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hello everyone this is Josh Valentine of the clean coalition I hope everyone is staying safe out there and I want to thank you for joining us on today's webinar grid saturation lessons from Australia and Hawaii before we get started as usual like to point out the GoToWebinar control panel this is where you can type in your questions for the Q&A session for the two speakers at the end of the webinar if you have questions you'd like answered they will try to get to as many as possible during the Q&A portion simply just type your question into the box it says questions and we will see them recording and slides will be sent to registered attendees within two business days all webinars are archived on our website clean - Coalition org and the Clean coalition's YouTube channel and if you have any general questions about the webinars that we put on please email me Josh at clean - coalition org and if you have any other questions about the Clean coalition you can send that to me as well our speakers today Steve thrall director of development North America at Planet Ark power after first working with planet art power in their Australia office Steve has returned home to his country of Canada to lead flight and art powers global expansion into the North America clean energy market using their game-changing technology Alexis an AI and IOT based solution that transforms the electricity grid into a true to a grid the other speaker Ben Schwartz he's a policy associate right here at the Klean coalition then focuses primarily on representing clean coalition and proceedings at the CPUC on micro grids and that energy metering man is also a fourth year student and UCSB and uses his background environmental studies and history public policy to inform the diverse local state and national policy work he does at the clean coalition so now put it off to Ben okay hello everyone let's make sure that this is working looks great and thank you all right good morning everyone I just want to echo what Josh was saying thank everyone for attending and with that I'm gonna jump right in let's start with the agenda for today's webinar so I'm gonna start with the claim coalition's mission and the glue to load pocket community micro grid and then I'm going to have an overview of planet dark power and Alexis third we're going to move to Australia and learn some lessons from the leader in rooftop solar then we're going to move to Hawaii policy evolution required to accommodate high saturations of rooftop solar and storage and then we're gonna take those lessons and move to California see what can be learned from Australia and Hawaii okay [Music] so the clean coalition's mission is as a nonprofit organization to accelerate the transition of renewable energy and a modern grid through technical policy and project development expertise it takes a target specifically renewable energy and so what we're trying to do knowing that California is on its way to 100% renewable energy is a specific 25% of that energy should be according to the code clean coalition local and interconnected within the distribution grid which is helping ensure resilience 25% on a local grid is enough for 100% resilience without depending on the transmission grid that means that 75% of that energy can be remote and fully dependent on the transmission rate so next let's talk about community microwaves community microgrids are a new approach for designing and operating the electric grid stacked with local renewables and staged for resides community micro grids take the target area and basically connect that within the distribution grid and this includes a high penetration of de R and resilience some key features of a community micro grid include a targeted and coordinated distribution grid area served by one or more substations and ultimately this can include a transmission and distribution substation setting stage for distribution service operator DSO and this also includes stage capability for indefinite renewables driven backup power for critical community facilities around the grid area which would be achieved by the 25 percent local renewables mix so when it comes to community micro grids the Guadeloupe pocket is the perfect opportunity for a comprehensive community micro grid if we take a look at the maps there the Kyokai spans 70 miles of the California coastline and right in the middle is UCSB it also incorporates the cities of Goleta Santa Barbara and carpinteria the largest three-layer States the GOP is interesting because its transmission vulnerable and disaster prone in the past couple years there have been the Thomas fire and debris flows but there could also be other rain landslides and earthquakes as well this is specifically only an area of the county served by SCE and so if you take a look at the purple line on the map there's only one pair of transmission lines they run on the same you sment on the mountain and because of that there's a definitely more resilience as the heat SCE has already admitted that they need to replace it and that it is potentially vulnerable to multiple issues now with that in mind the the GOP is so important because community microgrids could have provide that resilience according to Klan coalition calculations 200 megawatts of solar and 400 megawatts of energy storage will provide 100% renewable renewables backup resilience in the GOP and that can only be done well that could actually be done with specifically similar sighting opportunities on a commercial scale built environments parking lots parking structures and rooftops now 80% of what is needed could be done on parking lots alone in the GOP which is pretty standard in a current area with that background on community microgrids and the GOP ideally we want this territory to be able to fully deploy a community micro grid and do your solutionist allowing 100% results great with that in mind let's start to talk about planet our power plan our power is a leader in Australia who is looking to bring their solutions to the u.s. particularly California Planet our power is interested in what the plan Coalition is doing and where the clean coalition believe that their solutions will help bring the electric industry the changes that we are interested in and we need the clean coalition is aligned with Planet our powers goals and we like each other so with that in mind that let me hand it over to my partner for today fellow present presenters Steve go ahead good afternoon everyone there we go never unsee my screen Josh we good scraped perfect thank you Ben Josh and as was already mentioned my name is Steve thrall and I'm the director of development for North America with plunder power hustle planet power is an Australian engineering and technology company and we've developed a solution that enables the world's first to a clean energy grid our Lexus technology radically speeds increases the amount of rooftop solar that can be installed in the distribution grid and allows for the quick and cost-effective decarbonisation of the electricity sector so what is Alexis well Alexis is a combination of power electronics paired with advanced AI software that manages voltage using reactive power control in real time while also monitoring market price signals to maximize the economic returns of a customer's solar pool storage system alexis is installed behind the meter and in combination with advanced smart inverters to manage voltage and allow for the safe uninterrupted export of clean energy into the grid this allows customers to overcome curtailment restrictions and avoid the need for costly distribution grid upgrades was recently recognized in the world stage winning 2019 startup energy transition Awards on behalf of the world Energy Council and German Energy Agency so why planet power and why Alexis for Australia happened to be one of the first places in the world to experience the rooftop solar boom as a result it was also the first place is the widespread challenges caused by high saturations of rooftop solar electric electricity grids around the world are fundamentally all designed the same so for the rest of the world Australia can serve as the canary in the coal mine so to speak in terms of understanding the challenges that will be faced globally as de our saturations continue to rise so what is the problem well the traditional electricity grid is designed to be one way it's designed to have energy flow from centralized generation with a coal plant the solar farm a wind farm whatever it may be to the end customer and this one-way grid has a limited hosting capacity for rooftop solar which requires a two-way grid so that excess energy can be exploited once local saturation levels exceed around 15% of the subsidies equipment rating and the distribution grid begins to experience problems which bulleted volatility in response by the utilities is to either complete distribution grid upgrades to increase that hosting capacity which is common in North America and under net energy metering or they work within the constraints of the existing grid and make curtail export which is how its managed Australia again to both of those in further slides um green upgrades are really expensive and they only offer a short-term solution so more upgrades will be needed in the future as de our saturations continue to rise curtailment on the other hand significantly reduces the economically viable size of solar and storage systems as all access generation is wasted customers therefore only install a system that's matched that will that size to match solve their self consumption procurement also destroys project Bank ability for large CNI projects that require third-party financing because of intermittent revenue streams it creates so we develop Alexis Alexis manages voltage volatility at the floor labeling a hundred percent export while ensuring a safe and reliable electricity grid its installed behind the meter and paid forth by the site through increased returns so there's no cost to the grid alexis provides up to a 13 x increase and the amount of BER that can be installed making the world's first to a clean energy grid this two-way energy flow makes virtual power plants and community micro grids possible and allows local renewables to provide clean energy and resiliency to them to the communities they serve by guaranteeing 100% export Alexis also creates bankability for third party investment by ensuring a consistent and forecast full revenue stream this in turn allows institutional investors like pension funds to invest into de are so alexis is not just about the engineering solution can manage the voltage but also about the business model it enables by unlocking this institutional investment so let's look at some examples but first it's important to understand the basic energy policy in Australia so Australia uses feed-in tariffs to compensate customers for excess solar generation that's that export to the grid rarely our distribution grid upgrades completed to increase hosting capacity because they're expensive and unsustainable instead Australia's decided to simply utilize the grid that they have one solution cut capacity limits are reached solar curtailment restrictions are imposed the solar generation can only be self consumed the result is much smaller installations systems are designed to only match self consumption again CNI customers who typically require a third party financing often can't get it because revenue streams are intermittent due to curtailment which creates risk an example of C&I stadium in Australia as I see a picture on the left shows the economically viable solar installation with curtailment restrictions in post customer only install a system large enough to match the cytosol consumption leaving the rest of the roof space simply wasted and you have the picture from the right which shows the installation potential with Alexis a managing voltage and ensuring a hundred percent export the entire roof space can now be utilized access generation is exported to the grid providing increased savings to the customer and additional clean energy to the community so planet power is currently completing our flagship project which will be done later this year it's 3.2 megawatts of solar and 3.4 megawatt hours of batteries and this project would not be possible without Alexis you know hosting capacity limitations curtailment and intermittent revenue streams the project will be owned by one of Australia's largest pension funds earning more revenue for the plenty of project life the customer will purchase clean energy through a PPA saving them roughly a million dollars annually and hedging them against rising electricity costs excess energy from the solar and batteries will be exported to the grid earning revenue through various food services such as frequency control and ciliary services and energy arbitrage and finally the building on our altar receives rent for the rooftop so this model solves the split sent a probe problem that's traditionally restricted CNI from installing solar and storage so again alexis is not just about the engineering solution but also the business model that enables your voltage volatility in the risk of curtailment this project would have been non bankable to the pension fund however alexis overcomes this by harmonizing the grid to deliver a predictable income stream and equalling billions to be invested into de our pension funds already committed 200 million dollars to be spent on similar projects for the next four years and this customer is seeking similar projects in all of their buildings throughout Australia now let's have a look at North America so how do you know the meter rooftop solar is generally compensated through net energy metering the fundamental market structure of nem is built on the ability of the customer to use the grid as a virtual battery you can access excess flow generation can be exported in credits that can then offset again spirit supplied energy consumed later because of this structure though the excess energy must be always expert you have to be able to text for the energy so sufficient hosting capacity on the grid must always exist when the hosting capacity limits are reached and the grid becomes constrained you typically the utility typically completes distribution grid upgrades to increase that capacity he's upgrade costs reader passed on to utilities rate base or directly to the developer and customer for larger installations so the result is increased electricity prices for everyone or increased project costs and reduced returns for the developer and customer if they're if they're responsible for the upgrade cost themselves the challenge is that these upgrades don't fix the voltage problem so as more solar gets installed more upgrades will be required so let's move on to Hawaii why does some of the highest solar saturations in the u.s. one in five residential customers have rooftops or compared to the national average one in 50 why it is also unique and that they've traditionally depended on imported petroleum electricity generation it's costly to have the highest retail electricity rates in the US roughly three times that of the national average so in 2015 why also became the first US state to commit to 100% renewables and so it's the combination of all these factors that really helped spur Hawaii's rooftop solar boom so with the boom in rooftops or came a decrease in annual electricity cost for customers the turn around 2016 when the trend reversed now the question is why did not happen well as solar saturations rose the grid became more constrained and not Vigil required these upgrades were completed by the utility the cost passed under the customers in the form of higher e to electricity rates and so then again the homeowners saw their total electricity cost begin to rise now the PUC identified the utility capital and operation expenditures were driving up retail electricity rates name and distribution grade upgrades simply are not a sustainable way to achieve a hundred percent of new energy targets so in 2015 PE to see the PUC decided it was time to transition away from net metering and so they've replaced it with two different programs for price down these programs were designed to better a ign solar output with grid needs new programs there's customers self supply and customer grid supply so under customers self supply energy can be self consumed but never exported this is the same general policy mechanism as per tail mint and zero expert restrictions that's being used in Australia okay I'm still incentivizes so learn storage the systems are only size to match sight self consumption needs and all the other generations wasted this results in wasted group space and wasted energy especially in C&I now a customer grid supply is similar to a feed-in tariff in which customer can still export energy but is compensated a much lower rate than retail so when designed correctly you feed-in tariffs are an excellent way to incentivize the installation of rooftop solar as they can make it economically viable to maximize a roof space now much like Australia Hawaii has chosen a similar policy path to manage voltage volatility and a constraint grid this policy progression is likely to occur in other regions throughout the US as de our saturations continued to rise with alexis were able to increase the grids hosting capacity by up to 13 times this allows her more solar and storage should be installed and enables market mechanisms to compensate for the energy being provided to the local community supply stalls a long ways to go as does Australia and as does everywhere else in the world but they're clearly a leader in our pursuit of achieving understand available energy why a showman's stakeholder alignment is absolutely key that starts with renewable advocates like the clean coalition and building community support right up to utility regulatory and political leadership stakeholder alignment is essential if we're to transition to a clean energy world so now I'll pass it back to Ben who's going to discuss California and and what California is doing to progress towards their hundred percent clean energy goals right great thank you Steve so I just want to kind of give a brief overview there's a lot of things that we can learn from Hawaii specifically and to try to get to it on a high level I'm just going to do try to bring some things in that Hawaii is doing correctly and then compared to California and why California needs to be doing so I just want to start by agreeing Hawaii has done a really good job with stakeholder alignment the HP you see the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission and the utilities are on the same page about greenhouse gas reduction and the need for de are one of the Hawaiian utilities kay you I see the kawaii Island utility acts as a cooperative meaning it's about the people rather than the financial incentive anyone who has developed a major infrastructure project you tell you having stakeholder lining is key for success you need to have news the polities utilities property owners policymakers residents funders all of these stakeholders have to be aligned for a successful project now let's start with clean energy as Steve mentioned in 2015 Hawaii became the first state in the nation to call for 100% renewable energy by 2045 when they passed House bill 623 that year California passed SB 350 mimicking Hawaii was a call for 100% clean energy by 2045 however last year the two pcs signed an mou essentially supporting each other and creating basically a system where they could work together and share information to get the best possible policy goals and policy in place Hawaii is doing extremely well like California has RPS goals and Hawaii as it will achieve 40 percent renewable energy by 2030 already the Kauai Island utility corporate cooperative rather has changed 56% renewable energy in 2019 already surpassing that landmark and this is done in large part in addition to large penetrations of rooftop solar it is done because of large utility scale projects as well as innovative new tariffs so let's keep going and let's start with if I can change the slide the new micro grid tariffs in Hawaii in February 19th the HPC started a new proceeding to properly compensate owners and streamline the interconnection process forming micro grids in December of last year the proceeding revealed a draft tariff and on March 3rd of this year deck echo the Hawaiian Electric Company officially filed the draft tariff with the HP you see now that being said the tariff itself is not exactly as beneficial or advanced as many people would hope because of their three tracks this tariff is focused on short-term issues meaning that there's nothing related to expedited interconnection nothing related to creating a standard value of resilience micro grids an island mode cannot be counted towards RPS and this is only focusing on behind the meter micro grades essentially this is not exactly what people hoped for but it's the start of what could be a more detailed tariff down the wine and that being said California also has followed Hawaii with a micro grid proceeding as well and the micro grid proceeding just came out with a proposed decision for the first track with expedited interconnection for specific critical facility micro grids as well as pre-approved single line diagrams to ensure interconnection is not what stops micro grids from being deployed in addition that the proposed decision suggests increased information sharing between utilities and local governments as well as removing sizing limits for energy storage ensuring that micro grids will be used successfully in the short term for resilience but also in the long term questions still need to be answered about the value of resilience as well as other aspects of how to make a community micro grid acceptable going back to Hawaii Hawaii has done a very good job promoting resilience and ensuring that the utilities are also promoting resilience that starts with the altar of the alternative non wire alternatives being proposed by the utilities in August of last year the P Hawaii PUC criticized the Hawaii Electric Company's decision for too much reliance on traditional distribution infrastructure upgrades as opposed to non wire alternatives that would promote de r and resilience in the long term both the HPC as well as echo concluded that the question of resilience is too important to be overlooked the question is how to achieve that resilience now here California the same remains true the question of resilience is too important not to be considered in detail and the reason for that is because there's no one who is yet been able to quantify the value of resilience despite the fact that resilience is of such importance the Clean Coalition has established a standard value of resilience and hopes to make this clear in the policy worlds as well to do this the clean coalition basically cut the road into three different tiers the first year is usually around 10% and focuses on mission critical life-sustaining loads the second one is about 15% of the load and is this priority load essentially anything that can be maintained as long as it doesn't threaten the first tier the important load and Tier three is everything else the discretionary load seventy-five percent of the total load that is not the tier 1 and tier two loads and can be kept on as long as those two are kept on as well and I know that's a bit hard to understand here's a graph graph on the subject and specifically in total the Clean Coalition has determined that the value of resilience is a 25 percent adder on top of non resilient electricity the way this is calculated is with Tier one a hundred percent resilience is worth three to five times the normal price for electricity for tier two eighty percent resilience is worth one point five to three times and discretionary loads is worth zero together coming out to do an extra 25 percent of the normal price which is something that needs to be considered for the true value of something like a micro grid and recipients to really be considered and let's continue on okay so thing about resilience we come to the case study of Direct Relief direct relief is the providing joy of Santa Barbara it's a nonprofit that is a pharmaceutical warehouse and they send pharmaceutical supplies all over the world during disasters and what that means is that they need cold storage to ensure that the medicine stays effective and so they have to have resilience and as to results Direct Relief install a micro grid a solar plus storage micro grid as a backup and a diesel generator as a backup to the backup so you can see from this picture that the roof has solar but it doesn't nearly cover the entire works so essentially Direct Relief was only able to post or was able to put enough solar on the roof to get to Net Zero beyond that there was no real way to do it within limits yam limits that is and if they were to consider things like wholesale interconnection through a WD tariff there's nothing specifically that could make it economically viable so let's take a look at what they could be doing only around 30 percent of the roof is being used and daddy doesn't even consider parking lots and parking structures additional storage is also not being considered so in reality when it comes down to it Direct Relief wants to be a part of a community micro grid they want to be able to help increase the capacity of the feeder and act as resilience but there are no market mechanisms that would allow this to occur and the current policy does not allow for extra solar beyond net zero essentially oppose my cousin mechanism needs to exist that would allow a site like Direct Relief to maximize the siting opportunity and that's where we come to talk about feed-in tariffs now Steve mentions a little bit that there are some feed-in tariffs in Hawaii and whites actually been using them since 2014 where they ensured that small commercial and industrial deployments would be using any sort of fits an April 20 this year around 33 I think 32 applications are currently in place in the queue to use the fit now a feed-in tariff is standard based long-term guaranteed contract which allows other smaller local renewable energy projects to sell the power to a local utility clean coalition fan tariffs use market-responsive pricing which allows a base rate to be set and ensures that energy contracts are set at the best price meaning that they can either be adjusted up or down depending on the market rate and this dispatch ability a term like dex can offer a fixed kilowatt hour bonus on top of a feed-in tariff rate so this dispatch valid dispatch ability at our decks or dispatchable energy capacity services generally so utility can contract for energy storage out of the battery and ice it for whatever that utility wants that could be frequency regulation ramp smoothing Road shifting resilience whatever essentially the utility can shift for what they need it for so the thing they can use part of that for resilience or for something else the utility gets a certain portion of the state of charge of the battery and the storage owner which is important gets a single bankable revenue stream something has caught me missing in the market today and considering the California needs energy storage and resilience in the future it would be a sin to have some sort of contract like Dex there would allow an owner of energy storage to actually make some sort of money the cost of service wants to incorporate the net cost of energy from the battery capex and OPEX costs from the battery allowing the owner to make some sort of profit in the long run this would not only help with them but in general it would help with the situation with Direct Relief who wanted energy storage under weg but was not necessarily able to do so so wdg it's kind of the middle between two extremes so there's retail distributed generation which is a specific on-site load on the one hand and that's behind the meter on the other hand there is central generation large solar farms that are directly connected to the transmission grid with metal poles and in between that there is wholesale wdg which is interconnected in the front of the meter but it's specifically connected to the district nursing grid and the reason that this matters is because this is a portion of utility scale projects that is broken in California because the interconnection process is not streamlined it can take years to interconnect a wdg project making it harder and more expensive the longer it takes the clean coalition is designed an interconnection pilot for this program and realizes that the same is true for Hawaii if Hawaii wants to consider interconnection in their micro grid tariffs they need to be able to streamline the process not only for behind the meter micro grids but also front of the meter wdg interconnected micro grids as well and with that in let's move on okay so the next slide is about transmission access charges and this is kind of important when after talking about for sale distributed generation because the proper rate of value wdg is through the value of resilience it's by properly addressing transmission access charges it's once you have all these things together that you can truly unleash the value of a community micro grid and de are so let's take a look at tech in a PTO participating transmission operator surrogate territories in California repairs are chartered to setting amount for using the transmission system which is measured at the customer meter so the rate payers are charged regardless of whether they actually use the transmission system hurting de are that is only using the distribution system this cost is four point five cents from all weg in Nam exports to twenty five cents of which comes from the past values of transmission investments the other part and I'll mention this in a moment but I do want to mention a recent policy one related to this the clean coalition yet the future transmission costs two cents added to the averted cost calculator now in all three IOU service territories it only used to be considered in PG DS territory what this means is that with the two point five cents in past cost and with the avoided cost calculator two point two cents of future costs is a total of four point five cents in transmission access charges that are automatically added to all projects in reality when you take this away clean local energy is of a better value than anything else and this wants to be considered before it can be truly valued okay and with that in mind I think the last kind of important part of this is something Hawaii Oh has been doing very well for years and that's performance-based regulations starting in 2014 the Hawaii PUC put out a paper entitled aligning the utility business model with customer interest and policy goals essentially the utility or the Commission put out a paper determining what the ideal utility would look like and how the PUC could align with that utility to ensure it happens so relating to that HPC commissioner Jennifer Potter mentioned the current regulatory model encourages companies to make large capital investments to earn a return our efforts will break that link so the utilities can earn a return on providing services and programs instead of just capital investments we must think of a broader set of regulatory mechanisms that allows the utility to move with flexibility and accelerate our path to renewable energy regulation is where the rubber hits the road and a specifically of performance-based regulation and for an ideal of utility the HPC created a guide for 21st century generation systems to create a sense of urgency by the utilities they also created a modern transmission and distribution guide to determine how the utility would upgrade the infrastructure properly and policy and regulatory reforms to achieve Hawaii's clean energy future by putting these guides out for the public and for the utilities it allowed the utilities to help shift to a model based off of performance that rewards them rather than having a financial incentive that rewards the shareholders when a utility upgrades infrastructure and as a part of that we're requirements are as follows - they're two things the first is the utility is required to create a multi-year rate plan with predetermined formulas for revenue adjustment and the second is performance mechanisms that allow increases or reduced revenue based of of the metrics and these specifically are what the pH PUC is relying on to ensure that the utilities meet their demands and their goals and the reason I'm bringing this up is because this is one of the things that California should be trying to achieve to ensure that there's greater cooperation between utilities the rate payers and the PUC and I guess as part of that it's essential to realize that one of these issues alone is not enough to help California unleash ter and through it the value of community microgrids just as much as a value of residents is essential it's also essential to help get rid of tax charges who I specifically had a Public Utilities Commission there was in favour and and aligned with its utilities as well as as shareholders and yet somehow when it came down to it and planning grid upgrades utility still ended up with traditional ideas about infrastructure upgrades instead of non wire alternatives so clearly one thing alone is not good enough all of these things together are the policy achievements that need to happen to properly valued eer and with that in mind I just would like to say thank you and ask if there are any questions thank you Ben yes there are for you and Steve if you wouldn't mind if you can go back to the slide to to show where people can enter in their questions that would be great so thank you Steve Thank You Ben for a great presentations so now we're gonna get to the Q&A section of the webinar and if there is anyone out there who still wants to submit a question feel free to do so we've got about 17 minutes left go to the control panel and enter it into the questions box alright so for Steve on Alexis there is that to go for these are complimentary questions so if you need me to repeat just let me know from Claire Broome an adjunct professor at Emory University Claire asked please provide more information on how Alexis provides voltage regulation services to the distribution grid and then Ron Leonard founder at eco our NRG States you have not explained what your device does justify it's fixing the voltage problem Boltzmann problems are not the issue is is it was two ways to weight flows to a substation yet excessive utility upgrades what is the device so if you want me to repeat that let me know but ya know I think I think I'm good thank you yeah to two really good questions and so I guess just for starters I'm not an electrical engineer so I might not get to the depth of answer that that you poor but Bouton's certainly expand upon that offline if you need but basically Alexis's is a combination of the power electronics and AI and so it's silicon carbide power electronics there are fundamentally a deist comm device that manages voltage volatility using reactive power control our AI is used to manage voltage in real time ensuring a safe and reliable distribution electricity grid while simultaneously making market-based decisions that maximize the economic returns of the solar and storage system and so so alexis is able to design to be installed in conjunction with with smart girders and but it's able to manage voltage using reactive power control much more efficiently and to to a much greater level than smart since then as a result were able to ensure the 100% export of energy and increase the the hosting capacity on the distribution grid by up to 13 times now as far as voltage being the issue there's there's a lot of research and studies out there and happy to to get into that offline about how voltages is a major challenge with reducing hosting capacity on the grid as a result of rooftop solar and needing to export to the grid and so yeah hopefully that's sufficient and answering that question great thank you so this one is from Robert this is a lengthy one but let me know if you need to repeat anything robert Parry a principal consultant at synergistic solutions Robert asks what are your thoughts on a micro grid tariff which routines site autonomy and energy generated but allows for revenue from exporting and ancillary ancillary grid services under the scenario a site could use more on-site capacity during low production conditions but export access term but export excess during optimal conditions also should sites be encouraged to add electrolysis to use excess energy for renewable hydrogen production and yeah I think like ultimately the the goal is that you need to be able to have clean energy rooftop solar and batteries be able to normally provide value to a customer behind the meter but also participate and provide value to the Greater grid so in Australia for instance we're able to use rooftop solar and batteries and those batteries are able to do come your standard peak demand shaving and time abuse arbitrage which is how behind the meter energy storage is is typically used in California but then it's also able to use that excess energy to provide grid services so frequency control and ciliary services and participate in the wholesale energy arbitrage market and currently from a policy standpoint that's not possible in California and really then limits how rooftop solar and batteries are able to to provide both value to the customer and to the grid and so that's just an area of policy innovation regulatory innovation that and we're hoping will will change in your future yeah I would just add if we take a look at Hawaii they already have a large penetration of rooftop solar and now the biggest issue is a large amount of energy storage that can combine with it and especially deal with issues of frequency regulations so I think when you have an actually storage and especially considering California is going to be needing gigawatts of energy storage in the next decade it's essential that there's some sort of energy there is some sort of market mechanism in place that allows it to actually be an economic value stream and I think that's also why something like Dex's is so important because that's exactly what it does great thank you both all right the next question comes from Claudia salad director of the California desert coalition Claudia is asking where is California and aligning its policy to recognize avoided transmission costs in valuation of local generation as ccas have argued about unfair transmission costs assessed to them so specifically the the wind recently was getting all of the IOUs to actually consider future costs as part of the avoided cost calculator transmission access charges are kind of a tough one because it's something that both kaizo and the CPUC have to deal with and and if both are pointing towards each other a little bit it's certainly something that's going to be looked at a little more in micro grid proceeding but as of now it doesn't look like things are changing beyond tap is being charged to every customer the ratepayer all right thank you all right so sandal ba is asking how do you see these policies rolling out across the United States is there is are there similar initiatives at the FERC level so most states around the United States our reliance on on them as well rather than curtailments so there's definitely a similarity between California and those states in addition I guess it also depends on the ASO in charge but at the federal level I guess so FERC order 841 is relating to battery storage the the caisson market also has kind of day ahead markets that allow for hybrid resources so that could mean store plus storage as well so I think what's going on here and even in the federal market here is going to be repeated around the country resilience is becoming a big issue as well and non-white alternatives so I think you know Hawaii and California are kind of to a certain extent the standard bearers for for other state policies if that helps yeah just just to add to that Bend and distribution grids around the world are fundamentally you know designed the same and as more dr.azz interconnected the challenges of voltage volatility that are already being experienced in California and Hawaii and other pockets throughout the US will continue to rise so the kind of right now the current method of completing these grid upgrades is really expensive and causes electricity prices to rise for everybody often those costs being kind of unproportional II and equitably borne by certain parts demographics of the population so I think as as saturations continue to rise will be increased pressure to come up with a different system and net energy metering just doesn't end up kind of getting to being effective in getting to a hundred percent clean energy goals that that an increasing amount of states and locations around the world are committing to thank you then and Steve alright so the next questions from Norman Wilson principle rex wilson LLC Norman's asking what is the outlook at the CPUC for improved interconnection approval for wholesale distributed generation ok so I can start from the perspective of the micro grid proceeding it was the the the first track of the proceeding was mostly about kind of short-term issues but this and third are going to be about broader state goals things like determining value of resilience and non behind the meter micro grid so anything with multiple customers so I think there's some potential there to address wholesale interconnection but I guess what I was saying during the webinar applies it's that there's not just one aspect of it that you need to fix I mean there are multiple things so interconnection is an issue as well and I think the interconnection proceeding will be addressing this some as well so it's kind of little steps for it I think that will really really make this important but the more regulation there is around energy storage and the more energy storage is allowed as a bankable stream of revenue I think there will be definitely more done at the CPUC to to allow it to occur very much that helps answer the question specifically though No thank you then Bert wank CEO at infrared corporation ask how does de are overcome ET ET J's legal restrictions for instance sharing of power across property parcels demanding pay for poles and Myers imposed by the local energy provider for having made the investment into infrastructure so that's a good question and it depends so for example if a battery project is in front of the meter it can potentially help share with a behind the meter solar project for example in terms of micro Gribbs that's one of the biggest issues is the over the fence rule is what what prevents or has prevented community micro grids in the past and so the micro grid proceeding will kind of help deal with that but it does prove that you need the stakeholder alignment of a utility and yes did you want to mention anything about that yeah I think that you know that's obviously there's a lot of layers to that onion so to speak and and it's not kind of clear how you solve all those problems but I think what is sort of clear and what you're seeing with with Hawaii and then you know the challenges that they've had and the need for that stakeholder alignment is that you're really changing the fundamental system in terms of you no longer have or you're trying to move away from a system of just having centralized generation and having the utility and and they kind of they run everything and so you're as you move away from that you're gonna you're gonna fundamentally change the way that the market operates and so for instance I think that you know as a potential solution that's you know gets brought up often is moving towards like a DSO and having a distribution system operator and some of that and because the idea is not to get rid of utilities you need you need a really robust distribution low-voltage grid to be able to have these transact of energy markets so it's not about getting rid of or anything like that I need that to survive and but it's just changing the the market mechanisms so that you can have prosumers and have communities that are run on local renewables yeah I'll also just add that the more that technology is improved and deployed whether that's something like Alexis or something like a smart inverter i think the easier a process like that will become worrying about an issue over the fence or over a public street or something along those lines we're alright thank you both David Brown principle distribution system engineer at SMUD asks as solar cost decline isn't limited to curtailment often the more economical choice well the challenge that with curtailment is is that it destroys the economics of a project so if you for instance I'm speaking to to Australia when you think of a large CNI project if you're if that if the finances of that deal are built on being able to export energy but you don't know whether your system will be curtailed in the future or when it will be curtailed then you have an intermittent intermittent revenue stream and that's where the the bank ability issue comes in and not being able to to get financing because it's curiosity if you don't know if you don't know where that revenue stream is coming from and so I mean curtailment like it in kind of the solar farms and some of that is something that's that's happening right now but in kind of any situation and it's the economics get impacted if you start curtailing energy and as alexis has been designed and shown in in Australia we're able to overcome curtailment and by creating this to a clean energy grid and maintaining a safe and reliable grid so that energy can be exported you have that consistent revenue stream and you have more clean energy in the community that can then be utilized yeah just to add to that Hawaii specifically rather continuing to capital residential homes some run and open access technology international have partnered with the utility there to use bisque themselves in residential homes to create a virtual power plant that could rather than curtailing that energy that could potentially replace one of the larger coal-fired power plant so curtailment isn't necessarily the best option especially if a utility is willing to install the energy storage to make that happen great thank you both all right we are at the one hour mark but I would like to fit in some of the some specific questions about Alexis that's okay Steve yeah sure go for it Karen Darrin thought MIT SVP at URIs Energy America Corporation asks does the device store energy how does it compare in cost to a li battery system per megawatt or a megawatt hours yeah great great question um no so it doesn't store energy like alexis is designed to be to be installed with the energy storage and so you know it's a battery inverter and battery controller and and manages that battery and and uses its AI software to to maximize the economic returns that that battery is able to to provide in terms of costs the the model that plan our powers developed is that we don't sell alexis instead we've designed a software-as-a-service a SAS business model under which alexis is provided as a service much like Microsoft Office or an Adobe subscription so alexis earns a percent annual percent return over the you know the the contract life and and on the additional income that's able to generate well installed on-site and so so that's how it's able to manage voltage without any cost to the grid it's paid for by being by the site by through the increased returns it's able to generate all right great thanks Bert link again from seat CEO and Pharrell Corporation is asking about Alexa so reactive power is managed by inverters today actually when they can't do it well as reported by a utility it seems to cause inverter failures what's the difference between Alexis and a power factor correction on a large scale does it replace the capacitor banks used to compensate the grids power factor yes so like currents Martin burners to have are able to have a set power factor and and use reactive power to manage voltage using their Bulevar and volt walk functionalities alexis is doing much of the same but it's able to do it much more efficiently and so it's able to not only do it more efficiently but then get us to that hundred percent export and we've seen and there's you know been research and studies that have come out that show that yes smarten burgers are able to assist with increasing the hosting capacity but the might only get you from you know from that fifty percent to say twenty or thirty or even you know forty percent saturation levels and and whereas alexis can get us rate to a hundred percent with you know up to a thirteen times increase in the grids local hosting capacity so it's doing it's that's why it's designed to be installed in combination with with smart Murders it's fun it's not designed to replace a smart inverter but instead to be this installed with smart meters to further increase the hosting capacity of the grid great thank you all right final question about Alexis for you Steve and overall final question what is John McClellan from citizens climate Lobby ask what is the scaleable range of the alexis system uh yeah so i mean that's that's part of what we're we're working through in in australia and so there you know that software as a service business model is fundamentally designed so that we can scale globally licensing alexis to the entire renewables supply chain and so we're you know we have alexis deployed in australia but then we're working on projects here in california we're also into into Europe and Singapore and a bunch of places all across the world and so the idea again is its global scalability and so that we can use alexis to cost effectively and quickly decarbonize electricity industries across the entire great thank you and thank you Steve and then for two great presentations we learned a lot and we hope Steve that you come back and present for us again in the near future yes so great job guys thanks so much and thank you to add to the clean coalition you certainly have the support of planet power excellent all right so thanks once again everybody for attending today's webinar as usual we will be sending out the slides and the recording 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