Connecticut and Massachusetts are both continuing efforts to modernize their electric grids despite the lockdown in recent months caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So heard 100 participants Thursday in a webinar hosted by the Connecticut Power & Energy Society (CPES) and the Connecticut Bar Association’s Energy, Public Utility and Communications Section.

Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Chair Marissa Gillett shared the stage with her counterpart from Massachusetts, Matthew Nelson, chair of the state’s Department of Public Utilities. Eric Johnson, president of CPES and ISO-NE director of external affairs, led the discussion about each state’s approach to grid modernization.

Defining Terms

Last October, the PURA issued an interim decision outlining its framework for investigating methods for realizing an equitable modern electric grid in Connecticut, as well as for plans for ensuring continued grid developments through a biennial integrated distribution system planning process (Docket No. 17-12-03).

“On May 6 we issued the [request for proposals] and the request for program designs in the first six proceedings” of the effort, Gillett said. “Those are still pending before us … so I’m going to abstain from speculating about where we’re going since those are open proceedings.”

The first track was energy affordability, which could have its own webinar, and the second track was advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), she said.

Nelson said that in 2012, Massachusetts was “one of the first out of the gate on grid mod,” a term that covers a lot of territory, with AMI being the most prominent in most people’s minds.

“There’s how customers interface with the grid; there’s how rates are designed; there’s the automation in the distribution side of it … communications,” Nelson said. “Companies are always concerned with billing systems, and they’re pretty much the only ones who want to talk about billing systems, other than maybe competitive suppliers.

“The DPU approved some grid modernization, but we divided it into two parts: a grid-facing side and a customer-facing side,” Nelson said.

COVID-19 Challenges Affordability

“One interesting thing that came out of the pandemic was in the first track in our grid modernization docket, on energy affordability,” Gillett said.

“We had some ongoing sprints trying to tackle a few key barriers, and we had launched these sprints and were right in the middle of them when the pandemic was first really taking hold in Connecticut,” she said. “We were really adamant that our advocates for those affected groups be active participants in the sprints, and we realized that those advocates had more pressing short-term challenges serving their client populations.”

The remainder of Connecticut’s grid modernization docket is with PURA’s stakeholders now, and “we’re anxious not to lose momentum,” Gillett said.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I have any knowledge of what the long-lasting impact of COVID-19 is going to be,” Nelson said. “I think that energy is going to be affected by it. … Both Marissa and I have been looking at what is the impact to society.”

“Commercial and industrial customers, unlike in most of the other recessions we’ve seen, are uniquely impacted here,” Nelson said. “I think there’s going to be a shift in everything, and the key is, when you see that shift occurring, and you know when you’re on the other side of it, we have to be a lot more cautious and careful about selecting programs that we’re going to use ratepayer dollars on.”

“While we’re going to have to continue to try to balance ratepayer interest, as we always do, I think there’s a lot of momentum and things that could come out of our grid mod docket that would shore us up against future issues,” Gillett said.

“C&I customers will always value price, but I still maintain that reliability is core, and I don’t think anything else really comes close at the end of the day,” Nelson said. “We’re the economic regulator, but we’re also in charge of safety, and to a large degree, that’s a very interesting dilemma. FERC doesn’t really deal with the safety side of it.”

Storage Benefits

“I think of storage as having benefits for all aspects, behind the meter, in front of the meter, grid scale, customer-sited,” Gillett said. “The lack of a storage market in Connecticut has been truly to our detriment.

“Connecticut has been interesting for me because it doesn’t have some of the use cases that we were looking at when I was at the Maryland commission, and Maryland still has a lot of congestion,” she said. “Connecticut is not experiencing that, so some of the more obvious uses of storage are not there, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a million other uses that we’re hoping to get responses to in our request for program design.

“I’ve been very adamant that we’re not looking for pilots, and we’re not looking for one-offs,” Gillett said. “I think we really need a storage policy that is going to drive toward a deployment target and have all the pieces work together.”

There’s been some unfair talk about storage in environmental communities, she said.

“Articles come out and talk how storage actually increases emissions, and I always find those conversations so misguided because storage itself is just a tool,” Gillett said. “It’s going to do what we tell it to, so if it’s driving up emissions or not achieving your environmental goals, it’s because the regulators and policymakers haven’t told it how to.”

“We’re just at the beginning of understanding how storage can be deployed,” Nelson said. “In terms of [solar] distribution saturation and excess power overflow, there is precedent, and we understand how we can save and dispatch excess energy. The manner in which we’re doing that is very infantile right now, and the price signals in the market are not aligned to incent the sunk costs of buying a storage unit and developing a model that allows storage to monetize the benefit it brings, because a lot of those benefits are hard to measure.”

Solving the storage puzzle is challenging, but Nelson said he’s bullish on the “perfect technology for what we’re trying to achieve collectively for a more dynamic and responsive grid.”