Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced interim findings
from an ongoing Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) project that
aims to demonstrate the functionality of smart inverters.
As more Californians power their lives with solar energy, energy storage
and electric vehicles, PG&E is looking to the smart inverters that will
be installed on those technologies to manage their interaction with the
grid in support of continued clean energy growth.
“We have a long history of embracing innovation and new technologies for
the benefit of our customers and the communities we serve. The smart
inverters being installed on our customers’ solar and energy storage
systems, paired with our investment in grid operations systems and
technology, show promise to facilitate distribution system reliability
and power quality in the increasingly complex grid,” said Roy Kuga, vice
president, Grid Integration and Innovation, PG&E.
A standard inverter converts power from solar panels and batteries from
its native direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC) which can
be used on site or fed into the power grid. A smart inverter is a more
sophisticated version of an inverter that makes autonomous decisions
that can help maintain grid stability, reliability and power quality. In
the near future, smart inverters will be required to have the capability
to receive remote operation instructions and communicate measurements
and status. Some solar installations already have smart inverters with
these advanced capabilities.
California’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) began requiring smart
inverters on all new solar interconnections starting September 8, 2017,
through the California Public Utility Commission’s Rule
21 tariff. As smart inverter standards and requirements continue to
evolve, PG&E can use demonstration projects like this one to explore how
smart inverters on customers’ solar installations function and interact
with the grid.
Completed Project Activities
PG&E recently published an interim
report on project activities and findings to date, along with
planned next steps.
PG&E’s Grid Integration and Innovation group, which is leading the
project, has found that smart inverters can be beneficial. As solar has
become more ubiquitous in California over the past decade, the grid has
started to experience reliability and power quality issues. Smart
inverters have the potential to prevent the solar systems from
contributing to voltage fluctuations and adverse impacts on protection
systems due to reverse power flow. The demonstration has also shown that
more work and investments are needed to standardize the technology and
improve communications reliability. The ongoing project will next test
the capabilities of smart inverters on a different type of electrical
distribution circuit with higher solar penetration.
PG&E believes that with additional investments that enable grid planning
and operations to achieve better utility monitoring, visibility, and
communication capabilities, smart inverters have the potential to become
an important tool in the integration of clean energy into California’s
electric grid.
Ongoing Project Activities
Working with Turlock-based JKB
Energy, PG&E is testing smart inverter capabilities on
commercial-scale solar installations for agricultural customers. These
installations are all connected to the same distribution line in Merced
County, and this particular circuit already has a high penetration of
solar-generated electricity and has experienced problems as a result of
the amount of solar currently installed. The project includes installing
smart inverters to prevent the inverter from contributing to voltage
issues, ensure greater electric reliability, and facilitate the
continued integration of additional solar. JKB Energy installed and
maintains the customer-owned solar generating stations.
“At JKB Energy, we place a heavy emphasis on paying close attention to
the details that can make or break a project. In working with PG&E to
install smart inverters for some of our shared customers, we have the
opportunity to enhance our customers’ experience with a solution that
integrates more clean energy onto the grid, ultimately resulting in
greater safety, reliability, and affordability for our customers,” said
Bob Hansen, vice president and chief operating officer, JKB Energy.
This project is funded by PG&E customers through EPIC - a program that
enables California investor-owned utilities to demonstrate new and novel
technologies and evaluate how they support safety, reliability, and
affordability objectives for the benefit of their customers. To learn
more about EPIC, visit www.pge.com/epic.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of
the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and
Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/
and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
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