NARUC Summer Policy Summit
The Clean Coalition's Sahm White participated in a panel at this event, which took place on July 16, 2017 in San Diego, CA.
Sahm White,Economics & Policy Analysis Director for the Clean Coalition, took part in the panel, “Preparing for a Future Grid with Abundant DER,” at theNational Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Summer Policy Summit. This panel met on Sunday, July 16 in San Diego, CA.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is developing a comprehensive suite of tools, processes, and investment frameworks to enable utilities to fully integrate distributed energy resources (DER) into their grid operations, and modernize their annual distribution planning processes. The CPUC distribution resource planning (DRP) proceeding resulted in fundamental changes for the role DER plays in achieving the state’s ambitious energy and climate goals. California utilities, the CPUC, and diverse stakeholders are identifying “optimal” locations for DER deployment, that will help minimize overall system costs and maximize ratepayer benefit from the investments in DER and related grid infrastructures. The DRP process aims to:
- Modernize the distribution system to accommodate two-way flows of energy and customized energy services throughout investor-owned utility networks;
- Enable more customer choices of new technologies and services that can cost-effectively reduce emissions and improve reliability;
- Enable DER to realize economic rewards by providing valuable grid services; and
- Deploy “non-wires” alternatives to traditional transmission and distribution system investments.
This panel shared their visions of the future grid and lessons learned to date from the regulatory and policy making landscape that is shaping the distribution grid and the role DER will play.