Advanced Energy Perspectives

This is a guest post from AEE member CLEAResult, adapted from the version posted here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here. 

As an opportunity to save money and save energy, energy efficiency is now top of mind for customers. Therefore, understanding and adopting the latest in energy efficient products and technologies is important to the utility industry, which hosts energy efficiency programs. Thanks to new developments in technology, mobile applications, and other digital innovations, utilities have more tools than ever before to meet the demands of today’s energy-conscious consumer and business and save them money. However, reducing electricity costs for customers is at odds with utilities’ revenue goals and shareholder interests.

So how can utilities stay competitive and adapt to their customers’ shifting expectations, while also meeting revenue goals and shareholder expectations?  

In CLEAResult’s second annual Innovation Outlook report, we give utility companies something to think about when it comes to how they deliver on the promise of energy efficiency, how to stay profitable doing so, and how to change the way customers use energy to the benefit of all.

This is a guest post from AEE member AES Energy Storage and originally posted here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here. 

Whether you’re expanding an office or widening a road, gauging how much room – or capacity – you’ll need is a big challenge. You have to predict the future and guess how long your additions will accommodate your needs – whether that’s a growing staff or changing traffic patterns – so you can estimate whether it’s worth it financially.

Grid planners face similar issues when assessing how much new transmission capacity to add, such as transmission lines or substations, with the additional burden of only having a few sizes to choose from. Until recently, there has been no easy way to incrementally add capacity. It was all or nothing.

Battery-based energy storage solutions are now enabling utilities to add the right amount of capacity at a lower cost, and delivering a host of other benefits as well.

This is a guest post from AEE member Veolia North America. To learn more about Veolia, click here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here. 

Not long ago, the wastewater treatment plant was the biggest power user in municipal operations for the city of Gresham, Ore. Then, 12 years ago, the city entered into a long-term sustainability partnership with Veolia and began the process of turning the city’s energy hog into an energy asset. First step was a cogeneration system that met about half of the power needs of the plant. Five years ago, the city brought in fats, oils, and greases (FOG) from food manufacturers as an additional organic source of biogas, co-digested with sewage sludge through anaerobic digestion. It was a natural fit: the heat from the cogeneration system kept the FOG from hardening as they were processed. Five years and 9,000 gallons of biogas per day later, Gresham’s wastewater treatment plant is now “net-zero,” generating at least as much power as it uses. 

This is a guest post from AEE affiliate member Navigant. To learn more about Navigant, click here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way building technologies, business data, and analytics tools can integrate to deliver vital information. Now, IoT is going retail. Company executives and store managers can use IoT solutions to achieve important business goals, ranging from energy efficiency and sustainability to improvements in equipment performance for better customer experiences. These technologies can have a direct impact on the bottom line by keeping shoppers comfortable and giving them a new kind of shopping experience.

This is a guest post from AEE affiliate member Navigant. To learn more about Navigant, click here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here.

Disruption is a prevailing and uncompromising theme of technological innovation in the 21^st century. Technologies that can slice through preexisting layers of regulatory and business model processes to directly connect customers to the goods and services they seek are gaining traction across global markets. As a result, the regulatory compacts and constructs that have governed various forms of natural monopolies in energy markets face formidable challenges from distributed energy resources (DER). Chief among these challenges is a growing demand from customers to integrate these cutting-edge products to the electric distribution grid.

From solar photovoltaics (PV) and energy storage to demand response (DR)-enabled thermostats and electric vehicles (EVs), technologies with capabilities that were previously only provided to electric grids from supply-side resources are becoming available to the average consumer. Navigant Research expects the installed cost for PV in global markets to fall below $1.50 per watt by 2024, while the North American market for EV services and equipment is expected to grow to more than $4 billion by 2025. These trends fueling DER adoption bring with them complications for network operators, requiring nuanced coordination. This tangible convergence of DER interconnections to networks ill-suited to integrate demand-side behaviors is ground zero for DER disruption of the global energy landscape. The answer? Integrated Distributed Energy Resources (iDER) portfolios – and they’re coming.