Skip Navigation

Ditto, Sargent named to GridWise Alliance advisory council formed to support call for investments in power system

May 12, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 12, 2021

Joy Ditto, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA), and Jackie Sargent, general manager of Texas public power utility Austin Energy, have been named to a GridWise Alliance Grid Infrastructure Advisory Council (GIAC) to support the alliance’s call for at least $50 billion in federal spending to modernize the nation’s electric power transmission and distribution systems.

Formation of the 30-member council was announced by GridWise Alliance Board Chair Gil Quiniones on April 26. Quiniones, who is President and CEO of the New York Power Authority, will lead the GIAC.

After the announcement regarding the formation of the GIAC, the White House recognized the launch of the council in a Fact Sheet on the Biden Administration’s plan to advance the expansion and modernization of the electric grid.

“GridWise Alliance’s new Advisory Council will be a vital asset as we work to build support in Congress and throughout the country for grid modernization and for President Biden’s ambitious and potentially historic infrastructure plan—the ‘American Jobs Plan,’” Quiniones said in a statement.

He noted that the council includes leaders from the electric utility industry, environmental groups, labor unions and other interested parties in the public and private sectors.  “It is diverse, but also united in its firm belief that the power grid must be significantly upgraded,” Quiniones said.

The GridWise Alliance praised the Biden Administration on the infrastructure plan’s proposed $100 billion investment in upgrading the electricity grid and promoting clean energy and $50 billion for resilient infrastructure, Quiniones said.

He noted that this complements the Alliance’s Grid Investments for Economic Recovery initiative, launched earlier this year, which focuses more specifically on urging a $50 billion federal investment in modernizing and upgrading the transmission and distribution networks.

The purpose of Ditto’s participation is to ensure public power is well represented on the group.

“A reliable power supply depends upon having a robust and modern transmission and distribution system,” said Ditto. “I am honored to be able to serve as a voice for public power on GridWise Alliance’s Advisory Council, and I look forward to working with my fellow council members,” she said.   

“I am honored to have been asked to serve on the Grid Infrastructure Advisory Council,” said Jackie Sargent, Austin Energy General Manager. “This is an important and exciting challenge and I am looking forward to working with this diverse group to reimagine our electric grid.”   

The GIAC and GridWise Alliance will work collaboratively with the Biden Administration to define areas where investment in the electric grid would be most beneficial to the economy and the communities in most need, a GridWise Alliance news release noted. The council will amplify the best practices of alliance members, put a spotlight on key policy and appropriations recommendations and utilize its utility executives, grid equipment manufacturers, and vendor members to advocate funding for grid modernization.

The GridWise Alliance represents stakeholders that design, build, and operate the electric grid.

Colorado Springs Utilities to join Southwest Power Pool’s Western Energy Imbalance Service Market

May 12, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 12, 2021

Public power utility Colorado Springs Utilities on May 12 said it will join Southwest Power Pool’s (SPP) Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) Market in April 2022 and join other western utilities in evaluating membership in SPP’s regional transmission organization (RTO).

“Our current portfolio of solar compliments SPP well,” said Colorado Springs Utilities CEO Aram Benyamin in a statement. “We expect to save customers money by optimizing the dispatch of different utilities’ generating resources within each hour of the day. Our employees will also benefit from increased market intelligence, better integration of our new solar projects and being one step closer to meeting our clean energy goals.”

In June 2020, the Colorado Springs Utilities Board approved a new sustainable energy plan, which calls for Colorado Springs Utilities to reduce carbon emissions at least 80% by 2030 and 90% by 2050. Additionally, the plan increases renewable energy and incorporates storage resources. It benefits customers by maintaining competitive and affordable rates and advances energy efficiency, the utility notes.

SPP launched its WEIS market Feb. 1, 2021. The wholesale electricity market balances regional supply and demand of electricity in real-time. Colorado Springs Utilities will join eight other western utilities already participating in the WEIS.

SPP is already coordinating an effort by several western utilities — all current participants in the WEIS market — that are evaluating membership in its RTO, and Colorado Springs Utilities will join this effort too.

While SPP administers the WEIS market on a contract basis to non-members, it provides RTO members an entire suite of valuable services including market administration, transmission planning, reliability coordination and more. A recent SPP-Brattle study estimated the WEIS participants’ move to RTO membership would produce $49 million in benefits and those would grow with additional western members.

Colorado Springs Utilities plans to work with the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), a current SPP WEIS participant, to act as its balancing authority.

A balancing authority is required to enter WEIS as they are responsible for operating a transmission control area. They match generation with load and maintain consistent electric frequency to the grid, even during extreme weather conditions or natural disasters.

The evaluation of membership is expected to conclude in early 2022, with the terms and start dates of any interested parties’ membership agreement to be announced then.

WAPA’s Colorado River Storage Project to explore membership in SPP

SPP recently received a letter from WAPA’s Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) expressing interest in evaluating membership in the organization.

In November 2020, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and WAPA’s Upper Great Plains-West and Loveland Area Projects notified SPP of their intent to evaluate membership in the RTO.

The entities’ letters indicate they will work with SPP to evaluate the terms, costs and benefits of putting western facilities under the RTO’s tariff.

Glenwood Springs and Aspen in Colorado ramp up plans for EV charging stations

May 11, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
May 11, 2021

The Colorado communities of Glenwood Springs and Aspen are collaborating to increase the number of charging stations needed in their region to support the growth of light and heavy duty electric vehicles.

The collaboration includes a focused effort to be more strategic in advancing EV charging infrastructure in their communities.

“Being a local hub for the Western Slope [of the Rocky Mountains], we feel it’s important to be able to provide appropriate numbers of charging stations along with the private stations that are available to the public,” Matt Langhorst, public works director for Glenwood Springs, said in a statement. “We see the future of electric vehicles coming and plan to be prepared for it.”

Last year, Glenwood Springs added three dual cord, Level-2 ChargePoint stations and a similar unit in a downtown parking garage. There are also several publicly available private charging stations such as Tesla stations close to Interstate 70.

In the near future, Glenwood Springs intends to increase its level of collaboration with Aspen, which is in the process of developing an electric vehicle infrastructure masterplan that would serve as a blueprint for Aspen’s public charging stations over the next five years. The plan would provide recommendations on where, when and how Aspen should install public charging stations and how it should manage its existing stations. The plan would address policy issues such as when to begin paid charging and how rates might compare across the regional charging network.

Aspen currently owns and operates eight publicly available electric vehicle charging stations, six of which are dual cord, Level-2 ChargePoint stations and two are direct current fast charging stations that serve one vehicle at a time. The city also operates several Level 2 charging stations for its administrative fleet of light duty electric vehicles.

There are also eight electric buses that operate within Aspen and in the 70-mile stretch between Aspen and Glenwood Springs as part of the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority’s (RFTA) Battery Electric Bus (BEB) Pilot Project.

RFTA, based in Aspen and Glenwood Springs, integrated electric buses into its fleet of 120 buses in 2019. The buses use Level 2 chargers to replenish their batteries overnight to take advantage of lower off-peak rates. Overall charging time for the buses is approximately three to four hours.

Langhorst said he hopes Aspen’s EV Infrastructure Masterplan will serve as a guide and a tool for other regional stakeholders with electrification plans.

Aspen and Glenwood Springs were among the first communities in the United States to achieve their individual 100 percent renewable energy goals. Aspen reached that goal in 2015, Glenwood Springs in 2019.

Aspen and Glenwood Springs are members of NMPP Energy and the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska, the wholesale power supply organization of NMPP Energy, based in Lincoln, Neb.

The Nebraska Municipal Power Pool (NMPP), part of NMPP Energy, provides a variety of energy and management services to nearly 200 member municipalities in six Midwest and Rocky Mountain states.

TVA, Kairos Power to collaborate on low-power demonstration reactor

May 11, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 11, 2021

The Tennessee Valley Authority and Kairos Power recently announced plans to collaborate on deploying a low-power demonstration reactor at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

As part of this agreement, TVA will provide engineering, operations, and licensing support to help Kairos Power deploy its low-power demonstration reactor, named Hermes, TVA noted on May 6.

California-based Kairos Power states on its website that its fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactor is a novel advanced reactor technology that aims to be cost competitive with natural gas in the U.S. electricity market and to provide a long-term reduction in cost.

Kairos Power has chosen Albuquerque, N.M., as its home for a new engineering center to support the development of its advanced reactor technology. The facility will be located in Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol master-planned community in an existing building on 32 acres of land for future expansion.

Jeff Lyash, President and CEO of TVA, discusses the Kairos Power news in an upcoming episode of the American Public Power Association’s Public Power Now podcast. Click here on Monday, May 17 to access the podcast episode.

TVA generates more than 40% of its electricity from nuclear power and has the third largest nuclear fleet in the U.S. 

In April 2020 it was disclosed that the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley Authority had signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate the development of a new generation of cost-effective, advanced nuclear reactors, such as small modular reactors, at TVA’s 935-acre Clinch River Nuclear Site in Roane County.

TVA signed a similar agreement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in February 2020 to explore advanced reactor designs as a next-generation nuclear technology with potential for improved safety and increased flexibility.

Biden Administration approves first major offshore wind project in U.S. waters

May 11, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 11, 2021

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on May 11 announced the approval of the construction and operation of the Vineyard Wind project, the first large-scale, offshore wind project in the U.S.

The 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind energy project, which will contribute to the Biden Administration’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of energy from offshore wind by 2030, will be located approximately 12 nautical miles offshore Martha’s Vineyard and 12 nautical miles offshore Nantucket in the northern portion of Vineyard Wind’s lease area.  

The May 11 Record of Decision (ROD) grants Vineyard Wind final federal approval to install 84 or fewer turbines off Massachusetts as part of an offshore wind energy facility.

According to the ROD for the project, the project would deliver power to the New England energy grid to contribute to Massachusetts’s renewable energy requirements—particularly, the Commonwealth’s mandate that distribution companies (IOUs) jointly and competitively solicit proposals for offshore wind energy generation.

The ROD is jointly signed by and addresses permitting decisions by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Marine Fisheries Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Prior to construction, Vineyard Wind must submit a facility design report and a fabrication and installation report. These engineering and technical reports provide specific details for how the facility will be fabricated and installed in accordance with the approved construction and operations plan.

In addition to the May 11 announcement, since January 20, the Department has initiated the environmental review of two other offshore wind projects, and pursued additional leasing opportunities in the New York Bight.

The Departments of Interior, Energy and Commerce on March 29 announced a shared goal to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030.

At a White House forum, Interior announced the final Wind Energy Areas (WEA) in the New York Bight, an area of shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.

The goal of the Department’s area identification process is to identify the offshore locations that appear most suitable for wind energy development, taking into consideration coexistence with ocean users, Interior noted.

The WEAs are adjacent to the greater metropolitan Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Interior’s BOEM has identified nearly 800,000 acres as WEAs in the New York Bight. The BOEM will initiate an environmental review, with public input, on these areas in federal waters for potential offshore wind leasing.

In addition, Interior in March 2021 said it was initiating an environmental review of the third commercial scale offshore wind project by announcing a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for Ocean Wind LLC’s proposed project offshore New Jersey.

Ocean Wind has proposed an offshore wind project with a total capacity of 1,100 MW.

 N.Y. stakeholders, including LIPA, adopt plan for power line for offshore wind farm

A group composed of the New York State Public Service Commission and more than a dozen stakeholders, including the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), recently agreed to and adopted a plan to build a transmission line that would link a proposed offshore wind farm to the state’s power grid.

In a recent episode of Public Power Now, Tom Falcone, CEO of LIPA, discussed offshore wind.

In August 2019, the New York Power Authority shared key results from a study of European offshore wind transmission models that will help guide New York State as it moves aggressively towards its offshore wind goal by and inform regional and national offshore wind development.

TVA Board of Directors approves move to establish series of decarbonization milestones

May 10, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 10, 2021

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Board of Directors on May 6 approved a resolution that endorses a document establishing a series of decarbonization milestones over the next three decades for TVA.

At its quarterly business meeting, the TVA board approved a resolution endorsing TVA’s Strategic Intent and Guiding Principles.

TVA said that by 2030, it will focus on growing its current 63% carbon reduction to 70% by:

Specific plans to achieve this milestone, including any decisions affecting existing or new facilities, will be developed over the coming months and will include detailed environmental assessments that will seek public input before any actions are taken, TVA said.

TVA said it has a path to an 80% reduction by 2035 with up to 10,000 MW of solar capacity online and continued investment in extending the lives of its current nuclear and hydro fleets, as well as the integrated systems needed to support the energy system of the future, while moving toward an aspirational goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

TVA noted that since 2005, it has reduced carbon emissions by 63% primarily through the creation of a diverse generation portfolio, which includes adding 1,600 MW of new nuclear capacity, an additional 1,600 MW of wind and solar capacity, retiring 8,600 MW of coal capacity that was at the end of its useful life by the end of 2023 and investing more than $400 million to promote energy efficiency.

Key U.S. energy pipeline company hit by ransomware attack

May 9, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 9, 2021

Colonial Pipeline on May 7 learned it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack and it has since determined that this incident involves ransomware.

“In response, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems,” the company said on May 8 in a statement.

“Upon learning of the issue, a leading, third-party cybersecurity firm was engaged, and they have launched an investigation into the nature and scope of this incident, which is ongoing. We have contacted law enforcement and other federal agencies,” Colonial Pipeline said.

Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline said it is taking steps to understand and resolve this issue.

Colonial Pipeline is the largest refined products pipeline in the United States, transporting more than 100 million gallons of fuel daily to meet the energy needs of consumers from Houston, Texas to the New York Harbor.

The company transports 2.5 million barrels per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products through 5,500 miles of pipelines linking refiners on the Gulf Coast to the eastern and southern United States, Reuters noted in a story about the attack.

“At this time, our primary focus is the safe and efficient restoration of our service and our efforts to return to normal operation. This process is already underway, and we are working diligently to address this matter and to minimize disruption to our customers and those who rely on Colonial Pipeline,” Colonial Pipeline said in the statement.

Over the past 48 hours, Colonial Pipeline personnel have taken additional precautionary measures to help further monitor and protect the safety and security of its pipeline, it said on Sunday, May 9.

“The Colonial Pipeline operations team is developing a system restart plan. While our mainlines (Lines 1, 2, 3 and 4) remain offline, some smaller lateral lines between terminals and delivery points are now operational. We are in the process of restoring service to other laterals and will bring our full system back online only when we believe it is safe to do so, and in full compliance with the approval of all federal regulations,” it said.

Biden declares emergency

The White House declared a state of emergency on Sunday tied to the ransomware cyberattack, the BBC reported. The emergency status enables fuel to be transported by road, the BBC said.

A number of media outlets reported that the attack was carried out by DarkSide. “The cyberextortion attempt that has forced the shutdown of a vital U.S. pipeline was carried out by a criminal gang known as DarkSide that cultivates a Robin Hood image of stealing from corporations and giving a cut to charity, two people close to the investigation said Sunday,” the Christian Science Monitor reported.

On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary Gina Raimondo on May 9, said that “This is what businesses now have to worry about, and I will be working very closely with Ali Mayorkas on this. It’s a top priority for the administration. Unfortunately, these sorts of attacks are becoming more frequent,” she said. “They’re here to stay and we have to work in partnership with businesses” to secure networks, “to defend ourselves against these attacks. As it relates to Colonial, the president was briefed yesterday. It’s an all hands on deck effort right now. And we are working closely with the company, state and local officials to, you know, make sure that they get back up to normal operations as quickly as possible and there aren’t disruptions in supply.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “is monitoring the ransomware incident affecting Colonial Pipeline. Every organization must be vigilant and strengthen its cybersecurity posture against ransomware and other types of cyber-attacks,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS Secretary, said in a May 8 tweet.

“We are engaged with the company and our interagency partners regarding the situation. This underscores the threat that ransomware poses to organizations regardless of size or sector. We encourage every organization to take action to strengthen their cybersecurity posture to reduce their exposure to these types of threats,” said Eric Goldstein, Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the DHS.

“This incident highlights that ransomware continues to be a significant issue facing all critical infrastructure sectors. While this incident did not involve an electric utility, the relevance to the electricity subsector cannot be understated,” said Sam Rozenberg, Senior Director of Security and Resilience at the American Public Power Association.

Ransomware is a very familiar threat to the public power segment of the industry and APPA held a webinar on April 21st of this year, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The slide deck and the recording can be accessed here. Additionally, the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) in February of this year released a report labeled Ransomware Trends for Utilities and APPA encourages public power utilities to review this resource.

APPA continues to stress the importance of public power utilities joining the E-ISAC for timely and actionable sharing of threats to the electricity subsector. To learn more about the E-ISAC and how to join, visit the E-ISAC website or contact E-ISAC Member Services.

Any questions can be directed to: cybersecurity@publicpower.org.

Salt River Project consolidates testing functions with new innovation lab

May 8, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
May 8, 2021

Arizona public power utility Salt River Project (SRP) recently began operation of its new utility innovation testing laboratory.

The 5,400 square foot Technology Innovation Lab in Scottsdale, Ariz., provides space for SRP employees and contractors working in a variety of functions across the public power utility, including telecommunications; distribution integration; distribution operations; protection, automation and control; power delivery engineering; and power delivery technology services.

“The lab will support the day-to-day activities of these teams as well as longer term testing, proof of concept, and vendor evaluation efforts of new software and hardware solutions to see firsthand how these will work in an isolated environment before fully deploying across SRP’s system,” Tait Willis, director of protection, automation and control at SRP, said in a statement.

The new lab consolidates the lab space that SRP already had. The utility used to have six labs. It now has three. Four of the former labs are now housed in the new lab and two labs – one for customer programs for things such as smart thermostats, the other tests metering technologies– remain at separate locations, though they are being connected to the new lab so they can participate in tests that better replicate the breadth of the utility’s operations.

There was some discussion about bringing all the labs under one roof but limiting the scope of the project made the costs more manageable, Kyle Cormier, director of telecommunications systems at SRP, said. In the past, many of those labs were siloed; now “the new lab provides a more cohesive space for testing and training.”

The new lab also has a small classroom space where vendors and SRP teams can conduct training sessions with engineers and technicians. “Training is a huge area of focus for this lab space,” Willis said. SRP’s engineers and technicians needed “a central space where employees can come to learn maintenance and commissioning practices in a safe environment.”

The idea of creating a single lab for the whole utility had been under discussion at SRP for nearly a decade, but the concept really came together about three or four years ago when SRP hired a consultant to conduct a cyber penetration test. It turned out it was hard to run a useful version of the test because the representations of the utility’s system at the various labs were not consistent.

Instead of testing the robustness of the utility’s cyber security measures, the test showed that the various labs did not accurately reflect the reality of the utility’s system, Cormier said. It became apparent that the utility needed to have “more integration to do end-to-end testing that can look at the system as a whole.”

After about two years of planning, construction of the Technology Innovation Lab began in December of 2019, and it began operation in April 2021.

SRP’s protection, automation, and control department is one of the departments that has already started using the lab’s capabilities. In collaboration with Intel and other utilities, SRP’s team is in the early stages of running tests to evaluate the benefits of virtualizing substation systems.

In the past, substation controls were mostly electro-mechanical with different functions controlled by separate computers. In that configuration, adding a relay to a substation requires a lot of rewiring and physical integration.

If those functions can be virtualized, that is, replicated using software instead of adding another box with dedicated controls to the substation, the utility would be able to perform the same function by adding a new application.

From SRP’s perspective, a virtualized solution would help standardize substation hardware, consolidate and centralize functionality, improve employee safety, and reduce capital investment, as well as operation and maintenance costs.

SRP’s telecom engineering department is using the lab to test firmware for Field Area Network (FAN) Tier 2 radios as a way of improving two-way communications for connected devices. The tests are designed to help determine if new firmware solutions improve communication with SRP’s devices in hard-to-reach areas.

“Right now, we can send information to the device, but we don’t get anything back,” Cormier said. “Two-way communications would yield more information about temperatures and voltage levels and more insight into basic power qualities, which will be helpful as we integrate more renewables into our system.”

Another huge benefit is being better able to test new equipment, Cormier said. Just because a manufacturer’s equipment meets industry standards does not mean it will work well with other components. The Technology Innovation Lab gives SRP the ability to run “end-to-end tests” on new equipment in a more realistic and holistic way, he said.

Power sector explores ways in which to leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning

May 7, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 7, 2021

The electric power sector is increasingly looking for ways in which to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for its systems as the industry undergoes a digital transformation.

On March 18, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) convened a roundtable that looked at AI and the power sector.

EPRI is leading a collaborative effort (AI.EPRI) between the electric power and AI industries. To kick off a 2021 community-building event series, EPRI hosted the virtual roundtable with executives in both industries.

Arshad Mansoor, President and CEO of EPRI, said “We’re starting a decade where the full digital transformation of how we generate, how we distribute, how we use electricity is going to happen.”

AI “will play a huge role in that digital transformation,” Mansoor said during the roundtable. “The reason this is the decade to seize on is the technology advancement that has happened just in the last five years.”

The use cases for AI are huge, he said. “There are a lot of entities – data companies, universities, technology providers – who are working with our members to shape this future.”

When asked by Heather Feldman Director for R&D at EPRI, to discuss AI use cases in the power sector, Bhavani Amirthalingam, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer at Missouri-based investor-owned utility Ameren, mentioned asset health.

“Being able to do predictive, preventative maintenance, condition-based maintenance on key assets I think is a fantastic use case,” Amirthalingam said. “It’s great for customers from a reliability standpoint. It’s great for customers from an affordability standpoint.”

Another roundtable participant, Arun Majumdar, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, said that “it’s important to point out that the people who are focused on data do not always understand the issues related to the electricity industry and vice versa.”

Majumdar also said that “there are security issues with this, there are privacy issues with this. There needs to be anonymized data sets that could be used and this needs to be at scale and the scalability of organizing data and making it useful is something that the information industry understands very, very well. They have techniques that the electricity industry does not have.”

“I think the topic of data is really very central to how you make AI useful,” said Jatinder Singh, Vice-President, Digital and Data Transformation at Texas public power utility CPS Energy.

“Even if I have data, even if all of us have data, do we have the right tools and talent to do something with that data?” If not, this is one way that data sharing can help, he said.

In a Q&A with the American Public Power Association’s Public Power Current newsletter, Singh noted that he is responsible for developing strategy and multi-year roadmaps for digital capabilities that will elevate customer and employee experiences.

“The roadmap will transform our technological capabilities and the way we work – from technology projects to digital products – from waterfall to agile. In parallel to the digital transformation is the transformation of our data eco-system and governance that will allow us to capitalize on the promising newer emerging technologies,” he said.

Singh was also asked whether there are any projects currently underway at CPS Energy that involve the application of artificial intelligence to the utility’s power system.

“There are several examples of where our teams are currently leveraging machine learning to improve management insights into operations,” he noted.

“The teams are leveraging several data sources for outage prediction for seasonal weather patterns to reduce potential outage duration for customers and engage in preventative maintenance.”

For San Antonio’s wide load forecasting, the team is leveraging machine learning for better demand management. And for vegetation management, the team is at the early stage of leveraging LiDAR and GIS data combined with machine learning to be more effective and efficient in addressing potential vegetation related outages. The team is also leveraging machine learning on AMI data to solve several asset management, maintenance, and demand management use cases, he said.

Meanwhile, Singh elaborated on what he sees as the long-term benefits that the power industry could derive from the use of AI.

“There are at least four areas where I see opportunities for artificial intelligence (AI) to potentially provide meaningful benefits for the energy industry,” he said.

 One is asset management. “By leveraging image recognition and data such as GIS and LiDAR, AI will dramatically improve the industry’s efficiency to manage sprawling transmission and distribution assets, which are the highways through which our services are made available to our consumers,” Singh said.

Another benefit is in customer service, he said. Through natural language processing and voice recognition, the industry “can provide personalized, relevant, and convenient access to information and services to new and existing customers in their language and at the time of their preference,” he said.

There could be opportunities to explore how AI could help improve the efficiencies with renewable energy by combining weather data and mechanical devices that will maximize renewable energy generation from solar panels and wind turbines, he said.

Singh also mentioned new solutions. The industry “could generate new revenue sources through services and products, powered by data and AI, that will allow customers to reduce their carbon footprint and power their increasingly electrified lives.”

CPS Energy “is taking a test and learn approach towards several use cases in the above categories. However, there are some potential use cases that we haven’t yet envisioned that are becoming more apparent as the technology and its usage gain maturity within the energy and other industries. We will continue to explore those new opportunities to leverage AI as they present themselves.”

SRP

In 2019, Arizona public power utility Salt River Project (SRP) signed a deal to use AI to improve its information technology (IT) operations. The Phoenix-based public power utility adopted ScienceLogic’s SL1 platform to monitor its IT operations and applications.

In a Q&A with Public Power Current, Joe Kosmal, manager of data center operations at SRP, said that SRP completed phase one of the ScienceLogic implementation in July 2020, which was a value-added replacement of SRP’s legacy IT operations platform. 

“We are currently well into our phase two project which includes the advanced capabilities to assess the health, availability, and risk to applications and systems that serve critical business processes in the enterprise,” he said.

Kosmal was asked to discuss how ScienceLogic’s platform has improved SRP’s IT operations since its implementation.

“Since implementation, ScienceLogic has helped us regularly identify issues before they caused impact to the reliability and resiliency of our IT systems,” he said. “This has helped mature our IT operations from reactive monitoring and escalations to proactive monitoring that fosters a stronger partnership with application and system support teams in the organization.”

When asked whether SRP is considering deploying AI in any other parts of its operations beyond IT, he said SRP is exploring use cases for AI in different areas of the utility and evaluating how those capabilities can improve operations and better serve SRP customers.

NYPA

Meanwhile, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) has been awarded two $125,000 grants from the American Public Power Association’s Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments (DEED) program to fund demonstration projects that will analyze the impact of ice on a hydropower plant and test an advanced technology that evaluates the health of high voltage assets in a substation.

The DEED program funds research, pilot projects and educational programs to improve the operations and services of public power utilities. 

NYPA will undertake the following projects:

Analyze the Impact of Ice on Hydro Power Resources with Machine Learning: NYPA has had significant power generation losses due to ice blockages near intake valves in the Niagara River and has worked to address the issue with industry groups and other utilities. During the winter, water can become supercooled all the way to the bottom of the river, leading to the formation of frazil ice crystals, anchor ice, or both. Anchor and frazil ice affects water availability estimation by Niagara River Control Center and frazil ice can affect hydropower plan operation since it’s “sticky” and can result in ice formation on the plant’s water turbines. These studies will include using 3-D sonar to quantify the impact of frazil ice on the efficiency of the hydropower units and forecasting the formation of anchor and frazil ice with a look ahead of a few days to a few weeks.

Smart Insulation Condition Monitoring System (CMS) for Substation Assets: A state-of-the-art Condition Monitoring System will be developed to constantly monitor the insulation condition of various high voltage assets (transformers, GIS, switchgears and cables) in a substation. The CMS consists of smart sensing, advanced noise mitigation and artificial intelligence for data interpretation. The system will use an advanced diagnostic technology that recognizes and evaluates defects and provides guidance for maintenance planning. The system will improve the power grid reliability, reduce customer outage costs, and help asset management optimize maintenance and maximize asset life.

NYPA deploys AI-based application

In 2018, NYPA selected C3 IoT to provide a software platform to help NYPA and the state implement and meet its energy efficiency targets.

Under a multi-year, software-as-a-service agreement, NYPA agreed to deploy C3 Energy Management, an AI-based application, as part of New York Energy Manager, NYPA’s advanced, secure energy management center, headquartered in Albany, N.Y. It provides public and private facility operators across New York State with timely data on energy use.

The C3 Energy Management application enables the New York Energy Manager program to aggregate enormous volumes of data, including real-time data from smart meters, building management systems, end-use equipment controls, sensors, weather data, occupancy and daylight data, solar data, and utility bills.

C3 IoT said the application would allow the New York Energy Manager program to employ machine learning at scale, generate insights about individual customers’ energy usage, and deliver personalized recommendations to help customers reduce their energy use.

The company said the software would also allow NYPA to offer its customers services such as building energy load forecasting, fault detection and diagnostics, continuous optimization of energy use, dynamic demand response, solar and energy storage monitoring, and aggregation and dispatch of buildings as distributed energy resources.

New York Energy Manager “is utilizing C3’s Energy Management application to help our customers reduce their energy costs, improve their building operations, and track and report their progress towards energy efficiency and sustainability targets,” said Paul DeMichele, Manager, Media Relations, at NYPA. The application gives New York Energy Manager advisors “visibility into customers’ energy use and expenditure, helps them identify and prioritize actions to reduce operational and energy-related costs, and reduce their carbon footprint.”

APPA receives patent tied to machine learning techniques

APPA recently received a patent related to protecting the ability of public power utilities to use machine learning techniques for advanced analytics and benchmarking to improve safety.

This is the third patent APPA has received in its work to help ensure that public power utilities have long-term access to advanced analytical technologies for business-related decision making.

While it is likely that utilities will increasingly use specialized machine learning techniques to predict and prevent outages and equipment failure, this application is focused on increasing the likelihood that maintenance actions are safe.

“Using machines to help us see patterns that aren’t obvious is a great role for technology and can help keep us safe,” said Alex Hofmann, Vice President, Technical and Operations Services, APPA.

“Through the system we have designed, our systems and workers will be able to take actions that are safer for a given situation. How many times has the weather drastically changed and line workers keep working without adjusting to the new risk, leading to injury?”

Though participation in APPA’s eSafety Tracker service, APPA is helping public power utilities work together to build and train machine learning models to predict the safety-related outcomes of planned future maintenance actions. 

Renewable energy and AI

Machine learning and AI are also being looked at for renewable energy projects.

Case Western Reserve University computer scientists and energy technology experts are partnering to leverage the diagnostic power of AI to make solar power plants more efficient, the Cleveland, Ohio-based university reported in January 2021.

The project aims to use computers to better analyze data from a large number of neighboring PV systems to help quantify their short- and long-term performance. Those machine-learning methods will be used to overcome data-quality issues affecting the individual plants.

The work, funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is part of a broad $130 million solar-technologies initiative announced by the DOE in 2020 including $7.3 million specifically for machine-learning solutions and other AI for solar applications, the university noted.

In 2018, DeepMind and Google started applying machine learning algorithms to 700 megawatts of wind power capacity in the central U.S. DeepMind is an AI firm and Google affiliate.

“Using a neural network trained on widely available weather forecasts and historical turbine data, we configured the DeepMind system to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation,” DeepMind noted in a 2019 blog. “Based on these predictions, our model recommends how to make optimal hourly delivery commitments to the power grid a full day in advance. This is important, because energy sources that can be scheduled (i.e. can deliver a set amount of electricity at a set time) are often more valuable to the grid,” DeepMind said in the February 2019 blog post.

“Although we continue to refine our algorithm, our use of machine learning across our wind farms has produced positive results. To date, machine learning has boosted the value of our wind energy by roughly 20 percent, compared to the baseline scenario of no time-based commitments to the grid,” it said.

LADWP official details wildfire mitigation efforts

May 7, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 7, 2021

Brian Wilbur, Senior Assistant General Manager, Power Systems, Construction, Maintenance, and Operations, at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, recently provided details on how the utility is taking steps to mitigate the threat of wildfires.

He made his comments while participating in a Wildfire Workshop and Technology Summit held by the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC).

Sam Rozenberg, Senior Director of Security and Resilience at the American Public Power Association (APPA), and Jack Cashin, Director, Policy Analysis and Reliability Standards, at APPA, moderated panels at the summit.

Wilbur noted that Los Angeles has a relatively small amount of High Fire Threat Area within its service territory when compared with other parts of the state (around 14%).

Addressing the topic of preventative maintenance, Wilbur said that LADWP has spent more than $3.9 billion over the last five years in rebuilding aging infrastructure, which has been a key step in mitigating hazards in high fire threat areas.

While noting that technology plays a role for LADWP, Wilbur said the “bang for our buck” remains replacing things like poles, cross arms, conductors, and transformers.

Cashin asked panelists to detail what is on their wish lists when it comes to the key piece for wildfire mitigation today and in the future.

“It’s not about getting the information but what you do with it when you get it,” Wilbur said. “We have all kinds of line sensors, relay equipment, what we’re doing with distribution automation, what we’re doing with our communication system, putting that all together gives us a ton of data, but it’s the analytics portion of that. It’s not only just warehousing the data once you get it but analyzing” it properly and getting your system to work together. “That’s our goal moving forward,” he said.

Wilbur said that “getting our communication system to tie in with SCADA, with our line sensors, with our relays, with all of that – we’re just getting that off the ground to where we’re starting to tie some of our systems together.”

Marty Adams, General Manager of LADWP, also discussed the utility’s wildfire mitigation efforts in a recent episode of APPA’s Public Power Now podcast.

The panel moderated by Rozenberg examined advancements and improvements in preparing for public safety power shutoffs (PSPS). Investor-owned utilities including Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2020 implemented public safety power shutoffs in response to elevated wildfire risks.

Along with Rozenberg and Cashin, Corry Marshall, APPA Senior Government Relations Director, moderated a panel on drones that included Dan Herrmann, regional manager for transmission at the New York Power Authority (NYPA).

Dan Beans, Electric Utility Director at California’s Redding Electric Utility, spoke on a community engagement panel, while Scott Corwin, executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association (NWPPA), moderated a panel on technologies.

Joy Ditto, President and CEO of APPA, also participated in the summit.

ESCC

The ESCC serves as the principal liaison between the federal government and the electric power industry on national level response issues such as pandemics. APPA President and CEO Joy Ditto serves on the ESCC Steering Committee. Kevin Wailes, CEO of Lincoln Electric System, is an ESCC co-chair.

Three other public power CEOs also sit on the ESCC directly (Jackie Crowley, Middleborough Gas & Electric Dept.; Gil Quiniones, NYPA; and Mike Hummel, Salt River Project) and another three lead or participate in working groups: (Brian Skelton, Tullahoma – cross sector communications working group; Randy Howard, NCPA – ESCC Wildfire working group Co-Lead; and Corwin, NWPPA – ESCC Wildfire Working Group member).