The fourth semester of the Energy Solutions Forum welcomed Jon Wellinghoff, the former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Nevada’s first Advocate for Customers of Public Utilities. Today, Wellinghoff is the Chief Executive Officer of GridPolicy, Inc., a consulting firm focused on energy policy and electric grid operations. Wellinghoff’s talk centered on grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to improve electricity delivery to users.
According to Wellinghoff, GETs are modern devices, usually digital, that can be put into the electric grid to make the system work more efficiently.
“The grid is a very, very complicated machine that is operated by literally hundreds of operators,” Wellinghoff said. “If we're going to advance to the point of making the grid a low-carbon, no-carbon energy delivery system, we're going to need to make it work as efficiently as possible.”
Standard methods for improving grid efficiency such as installing new transmission lines work well and will continue to be needed, Wellinghoff said, but they can be expensive and time consuming. He advocates that GETs will be crucial to meet demand and better deliver energy services.
While many types of GETs are available on the market, uptake of the technologies has been inhibited, Wellinghoff said, by the incentive systems utility companies face. He hopes that policy will be adjusted that would motivate utility companies to install GETs. In other countries, uptake of GETs is higher due to different models of electrical service provision.
As sources of renewable energy, including variable sources like solar and wind, continue to take the place of the more stable energy supply of fossil fuels, greater flexibility is needed in the grid to better allocate energy delivery. Wellinghoff also emphasized that regardless of the source of power to the electrical grid, whether fossil fuels or renewable energy, GETs can enhance the grid’s energy efficiency.
“They are sort of resource-agnostic with respect to the type of resources that are being delivered,” Wellinghoff said.
Some power lines are subject to electron losses due to congestion in the lines, where too much energy is being trafficked on the line. GETs can relieve that congestion by increasing the rating on the line or pushing power to other lines, so that clean energy isn’t wasted when energy allocations on power lines aren’t optimal.
Wellinghoff is also interested in how consumer batteries can be used to store energy that can be redirected to the line, should the consumer be willing to contribute that energy. GETs can also help connect consumer-contributed energy to the grid.
At the beginning of September, the Energy Solutions Forum continued into the second half of its second year. The Energy Solutions Forum was started to increase opportunities for conversations and collaborations toward finding sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. The forum is sponsored by College of Science Advisory Council member and adjunct faculty member Mick Hitchcock and is free and open to the public. There are three Energy Solutions Forums held each semester, on the first Wednesday of the month. More information about registration and upcoming speakers is available on the Energy Solutions Forum website.
