One Crazy Policy That Holds up Distributed Energy and What Virginia May Do About It
By Elisa Wood, Energy Changemakers
My home state, Virginia, has been tackling all kinds of distributed energy resource (DER) problems over the last two years.
Next up? A possible DER tariff to get solar, storage, electric vehicle fleets, and other DERs on the distribution grid more quickly and equitably.
The tariff is meant to solve the notorious "last man standing" problem that heaps a massive bill on any DER project developer that lands in the wrong spot in the interconnection queue. It's a problem that's not only creating unfair costs but creating inefficiencies. It incentivizes developers to look for places on the grid where it's easy and inexpensive to connect projects rather than where they are necessarily needed.
We previously wrote about how Massachusetts is attempting to solve the problem in Unfair Charges to Distributed Energy Projects for Grid Modernization
While researching the Virginia story, I learned a new term, "dark fiber," which has DER developers in Virginia very concerned.
Please look at today's feature story, Can DER Tariffs Solve the Last Man Standing Interconnection Problem?
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How does China install gobs of wind and solar and no connection issues. Are they using better copper wires...I believe that utlities are using old spec numbers to limit wind, solar, and storage.
Retired CEO & Chairman, POWER Engineers
3 个月Connecting or building in places where the Grid has capacity , just makes sense for the IPP/ Developer. Building or connecting where it might make the most sense ( Grid wise ) is certainly more expensive due initially to system upgrades required . This is also a problem for utility scale Wind/Solar as the system upgrades are significant and very costly , it seems that a lot of conversation ignores these costs because they are real .
GridAware real time power grid phase frequency and voltage maps. Where did that branch hit that line ? Low cost feeder line detail.
3 个月Allow / require grid DER to be voltage and frequency aware. I believe this solves 50% of the issues. Grid stibility remains to be addresed.