SAN ANTONIO — Grid safety and security were the focus of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Alliance’s (TREIA) annual GridNEXT conference last week.

Speakers during the event Thursday addressed a variety of related topics, from protecting critical assets and safeguarding vital data, to the role renewables and microgrids will play in ensuring a more reliable and resilient grid.

TREIA board member Ingmar Sterzing, a vice president with renewable developer OnPeak Power, put things into perspective when he asked his panel, “Are you prepared to operate your business without electricity and cellphones?”

“You need a responsible plan for cybersecurity. You plan to have that event actually happen. You don’t plan for it not to happen,” Mike Allgeier, ERCOT’s director of critical infrastructure security, told attendees gathered at The International Center. “Prepare for the worst. If you don’t prepare for the worst, when the worst happens, it’ll be pretty bad. Plan for what you think is the worst, then double it.”

Allgeier warned that the “bad actors,” or hackers, operating online today are not to be underestimated.

“They’ve been around a while,” he said. “Typically, they’re dedicated and well-trained to do their job. It’s not the 15-year-old kid in the basement. They have goals and they’re measured. They have quotas.

“They’re not only looking at the big guys. They understand that if they can control a wide swath of resources, that can be just as damaging as getting into one large resource,” Allgeier said.

Speaking on the same panel, ABZ’s Trey Kirkpatrick emphasized the importance of raising awareness of cybersecurity issues among employees. He used Berkshire Hathaway’s three-strikes-and-you’re-out approach to phishing emails as an example.

“Their policy is if someone clicks on a phishing email three times, they’re gone. You don’t see that in every organization,” Kirkpatrick said.

Both Allgeier and Kirkpatrick bemoaned the difficulty of finding and retaining cybersecurity subject matter experts, with Kirkpatrick calling it “the biggest risk.”

“The consultants are getting busy; they’re highly paid, and they’re moving around,” Kirkpatrick said. “I know companies that can’t even find a cybersecurity manager, even with the money they are offering.”

Allgeier said he typically fills his cybersecurity staff with personnel that have financial and military backgrounds.

“From the financial side, because they’ve been doing this for a long time; and from the military sector, because they have been trained to fight our online enemies,” he said. “I can’t always compete with salaries the high-tech or financial firms can offer, so we try to keep them with competitive benefits and the collaborative nature of work, building the esprit de corps.”

Place for Storage, New Technologies

Panelists discussing the ability of renewable energy and smart technology to make the grid more secure and reliable suggested looking away from California, where mid-day solar energy peaks reduce demand for other sources, resulting in a “duck curve.” (See Report: Calif. ‘Duck Curve’ Growing Faster than Expected.)

“California has kind of become the sacrificial lamb,” Energy Storage Consultants CEO Judy McElroy said. “Storage is a good answer to that, but just throwing storage on your grid doesn’t make it more reliable.”

“As we integrate [battery storage and other technologies], we can make them more reliable, but there’s a cost,” said Dean Tuel, global vice president of microgrid and storage solutions sales for Aggreko. “We have a diverse portfolio of technologies we can provide at a cost the customer is willing to accept. We can accommodate this with today’s technology and reach a level of renewable penetration that gets us to the … reliability the customer is looking for.”

TREIA on Track for 50% by 2030 Goal

Buoyed by the large amount of wind and solar projects in ERCOT’s interconnection queue, Sterzing said TREIA’s goal of achieving 50% renewable energy in Texas by 2030 is coming into clearer focus.

Sterzing pointed to the 35.7 GW of wind projects and 58.6 GW of solar projects in the queue as of May as reason for hope. Only 14.3 GW and 7.6 GW of the respective wind and solar projects have signed connection agreements.

“Will it all be built? Hard to say, but that’s a huge industry movement either way,” he said. “There’s a lot of development coming into Texas. There’s certainly a lot more we can do as a state, with this kind of investment, to make Texas an energy center for the country.”

Sterzing noted Texas that has seen a “steady trajectory” over the last five years in renewable energy’s share of the fuel mix. Wind and solar energy accounted for almost 20% of ERCOT’s production in 2018. At the current rate of growth in the state, Sterzing estimated an additional 18 GW of wind energy and 39 GW of solar would help “maintain a reasonable mix and achieve the 50% goal.”

“That’s a huge, huge target, and enough to keep us all busy,” he said.

Energy Industry, Military Collaborate on Grid Security

A panel focused on defense and grid security stressed the importance of the energy industry working closely with the military.

Melissa Miller, Avangrid Renewables’ regional development manager for the central U.S., said technological improvements have led to the construction of wind farms in areas they could not have previously been built. That has only increased the conflicts seen across the country between wind facilities — which are increasingly taller — and military flight paths.

“We’re more successful with wind almost everywhere, but all of a sudden, that creates an impact with military operations,” Miller said. “It’s really important we learn about their missions and what their objectives are, especially in the lower air space. The need to collaborate is so important.”

Shanna Ramirez, CPS Energy’s chief integrated security officer, said the San Antonio utility has long enjoyed a collaborative relationship with the military, which has four major installations and 250,000 retirees in the city. Ergo, the city’s trademarked nickname, “Military City USA.”

“We’ve been really successful about keeping the military aware of how we secure our mutual facilities,” Ramirez said. “We have more people at the table, we keep buying a bigger table.”

“There’s an acknowledgement we will not solve problems alone,” said Christian Delarosa, deputy base civil engineer for Joint Base San Antonio. JBSA is composed of the Army’s Fort Sam Houston and the Lackland and Randolph Air Force bases.

“The Air Force wants to keep focus on resiliency and low costs,” Delarosa said. “We’re still interested in saving energy, but we’re now focused on resiliency and grid operations. It’s going to take industry experts and academia to look at this problem and develop solutions.”

Renewables Enjoy Positive Legislative Session

Attorney Chris Reeder, a partner at Husch Blackwell, reviewed the recent 86th Texas Legislature, painting it as a success for the renewable energy industry despite the efforts of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).

Reeder said the TPPF was at the forefront of a “sustained and aggressive and hostile campaign” against renewable energy during the recent session, which ended in May.

“They’ve made it a centerpiece of their political strategy to oppose renewable energy,” he said. “When they say, ‘Level the playing field,’ others would call that a rollback. They have been very vocal and aggressive in shooting down our success to the economy of Texas.

“Any legislation with renewable energy attached to it automatically draws some level of opposition in our state House and state Senate,” Reeder said. “That tends to misread the true situation, in which there’s much more support out there than makes its way into the chatter you see in The Dallas Morning News or the trades.”