Beyond the Layout
Beyond the Layout is a long-form solar industry podcast focused on honest, technical conversations with the people building the energy transition, and without the marketing filter. Follow the show for future episodes, and share it with someone shaping the future of solar.
Beyond the Layout
#1 Inside the Utility Queue: How Solar Interconnection Really Works | Ed Mirfin
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What really happens after you hit submit on a solar interconnection?
Utility engineer Ed Mirfin joins us to explain how utilities actually study solar project, what triggers costly upgrades, and how smarter design decisions can speed approvals. We cover voltage control, feeder strategy, queue realities, and the technical details that quietly shape project economics.
If you build solar projects, this is the conversation happening behind the curtain.
Have a question or perspective? Send it to the Beyond the Layout team.
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Beyond the Layout is a long-form solar industry podcast focused on honest, technical conversations with the people building the energy transition.
Follow the show for future episodes and share with someone shaping the future of solar.
Meet The Hosts And The Mission
SPEAKER_02You ready to go?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Ready to start?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02All right, Ed, welcome to the first episode of Beyond the Layout. My name is Rocco Fustola. I'm here with Celeska. This is my friend and colleague Ed Murphan. We met way back when at QE Solar doing OM together. And now I'm at Celeska making layouts, engineering drawings, and you're at PPL doing the uh interconnection applications, agreements, and bottlenecks. And so I figured we just launched this engineering feature that allows our clients to download interconnection plan sets and submit them to utilities. Who better to have on for this first guest than somebody who is actively fielding the interconnection application?
What Power Flow Analysis Really Means
SPEAKER_02So can you tell me a little bit about yourself, about that process and how working on a utility works and how utilities handle those grids and those applications? I think our clients would, and anybody who's a solar developer, would be eager to know the inner workings behind what happens once we submit for an interconnection application.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. As you said, my name is Ed. Ed Murphan. I work for PPL Electric Utilities. I do the engineering side of all that application insight because quite a bit of admin work that goes on all the billing and customer contact points that I work with the teams that do all that, but I my my bread and butter is running Powerflow analysis. And uh we design a lot of a lot of reinforcements to solve issues and coordinating that across many different teams of the utilities. But it's a very big organization.
SPEAKER_02Uh so tell tell me tell us more about Powerflow. What does that entail? What does that look like? Like help break the veil between what a developer does and then when you say power flow, what actually goes behind it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so PowerFlow analysis is a uh a top-down iterative calculation of trying to estimate what the voltage on the grid is under specific conditions. Uh so we have metering points throughout the grid, and we do have smart meter data, but bringing back smart meter data, it's a lot of data for the analysis that you're trying to do. So most applications will do a power flow analysis instead of just literally bring back all the meter data. It also helps with kind of round out some of the physics. Like if every meter has a slight air to it, your physics isn't gonna quite add up. So it's generally smooth those together. But you start with your your feeder head uh reclosure data will give you your your starting voltage and your current flowing through it. And then ideally you want to have some a couple more meter points going down where you really just have demand, which can be in kilowatt uh kilovar. And you're just calculating with what your starting voltage is, you have all the demand of all the different loads on that grid, and you have a couple meter points that you can chew up all that accuracy to, and you're just calculating the voltage drop as you go along that grid, as you go along your circuit outside.
SPEAKER_02And so when I'm submitting an interconnection application for like, say, up or downstream on that circuit, you're measuring the kilovar that comes in, which and you should probably go into what kilovar is and the differences between like amperage voltage and kilovar as it relates to the grid.
SPEAKER_03And then you're taking that information and you're trying to predict what voltages you're gonna see downstream at the substation and so on of that. Is that correct? Yeah. So I'll start like a little, it is mostly correct. I'll start like a little higher level in that when when I when you
Modeling Scenarios: Peaks And Daytime Minimums
SPEAKER_03submit an application, I will first find out what circuit circuit it's on and do a rough analysis on if that I think is the best circuit. Some there are some edge cases where people are like on this circuit and that circuit, which obviously doesn't we have twice the amount of work we have to do. Uh but what I'll do is I'll find the circuit that you're on, and we want to get like three different scenarios that we model them under uh feeder peak, uh summer peak, and then also we look for the daytime min value. So it's the lowest demand only in the daylight hours, which is very unique to Solaris. We have to stand up some processes just for that. Um we want to model that. Essentially, we model, we look at the last 12 months and we find those three daytimes, and we try to model that like base case, like how the grid currently is. We model that. I try to make sure that we account for all the ongoing reinforcements. So once we model the grid as it is, if I've if I know we have planned work going on there, I want to model that planned work because the solar is going to connect after that planned work. And then I find the solar, like the exact location that it's at, and I just insert the solar to the model and turn it on and watch what happens to my voltage.
SPEAKER_02What typically happens?
SPEAKER_03It definitely goes up. Uh yeah, that's I mean you're to take your like to the basic principle like V equals IR. So if you have current going through that line, uh if you add full if you add a generation source down the line, you're supplying your load closer than it needs to be. So you're supplying some of that current from a different location. So instead of like the whole grid was designed that you have a voltage drop across your circuit. Like the further you get away from the substation, the lower your voltage is gonna be. But a lot of the solar flips out in reverse, where like
Voltage Rise, Reverse Power, And Costs
SPEAKER_03we have solar at the end of the circuit, and now you're actually sending power back through the substation. So that V equals IR, that sign on that current flips. So then your voltage at your feeder head is higher than it is at your feeder end. And that's where the expensive interconnection upgrades come in, huh? That can that can be part of it. Um, the expensive ones, the most common expensive ones are uh protecting the substation for the reverse power flow. So that is like the biggest when you do get that flip. Um, we need to add a ton of breakers to it. Uh, and touching existing equipment is very expensive.
SPEAKER_02Is there any way that we could add like batteries before that so that we don't have to flip that? Or is that something that's a good thing?
SPEAKER_03Specifically with that upgrade, which isn't really the same thing as the voltage one we were talking about a second ago, but that upgrade is a is a very binary value, at least the way we handle it. Uh whereas like we just measure the the last 12 months and we look at like the lowest daytime minimum value uh in terms of real power, so kilowatts. And then if it's over that, you're back feeding. Yeah, yeah. So it's like theoretically, if you could if you could if you had if our daytime minimum value was like 1600 and somebody applied for 2,000 kilowatts of solar, and you you could install a four hour or a 400 kilowatt battery that would absorb uh 400 kilowatts at that hour, then you would not that that should be the worst hour. So every other hour, obviously you're gonna have capacity for that. Uh, we would need to be very confident
Batteries, Curtailment, And Flexible Interconnects
SPEAKER_03that the duration of that battery is long enough because like if you have your peak, if you have your minimum value, like what's the shape of that minimum value? Does it go does it drop suddenly and then come right back up? Or is it a whole hour? Like what's a whole hour? Is it six hours? Um you need like predicting in there because you gotta know that battery is like actually like empty and can charge during that.
SPEAKER_02Uh so yeah. And so that's one way of handling that. You said that's for the power. How would you handle that for the voltage? Besides, are there any creative ways that we can use DER solutions to make it so that you don't have a voltage upgrade at the substation like we would for that power?
SPEAKER_03Something we do a lot that helps so much with the voltage is putting a volt var curve on the inverters. Uh so that means that so you have your do you want me to explain what real and reactive power is? So I think everybody's kind of familiar with what power factor is on their transformers and their inverters, right? And so power factor from the layman's terms is you have the power that you get paid for, and then you have almost imaginary, which is reactive power, and each one is a a kind of either exponential or logarithmic scale. So every one percent removed from 100 to 99 gives you many percents on the reactive, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_02So a lot of times we'll help with the reactive power, which is what keeps the grid stable and running. And if please correct me if I'm wrong or it'll add to that.
SPEAKER_03No, no, that's totally accurate. Uh, most people uh have heard like the beer analogy where like you use the word like imaginary power, it's uh that's the foam on top of your beer. The real power that you get paid for is that that actual liquid that you're drinking. Got it, got it. Yeah. Um, it's super important for uh you can use bars to control the voltage. Uh I've heard many times you it's there, they're there are more complicated things that we're trying to balance. Um, and having having a unity power factor at your feeder head is is very valuable. It reduces the current that's going through your transformer.
SPEAKER_02And
Real vs Reactive Power And Volt-VAR
SPEAKER_02unity doesn't mean 1.0. It just is what unity means. That's what unity means? Okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um and typically like you you're gonna have your your actual substation transformer is gonna have a little bit of uh positive reactive power or sorry, reactive power consumption to it. So if you are a little bit capacitive and you have negative power factor at your feeder head, uh that means your transmission grid will have uh positive. So some utilities will will try to run like a little bit capacitive at the feeder head, and then so you get unity to the transmission grid.
SPEAKER_02But going back to the volt bar curve with the inverters, that helps you have unity at No, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_03It actually makes it really hard. Uh that's that's where like something like Durham's would come in, where you're trying to manage this less from like an autonomous level, but more from a system that can see not just your solar site, but this other person's solar site as well as well as the other devices we have on our grid to manage VARs. Um so controlling VARs is important, but what a volt var curve does isn't really control vars, it uses vars to control voltage. Got it. Um you you know I talked about V equals IR, but it's really V equals IX. No, V equals I is Z. And Z is equal to R plus X. So your your X is your. I lost these symbols. We've got to give you these symbols first. We're coming. So R is resistance, everybody knows that. Your X is your impedance, which is literally your resistance but to the reactive part of your current. So that's that Z value on the transformers if you were to set that. Z is a complex uh number. It's so it it it z is comprised both of your resistance and your reactance. Okay. Now, like so you're talking about like transformers. So you get you get like that's typically usually transformers are presented to you as Z equals like a percentage. So 6% is a pretty common percentage for the size transformers we're talking about. And then what what you also see is an X over R ratio. So you actually need through both of those, you can get like what your actual absolute impedance value is, and that's like R R plus X. Now, like that X over R ratio is actually pretty high. It's like between 5 to 10, which means that the reactance of that transformer is about five to ten times larger than the resistance of that transformer.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03So you have a voltage, your solar, you're pushing currents. You have that means your secondary side is literally a higher voltage than our primary side because you're pushing power there and there's a voltage drop across that transformer from the solar to the primary side. If you were to not operate at unity power factor, but you were to operate at like 0.98, uh, you're gonna see an even you're you you'll see a different voltage rise. So the reactive component is significantly more impactful to what your voltage is because it's actually it's like five to ten times more impactful than your than your real current component. So even though you might have less
Impedance, Transformers, And Voltage Control
SPEAKER_03reactive power flowing through that transformer, because it's five to ten times as impactful, you actually might see a voltage rise to use the same direction we were talking about earlier, such that your primary side is a higher voltage than your secondary side. Wow.
SPEAKER_02And so, how, with all that being said, how does that impact like how can we, as solar developers, design something that gets to that unity power factor at the substation so we do reduce that voltage?
SPEAKER_03I mean, I'm not sure if that's something that like that is a solar developer like really entirely one because like if you're if you're applying, if you would be causing high voltage, then the volt var curve is going to see high voltage shift you out of unity power factor such that you are absorbing vars and you're actually dropping the voltage. And like that is generally good for you because it's gonna like have like a lower like interconnection volume.
SPEAKER_02And so that's one way to do it. We talked about can potentially connecting batteries, is another way. I've been hearing of this third way, which are flexible interconnection agreements. That's that term has been tossed around slightly for the past few years.
SPEAKER_03And one of that is basically say flexible interconnection agreements allow you to allow the utility to derate a solar system for X amount of time throughout the year, so that instead of using your back analogy, if it was you're trying to connect 1600 and there's only a few hours of the year at 1200, we can derate that system using an RTAC or some other means to get it to 1200 for those times. That way, for the rest of the year, you're at 1600 and there's no upgrades.
SPEAKER_02What I'm really curious about is A, is that being talked about PPL? B, what like when you're seeing those lowest power on highest sunny days of the year, how often, like, is that a P10 case? Is that a P1 case? What's the probability of that event and how long does it stay there versus like how much higher can you go, right? Like if you're going from using that other example of 1600 to 1200, how often does it typically last at 1200? And how often is it below that 1600? Now I know we're using generalities, but just giving a bird's eye view of the generalities of the landscape.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, it's definitely brought up. It is, I think, I think most people are supportive of it, but are very hesitant with how difficult it would be to manage from the utility side. There would be a lot of paperwork around like who has what flexible interconnect agreement. And right now it is literally just like you can operate. So like setting all that back end admin up, and then the actual like enforcement side of it for like if we told somebody to derate and they didn't derate, like, how do we manage that contract? Um, you talked about like the probability. I wish I could answer more to that. Something that we need to get to from a utility standpoint is doing what's called 8760 modeling every hour, right? Yeah. At the beginning, I told you like I only study three timestamps. And like it's a good thing. And you have none of the rest of the timestamps.
SPEAKER_02Are they possible to get, or are you just that's all that you repeat?
SPEAKER_03With an 8760 study, they'd be possible to get.
SPEAKER_02Got it. How long does a study like that take? And is that like when you say you do a study, is that you'd be requesting that study for every single feeder, or is that something that you just have to comprehensively overhaul at these utilities?
SPEAKER_03I mean, we would run it on like a on every feeder that we needed. I think once you set up the like procedures and the software, and like I don't think it's especially if you can do it like in a cloud-based environment. I don't I I'd I'd imagine it would take somewhere like 20 like 20, 40 minutes to like actually process the software. Like I don't want, like, I'm sure it takes way longer to set everything up.
SPEAKER_02Um I'd be surprised you don't have the data, right?
SPEAKER_03Like you know how many people how much data how much power you're giving and receiving at any given timestamp of people's meters at the meters along the system that you discussed, right? So, like I said, back to like the like the power phone modeling side of it, we would we would do we have the data as far as like all of our circuit, like we would do the same process where we have like a circuit breaker data, and then we kind of process called load allocating, where we can we can see what people's connected capacity to keep it simpler is, and we can scale up and down everybody's load to make the demand at the circuit breaker match with that. Um
Practical Voltage Fixes And Capacitor Strategy
SPEAKER_03I think it's honestly like software to say. Like I I just can't answer it a ton because I don't have any experience trying to do it, to be honest. Like I'm trying to get I'm trying to get caught up on studies that were only studying three timestamps. Like it's hard to be thinking about like how are we gonna get to 8760? I would love to do it. Like it's it's definitely something I hope we can tackle uh in the future.
SPEAKER_02So going back to the like what developers want to hear about, they enter a study, right?
SPEAKER_03You're studying it at those three timestamps.
SPEAKER_02And then based off of those three timestamps, what are the things that you're looking for in your PowerFlow model that impact whether an interconnection agreement's gonna be a few thousand dollars or a couple million dollars?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we gotta run three phase wire out to out to your site. That's expensive. That is expensive, and a lot of people buy cheap land uh in the middle of farm fields where we have single phase wire out there. So upgrading that is is expensive. So that's like obviously the first thing to do. Like, there's no, we can't really get around like having to run wire out. I generally been trying to do very creative things where we like try to shorten the path back to the substation. I think that's I love when I can find solutions like that where we can shorten the path and that it's cheaper for the developer, and it also brings everybody closer to the substation. There's just less trees in the way. So when you say shorten the path, what does that mean? Like go go a little bit. So we if we have like we obviously have like one substation that serves like a town. Uh and we have like lines that run through all the roads, essentially. We try to we try to use roads. Like we have a lot of historical stuff that's like through people's backyards, but nowadays we we definitely try and use roads. Um I'm surprised, honestly, at how many instances they take a right to then go like it's like uh it's to go like up and then to come back down to like get over here, and when you can just like kind of cut this way. And so I definitely there's a lot of opportunity to like bring people closer, and it is cheaper. It's actually crazy how installing new wall like greenfield is half the price of like touching existing assets, really.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so refurbishing is just double period, and if you're able to do something new, it's a lot cheaper.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So it's a lot cheaper. Like if I can find like paths that aren't really used. I mean, you have right-of-way risk there, is a huge risk. Um, but that's to answer like what like what we're talking about. Like the first thing is like how like how am I physically going to get three-phase wire to your site? Um and hopefully a developer's lucky enough to have an interconnection person like you that's trying to find that shortest path that might cut the cost by multiples of what that is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I definitely do.
SPEAKER_03Developers are the more savvy developers are very aware of how far they are from existing three-phase. And if you if you give them a number that they weren't expecting, they will question it on you. And does that sometimes actually lead to better wire runs on your side when that happens? I've seen I've seen some legacy studies. I say legacy, I've seen I've seen some studies that uh they do, they will find like a shorter, a shorter path than we had originally proposed. Because like I said, it's it's easy to kind of go in
Rapid Voltage Change And Industrial Sensitivity
SPEAKER_03and just draw the trace upstream and just run run three-phase wire out there. I've really been trying to, for myself and for my team, like be creative in these solutions uh to get to find the shortest path back. Sweet. So we have you gotta get three phases to the system.
SPEAKER_02Period, full stop. That's a part of that cost. Hopefully you can find the the shortest route. Hopefully it's new instead of refurbishing existing. What are the other components that go into it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Let me let me go back to the like the running three phase. Like I do also see developers where like sometimes they'll point to a substation that's like not even ours. Why are you not connecting me to this substation? It's like either a transmission substation. I've seen plenty of people trying to install SOR in the middle of wind farms and they're trying to connect to like a customer-owned wind farm substation. Um, so they don't always get it right. There are examples of them getting it right and being very accurate, but there are there are assets that aren't ours that people think that they can just connect to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, surprise, there's a lot of utilities out there and a lot of different substations owned by a lot of different entities.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the next thing that I will try that I try to do is look for a thermal violation. Uh so if you if we have small wire running out to your site, uh, we need to increase the thickness of that wire.
SPEAKER_02And that's expensive because that's refurbishment and not new wire.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Uh we try and solve that. Once you we have ratings on our on our system. So like once you get over like our thickest wire, then um it can be difficult because then we just literally have to create a new circuit to get out there. How big are we talking for those type of projects? Or is it a lot of projects on the same wire that would cause that? Yeah, I don't really want to give a number for what that is just because I I literally don't know if like it's public or not. Um but I think it's pretty fair that like obviously like our thickest wire size can only support so much solar. I bet anybody could do the math if they'd like to know what that is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Is there anything a developer can do? Help decrease those thermal violations at the site that they're applying for.
SPEAKER_03Um I mean, not a ton. Like I wonder, like, we don't have a ton of people being I don't even know if like we would have the capacity for this, but like the only thing I can really think of is like that instance where like moving your POI like across like the field and being like on the other side of the farm field um can change like what options we really have to like bring a new circuit to your to your facility.
SPEAKER_02And when you do that, is there a way for developers to say, hey, like here's preference A for POI, but if we're able to save half a million dollars and go to the other side of this farm field, can you study that simultaneously? Is that there a way to add that to notes? Or do you want to do that?
SPEAKER_03I honestly don't know. Like I think, I think for like again, because we're trying like this is like we don't have a ton of applications that like they really are overloading circuits. So like if I'm trying, if we're trying to solve for like let's get interconnection studies back out of like faster
Queue Realities: Timelines, Base Cases, And Delays
SPEAKER_03and cheaper, I don't want to add that complexity to solve for like the 10%, and then like we're just gonna like make the 90%. So like I and I don't know where we can even get. I think I just we need like the certainty of like a lot on being somewhere and like let us like figure that out. No, I like brought that up as a solution, but I don't know. I hope we can get somewhere where like I'm studying something and like see like oh there's other circumstances of the field, like maybe maybe they're open and like I might approach them. I think like where we're at, I'd prefer like something like that. Cool, cool. And so that's the second thing, thermal violations again, not much that the developer can do.
SPEAKER_02And then go into what else is what's the next step in that process for you?
SPEAKER_03Voltage. Voltage. Yeah, it's big V. Yeah. Yeah. Uh we have a lot of tools for voltage on our side. Um like regulators are just like the most, like that's literally what they do, is like in like support voltage. We do have there are issues that regulators can cause. They're series devices. So when they fail, they cause an outage. Um they cause step changes when they're physically switching devices. So any customer downstream of that regulator will see their lights flicker every time that regulator operates.
SPEAKER_02Cause for second for regulator, you don't mean like the regulator that's a pie and the Nurk, right? Or or the utility commission. You're talking about like a physical person, a physical piece of equipment.
SPEAKER_03It's a physical piece of equipment. It is that autonomous that's just able to regulate it. It is autonomous in the sense that it uses local settings to change its taps. So it's a you can kind of think of it like a like an on-load tap changer.
SPEAKER_02Kind of like a person back when they were switching the calls at the at the bottom of a building where they'd move the things around, and then that could just do that automatically.
SPEAKER_03Well, it doesn't get moved around. It's you have like so like a transformer that you would have at like your DER site is going to have taps on it. Um, those are probably offload tap changer taps. So you would have to like de-energize your entire solar site to then switch the tap. But if your transformer is like 12.47 to like 480, then you could like move the taps, and now it would be like 12.7 to like 482. Um, so you can like fine-tune adjust those, like if you know, like if we're like if the utility is consistently giving you like high voltage or low voltage, you can change them up and down. But like these are devices that I mean they're not as drastic, they're like 12.47 to like 12. like three. Got it. Um very minute adjustments. Yeah, and then there's taps change, like they tend they change 0.75% in each direction when uh when they do operate. Um I'm not 100% sure if I got that number right. All right, we'll fact check you in. Yeah. But there so they do, they can change the voltage and they can be valuable, but our principles is like we would reconductor first because it's it's better for like the entire system to have a thicker wire that just has less impedance on it than to have this device out there that can misoperate in any way. Got it. And that would be reconductoring to the from your substation all the way to the so we when you reconductor, you want to reconductor the part that's gonna cost give the most impact for the least amount of month. Um, that's most likely gonna be your thinnest wire, which is because we're yeah, and then that's gonna be at the end of the substation, because everything was built for power, like your demand is mostly at the substation, and then you have like small stuff out towards the end. Um also then if all like let's if all the conductors are like the same size, then you want a conductor where your current's the highest. So we're trying to, if the DDR current is what's causing the high voltage, then reconductoring at the DER site back towards the substation is gonna you're gonna get you're gonna get more voltage change for that
Three‑Phase Extensions And Shortest Paths
SPEAKER_03amount of reconductoring that you do.
SPEAKER_02And so you're optimizing anytime an interconnection application comes in, you're finding the three fees, you're doing the thermal checks, you're trying to optimize for the best bang for your buck reconductoring. What's the next step after that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, let me finish voltage. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. It's big uh yeah. I think I did kind of work backwards on voltage for like options I would do. So I apologize for that. But when we can find options that like even if I can bring somebody like closer to the substation, like I said, like that means they're gonna have less impedance. So like being close to the substation is super valuable. Like I try and look for that first. Um and just generally balancing it, like we talked about like the VARs. Like, I definitely see a lot of we have devices out there called capacitors that provide negative VARs to the system. Um, and those are gonna raise your voltage. Uh so like a lot of times replacing those with like a switching device where it can when it he's high voltage, it can take away the vars providing the system. That's like really cheap and makes our system better. Uh and like, yeah. Does that make it more reliable as well, doing that switching device, or is there no? I think it makes ability benefit as well. I would say it makes it more stable. Um, I think we use the word reliability for like does a customer experience an outage. Got it. Got it. Um so capacitors are shunt devices, so when they fail, they just pop their fuse. Um regulators are important because they they are literally in line of the of the circuit. Like it's sort of they fail, you have an open point. Um it makes it more stable in the sense that like if you do have high voltage, like even if the solar is off, uh that device is now able to open itself and stop providing varsity system. So you can control your you can control your voltage better. Um, depending where they are. You do a lot of the this this strategy, it was I think it was it was named incorrectly that it's called volt var optimization, and it really should be called var volt optimization. You really want to balance your VARs first. Good to know. But I'd say just like generally balancing the system can really help with voltage, and then uh that volt var curve does take it out of balance, but it's currently in our process to put a volt var curve in the system and let the solar site consume a massive amount of vars such that it's dropping the voltage, which will help drop the voltage across the entire bacterial system. Yeah. We just have a ton of vars de feeder head that we eventually have to do something with, but it is not currently in our process to do anything with it right now. What are you gonna do with it, you think? I think if we we need like more holistic like holistic training on it. But um there's two for we need capacitors, because you need to you need something consuming. Yeah. You need something produced, you need something produced in the vars because the solar is consuming it. So like it also it's all with it's all of V equals IR. So if you have your your solar is high because it's solar is high voltage because it has a high impedance back to the transmission tap. So if you're consuming, like let's call it a thousand kilovar, like at your solar site, you're gonna drop your voltage down. Now, what I can do is produce a thousand kilovar really close to that substation head. And that's gonna have that's not going to raise the voltage as much as the solar consuming kilovar away from the substation with a large impedance between it will drop the voltage. So you can actually like have these two devices that like are kind of working against each other, where like one's consuming a thousand kilovar, one's producing it. But because their their impedance back to the substation is different, they have different voltage effects. And then so you can actually kind of play with your voltage even though you're still balancing your vars. That's very interesting. Yeah. We need you need a var-controlled cap bank there, which is not something we really have done a ton in my utility. We have a lot of voltage-controlled cap banks, but I think the the play is a var-controlled cap ink right at the feeder head, where you really shouldn't have that much voltage variability to begin with. And then towards the end of your feeders, you have voltage controlled cap banks, so that like if you do drop voltage down for whatever reason, those caps will close in. Hopefully, they're sized appropriately, so they're just really zeroing out the vars. They're not like they're not uh producing a bunch of vars, so you're still like zero like you need power factor at the feeder head. Um, but they should really support the voltage if you're producing vars all the way at the end of your system. All right.
SPEAKER_02Is there still more to go on voltage?
SPEAKER_03No, we're down voltage. Thanks for asking. There we go. We're done with voltage. What's next? The next reinforcement we do is
Thermal Limits, Reconductoring, And POI Choices
SPEAKER_03uh rapid voltage drop.
SPEAKER_02Um that sounds voltage. That sounds like voltage.
SPEAKER_03You know, it does have voltage in the name, and that's a good that's a good point. Uh the difference is that one is we model it like a steady state voltage.
SPEAKER_02Okay, we turn and this is change, this is delta voltage.
SPEAKER_03That's delta voltage. So we we'll we'll so we'll model the base case, we'll turn the solar, we'll plug the solar in, turn it on, see what the steady state voltage is. If that's all good, then we'll turn the solar off and we'll compare the voltage values. So we have a standard where at the point of interconnection, you're not allowed to lower, you're not allowed to change the voltage by more than 3% in a given switching event. So like all these solar sites have like reclosers. You know, we worked on solar sites. Like I remember going up to the recloser and just push them open.
SPEAKER_02Pop, three megawatts gone.
SPEAKER_03Every customer that's near that solar site, their lights are gonna flicker.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_03And if they're industrial customers, they're pot they're possibly going to trip. Um if they don't, they're uh they're gonna complain because they've just lost a lot of value worth of uh equipment. Um industrial customers are really sensitive to voltage. Residential customers are too. Uh and like we like it is very our customer satisfaction is dependent on like how much people's lights flicker. Um so we have a standard and it's backed up by IEEE uh that we don't let the at the DVR point of interconnection, we don't allow for a rapid voltage drop of more than 3%.
SPEAKER_02And that would be caused by a sudden switching off, right? Could be caused by clouds rolling in really quickly, potentially, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we looked up something because like this is really hard to solve for, so I spent a lot of time trying not to do it. Um I got any good edgy. Yeah. Uh we did find something that like the clouds rolling in, you're really not gonna have the clouds roll in fast enough uh to really like just lose all your production to the point where like people like really notice it. But the other thing is like we do have these switching devices, like capacitors and regulators that really can compensate for the voltage. We're trying to model is like what is that instantaneous voltage drop before those switching devices kick in? Because those switching devices do actually have intentional time delays on them because we don't want them just like opening and closing. Um so like we we want to see that like really fast response. Um, so that the in the real world that really would be like your recloser at the site opens. All right. The only way to get around that is uh just lowering your impedance back to back to the transmission tap.
SPEAKER_02Uh there's really And that could be done by having a higher impedance on your transformers. Could that be done by the Vol4?
SPEAKER_03So where I measure it at our point of interconnection. Um, so our primary side. So lowering your your trans your transformer isn't really gonna do anything. Um you need like we need either fatter wires or a shorter distance. Um back to like everything's better.
SPEAKER_02So say we have a field that has a 2,000-foot easement, right, to get access to that field, and that's the run. We would need really thick wires, either underground or poles, to your point of interconnection from those transformers. Or we'd want to ideally get the transformers as close as possible to that interconnection, and then make that gap between the solar transformers, the developer transformers, and the POI on your side as small as possible.
SPEAKER_03Is that what I'm hearing? I mean, I model this at like the POI. Yeah. So, like, however thick the wires are that you guys have, like that solar developers have after the POI, like that is generally going to be good for these things that like are important. Inverter-based resources really don't care though. They're really good. Got it. What cares more is like these large industrial motors.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the the the inertia machines.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So the inertia machines don't like the drop. There is some stuff that I that I am trying to play around with with
DER Management: Visibility, Control, And Compliance
SPEAKER_03with if you can model, if you can have a lower impedance, like like you said, if your transformer is like a smaller impedance, then your volt var curve is actually going to be more impactful. Um that is going to matter. And I I am playing around with that. But to be honest, like I don't model any of that. I just assume your inverters are right, are right there. Got it. Um I put on I'll put on a transformer that is just our standard impedance.
SPEAKER_02And so sometimes if your wire your utility wires at the POI aren't big enough, maybe the solution here to get that is to reconductor out a bigger wire to fix it, even if there's not a thermal fault along that system.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yeah. It's either you gotta reduce impedance. So like an order from least costly to costly would be like finding a shorter path back to the substation, reconductoring the existing wires, or I hope I never have to do this, but replacing a substation transformer. That is no bueno. No.
SPEAKER_02So how does this we talked about? Is this the whole system? All of your checks are basically going through that whole thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's actually when we're when uh if we've done all those, then that is those are all the constraints that I look for.
SPEAKER_02And then how long does that take to do per interconnection application? Like we we hear all the time queues are really long for interconnection applications. You just explained what a single interconnection application entails. How long does that take? How long reasonably can we expect it to take to process these interconnection applications?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um question I'm actively actively battling. Talk about it. Talk about it is uh I wish I, you know, I think they're like really been doing like a concept of like operations management where like that cycle time is like really important to know really well. Um definitely trying to measure it a lot more accurately such that we can predict a lot of these things. Um I'd say a lot of it too is, and like I'll give an average after this, but a lot of it too is like some circuits are just way harder to model than other circuits. Really? Yeah. What makes the circuit hard to model or not hard to model? I think having so I talked about at the beginning of like when you're setting up your load flow, if you have you have devices that are kind of down your circuit. Um so having those in the right location that are uh accurate, that are that are new. Um is correct. That are correct and helpful, is helpful. Um I found that it is very difficult to accurately model um single phase sections of our staircase. We'd have to reconductor them to three-phase. Yeah, but like even if you're on like a three-phase backbone. And I and like that's that's like I still need to set up the base case, regardless of if we're reconductoring three-phase. So I'm saying like what's taking me a long time. So, and even if you're even if you're on a three-phase, I don't have to do that first step of like three-phase extension. Um, I still need to set up the base case. Yep. So if like if you're on it, setting up that base case takes a while. And it can't, it can, it can take a while, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But once you set that up for a circuit, you shouldn't have to do that again. Are you guys having to reset up that base case?
SPEAKER_03We have to do it. So we need our three load models. And those load models expire pretty much every six months. Because So every six months you guys are going in and remaking those base cases for every single circuit that you're I have solar on, yeah. That is solar on. So if you have so because I said like we have summer and winter peak. And we also have data. But like the summer, so every six months I get a new summer and winter peak. Uh or summer or winter, like it's well. So, you know, like it definitely is super efficient. And, you know, like we get applications where it's like developer will submit like two sites in like one location. Um, the second site is way faster. Uh you've already like ironed out those kinks. Um the three-phase extension is usually already done. Yeah. One that like is all is has to like a bear to go through. So that's already done. Um, you've already kind of done your analysis of like what's the shortest path back there. And uh really all that stuff is like reconductoring. So if they're like if if you do have like voltage issues or if there are multi-s like you just
Flexible Interconnection Challenges And 8760 Dreams
SPEAKER_03just throw a thicker wire on it. Like it's expensive, but like from our side, it's kind of easy. Got it. Got it. So that'll be a quick turnaround, but potentially a costly turnaround. I'm just saying for that second application. Yeah, for the second app. Yeah, we study in we are we are regulatory that we we have a regulation where we study in order. Um so like the queue. Uh the queue. Yeah. If we have um we have a start date. Uh so once the customer like obviously submits the application, um, we need to approve their one-line drawings, they need to pay us uh not the application fee. Um there's some other things for residential, but for like these big um CNI, community solar, commercial projects. I'll say for um for new service applications. New service applications. Uh yeah. Um those two those thread holes don't apply. So really it's just like paying the invoice and uh uploading the one line. Uh once those things are approved, uh you enter the queue. Uh so we have to study it in queue. And we do, I think the number we're giving out probably right now is five to six months for uh once you enter the queue to have a result back.
SPEAKER_02And we'll get to the processes, hopefully, that you're doing to try to shorten that window, and maybe other utilities can do as well. But getting into the queue, right? You said you need to get that one line. I'm a little curious how often are developer delays of their drawings, of their inputted information, impacting your ability to get them into the queue and then to analyze them once they are in the queue.
SPEAKER_03I think a lot of it stems from like that it's like my team that's like doing the one-line reviews, less so than like if you didn't like it's like a three-day delay for you to like turn around a revision on the one-line. Like, I don't really think that's materially impacting like where in the queue you are. Got it. Um but it's like I would say like it probably more so impacts it, and that's like literally like an hour of me like reviewing one lines is just not an hour of me doing load flow analysis. And so every time that a developer submits something that needs to go back for a revision, you've now lost an hour, which on that five months, now that adds an hour to that five months, and you get enough of that, and that's where that builds up. Yeah. That's really just like when you apply to utilities, like you gotta understand like the REMSI requirements, um, rules of electric metering and service. Thank you. There's way too many acronyms in our Yeah, I no, there's an I in there that I don't even know. I don't even know that one. But it's kind of like the regulations that uh like that were when when you have when you when you have an electrical service, like what are you responsible for doing as like that customer?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02And so what are you looking for when you are approving a single line and the site plan and the information that is coming in? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So that way a developer can get it right off the bat, save you an hour, save that three-day turn, all the cost that comes in with that revision, and then go go forward. So it's all on our website, uh PPL RemSy, um, for like what we need specifically. I'm sure every utility has like general rules that they also have and uh some location on the website for it. Uh we so for I'll stick to uh I'll say larger app, but I'll say larger primary applications. So a big thing is like we you need to be able to disconnect the solar with uh with an air break disconnect. Um so that could be like just represented as like like just like a physical open switch on the line diagram. Um if you have like a circuit breaker that you're representing with, we require that it either says that it has like a viewing window for the air break, or it's a draw-out type circuit breaker. And so you just specify that on the one line or in the notes of the drawing. It can literally be anywhere on the one line. Just like you just say an indication that this is a visible and lockable air breaker. Yeah. Yep. Um we only do YY transformers. Uh that is better, that provide YY transformers provide more fault current, so the corrected devices. And uh clear default better. Do you require grounding transformers? I know some utilities require grounding transformers in certain instances. I don't think they need to be YY grounded. But they do need to be YY. And then we would have the grounding. I'm certain it's just YY. Got it. Um we also have a DER management project. Uh so ours is unique in this. Um we require that you leave an open available communication port for us to connect our DER management device into. Uh we require an indication
Queue Discipline, Deposits, And Restudies
SPEAKER_03that the installer will network all set inverters to that open innovation. So you can understand everything that's happening at the system. Yeah, we our device will read the uh production, uh, both real reactive of the system, uh the voltage uh at the system, um, and the Volvarkers uh will set them remotely. And then with that, what are you trying to build with this initiative? With it with the DR management pilot?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03We're trying to provide visibility and control into the DERs. Um so having like the backslides like this base case, like if I if we have solar on our system, um there's really without this DR management pilot, there's zero indication of like what a given solar site is producing at that moment in time. Um at least that's really accessible to like all of our SCADA tools. Like we do have like meter that's at meter data that's like honestly like for your service. Um, but really this device is much more capable than our meters of really being heavily integrated into our SCADA systems.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's not just the meter information, it's you're giving so much more information than the meter has for the system.
SPEAKER_03I think the production is the most important. Um, but it does do a control side of it, and the meters just straight up wouldn't do. Um so we can program volt var curves remotely, we can program ride-through curves remotely. Uh solar tripping off during disturbances um can cause issues. Uh we can also change the inverter out of volt var mode into a fixed power factor. So volt var curve is really, really powerful in the sense that like if the DER is in the voltage violation, it can actually respond with vars. The fixed power factor honestly benefits like other people more. So having like having this is just better for our system.
SPEAKER_02It gives you more options, it gives you more levers to pull to stabilize the pit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so we can control solar sites that might not necessarily be like in the actual issue that's happening, but they can, again, provide or consume VARs to help a can a system condition that they might not necessarily be seeing. You know, they might not be in violation. Uh well, they might not be above one and a half percent of their nominal voltage. So they might not be maxing out their volt var curve, but maxing out their volt var curve might actually help the overall system.
SPEAKER_02And then with that, I'm remembered that was actually your team before going to the interconnecture application team. So, how is that initiative going? Where where would you like to see that go in the future for PPL and honestly any other grid? Because in America right now, we're thinking of at least my generally held consensus is that the infrastructure of the grid is very aged, it's very old. We haven't been given a lot of generation, and it is very difficult to provide generation through these interconnection application queues and whatnot.
SPEAKER_03How is that helping modernize the grid? I mean, the vote, so the vo the biggest thing from like what we've been talking about is that with through the DER management pilot, we have a level of confidence that these solar types will actually get their Volvar curve on them. Utilities in general do not trust customer-owned equipment to be ready to be their settings. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And then this ensures compliance of the settings, which allows for that more stable grid, which means more solar on the grid.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So then I go in and I model like these solar sites with a Volvar curve on them. Um then someone does the races and you have inconsistencies between the power flow model and the I mean, I don't like I think from what we're talking about, it's like there is no reality because I'm modeling like future solar. Yeah. But it's the the amount of voltage issues that I would see without Volvar curves is very, very high. Um Volvar curves really do solve voltage issues a ton. Um, I'm not saying there's not voltage issues with Volvar curves on there. You definitely definitely can get it. But it helps 80-20 at solving 80% of the problems. It does do that. And a lot of times I see too, like when it doesn't, I really do have a lot of options in terms of like creating more balance to the grid to solve that voltage than I do
Build Near Substations And Cut Line Costs
SPEAKER_03just like straight up just reconductoring. Um, and those are like I talked about like the capacitor devices, all that, those are just a lot cheaper than reconductoring and a lot shorter turnaround time.
SPEAKER_02Well, before going to just more brainstorming about the grid, the future of energy in America, what uh is there anything else you have to say about directly relevant to developers trying to submit solar interconnection applications, trying to get those projects through the queue and built as efficiently as possible?
SPEAKER_03I would say I don't like open concept. This is an open concept. So a difficulty that I haven't talked about is um the queue shifting. And so like we talked, like you talked about earlier in the sense that like, well, what if developers gave you like a ton of options? That that increases the complexity like so much. And what I'm really what I'm really trying to do is like reduce the complexity. Um cancellations in the queue, and I like I feel bad for people that are actually serious about installing solar, and then they get behind somebody in the queue that's extremely speculative, and then they are holding that spot.
SPEAKER_02They're they're already being in the power flow model for the people downstream of them, and they're pretty much dictating where the ship goes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um they're trying to hold payments up to pay for the reinforcements. They so we implemented a rule in 2024 where um you actually have to give us a 25% deposit before we even start detail engineering. Um, we didn't used to have that.
SPEAKER_02So there used to be a lot more, I won't want to say bad actors, but people
Big Picture: Load Growth, Rates, And Incentives
SPEAKER_02holding a place in the queue that really aren't serious about developing that solar right now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's not like it's not so much as like they're holding a place in the queue in the sense that like we have people that agreed to pay us $2 million. And we do detailed design engineering and we tell everybody to the cue point, we tell everybody behind them that like you can go into service on this date once this reinforcement is done, and it's gonna be a low, low cost because we make it very clear there's an application ahead of you that is paying two million dollars. If this application cancels, you have to pay two million dollars. And you know, we're ready to go. We we issue invoices right before construction. So if we've done all the detailed design engineering, they've already paid 25%, or at least some we only have this 2024. So we we have many, many applications where they haven't paid 25%. And we send them an invoice, and they make up every excuse in the world of like give us like X amount more days, this, that, that, and then they just never pay us. Wow. And that holds up the entire queue where like we were ready to go to construction, and now we delayed it however many days because the customer like came up with every excuse of like why they deserve a couple more days to pay. And then now we have to completely restudy the queue. So we have to set up new every single person, every, every single we we're coming into reinforcements and the entire system assuming that this solar would be operational at the time that this solar became operational. So we don't necessarily know what's going to happen to our power flow model if this solar is not operational. So you have to redo the entire entire power flow. So that takes time.
SPEAKER_02Is there a way to do that, like a Monte Carlo simulation where every time you analyze a new application, you basically go through all of the solar that had to have been true and switch them off one by one?
SPEAKER_03I am trying to put that in our process.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. What I want to see happen is that if you like what like we send you a letter and it's like we say that's like it's $2 million for like this specific upgrade. And like, you know, if this app if this custom customer A is paying for it right now, and if customer A cancels, you potentially could pay for it. I want to go in and say that like I'll just analyze that one specific reinforcement. Like I'll go back to the power, I'll do the power flow model again, hopefully use the old model. But right now we use new dates, um, which take we need to set up the entire base case again. Um, I really just want to see us studying like that one like reinforcement. Like, but right now, again, it's like back to the drilling board, like all these reinforcements. And uh, and it make like it's hard because then it's like you don't actually really know like what your potential cost is of a customer in front of you cancels. Um and like we like if I do, let's say I bring in like somebody like your customer two, and you want to pay the two million dollar upgrade, and then customer one cancels, you know, I'm you might be able to sign that two million dollar upgrade, and like we might be able to like keep your original and service date. But if I have to completely restudy you and like let's say like a new date came in that's like not even really related to the original cancellation, like we haven't started that detailed engineering yet. So like we obviously have to delay you because we haven't started the new project that is now emergent and needed to in order to handle your application.
SPEAKER_02And so if
Software, Operations, And Grid Automation
SPEAKER_02you're serious about solar, stay in the grid. But if you're not, withdrawing your application as soon as you know you're not going to build that project is gonna be very beneficial to everybody. Absolutely. Yeah. And that is would help the entire industry and developers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think it's kind of like a positive like feedback loop because it's like like I understand why you as an individual actor want to be speculative. Like, of course, you're gonna throw out like applications like everywhere and then like see what's the cheapest. And we have plenty of developers that don't even really like want to own their project, and they sign like an application saying they're gonna go through, assuming that they're gonna be able to sell the project before the bill comes through. And then when they don't, like then that's when the issues come. And like again, like I get why you'd want to do that as an individual actor, because there's really no like negative consequence to you to do it. But but if enough individual actors, it's a tragedy of the common situation. Yeah. So as soon as you know that project's actually not gonna go forward, withdrawing from the is there an easy way to withdraw from that. Yeah, you just email like our customers.
SPEAKER_02Just email, and then then every hopefully after you institute the new process, you already have those simulations ran, but right now you they'd have to rerun all those simulations, and that five-month timeline seems a lot more reasonable when you're handling all these different errors in flight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that's for like the original application. We do really, really try to prioritize uh cancellation restudies. Um, just because we have so many pieces that are moving. That you have to go. Yeah, like if we had a crew ready to go install a thing and we're like, well, I don't know if customer two is even going to pay for it, we have to get that study out the door to customer two because then they have 45 days to sign it and see if they want to pay the $2 million. And if they cancel an answer to customer three, meanwhile, we have a crew on standby waiting to go install this reinforcement. So, like, get it like we do prioritize cancellation, so it's not quite that five months ago.
SPEAKER_02Well, I meant to say that like the cancellations and the need to restudy take some of your time, which comes, which which contributes to the time it takes to study new studies.
SPEAKER_03I've had studies where like I've sent it to my customer. It's taken me so long because it's like unique. There's there's conflicting reinforcements I have to like go to other teams to talk to about. I find like it's taken me weeks to like iron out the details of this application. I send it to my customer team to like send out the send out, send it to my my team, my internal team that's gonna send it to the customer. Yep. To then walk back to my desk and an application I heard I've canceled, and I have to completely restart. Oh my god, that must be brutal. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's one thing. Is there any other big that's a pie in the sky dream where we all start treating the commons a little bit better and every man does their part, man woman does their part.
SPEAKER_03Is there any other useful brainstorming ideas that you can think of that would genuinely help? I mean, that's really the biggest one. I think too, and there are like savvy developers, so like like I've I've talked a lot about like distance to sub. So if you are like if all else is equal and you see like one farm field next to a substation and one farm field 10 miles away from a substation, it's gonna be a lot cheaper to interconnect to you to the the one right there. So the savvy developers are getting right next to the substation. We have plenty of solar that's going in the farm field next to the substation. I think that is very intentionally done. And they're very cheap interconnections. Good for that. I'm not saying there's not uh there's not like substation reinforcements that they're paying for. But it's a lot cheaper than two miles away from the substance. Well, five miles away. It cuts out like a ton of the line work.
SPEAKER_02And the line work can be millions of dollars.
SPEAKER_03Line work can be millions of dollars, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Alright. So that's interconnection. Let's go to I I don't want to say part two, but basically, we see and we both listened to the recent Elon Musk podcast where he's saying that it's easier to build space stations to do data centers because it's easier to do that than to interconnect to the grid right now and to actually build generation and build capacity in America right now. Meanwhile, we have got China that is increasing the size of the American grid every 18 months. What can we do, in your opinion, to try to write that ship? I feel like we're in a ship that's surrounded by ice and we're immobile watching somebody skate on the ice by us. How do we get moving again?
SPEAKER_03It's rough. I don't know. And you're in it trying to solve it like that. I try every day. I try so hard. Uh lately it's been operations management and just like just job aids, to be honest. That's that's the that's the thought I've been having lately of how do I get everybody on my team really doing things the same exact way. I think came up with uh consistency builds quality, quality build, scale, scale build, speed. And if we can, if you can figure out a way to get a multi-thousand person company, uh especially one that is bureaucratic and regulated as a monopoly, um to like all be moving in the same direction and making the same decisions, I think that's gonna that's gonna help a lot. Just operations management.
SPEAKER_02So operations management for all of the the people who are doing the work, is there anything that you think would help like more pie in the sky dreams in terms of reshaping regulations,
Leadership, Consistency, And What’s Next
SPEAKER_02reshaping incentive structures for utilities? Like what has currently, in your opinion, caused the molasses or the the comp I don't want to say complacency, but the plateau. And what how do we get here? And what do you think we can do to get going after that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there definitely is a lot of things that I that I have opinions on, but I'm not doing day-to-day.
SPEAKER_02And I'll say that just with a caveat that I'm not so so caveat, this isn't your job, this is more brainstorming ideas based off of articles and yeah, and industry understanding.
SPEAKER_03Um I am confident on this part of it though, that uh so for like how we got here, we the the US has been in 30 years of no load growth. Um 4.3 gig or terawatts or whatever for the past 25-30 years, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh I mean I don't know what the number is, but yes on. Oh yeah. Um And now we have like load growth. Um, I mean, I got into this when uh federal policies were more solving climate change. Uh and that the load growth curves for that were astounding. And that's really what I was thinking of. But now like the data center load growth curves are also astounding. Um, even more so.
SPEAKER_02I mean, electrifying vehicles, electrifying robots, like anything, yeah, even if it's not just data centers, the ability to go to a future and even an economy is dependent on how much power you have.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, it's I I mean, I'd say like it's how it's how much like energy you have. Yeah, energy. Yeah. But I mean, I'm of the opinion that like it is better served as electric. Uh I just think I think a lot of devices controlled by electricity are better than those not, um, regardless of greenhouse gas emissions. So I would I would love if we had an economy where uh power prices were going down. Um electric prices, to be clear.
SPEAKER_02Electric prices have been gone up because of the stagnation of building generation and of building capacity, would you say?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah. No, no. Power price, so like yes, as like the near-near term, like what's made the headlines lately. Um, but historically, uh generation prices, I think, I believe have been pretty flat. Um, again, I'm not a power market expert, so is that. But I I the transmission and distribution uh costs have been rising um a lot faster than the generation cost.
SPEAKER_02Is that because of deferred maintenance?
SPEAKER_03Is that because there's no incentive to do maintenance? What's the reason behind the cost update? Yeah. Um, I mean, I'll speak to like the regulatory side right now. I think that utilities, the regulations for utilities were invented in a period of load growth. And then they were being applied to a period of no load growth. And they incentivize utilities to spend money building new infrastructure. Um and if you don't New growth, right? Assuming growth. Assuming load growth. Like build like a lot of this is like rural politics of like how do we create these economic structures to like deliver power out to people where it's really not economical to do so. Um, and you know, as a utility with the current regulatory structure, like we love when somebody like applies in the middle of nowhere and we can build a X million dollar line and then rape raid case it, and everybody in the system has to pay for it.
SPEAKER_02That's how you make money, and that's how we make money, yeah. Increase in price of everybody in the system. So the whole system subsidizes that one line to the guy in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, yeah. And that's part of the regulation, but that's I don't have a feeling that's the full picture.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think yeah, I don't know. You don't know how regulatory experts. I think it's too big of a problem. It's a big problem. I think a lot of like the price side of it. I think a lot of like performance-based rate making is a buzzword that I think is uh really important. Um it's all about incentives. And you know, our regulatory structures right now are just like build fat wire, prove to the public utility commission that it's semi-justified, and then you make money off of that. And if you can actually create, like if you're as a utility commission and you say, like, I want these things to happen on the grid, and like whatever those would be, like, like I want like customers to experience less introductions, I want like the greenhouse gas emissions to go down. I'm not saying any of the things are good or bad, I'm just saying that like at least yeah, yeah. And then like say to the utility, you make more money if you do this, regardless of like I just take take it away from like a cost plus model of like, oh, you spent a million dollars on this. Here's a hundred and ten, here's a million ten point, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Back. So like right now, when developers are connecting solar and actually upgrading the grid infrastructure, utilities make nothing from that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we do not capitalize that. We actually lose more. You're not allowed to. Yeah. And then with so like all that stuff is then we go, we take that to a rate case and we say that like we spent a million dollars, therefore we deserve to collect a million ten back from our customers. And then we write that into like the actual rate that people pay for electricity. But then if it's like really cold one winter or really hot the next, like we would literally make more money on that. So like there is that's not entirely adjusted. Um, I brought all that up to say that like you like solar loses the utility money because so solar, let's say solar that um doesn't have batteries is in continuous. I was gonna solar that is actually supporting load. Really? Yeah, because we're not like that meter, we don't we don't Lose money when the meter is spinning backwards. Um, that's all flat. But it's like it's the lost opportunity of like we could have been serving that customer power, and then like now we aren't. And like we would have made money on like every kilowatt hour that like goes to that custom.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02And you make money by connecting new service, right? Making new, you said new lines, but that's not generation, that's new.
SPEAKER_03That's new infrastructure.
SPEAKER_02Infrastructure in a world where we have a lot of infrastructure. Do you feel like there is a need to rethink those regulations on how to drive profit as a utility so that you can actually drive profit from upgrading existing infrastructure? Because I think one thing we didn't talk about is you actually don't make much profit upgrading existing infrastructure.
SPEAKER_03Oftentimes you can say that upgrading existing infrastructure is a capital investment. Um if I have a 10 MVA transformer in a substation and there is load growth there, and you've got a 20 or something, and I go to that, I would capitalize that investment to increase the capacity of that substation. Now, if I replaced it like proactively with another 10, that would not. That would not that would be operational.
SPEAKER_02But if you and if you wanted to make it so that the grid is redesigned to handle volts going both ways, that's not also we are I mean well, no, it it's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Even though we would consider it to be upgrading, but under No, it is in the sense that I'm adding protective devices to that substation. Okay. So like the sub the capability of that substation is enhanced. I'm physically putting another piece of equipment inside of that substation. Um it's not cap it depends who pays for it. Like we have different budget line items. Um so if IPP is paying for it, then uh great. Then it's it's it's like you guys pay for it directly. You stoler developers pay for it directly. Um but we wouldn't capitalize it. So very big flag buyer, very difficult to go forward in terms of where the regulations stand and where like what you're able to do, right?
SPEAKER_02If you had, if you're able to be like president of FERC for a day and wave a magic wand, what would you do based off of your individual contributor, your team contributors trying to do this, trying to genuinely every day, because I know you like make the grid a better place. Like it's your one of your missions in life is to connect more power to the grid, right? What would you do if you could, if you're a dictator for a day, do to change that?
SPEAKER_03I would find a way to incentivize more efficient power use. Um, the people actually consuming the power. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um that would be like a non-net metered system, right? A system kind of like Texas has, where you get a true market rate of the power, not a net metered section of power.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yeah. Um I don't think that's the only uh way of the reason I phrase it is that's that's not the only way to do it. Um demand response is a real way to do this, in which you do kind of give everybody like this flat power price, but then like the people that are you pay the people that are participating in the market rather than like punish the people that aren't participating in the market. Yeah, so instead of having net meter, uh instead of having a rate-based system, you have a net meter system. But if you wanted to not have a net meter system, say you wanted when it is really sunny and your solar is producing to charge your car instead of exporting that to the grid, you give them a benefit, or maybe you charge your car during the middle of the day, even if you don't have solar, right? Or you run all your appliances when the power is the cheapest, you give them some money back on their on their bill. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're a long way from those programs being like that dynamic to really pair with solar, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of them are like you charge a car overnight. Yep.
SPEAKER_02Um run the dish, run, run, run the big appliances when the cost and the the cost is cheapest and therefore the generation is highest without anywhere for that to go.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yeah. Um, I'll add uh like we need better software um to like actually manage like that like all this stuff like solar, car like electric cars, and really even like not any of those like flashy things, but just like everyday consumer appliances that like that are really adding up are increasing the variability of the grid.
SPEAKER_02And I think that because I could have my car charging, I could have my HVAC system running, I could have my stove on, and I could be doing, I don't know, I think that's all of my high loads, yeah, right? And then I could shut them all off. Yeah. And that's a huge just one house.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. So it's when like all the houses together. Like, you know, I drove on your block, like you have three solar systems, and like like so the swing on just this one single-phase tap that you're on is massive throughout a day compared to like right now when it's like cold in winter. Um so like you need ways to actually manage that variability and and control it. Like that's what the dermis pilot talks about earlier, is doing that. We're still we're still a very far way away from just having like really, really awesome software to control that. And are there just not people trying to be in the space? Is there I think it's really expensive to can to connect to legacy software. Oh, because like you can't really AI helps with that.
SPEAKER_02That's like the promise of Cloud Super Bowl ad, right? Or whatever is. I I don't know if it's cloud or one of them, it's it's the ease of which you connect to existing APIs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Because like like, sure, like I'm I'm sure I know people have made software that is like in a very isolated system that shows like here's your most optimal like decision point like under this condition on the grid. But like now, actually take like our real SCADA feed and like make that decision point in real time. And most importantly, back to like the operations management, like communicate that in a way to like real operators.
SPEAKER_02That give them the ability to make the data that they need to make those decisions in those decisive moments.
SPEAKER_03And and test them. Like one thing that I was thinking about like if we like if we get to a world of like flexible interconnections, you're gonna need a lot of levers being modified instantaneously. And that doesn't really look like if you're thinking about it in like the one solar set, I can see how you would think that. But there's there's a lot of devices on the grid that like are switching. And like as an example, we have a system called fault location isolation system restoration. So if if if we lose a three-phase backbone at any given part of our grid, this system triggers itself automatically. And it will analyze all of the fault currents on all the different devices, it'll locate the grid. Um, and it'll determine how what devices actually need to open in order to isolate it. Now we have like that happen autonomously, but what I so like the fault is gonna trip your most upstream device. You locate that fault, the system will then send a remote communication signal to trip the downstream device. So now you are truly isolated. If there's another section that's even more downstream to that grid, we might have a tie to like a whole other substation. So we can change like where those customers are being fed from. And so like that plan might involve like two devices, like one opening and one closing. Yeah. It keeps continuous power despite a track. Well, it's not continuous. Uh the experience at momentary. Yeah, yeah. You can restore it in less than five. Well, as I continuous. If you can restore it in less than five minutes, it's not considered a permanent outage. Got it. Uh but like so you might get those those plans. Those get sent to a system operator who like who will look at them and be like, I agree that this makes sense. Run. Or I don't agree that this makes sense. Like cancel, cancel, run. Yeah. And like as you increase, as the variability in the grid increases, the amount of devices needed to manage that variability increases, these plans become exceedingly complex. So like how do we create the software that can like that can like come up with the most optimal plan, but then like also like the process and the procedures that like realistically we can have like system operators like you, that kind of like like Google Maps, like how we how we use Google Maps right now. Like you as a driver are capable of like I do it all the time. Like Google like it wants me to like drive over here and then take a right, and I'll see a road that I can just like like go in a shorter distance. And yeah, like integrate like having those plans integrate with like existing software and like existing like system operators, and like they do some very complex switching moves that I cannot even really imagine, let alone execute. Um like I gave like a very simple one, but um like there's field work every day out there where like we need to do preventive maintenance on the substations. And we very often will isolate like entire circuit breakers that might be carrying 10 MVA of load, and we have to figure out how to alternatively supply all that load, and it might be getting alternatively supplied from like multiple different substations.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Complex. Yeah. Complex. Well, if there is I know we both are super nerds about this, if there is one thing that you'd like to learn in the future that we'd like to understand more about, kind of like how a lot of developers would like to understand about interconnection applications, what would be one that you'd like to know about in the future? Well, more open concept than just focusing on the utilities and the grid infrastructure.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I'll go I'll go two answers because like I feel like you gave that like a really like long-term answer, which which I appreciate. Um and I think a lot of that is like is a lot like of like the 8760 studies, and like how would I how would I actually run that? And but it's not really just about running it and giving it probability. Again, it's about like what like how do I actually trust that at that one hour that I found that solar is actually going to derate itself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, what if there is a cloud? Or well, when you're talking about a flexible interconnection.
SPEAKER_03I'm saying, I'm saying for like the reverse power flow, which is like the big upgrade. Like I I've determined my my daytime end my substation is 1900, and you're applying for 2000. Then like I've like I look at my like data, and then that that 1900 only happens at one hour of the year, which is like the best case scenario we could poke for in flexible interconnection. I don't know necessarily, like I just have a degree of confidence, but honestly, not even that high that that 1900 is going to come next year. Because like I'm just looking at historical data, like that could have been low and it could be 2000 next year.
SPEAKER_02Could be everybody took vacation when we're in Pennsylvania, so everybody went to the Jersey Shore for the weekend and there's nothing on in the houses, just for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_03That's almost for the opposite. If I studied and like it's 2.1 and I don't and I don't charge a customer for reverse power flow, and then they reverse power flow. Like we have we have instances of that where like oh wow. So like you could be up or down, right? There's like we have load drop off. Like we like we studied you on an industrial circuit, and then like that customer went out of business. Well, yeah, just look at any city that used to have a lot of industry, and then those big warehouses go offline. Now you went from 1900 to 1800 potential. Yeah. Yeah. But like regardless of the variability of like if that 1900 T thing that comes like next year, like let's say I have extreme confidence that like one hour of the year next year is going to be 1900. I don't know what that one hour is going to be. So like every single day, I would need some piece of software that's running. That tells you how much the solar is producing and how much people are consuming simultaneously. Yeah, but not but like it needs to be prediction-based. Oh, so it's predicting how in the future are people going to consume. For like how for day ahead. Yeah. And really even like hour ahead. Like, what if like it is like because like I can be like I have 98% confidence that we're not going to drop below our bus time minimum, our substation and that's what we've been using. What about that 2%? But yeah, but like I get closer and I'm like, oh, actually, like this industrial customer took some holiday that like only this company celebrates. Well, in that instance, if you haven't SCADA connected, if you have the ability to modify the RTAC, uh the relay transmission and what's the something control.
SPEAKER_02Autonomous not autonomous, what's it? Radio transmission, something like that. Basically a device that modifies the real-time power voltage and vars of a solar system or any generative capacity.
SPEAKER_03If you have the ability to modify that, right, in real time, why can't it be as simple as when your three phase goes out and your grid operator gets to see that and say, all right, well, actually, let me just press a button and now derate that solar system, why does it have to be predictive in the future? Because it's the it's the statement you said if your grid operator sees that. Well, couldn't it be automatic?
SPEAKER_02As soon as you have that tied to if there is ever a reading at the substation where you're backfeeding power, I'm gonna instantaneously, well, at the speed of light to transmit that wire down to the RTAT, derate your solar system in that moment. Like, does it have to be predictive?
SPEAKER_03Um I think there has to be some level. I think it needs to be nice. But no, I was gonna say, like, I think there has to be some level of what you said. Because it's like, what if your prediction is wrong? Yeah, like you need so like I think you actually do need both, where like you need to know what your plan is for that day. Um, and you need to know it's like I said, like we do we do switching operations like every day. So like we have a plan of how we're going to operate this grid on this given day. Um and like introducing even just without like flexible interconnection, the variability of solar is so hard. Like, one thing I'm one thing we still really need to iron out is like right now in our interconnection agreements, the like you signed saying that you're only ever gonna operate solar on this specific circuit that I studied you on. But like I mentioned, like we move circuits all the time. So right now, if you move circuits, we just trip the solar offline. Oh wow. But like, how do you do that study like continuously? Like, how do you do like an 8760 study for like every single possible configuration that this like solar could be on?
SPEAKER_02Only thing I can think of is quantum computing to be able to do that many different scenarios so quickly.
SPEAKER_03I think you don't need like that, like because you don't like I don't need to know every single scenario. Like you almost need you need the scenario run like before you do the switching maneuver. And then it's like you need you need like really good software that can do that.
SPEAKER_02But just not good grid modeling software that can do that.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I don't think so. I'm not so maybe there's a very big gap in the space that somebody could hopefully innovate and help. I think I think people are definitely working on it. Um I've seen I've seen flashy grid software. Uh so I don't want to say that like this software doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_02But you're currently not implementing it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're currently not implementing it, which like maybe it's my IT team. I don't know. But big corporations are very difficult to move into new software. I don't think other utilities are doing much better than we are. When I go to these trade shows and like I've talked to them, like I like I talked about Flizzr, most utilities like won't even won't even let their reclose their line reclosers trip. They'll trip out their whole circuit breaker and then let a line crew drive to the location and figure out and operate all their reclosers and sectionalizing and have the line crew physically close in the recloser or sorry, open the recloser and then call their control center to like reclose in that circuit breaker. So you've just lost two-thirds of your customers that like you didn't even need to lose.
SPEAKER_02So you're doing a lot better. You're the at the forefront of innovation, but there's a lot more that can be done. Yeah. So that's just the life of an innovator. Yeah. Well, thanks for the time, man. I really appreciate you. Is there anything else you'd like to say before I ask my final question?
SPEAKER_03Let me, because I did say I was gonna give two parts. Oh yeah, two parts, two parts, seconds. So I got like two for long term. I wish like we'll get there. It'll be fun. It'll be it'll be really fun. Um right now though, it's like like I said this word, it's like it's just what I've been thinking about. Okay, it's just operations management. And just like, how do you how do you day in and day out like show up and have a job to do and have a team that's doing that job and have predictable cycle times where I can like confidently answer like this study takes four hours, um, have processes and procedures that like every single person is doing the same thing, and then not even my team, which is like relatively small, but like there's a lot of other teams that are making a lot of decisions, and like coordinating all those decisions together is just is a very big operations challenge. It's a leadership challenge. I agree. I want to get good at it.
SPEAKER_02Leadership is hard, man. That's a good thought of making sure everybody on the ship is helping to sail in the same direction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And no one's going out and I don't know, hanging off the rafters or or dragging the ship and putting an oar in when we're going this way. We we both rode crew, so like uh catching a crab and your the whole ship is gonna move. Yeah. Yeah. If there is anybody in tur in terms of the solar, like not anybody specifically, but uh any idea, anything you'd like to learn, this is the first podcast of hopefully many, where I'm trying to like the reason this started is because you and I would read all the articles. We read Canary Media every day, we're reading all the different the different papers, and there gets to a point where even the podcast, even the papers aren't putting out information that I'm learning on, right? And you taught me a lot today because obviously I don't do your job, and there's a lot that I have to think about about how the grid works.
SPEAKER_03What is something that you'd like to learn in the future that you haven't been seeing out there? I want to see how large organizations like we like we said this, it's uh I'm repeating myself, but how how large organizations can do like complex engineering challenges and and really effectively like coordinate all that effort. Without that uh what do you call it? Uh inertia being lost. Or what do you mean by inertia? Not inertia, that's that's a bad word for it.
SPEAKER_02Uh without the uh friction of moving forward, like the air resistance. I feel like there's in a large organization, the it's more like water resistance than it's like going through air. And ideally, you're going through a vacuum of space, yeah. And a startup's like a vacuum of space. There's no air resistance, there's no water, you're not, there's no ground resistance, right? And you get to a utility, it's like you're trapped in quicksand. And there's all this resistance to moving forward. And every time you flaw, you actually just sink deeper into this muck, right? How how do we how does a large organization or any organization for that matter stay, but especially as it scales to be large? Not only be out of the quick stand, but be back in flying, we're hopefully sailing through space. So I'll I'll hope to try to get somebody like that on for you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03All right.
SPEAKER_02Well, have a good one, man.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_02My pleasure.