FERC vs NERC: A grid control showdown over cyber security

WWW.INTELLIGENTUTILITY.COM /// JULY/AUGUST 2011
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Challenges driven by legislation
Driving the Borrego Springs project is California legislation
that requires the state’s utilities to buy 20 percent of their
power from renewable sources like solar and wind. That percentage
increases to 30 percent by 2020. Integrating the new
energy sources, as well as energy produced by homeowners
with solar panels, can be a challenge for utilities, which is
why the Borrego Spring project exists.
Assuming that hurdles like
Residents are energy storage can be ironed out,
the microgrid project could have
embracing the the potential to provide 15 MW
of electricity, enough to power
sun — specifi- the entire Borrego Springs community.
At present, 75 homes
cally, the vast have installed solar power in the
community, with a cumulative
potential from output of just under 800 kW.
While the solar conversion
solar power.
growth rate for Borrego has not
”
been forecasted, the California
Energy Commission’s growth
forecast for the state calls for solar installs to grow 37.5 percent
this year and next. There are currently about 200 MW
of solar generation in the California grid.
Coping with the challenges
Like most utilities, SDG&E is trying to cope with the many
challenges of smart meter deployment, like how to roll out
smart meters and capture customer engagement, how to best
plan for distributed resources like solar that can be intermittent
at best, especially during San Diego’s foggy months, how
to convert on a 10-year smart grid plan that includes items
that are not even possible yet technology-wise, and how to
best evaluate the slew of new technologies headed to the utility
market. The purpose of the Borrego Springs microgrid
project is to examine all of those issues and much more.
For example, during the spring, San Diego is hampered
by two months of thick fog, which creates havoc with the
utility’s ability to process power generated from rooftop
solar systems.
“If you know anything about San Diego, we have May Gray
and June Gloom coastal fog which travels pretty far inland,”
said Bialek. “It tends to burn off by noon, but you get little
pockets where there are no clouds, and output of PV systems
increases dramatically. Then the fog closes back in, creating
significant power fluctuations which our voltage regulation
equipment tries to keep up with during those short periods
of time. So there are issues associated with penetration of PV
and we’re trying to be pro-active about that.”
While the integration of all the different IT components
and communication systems represents one of the larg-
DISTRIBUTED GENERATION
est challenges in the project, “the real challenge is looking
at some of the smart concepts around customer empowerment
and trying to get customers to participate in the
smart meter program,” said Bialek. “Based on their participation
level, then you modify the output of generators to
compensate for demand.”
Multi-technology testing ground
So far, smart meters have been deployed to all 2,800 customers
in Borrego Springs. SDG&E is 98 percent complete in
rolling out 1.4 million smart meters to its entire customer
base. Studies show that smart meters can help homeowners
to save between 5 and 15 percent on their utility bills
by conserving energy.
At present, two 1.8 MW diesel generators are being retrofitted
and will be installed at the substation in August for factory
testing. SDG&E has completed an RFP for energy storage
components, with expectations that energy storage will
be installed during the second quarter of 2012. Homes with
existing solar and those that add solar during the course of
the project will be equipped with home solar generators. The
entire microgrid project is scheduled for completion during
the first quarter of 2013.
The Borrego Springs project will also serve as a test ground
to define the future technologies needed to effectively run a
smart grid and integrate renewable energy sources.
Today, smart meter technology alerts a utility when a
customer’s power is disrupted. Eventually, technologies
will become sophisticated enough to send alerts when a
system is about to fail, and remedy a potential
problem before it occurs. During this
self-healing process, grid switches will
automatically re-route power to
restore an outage without any
human intervention.
For now, that remains a challenge.
For example, in the smart
grid deployment plan filed
recently by SDG&E, technologies
do not exist yet to support
many of the concepts included for
2015 and beyond. Bialek says that
commercially available energy storage
options, equipped with the functionality
to run certain types of protocols or scenarios,
are still a couple of years away.
“There are a lot of concepts there,” said Bialek, “but not
a lot of hardware or software yet to provide a solution.
That’s a major challenge for a utility like us. That’s why the
Borrego Springs project is so important.”
John R. Johnson is a Boston-based freelance writer covering
wireless and RFID technology, as well as alternative energy topics.