers?
Lee Ragsdale: We've done quite a few. We have a bring-your-own-thermostat program that delivers energy efficiency in the home and enables utility coordination. We have water heater programs that we're also implementing for demand response.
We have two microgrids we've worked on in the past couple of years that have been research and development projects. We've learned a lot about how those edge-of-grid resources operate, and how we can bring greater good to the community and the membership at large.