Episode 02: Out With the Old, In With the New: The Future of Energy

Today’s guest, Priya Sreedharan, is a thought leader in the clean energy transition, from DER integration with the electric grid, to resource adequacy and power system modeling. Priya holds a PhD and MS in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed “data science” (Bayesian statistics and optimization) techniques for environmental sensing and energy efficiency diagnostics applications. She brings her insights on electric sector transformation to today’s episode.

The episode walks through: 

• Why we regulate the energy sector the way we do, starting with a walk through history, all the way back to 1890s Chicago;
• Key decisions public service commissions—the regulators of the electricity sector—have to make in transitioning to clean and renewable energy;
• How the future of energy is being shaped by distributed energy resources and electric distribution system planning.

Highlights:

• “Regulators should adopt a crawl, walk, run approach, recognizing that you don’t need to solve every problem today, but you need to start making progress.”
• “As we see billions of dollars in distribution system investments being proposed, regulators need to be able to sort through these proposals and decide what investments should be approved. We need to make sure that these investments are aligned with the policy goals that have been laid out by the state. Has the grid plan taken into account other incentives and programs for energy efficiency, electric vehicles? Does the grid modernization plan empower rather than hinder customers from adopting clean energy? Has the plan included backing with credible cost-effectiveness analysis?”
• “We’re seeing more and more sophisticated ways of modeling decarbonized power systems. This means the old way of doing things, where you could more or less plan with a spreadsheet and a planning reserve margin, is over. The design space now is far more complex. We need modeling tools that take into account the complexities of renewable energy and storage and have better linkages between the different kinds of modeling that are conducted, like capacity expansion modeling and resource adequacy analysis.”

Resources and Further Readings

• For a deeper dive into how California avoided power outages during a major heat wave using demand flexibility along with imports and storage, see Utility Dive.
• In 2022, Advanced Energy United and GridLab published FERC Order 2222 Implementation: Preparing the Distribution System for DER Participation in Wholesale Markets. The report provides recommendations to support DER participation in wholesale markets and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2222 implementation. 
• Priya notes the following report, an initiative led by the Energy Systems Integration Group, with participation from GridLab, and other stakeholders: The Transition to a High-DER Electricity System: Creating a National Initiative on DER Integration for the United States. The report “proposes a national initiative to develop greater consistency and consensus around DER [distributed energy resource] integration in the United States” (at p. 2).
• 2035 Report (GridLab 2035 Part Two Transportation Study). The report shows that transitioning to having all new car and truck sales be electric by 2035 is technically and economically feasible.
• In 2020, GridLab and IREC published the Grid Mod Playbook, a tool to help regulatory stakeholders evaluate and make more informed decisions about grid modernization proposals, distribution plans, and grid investments.