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Silicon Valley Clean Energy funds programs aimed at deep decarbonization

February 3, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 3, 2021

California community choice aggregator (CCA) Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) has selected four proposals to fund from a spring 2020 application round of an SVCE grant program that seeks to address key technical, market and policy barriers to achieving deep decarbonization.

The application round targeted innovative solutions for community-wide energy resiliency, SVCE said on Jan. 29.

“Public safety power shutoffs, heat waves, and rolling blackouts have put energy resilience at the forefront and highlighted the critical need for enhanced solutions to ensure a smooth transition to a carbon-free grid,” it said.

SVCE selected the program proposals to fund from the spring 2020 application round of Innovation Onramp.

The Innovation Onramp program was launched to leverage SVCE’s “unique position to engage and support the innovation ecosystem in addressing key technical, market and policy barriers to achieving deep decarbonization in our service territory and beyond,” the CCA says on its website.

SVCE provided additional details on the four pilot projects that were selected to further resiliency for SVCE communities.

Under one pilot Span.IO will install its smart electrical panels in homes across the SVCE service territory, addressing several key barriers to the all-electric transition and community resilience.

Under a second pilot, Extensible Energy and Community Energy Labs will demonstrate that load management technology can reduce electricity costs and enable schools to cost-effectively install battery back-up and serve as community resilience centers.

Under a third pilot, Outthink will provide e-bikes to four income-qualified residents and implement low-cost streetscape modifications to demonstrate the benefits and challenges of mode shifting and active transportation.

And under the fourth pilot, Electron will develop a prototype of an SVCE-owned local marketplace for load flexibility from distributed energy resources such as battery storage and smart thermostats, to unlock the value that they can provide to customers and the broader SVCE community, the CCA said.

SVCE noted that applications are now open for spring 2021 Innovation onramp funding. For this round, SVCE has dedicated $100,000 to provide seed funding to third parties with building decarbonization solutions. 

The ideas funded through this round will complement the efforts described in the Building Decarbonization Joint Action Plan, which was recently adopted by the SVCE Board of Directors.

The American Public Power Association has initiated a new category of membership for community choice aggregation programs.

New report charts path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

February 3, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 3, 2021

Achieving net-zero carbon emissions in the U.S. by 2050 is feasible, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report, the first of two, presents a technical blueprint and policy road map for the next 10 years of the nation’s transition to net-zero carbon emissions.

The committee that wrote the report emphasized that immediate action and proactive innovation are required and recommended a portfolio of near-term policies to ensure equitable access to benefits generated as a result of this transition, mitigate harms to vulnerable populations and engage public participation in decision-making, and revitalize the U.S. manufacturing sector.

The report, Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System, says most near-term reductions in emissions would come from the electricity sector, electrification of vehicles, and home heating. Other industries such as aviation, shipping, steel, cement, and chemicals manufacturing will need further innovation to achieve cost-effective decarbonization, the report said.

Among other actions, the report calls on Congress and the executive branch to set an economy-wide emissions budget for the next several decades. Starting with a price of $40 per ton of carbon, increased annually by 5 percent, this budget will create an economic incentive to reduce carbon emissions and unlock innovation in every corner of the energy economy, according to the report.

To guide policymakers through the transition, the report lays out a number technological and socio-economic goals to reach by 2030 including, among others:

Producing carbon-free electricity: The nation needs to double the share of electricity generated by non-carbon-emitting sources to at least 75 percent. This will require deploying record-setting levels of solar and wind technologies, scaling back coal and some gas-fired power plants, and preserving operating nuclear plants and hydroelectric facilities where possible;

Electrifying energy services in transportation, buildings, and industry: Fifty percent of new vehicle sales across all classes should be zero-emission vehicles. The U.S. should replace at least 20 percent of fossil fuel furnaces with electric heat pumps in buildings and initiate policies so that new construction is all electric except in the coldest climate zones. Where industrial processes cannot be fully electrified, they should begin the transition to low-carbon heat sources;

Investing in energy efficiency and productivity: Total energy use by new buildings should be reduced by 50 percent. In existing buildings, energy used for space conditioning and plug-in devices should be lowered every year to achieve a 30 percent reduction by 2030. Goals for industrial energy productivity (dollars of economic output per energy consumed) should increase each year.

Planning, permitting, and building critical infrastructure: The nation should increase overall electrical transmission capacity by approximately 40 percent in order to better distribute high-quality and low-cost wind and solar power from where it is generated to where it can be used across the country. The U.S. should also accelerate the build-out of the electric vehicle recharging network and initiate a national CO2 capture, transport, and disposal network to ensure that CO2 can be removed from point sources across the country;

Expanding the innovation toolkit: The nation should triple the U.S. Department of Energy’s investment in clean energy research, development, and demonstration in order to provide new technology options, reduce costs for existing options, and better understand how to manage a socially just energy transition;

Promoting equity and inclusion: Policies should work to eliminate inequities in the current energy system that disadvantage historically marginalized and low-income populations.  For example, the U.S. should increase funds for low-income households for home electrification and weatherization and for broadband Internet access for low-income and rural areas and increase electrification of tribal lands.

The report also outlines policies targeting specific energy supply and distribution goals to allow the electric power system to depend upon flexible demand enabled by pricing reforms and infrastructure upgrades. 

“In addition, to ensure markets for clean energy work for all, the U.S. should establish manufacturing standards for net-zero appliances, require recipients of federal funds and their contractors to meet labor standards, and enforce Buy America/Buy American provisions for federally funded activities,” a news release related to the report states.

The study was undertaken by the Committee on Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States: Technology, Policy, and Societal Dimensions.

Southwest Power Pool launches Western Energy Imbalance Services (WEIS) market

February 2, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 2, 2021

Southwest Power Pool (SPP) launched its Western Energy Imbalance Services (WEIS) market at midnight Feb. 1. The real-time balancing market is the latest of SPP’s contract-based Western Energy Services to be implemented in the Western Interconnection.

Several regional utilities are participating in the market. Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN), Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), and the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency announced in 2019 their intent to join the WEIS market.

WAPA’s agreement includes the firm electric service loads and resources of Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program–Eastern Division in the Upper Great Plains Western Area Balancing Authority footprint and the Loveland Area Projects and Salt Lake City Area Integrated Projects, in the Western Area Colorado Missouri Balancing Authority footprint.

SPP noted that many of the WEIS participants are now evaluating full membership in the SPP RTO. A 2020 SPP Brattle study found RTO membership could produce an annual savings of $49 million for both SPP and western entities, SPP said.

If Basin Electric Power Cooperative, MEAN, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and WAPA pursue membership in SPP, “SPP can extend the reach and value of its services and the synergies they provide when bundled under the RTO structure,” SPP said.

The real-time imbalance market is one of many services SPP offers to western utilities under its Western Energy Services umbrella.

In 2018, SPP became the administrator of the Western Interconnection Unscheduled Flow Mitigation Plan.

In 2019, SPP launched its Western Reliability Coordination service, through which it ensures the reliability of the bulk electric system in the west on behalf of 12 entities across seven states.

In 2020, SPP was hired by entities in the Northwest Power Pool to be the program developer for its regional Resource Adequacy Program.

SPP manages the electric grid across 17 central and western U.S. states and provides energy services on a contract basis to customers in both the Eastern and Western Interconnections.

El Paso Electric commits to joining CAISO’s Western EIM in 2023

Meanwhile, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has signed an implementation agreement with El Paso Electric (EPE) to join CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) in 2023, extending the real-time market to 12 western states.

Investor-owned EPE provides generation, transmission and distribution services to 441,200 retail and wholesale customers in a 10,000-square mile area of the Rio Grande valley in west Texas and southern New Mexico.

The Western EIM currently serves balancing authorities in nine states, which represents more than 60 percent of the total load in the Western Electric Coordinating Council.

The Western EIM is slated to expand this spring with the addition of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, NorthWestern Energy, Turlock Irrigation District, Public Service Company of New Mexico, and the Balancing Authority of Northern California (BANC) Phase 2.

California researchers to develop fine-tuned climate modeling for utility planners

February 2, 2021

by Ethan Howland
APPA News
February 2, 2021

With input from utilities, researchers in California plan to develop fine-tuned climate projections to help decision-makers bolster the grid in the face of weather-related challenges.

The California Energy Commission on Jan. 25 awarded $1.5 million to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other parts of the University of California system to develop next-generation “downscaled” climate projections.

The five-year project aims to provide detailed projections for the rest of this century across California’s varied landscape covering temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity, snowpack, runoff, streamflow and sea level rise.

The new computer simulations will be able to provide landscape detail at a 3-kilometer, or 1.9 mile, resolution compared with a 6-kilometer, or 3.7 mile, resolution. Based on utility needs, the project will develop hourly projections for various factors compared to daily estimates.

“With that sort of information, utilities will be able to better assess future impacts, including both long term changes and high impact extreme events,” Scripps climate scientist Dan Cayan said.

The project will provide California utilities and other stakeholders with one of the world’s most comprehensive, high resolution climate data sets, according to a summary of the project written for the CEC.

“This project provides the climate projections that California [investor owned utilities] and other stakeholders need to plan and adapt to such changes,” the summary said.

The model, for example, will more finely track the inland extent of the Pacific marine layer that provides natural air conditioning to the state’s coastal residents, and to delineate changes in the elevation where rain transitions to snow, which has traditionally supplied much of California’s summer water resources, according to Scripps.

The project will also produce data that can support the state’s fifth climate change assessment, which will be developed by state agencies, including the CEC.

The project’s data can also be used in studies on agriculture, ecosystems, human health, water management, infrastructure planning, energy demand and wildfire threats, according to the summary.

Based on IOU and other stakeholder input, the project aims to identify and downscale targeted climate extremes to assess future climate-driven hazards.

Among other things, the project will assess how climate change will affect electricity supply and demand as well as infrastructure, hazards and utility customers.

“The downscaled climate projections provide information to the IOUs and broader energy sector about how climate change may impact energy demand and supply based on changes in temperature, humidity, winds, and streamflow (hydroelectric),” the summary said.

The researchers will analyze how fire weather conditions will change in frequency and intensity, enabling the utilities to prepare for the changes, according to the summary.

Hydrological modeling and hourly sea levels developed from the downscaling will provide information on future flooding frequency that could damage infrastructure.

“This project provides the climate projections that California IOUs and other stakeholders need to plan and adapt to such changes,” the summary said.

MIT study offers data on optimal placement of EV charging stations

February 2, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
February 2, 2021

A new study by MIT researchers offers guidance on the placement of charging stations to help encourage wider adoption of electric vehicles.

Placing charging stations on residential streets, rather than just in central locations such as shopping malls, could have an outsized benefit, the researchers found.

It is critical to look at high impact approaches “rather than haphazardly putting a charger at the grocery store or at the mall or any other public location,” Jessika Trancik, MIT associate professor of energy studies and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement. Charging stations in public places such as malls are useful, “but public planning should be aiming to expand accessibility to a greater part of the population,” she said.

The other authors are Wei Wei, a graduate student; Sankaran Ramakrishnan, a post-doc student, and Zachary Needell, a former doctoral student.

The study also highlights the importance of making overnight charging available to more people. Many people do not have their own garages and use public parking. “It’s really important to provide access — reliable, predictable access — to charging for people, wherever they park for longer periods of time near home, often overnight,” Trancik says.

The study, Personal vehicle electrification and charging solutions for high-energy days, also found that adding high-speed charging stations along highways and making supplementary vehicles more available to people who need to travel beyond the single-charge range of an electric vehicle could greatly increase the spread of electric vehicles.

The report was published in Nature Energy.

While the vast majority of people’s daily driving needs can be met by the range provided by existing lower-cost electric cars, there are typically a few times when people need to drive much farther or make more short trips than usual in a day with little time to recharge. Those “high-energy days,” the researchers said, may only happen a handful of times per year, but they can be the deciding factor in people’s decision making about whether to go electric.

In the report, the researchers developed a methodology to identify charging solutions that would conveniently fit into people’s daily activities, using data collected from GPS tracking devices in cars, as well as survey results about people’s daily driving habits and needs.

The report used general data from the United States, as well as more detailed data from the Seattle area. In analyzing driving habits in Seattle, the researchers found that the impact of either adding highway fast-charging stations or increasing availability of supplementary long-range vehicles for up to four days a year meant that the number of homes that could meet their driving needs with a lower cost electric vehicle increased from 10 percent to 40 percent. The number rose to above 90 percent of households when fast-charging stations, workplace charging, overnight public charging, and up to 10 days of access to supplementary vehicles were all available, the researchers said.

“Real-world driving data can not only guide infrastructure and policy planning, but also optimal EV charging management and vehicle purchasing and usage decisions,” Lynette Cheah, an associate professor of engineering systems and design at Singapore University of Technology and Design, who was not associated with this work, said in a statement.

The study should help to provide some guidance to policymakers at all levels who are looking for ways to facilitate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, since the transportation sector accounts for about a third of those emissions overall, the study’s authors said.

“If you have limited funds, which you typically always do, then it’s just really important to prioritize,” Trancik said, noting that this study could indicate the areas that could provide the greatest return for those investments. Being strategic about infrastructure expansion will continue to be important even as fast chargers fall in cost and new designs begin to allow for more rapid charging, she added.

The American Public Power Association provides an EV activities tracker to its members. The tracker summarizes key efforts undertaken by members including incentives, electric vehicle deployment, charging infrastructure investments, rate design, pilot programs, and more.

Public power utilities, others pursue vehicle-to-grid opportunities

February 1, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 1, 2021

When Washington State’s Snohomish County Public Utility District (SnoPUD) in late 2020 contracted with Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi ABB and Doosan GridTech to install two electric vehicle-to-grid (V2G) chargers the PUD joined a growing number of utilities pursuing V2G.

The V2G chargers are being sited at Snohomish PUD’s Arlington microgrid site and will be able to charge an electric vehicle and also send the stored energy back to the grid during a power outage. “We see this as an important step in our ‘utility of the future’ vision and for SnoPUD to be one of the premier utilities in the country,” John Haarlow, the utility’s CEO and general manager, said in a statement.

While the Arlington microgrid is a pilot project, it is “an actual functioning system,” Scott Gibson, project manager for the Arlington microgrid, noted last year. There are a lot of similar demonstration projects but “this will be one of the first to truly put a functioning grid connected V2G system together,” he said.

Defining V2G

What exactly are we talking about when it comes to V2G?

Austin, Texas-based Pecan Street notes that V2G technology allows power to flow from the grid to an electric vehicle when the car battery is charging, and vice-versa, from the vehicle back to the grid.

This allows V2G-equipped electric vehicles to act in aggregate as mobile power plants and individually as local energy arbitrage systems, which can improve the efficiency and value of intermittent renewable energy like solar and wind, Pecan Street notes.

Pecan Street is a transportation electrification and V2G research organization.

Austin Energy

Texas-based public power utility Austin Energy worked with Pecan Street to test the use of EVs as peak shaving tools and, eventually, as a grid resource.

The tests, which were conducted at Pecan Street’s laboratory in east Austin, involves the use of an EV capable of bi-directional energy flows, also known as V2G capability, noted Cameron Freberg, Utility Strategist for electric vehicles and emerging technologies at Austin Energy.

The V2G testing center was part of the multi-faceted Austin SHINES (Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV) Project that is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and tests how energy storage can help increase solar power penetration, reduce peak demand, and increase grid resiliency. The project is also in support of the City of Austin achieving its goal of deriving 65% of its energy from renewable resources by 2027.

Widely deployed, V2G technology could allow utilities to aggregate EVs to act as a virtual power plant, Freberg noted. Paired with residential solar installations, EVs could become a source of clean, dispatchable power during periods of peak demand, he said.

As EV sales increase, more and more families have an energy storage system parked in their garage. Pecan Street estimates that each dispatchable V2G electric vehicle could power a home for two to five hours or power up to five homes for about an hour.

Through the SHINES Project, Austin Energy has two grid-scale energy storage installations, commercial scale batteries, homes in its territory that pair solar panels and smart inverters with energy storage batteries, and this V2G component. All of these resources are being controlled through a centralized optimization platform.

“Our goal is maximizing the value of distributed energy resources, and electric vehicles could eventually be a large component of that,” Freberg said. “To achieve that you can start stacking multiple value streams.” Having a fleet of V2G electric vehicles “opens up a whole myriad of resources that we can derive value from,” he said.

Austin Energy has identified as many as 19 possible value streams associated with energy storage and actively investigated six of those streams through the Austin SHINES Project. One possibility would be to have vehicles connected to a commercial building. Austin Energy could then have the ability to dispatch the energy in those vehicles to make sure the commercial customer’s load does not go over a certain level and, therefore, reduces demand charges.

In addition to reducing customer demand charges, some of the use cases Austin Energy is exploring include the use of energy storage to reduce peak load, providing voltage support, and arbitrage energy between times of high demand and high prices and periods of low demand and low prices.

To learn more about the Austin Energy SHINES Project, visit austinenergy.com/go/shines.

California

In California, regulators and public power utilities are also taking steps related to V2G.

The Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) is actively looking at V2G technology, noted SMUD spokesperson Lindsay VanLaningham.

SMUD is partnering with one of the local school districts to test the ability of electric school bus V2G technology to improve customer bill savings, reduce the need for electrical infrastructure (customer panels and service size), consume more renewable energy or lower cost energy, and provide ad hoc charging support such as for field trips. 

Twin Rivers Unified School District (TRUSD) expects to have 59 e-buses and up to 12 V2G charging stations capable of exporting energy back to the grid, in operation by the end of 2021. SMUD is currently working with TRUSD on interconnection requirements and their aggregator for how to schedule dispatch by SMUD. SMUD plans to start testing V2G dispatch capability at the site in the fourth quarter, as soon as the V2G charging stations are operational.  

“Fortunately for this segment, electric school bus manufacturers are providing warrantied support for V2G functionality.  The V2G market is in early stages as the interconnection safety standards for some of the technology is in draft form,” VanLaningham said.

“This initial testing project and lessons learned will pave the way for SMUD to possibly expand to a pilot program for other school districts.  Over the coming years, we expect vehicle manufacturers to build similar technology into other vehicle segments such as residential light duty electric vehicles or other commercial medium/heavy duty segments,” she said.

On the regulatory front, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in December approved a decision that adopts strategies, metrics, and near-term objectives to encourage vehicle grid integration and furthers the integration of EVs as an energy resource that can help meet grid needs.

The decision adopted recommendations from a CPUC vehicle grid integration working group and directed utility engagement on interconnection and rate reform, pilot programs, including the use of vehicle grid integration for resiliency purposes, such as using EVs as emergency backup power for buildings during wildfire-related utility Public Safety Power Shutoffs, and more.

The CPUC said the decision prioritizes investments in low-income and disadvantaged communities with targeted pilot programs, higher incentives, and community engagement.

The proposal voted on by the CPUC is available here:  https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M355/K104/355104591.PDF.

New England and New York

VG2 is also being pursued on the other side of the country.

At the end of 2020, Vermont power company Green Mountain Power (GMP) said it had successfully deployed what it says is a first-of-its kind vehicle-to-grid charger to reduce energy use on the grid during peak demand.

GMP installed a bi-directional Fermata electric vehicle charger at its Colchester, Vt. office in October. The charger is now drawing energy from the company’s 2019 Nissan Leaf during energy peaks.

In New York State, investor-owned Con Edison in December said that it has begun using the batteries on five electric school buses to provide power to its customers, marking the first time that electricity has flowed from buses into a utility’s grid in the state.

Con Edison and its partners have begun sending power from the batteries into its grid, a milestone in a demonstration project Con Edison began in 2018. The five buses can each discharge 10 kilowatts. For the five buses, that is 50 kilowatts or 50,000 watts.

While acknowledging that is a small amount of power for a utility grid with the capacity to serve millions of homes and businesses in Westchester County and New York City, the utility noted that the goal of the project is to explore the technological and economic potential of using e-school buses on a wider scale to improve air quality and grid reliability.

There are approximately 1,000 school buses operating in Westchester and 8,000 in New York City that could make a significant difference if converted to electric, Con Edison said.

The buses are manufactured by Lion Electric in North America with V2G technology.

Company receives certification for V2G EV charging system

In March 2020, global safety certification company UL announced that Fermata Energy’s bidirectional EV charging system was the first in the world to be certified to a new North American safety standard, UL 9741, the Standard for Bidirectional Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging System Equipment.

Fermata Energy states on its website that it designs, supplies and operates technology that integrates EVs with buildings and the electricity grid, “turning EVs into valuable storage assets that combat climate change, increase energy resilience, and reduce energy costs.”

The UL 9741 standard covers bidirectional electric vehicle charging equipment that charges electric vehicles from an electric power system and also includes functionality to export power from the electric vehicle to an electric power system.

In September 2020, Virtual Peaker and Fermata Energy announced a partnership to integrate Fermata Energy’s V2G technology with Virtual Peaker’s cloud-based residential energy demand response platform used by utilities across the country.

Studies examine value of V2G

In 2019, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released a study finding that utilities and ratepayers can derive substantial value from large-scale deployment of EVs equipped to transmit power to the grid.

Sunil Chhaya, the study’s project manager, noted in an EPRI Journal article that EPRI researchers developed models to calculate the value of V2G-capable vehicles for California’s distribution systems.

Chhaya noted that key insights on what could happen were:

Canada

More recently, Canadian non-profit organization Plug’n Drive in July 2020 released a report that it said demonstrated the economic value that EV batteries can provide to drivers and to Ontario’s electricity sector.

EV batteries can charge overnight when the demand for electricity is lowest and then supply electricity to the grid during the day when demand is highest. This vehicle to grid interaction “would help further reduce GHG emissions from Ontario’s already low emitting electricity grid, by lowering the demand for natural gas while reducing the need to build additional power plants, potentially reducing electricity prices for everyone,” the non-profit group said in a news release.

The report suggested that there could be as many as 18,555 EV drivers in Ontario participating in mobile storage programs by 2030, which could provide as much as 565 megawatt hours of electricity per day.

According to the report, Ontario’s electricity system could realize a total of $129 million in benefits per year from EV batteries while EV owners could earn as much as $19,000 over the course of their car’s life.

And, in January, the Government of Canada announced an investment to help Nova Scotia Power establish cost-effective energy solutions for an EV smart grid-integrated system.

The pilot project will demonstrate and assess smart charging EV solutions and technologies for the potential to make more efficient use of renewable power sources and reduce the demand on current electricity infrastructure, such as power lines, according to Natural Resources Canada.

“The technologies will enable EVs to store and discharge electricity during peak times to ease pressure on the grid. The project will also recruit up to 200 participants to help inform the demonstration,” Natural Resources Canada said in a news release.

New report offers regulatory roadmap for vehicle-to-grid integration

Seeking to avert an expected EV-driven 10-20 gigawatt increase in peak load across the U.S., a report from the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) released on Jan. 12 outlines how regulators can facilitate vehicle-grid-integration (VGI) development and deployment in their states to help manage EV impacts on the distribution grid.

Intended for regulators, staff, and utilities pursuing VGI deployment and approval, the report describes VGI and why it is important, how regulators are key to unlocking VGI, and the goals of a VGI roadmap and how to develop one.

Drawing upon utility survey data and analysis of VGI-related utility filings, the report’s authors stress that regulators are important to enabling appropriate VGI investments and providing guidance and incentives to utilities to experiment and test use cases, deploy technology solutions, and solve problems related to standards and interoperability.

Key findings include, among other things:

APPA resources

The American Public Power Association offers a wide variety of resources related to electric vehicles.

Those resources include the following reports:

APPA also provides an EV activities tracker to its members. The tracker summarizes key efforts undertaken by members including incentives, electric vehicle deployment, charging infrastructure investments, rate design, pilot programs, and more.

FlexGen, Kansas Power Pool partner on energy storage project

February 1, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 1, 2021

Energy storage company FlexGen on Jan. 27 announced that it is partnering with the Kansas Power Pool (KPP) to design, build and operate the Solomon Energy Storage Center in Minneapolis, Kansas.

When commissioned at the end of the year, the Solomon Energy Storage Center will deliver a total of 1 MW of power.

The FlexGen battery system also includes a “black start” capability if the grid goes offline. “Black start” is often compared to jumpstarting a car, where the FlexGen battery system provides the power needed to jumpstart backup generators that put more power onto the grid, FlexGen noted.

“The Solomon Energy Storage Center is another example of KPP delivering on its mission to provide cost-effective and reliable public power and services for our community of members,” said Mark Chesney, KPP’s CEO and General Manager, in a statement. “We are pleased to work with FlexGen on this important project that will add resiliency and reduce costs.”

Kelson Energy is providing project development, market analytics and implementation support to KPP on the project.

Sized at 5.1 MWh, the Solomon Energy Storage Center will be the largest battery project in Kansas, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.

The battery system operates on FlexGen’s energy management software platform, FlexGen HybridOS, which FlexGen said enables the seamless export of power onto the grid when it is most needed — during times of peak demand or when weather disrupts the grid. During off-peak times the battery storage systems will charge when power prices are lower.

KPP is a member-driven public power organization which procures energy and transmission service for community-owned electric utilities across Kansas.   

The American Public Power Association has developed a Public Power Energy Storage Tracker that is a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.

Biden signs executive order aimed at addressing climate change

January 28, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 28, 2021

President Joe Biden on Jan. 27 signed an executive order aimed at addressing climate change that consists of two major parts, with the first part addressing foreign policy and national security and the second part focused on a domestic “government-wide” approach.

The executive order establishes the roles and responsibilities of both the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, focused on international activities, and the National Climate Advisor, focused on domestic efforts.

It also creates a National Climate Task Force comprised of cabinet members and agency leaders. Those leaders will be tasked with, among other things, creating a federal clean electricity and vehicle procurement strategy that will use as available procurement authorities to achieve or facilitate “a carbon pollution-free electricity section no later than 2035” and “clean and zero-emission vehicles for Federal, State, local, and Tribal government fleets.”

The executive order also states that it is the policy of the Biden administration to “align the management of the Federal procurement and real property, public lands and waters, and financial programs to support robust climate action.”

In addition, it directs the task force to increase renewable energy production on federal lands and waters with a goal of doubling offshore wind by 2030.

The executive order also requires the Office of Management and Budget director, along with the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, to take steps to “ensure that federal infrastructure investment reduces climate pollution and to require federal permitting decisions consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.”

It also tasks them with identifying steps that can be taken to “accelerate the deployment of clean energy and transmission projects in an environmentally stable manner.”

It also creates an Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization tasked with coordinating and delivering federal resources to revitalize the economies of communities with coal, oil, and gas power plants.

In addition, the executive order creates an Environmental Justice Interagency Council representing several federal agencies to “address current and historic environmental injustice.”

The executive order is available here.

In remarks made on Jan. 27, Biden said that already, 84 percent of all new electric capacity planned to come onto the electric grid this is year is clean energy. 

“Clean energy. Why?  Because it’s affordable. Because it’s clean. Because, in many cases, it’s cheaper,” he said. 

“We’re going to need scientists, the national labs, land-grant universities, historical black colleges and universities to innovate the technologies needed to generate, store, and transmit clean electric — clean electricity across distances, and battery technology, and a whole range of other things,” he said.

Biden on Jan. 20 recommitted the U.S. to the Paris Climate Agreement.

HUD issues guidance on using community development block grant coronavirus funds

January 28, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 28, 2021

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently issued guidance on using community development block grant coronavirus funds for emergency customer payments to a public power utility.

The guidance comes in part because of public power utility inquiries about such payments and the disparate responses they were receiving from HUD regional offices.

At issue is an underlying rule that community development block grant coronavirus funds need to be spent on new programs, not existing ones.

HUD has taken the position that a public power utility is a “program” of the city in which it operates and, so, customer payment relief for this “existing” program would not be allowed.

While the HUD guidance appears to provide a clear path to using funds to help public power utility customers, it also retains some of the initial concerns for a utility that cannot distinguish itself from the city.

Specifically, the guidance states if the grantee “operates a public utility that is not budgeted or accounted for in a separate fund, the grantee is strongly advised to discuss options with its assigned HUD field office.”

$25 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program

 Meanwhile, the National Energy and Utility and Affordability Coalition (NEUAC) and National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association recently held a webinar on providing an overview of, and recommendations for, using the $25 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program to provide utility assistance.

The American Public Power Association is a member of NEUAC and ex officio member of the NEUAC board.

APPA believes that the bulk of program funds will likely go to rental assistance, rather than utilities, but is also strongly encouraging members to reach out to cities and counties eligible to receive a direct allocation of these funds to make known the needs of the utilities’ residential renting customer for utility assistance.

A recording of the event, slides from the event, and a detailed Q&A document can all be found on NEUAC’s website here.

NYPA board approves plan to cut rates for county governmental customers

January 27, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 27, 2021

The New York Power Authority Board of Trustees has approved a proposal to cut electric rates by $780,000 for the Power Authority’s Westchester governmental customers, which include the county, towns, villages, cities, schools and housing authorities.

The more than three percent decrease is the result of expected declines in market energy prices and it will be effective with January 2021 electric bills, NYPA said on Jan. 27.

NYPA noted that it works with its customers to obtain power supplies from NYPA generating plants and arrange economical power purchases from the wholesale energy market. NYPA generation, contracted generation and power purchases save customers millions of dollars a year on electric bills compared to the cost of securing power from local utilities, it said.

NYPA also partners with governmental customers on major energy efficiency and clean-energy initiatives to lower their power bills and operating costs.

Since 2019, NYPA has completed energy efficiency projects with Westchester governmental customers for an installed cost of more than $25.8 million. The upgrades will also reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by about 4,700 tons, the equivalent of removing nearly 3,400 cars from the road.