Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, said the university’s Utility of the Future study, scheduled for release in October, will have two major messages: “One is we have to reduce the barriers that impede an efficient and effective participation by distributed energy resources … and all resources, including DERs, should be exposed to correct economic signals, to allow DERs to respond to system conditions.”
Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Judith Judson said a comprehensive state study on energy storage will be released in the coming weeks, which will soon be followed by a request for proposals for demonstration projects. “Massachusetts has been lagging behind, currently ranked about 23rd in advanced storage (electrochemical and thermal), and we want to change that.”
Maryrose Sylvester, CEO of GE Current, a new General Electric company merging LEDs, energy efficiency services and the “industrial Internet,” discussed how data collection is driving optimal uses of energy efficiency. “Think of all the ways that people can make themselves more productive, when they have so much information. The challenge for a customer is how do you turn all of that data into something that is really usable, that tells them what to do, what to start doing, what to stop doing and to make it very actionable.”
Anthony Eggert, director of transportation for the ClimateWorks Foundation, said global electric vehicle sales reached about 1% of total sales in the fourth quarter of last year. “If we are going to meet our decarbonization goals, we have to have electric-drive vehicles as the dominant part, especially in the passenger vehicle market.”
DONG Energy’s Thomas Brostrøm said the company, which has had extensive experience developing offshore wind in Europe, sees opportunities in the U.S., where it holds federal leases for potential developments off Massachusetts and New Jersey. “We would have capacity factors in the high 20% to the low 30s [on the European projects], but that is trending upward as we’re seeing capacity factors in the higher 40s or low 50s as the newer turbines are coming online,” said Brostrøm, general manager of the Danish company’s North American operations.