IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021 - 29

customers to support the grid, thereby diversifying customer
options to gain value from their DERs.
SCE is taking a holistic approach to advance its policies,
processes, technologies, and tools to expand opportunities for
DERs to provide grid services. Through DER pilots, SCE tests
its strategies and technologies to enhance the integration and
management of DERs before full deployment. This article
presents key DER pilots and activities carried out by SCE in
the last few years, ranging from incorporating DERs into the
planning process to measuring their contribution to flexibility
(providing single or multiple grid services). Future operational
paradigms are also characterized.
Giving DER Flexibility an Opportunity
in the Distribution Planning Process
Rulemaking and guidance from the California Public Utility
Commission established a new framework for distribution
planning focused on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions
and enabling mass adoption of DERs. Within this framework,
SCE developed the distribution resources plan to
facilitate DER deployment at optimal locations and consequently
paved the way for addressing distribution grid
needs with DERs as providers of flexible distribution services.
Subsequent decisions and rulings from the commission
led to the development of the grid needs assessment
and distribution deferral opportunity report, which, in tandem,
identify and capture opportunities for DERs to costeffectively
defer or avoid traditional utility investments that
are planned to mitigate the forecasted deficiencies of the
distribution system.
The grid needs assessment identifies needs across the dis✔
26 million passenger electric vehicles (EVs), 900,000
medium-duty EVs, and 170,000 heavy-duty EVs
✔ almost 75% of building space and water heating needs
met with electricity.
A carbon-free future mostly powered by transmission-connected
renewables and DERs behind or in front of the meter will
increase the complexity of the systems needed to operate the
electric grid safely and effectively. Building and mobility electrification
will further increase the demand for reliable power.
These changes demand transforming the grid into a secure,
flexible, networked platform that allows customers to participate
seamlessly as grid partners, and that relies on distribution
markets to further the goals for clean, reliable, and affordable
energy. The utility of the future will plan and operate the grid
with greater precision through enhanced visibility and control
while enabling the vast integration and optimization of DERs.
As increasing numbers of Californians adopt DER technologies,
such as rooftop solar generation, energy efficiency
devices, energy storage, EVs, and demand response solutions,
the grid must enable millions of customers to provide services
to it. Utility communication with DERs (e.g., economic
signals, dispatch commands, and so on) will be required for
july/august 2021
tribution (up to 33 kV) and subtransmission (up to 115 kV)
system that will require an infrastructure upgrade or investment
to continue operating the system safely and reliably. The SCE's
grid needs assessment documents the output of the planning
process after engineers have identified needs throughout the
system, maximizing the use of existing equipment and exhausting
all of the available operational reconfigurations to balance
the loads.
The distribution deferral opportunity report documents the
alternative solutions developed to address the grid needs identified
in the grid needs assessment. The distribution deferral
opportunity report identifies SCE's planned investments that
provide one or more of four distribution services, namely,
capacity, voltage support, reliability, and resiliency; it also
catalogs candidate deferral projects based on initial deferral
screens applied to the planned investments.
The grid needs assessment and distribution deferral opportunity
report data are available in the distribution resources plan
external portal (Figure 1), an interactive web portal that provides
public access to DER hosting capacity results, locational
net benefit analysis results, downloadable data sets for DER
developers, and so on. The grid needs assessment includes
forecasted equipment deficiencies throughout the entire SCE
system and forecasted incremental demand and DER growth
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021

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