AGRION

The April 3rd Task Force meeting featured presentations from:

1) Dave Erickson of the California Public Utilities Commission addressing regulatory policies impacting Microgrids

2) Mat Eland of Pacific Housing and Steve Wolford of Sunverge describing the 2500 R Street project, including Zero Net Energy homes and Microgrid capacity

3) Andrea Traber of DNV Kema reviewing the DNV Kema Microgrid insights, expertise, and offerings

The discussion ultimately again returned to the impacts of current cost recovery and pricing of utility-provided electricity. The issue of volumetric charges versus fixed charges, and the incentive for microgrids to disconnect from the grid in response to burdensome fixed charges, may lead to the utility “death spiral” from an ever-increasing non-virtuous cycle of dwindling revenues requiring higher rates.

In our next meeting (on June 6th), following-up on this discussion, we’ll examine this issue in detail. Ed Cazalet, VP of MegaWatt Storage Farms and TeMix Founder/President, will present on “Transactive Energy Tariffs and Markets for Smart Consumers, Prosumers, DG, Storage, Microgrids and T&D”. Also presenting will be Matthew Muniz, Energy Program Manager, Alameda County, to discuss his lessons learned from the Santa Rita Jail microgrid, the country’s largest CERTS-based microgrid with renewable generation and large-scale energy storage.