IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2022 - 18

matter experts from utilities, businesses, and environmental
organizations. The groups identified solutions to address
challenges facing the state as it moved into the next stage
of electric grid modernization, including new technologies
and policies to improve the network. The NextGrid process
identified the value of DERs to the grid as a key topic. This
built on the Future Energy Jobs Act, calling for the implementation
of locational and temporal DER evaluation after
a 5% threshold of photovoltaic penetration was passed.
The 2021 Clean Energy Job Acts (SB 2408) revised this,
extending the photovoltaic incentives, creating a new
photovoltaic-plus-storage incentive, and requiring utilities
to prepare filings addressing additional avoided-grid-cost
benefits and evaluations.
Maine
In 2019, the Maine legislature passed an act to manage
electricity costs by using NWAs. Based on this law, every
IOU must produce an annual subtransmission and distribution
plan and identify forecast needs and corresponding
traditional grid upgrades. This plan must analyze system
requirements for the next five years and provide a schedule
and associated costs. Moreover, system capacity and forecast
loads by substations and circuits must be described.
Further, utilities need to perform NWA opportunity
screening for the identified needs. NWAs will be considered
if the estimated cost of a traditional grid project is more than
US$500,000. For distribution projects above that threshold,
an NWA solution will be analyzed if there is a reasonable
likelihood that it would be more cost effective than a proposed
wire project. Projects with one of the following criteria
are excluded from NWA screening:
✔ They are needed for redundant supply to a radial load.
✔ They are necessary to address maintenance, asset condition,
and safety needs.
✔ They are required to solve stability and short circuit
problems.
✔ They must be in service within one year.
Massachusetts
In February 2019, the state's Department of Public Utilities
issued two orders for storage rules that opened revenue
streams to utilities, third-party developers, and customers.
The orders clarified net metering rules for solar-plus-storage
facilities and capacity rights ownership to dispatch storage
resources. In early 2021, a bill (S.2144) was introduced in
the Massachusetts Senate, requiring every electric utility to
prepare a grid modernization plan every three years. The
plan is required to do the following:
✔ evaluate the locational benefits and costs of current
local energy resources and identify optimal areas for
local energy resources during the next 10 years, based
on reductions and increases in regional generation
capacity and demand, avoided and increased investments
in transmission and distribution infrastructure,
18
ieee power & energy magazine
safety benefits, and reliability benefits, including other
savings local energy resources provide to the grid and
avoiding costs to ratepayers
✔ provide information about the interconnection of distributed
generation via hosting capacity maps that are
accessible to the public and updated regularly
✔ update interconnection procedures for distributed
generation
✔ propose and identify locational-based incentives and
other mechanisms for the deployment of cost-effective
local energy resources that satisfy planning objectives
✔ propose cost-effective methods of coordinating programs,
incentives, and tariffs to maximize the locational
benefits and minimize the incremental costs of
local energy resources
✔ identify additional utility spending to integrate cost-effective
local energy resources into distribution planning
✔ recognize additional barriers to the deployment of
local energy resources.
Minnesota
In August 2018, the Minnesota Public Utility Commission
approved integrated distribution planning requirements
for Xcel Energy. This framework orders Xcel to develop processes
that analyze the value of DERs to the distribution
grid. The Public Utility Commission requires Xcel Energy
to file an integrated distribution planning report annually
and smaller utilities to file every two years, specifying distribution
investments five years into the future. Utilities are
to itemize nontraditional distribution projects, including
NWA analysis.
Xcel Energy filed its second integrated distribution
planning report in November 2019, indicating that in
future analyses, the utility would consider locational net
benefits. In this plan, Xcel Energy also reviewed the viability
of using a portfolio of demand response, storage,
and solar as NWAs for nine distribution system projects.
In June 2019, the Minneapolis-based Center for Energy
and Environment launched an NWA pilot in partnership
with Xcel Energy to test whether targeted energy efficiency
and demand response promotion could defer distribution
grid investments.
Nevada
Nevada lawmakers have approved several clean energy and
energy storage bills. In 2017, a bill (Senate Bill 204) directed
state regulators to consider requiring utilities to purchase
energy storage in the following years. A separate piece of
legislation (Senate Bill 145) would establish an incentive
program for energy storage within the state's solar program.
Nevada Senate Bill 146, passed in June 2017, required
Nevada Energy to submit a distributed resources plan to the
Public Utility Commission of Nevada by 1 April 2019 as an
addendum to its integrated resource plan. The plan's requirements
included the following:
march/april 2022
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2022
