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DER


Watt’s Up With Backup Generators?

September 30, 2020

Simplifying back-up generation rules, permitting, and demand response participation.

Renewables are here and continue to displace traditional coal resources on the grid. Battery storage is compelling and becoming more cost-effective — but it is still not a full-proof, scalable solution. Utilities are battling the challenges of grid intermittency amidst infrastructure challenges to support renewable penetration. All of this to say, the tried-and-true back-up generator is still the go-to resource when it comes to energy resilience and still remains a misunderstood energy resource.

Join CPower’s back up generation and demand response experts Arusyak Ghukasyan and Michael Mindell for this 30-minute panel to learn and understand topics including:

  • How generators can earn revenue for your organization
  • The rules and policies for BUGs at the federal, state, and local level
  • Common myths about using BUGs for ‘non-emergency’ situations like demand response and testing under load
  • What industries, markets, and programs are more favorable to BUGs for revenue
  • How to fund and finance generator upgrades or replacements

The Push for Renewables in New York

April 10, 2019

One of the Reforming Energy Vision’s primary goals includes renewable sources generating 70% of the state’s electricity by 2030. To do that, the New York grid seeks to implement distributed energy resources into its fuel mix.

How might New York’s energy market be redesigned to incorporate DERs like solar, energy storage, and others?

NYISO’s proposed changes meet opposition

In 2018, the NYISO proposed changes to the ICAP Capacity Market for how long a resource must be able to run to be eligible to be paid the full value of capacity.

Using the results of a study on energy-limited resources by GE Consulting (GE), the NYISO initially proposed that resources would need to be able to run for 8-hours in order to obtain full capacity value. The NYSIO then proposed it would allow resources that can perform for shorter durations to be paid a fractional portion of the capacity value as follows:

8-hrs=100%

6-hrs = 75%

4-hrs = 50%,

2-hrs =25%

A group of demand response and energy storage providers, including CPower, challenged the GE study’s findings.

A formal review of the GE study by Astrapé Consulting revealed “several flaws in the assumptions and methodology that influenced the study results to show a decreased capacity value for shorter-duration resources than would likely be expected.”

Skepticism of the GE study’s results quickly spread among key New York energy stakeholders, including DR providers, energy storage developers, C&I customers, environmental groups and various trade associations.

These stakeholders submitted a joint letter to the NYISO executive team and board of directors requesting “all market design changes relating to the GE Study results (including any changes to the SCR program) be removed from the DER Roadmap.”

So where does that leave New York?

Potential changes in the New York Energy Market

While there is an ongoing debate about the future of New York’s capacity market, there are no major regulations or market design changes yet announced to take effect in 2019. That could change pending the outcome of an April vote (more than a month away as of this writing) among New York’s energy stakeholders.  

That means, for example, the Special Case Resource (SCR) demand response program will continue to operate under its current parameters, including a four-hour duration requirement.

As far as the DER wholesale market goes, New York is in wait-and-see mode. DERs, especially battery storage, and renewable energy sources are a key component of the REV’s drive toward New York’s energy future.

New York, like several other US energy markets, is faced with the question of how to value distributed energy resources in its marketplace.

The question of DER valuation is being debated by the NYISO and various energy stakeholders in the state. As of this writing, there is no definitive timetable for when the debate will conclude and regulations for DER valuation will be enacted.

Energy Storage

New York has taken its place alongside California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts as a first-mover in establishing energy storage targets.

In June 2018, Governor Cuomo announced an energy storage roadmap that set New York’s storage target for 1,500 MW by 2025. According to the roadmap, that ambitious goal could elevate to 3,000 MW by 2030.  

At the state level, New York has recognized the need to fund storage projects instead of subsidizing them. Last June, Governor Cuomo committed $200 million from the New York Green Bank to fund storage investments that will help integrate renewable energy onto New York’s grid.

Funding opportunities for storage abound with plenty of state money being made available for storage development.

But without certainty on the wholesale market side and established rules concerning dual participation between markets, meeting the state’s ambitious storage goals will continue to have its challenges.

The key energy players in New York will need to resolve these issues before any substantial investment from the private sector will take a position on energy storage. The NYISO is targeting April 17, 2019, for a vote on market design to accommodate DER integration into its wholesale markets.


This post was excerpted from the 2019 State of Demand-Side Energy Management in North America, a market-by-market analysis of the issues and trends the experts at CPower feel organizations like yours need to know to make better decisions about your energy use and spend.

CPower has taken the pain out of painstaking detail, leaving a comprehensive but easy-to-understand bed of insights and ideas to help you make sense of demand-side energy’s quickly-evolving landscape.

Get Your Copy

Has California finally solved “The Duck Curve?”

California experiences a daily spike in energy demand in the early evening when renewable sources like solar go offline and residents come home from work and increase their energy consumption by flipping on their air conditioning, turning on their lighting, doing laundry, charging electronic devices, and engaging in other energy-consuming activities.

When charted on a graph (see picture), the shape of California’s daily electrical consumption resembles a duck. Analysts have noted the duck’s belly is getting fatter with each passing year, meaning the evening net load ramp when flexible resources are needed to account for the spike is becoming more extreme.

A Steady Diet of Storage

The duck’s belly may not get fatter in 2019, but it’s still going to be heavy.

To help alleviate grid stress associated with evening load ramp, CAISO is developing a load-shifting product under the third phase of CAISO’s Energy Storage Distributed Energy Resource (ESDER) that would be the state’s first product that will pay a resource to consume energy to soak up excess generation during negative pricing periods.

CAISO’s load-shift program embodies California’s desire to bring clean resources to the forefront of grid reliability by storing excess clean energy and making it available for future use.

The program, championed by the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) among other energy storage companies, also aims to reduce the number of solar curtailments needed to offset the ill effects of negative pricing caused by a large solar surplus on CAISO’s system.   

The two big questions on the minds of organizations that have implemented or are thinking of implementing energy storage are:

  1. When will the CAISO’s load shifting product be available for participation?
  2. How will these storage resources be valued in the wholesale market?

The short answer to the first question is the program is currently going through the FERC approval process and is scheduled to go into effect in November 2020.

As far as how storage will be valued in the wholesale market? It’s too early to tell right now, but expect California to continue to work to provide value for all the services storage can provide.


This post was excerpted from the 2019 State of Demand-Side Energy Management in North America, a market-by-market analysis of the issues and trends the experts at CPower feel organizations like yours need to know to make better decisions about your energy use and spend.

CPower has taken the pain out of painstaking detail, leaving a comprehensive but easy-to-understand bed of insights and ideas to help you make sense of demand-side energy’s quickly-evolving landscape.

Get Your Copy of the 2020 book

Webinar (2/14/2019): Dispatchable Dollars: How Demand Response Creates Revenue Opportunities For DER

January 28, 2019

Distributed Energy Resources (DER), including storage, are proliferating the world of energy management in a big way. Today, these assets are primarily implemented to provide operational resilience and demand management; however, additional opportunities are rapidly evolving.

As intelligent application of DER assets increases for commercial and government sectors, the opportunity to leverage these same assets into revenue generating channels also increases.

Through programs like demand response, your DER assets become vehicles for saving and earning, which increases ROI, shortens project payback periods or helps fund other energy projects, all while providing greater support for grid reliability.

Join DER and storage experts from CPower Energy Management and Stem and learn about:

  • The evolution of DER as a mainstream asset
  • Market drivers for DER growth and opportunity
  • Planning intelligent DER and Demand Response integration
  • How commercial orgs have added 30-50% to the value of DER projects by using flexible infrastructure, such as storage, to participate in DR programs like DRAM in California
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