Anticipated California Ruling: Crucial Alternative to Enhance California Grid Information. Will Regulators Seize It? – CleanTechnica – TechnoNews

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This text was initially printed on July 30, 2024. It was up to date on October 1 to replicate new developments within the regulatory continuing.

California is regarded to as a pacesetter in clear power, and rightly so. It is among the nation’s main producers of renewable power and has pioneered groundbreaking clear power and transportation insurance policies. However this management is threatened by inaccuracies in key electrical grid information printed by the state’s utilities, which have been ongoing for a number of years.

The California Public Utilities Fee (CPUC) is anticipated to difficulty a ruling quickly (mid to late October 2024) that would treatment these points, and pave the best way for extra environment friendly and inexpensive clear power and electrical car adoption within the state. A draft of its Proposed Determination was launched on September 13. The draft is optimistic in that it will require the creation of a working group to treatment a few of these points. Nevertheless, it fails to incorporate any deadline for these enhancements to be included, a big oversight on condition that these challenges have already continued for a few years.

On this article, we discover the character and historical past of those grid information points in California, why they matter, and what modifications to the Proposed Determination IREC believes the Fee ought to think about to most successfully remedy these issues.

You may as well obtain our factsheet on this difficulty right here.

What’s Fallacious with California’s Public Grid Information?

Thanks partly to over a decade of labor by public curiosity advocates, California utilities have been required to develop among the nation’s finest electrical grid information transparency instruments, referred to as “Integration Capacity Analyses” or ICAs.

An ICA is a mannequin of the electrical grid in map kind that exhibits how a lot electrical energy technology or demand (“load”) will be added in several areas with out expensive upgrades.

Sadly, since they have been first printed in 2019, quite a few points with the accuracy, completeness, and recency of ICA information printed by California’s investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E) have been recognized. These points restrict the flexibility of fresh power builders and different stakeholders to make use of the ICA as supposed.

Why Do ICAs Matter for Clear Vitality?

ICAs provide essential advantages for the event and siting of fresh power, together with:

• Serving to builders select optimum places for clear power and EV charging initiatives the place they’re much less prone to require costly grid upgrades. (These upgrades can price tens or lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} and add months or years to the timeline of a undertaking.)
• Offering utilities with beneficial information to tell and prioritize infrastructure investments on the electrical grid.
• Enhancing the effectivity of selections about whether or not clear power initiatives will be authorized to hook up with the electrical grid. (Since 2022, the CPUC has required the utilities to make use of ICA information in interconnection overview processes for sure DERs, taking the place of extra time-consuming opinions.)
• Enabling DERs to function based mostly on an export schedule that helps grid wants and reduces prices. California made clear power historical past in March by turning into the primary state to allow clear power methods to suggest an working schedule when making use of to hook up with the grid. Below this method, authorized initiatives can join with out requiring grid upgrades that may in any other case be wanted, as a result of they limit energy output at occasions when the grid is constrained in its potential to simply accept extra electrical technology. This protects money and time and permits extra clear power on the grid.

All of those functions are solely potential, nonetheless, if the information within the ICA is correct and saved updated.

What’s the Historical past of ICA Information Points in California?

The Fee first required utilities to develop ICAs in 2015 below a pilot program; it required their full publication in 2019. When the primary full ICA maps have been launched in 2019, IREC found severe inaccuracies within the information.

For instance, PG&E’s map was so inaccurate it indicated that its complete grid was unable to simply accept any new electrical energy technology (e.g., photo voltaic, and so forth.) and 30% of its system was not even displayed. SDG&E and SCE’s map additionally had points. The maps additionally had questionable information on capability for brand spanking new load (comparable to that wanted for electrical car charging). Initially, all three utility maps confirmed zero capability for brand spanking new load throughout the overwhelming majority of their methods, defying frequent sense.

Since then, quite a few different points have arisen:

• SCE continues to make vital errors that lead to delayed or misguided information;
• SDG&E has repeatedly violated Fee orders by not displaying required information;
• SCE and PG&E proceed to not replace their maps on the required frequency: when an ICA is outdated, the accuracy of the information it exhibits can’t be trusted.

Whereas the Fee has slowly required fixes to a few of these issues, 5 years after the ICAs have been first launched, many of those points are nonetheless ongoing. ICA improvement will not be easy, and a studying curve is anticipated. However after practically a decade of labor by the utilities and tens of millions of ratepayer {dollars} spent, it’s cheap to count on that these probably game-changing instruments must be absolutely practical.

A Crucial Second for Regulatory Enforcement

On September 13, the Fee launched a Proposed Determination that addresses these challenges; it’s anticipated to make an official ruling later this month. The Proposed Determination is a step in the proper course as a result of (along with different issues) it will require the creation of a working group to treatment a few of these accuracy points. Sadly, it fails to incorporate any deadline for these enhancements to be included, a big oversight on condition that these challenges have already continued for a few years.

IREC strongly helps the workshop course of, however the Fee should impose significant targets, timelines, and accountability measures. The public document on this continuing is full of examples of resistance to those efforts on the a part of the state’s investor-owned utilities and failures to tangibly enhance the ICA regardless of a number of efforts much like the one the Fee is now recommending. If the Fee doesn’t construct extra concrete targets into this resolution, IREC anticipates that the end result will probably be one other a number of years of course of with out outcomes.

Moreover, there are some modifications, particularly requiring utilities to replace their ICA maps on a month-to-month foundation, that must be applied now, as a substitute of pushing them right into a working group course of. Month-to-month ICA updates are a long-standing requirement from the Fee, that among the utilities have declined to adjust to. IREC recommends that the Fee give the utilities not more than 120 days from its order to undertake and implement a dependable system for month-to-month updates to the ICA.

IREC additionally recommends including two particular necessities to make sure enough communication about ICA points going ahead. First, we suggest that the Fee institute a requirement for utilities to promptly notify each it and the general public when accuracy points with the ICAs are recognized. That is essential to make sure, for instance, that clear power undertaking builders don’t make investments lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} securing a website and designing a undertaking based mostly on defective data. Second, along with offering well timed discover of points, we suggest that utilities must be required to speak when these issues are anticipated to be resolved and another related data.

IREC continues to observe and interact on this docket. This week, IREC will submit feedback on the Proposed Determination to the Fee, reflecting the above suggestions. “Reply comments” responding to the preliminary spherical of feedback from IREC and different events will probably be due October 8. Then the Fee will schedule a gathering to difficulty its last ruling (probably October seventeenth or twenty fourth). When you’re not subscribed to our emails, you possibly can enroll right here to remain within the loop on future developments.

Get Concerned: If this matter is essential to you, you may as well submit your individual public remark or make a remark at any upcoming CPUC assembly previous to the ultimate vote. Extra data on how to take action will be discovered right here on the CPUC web site (the continuing quantity is R2106017).

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Delays connecting clear power to the grid are a number one barrier to scrub power development. Delays connecting the brand new masses wanted for transportation and constructing electrification are maybe much more dire, critically threatening the state’s potential to fulfill electrical car mandates. Correct ICAs can speed up clear power and EV charger deployment whereas lowering the necessity for expensive grid upgrades.

IREC urges the Fee to acknowledge the intense menace that continued non-compliance with ICA necessities presents to California’s clear power and electrification mandates, and decide to resolving these points as soon as and for all via agency deadlines for enhancements, necessities for clear communication when ICA accuracy points are discovered, and by requiring utilities to start out updating their ICA maps on a month-to-month foundation.

Visitor article from IREC.