By Andrew Bishop, MBA Candidate, UMass Boston

What are the challenges and opportunities of upgrading the power grid to cope with growing supplies of distributed, renewable, and intermittent power from solar, wind, and other clean energy sources? On October 28, 2014, the Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Regional Competitiveness (SERC) at UMass Boston hosted a panel presentation and discussion on the Smart Grid and Clean Energy. The event featured Chris Ashley, Senior Director of EnerNOC’s Utility Solutions, and Peter Zschokke, Director of Regulatory Strategy for National Grid, and was facilitated by Tal Levy, a consultant and graduate of the Technology and Policy Master’s program at MIT. Over 100 students, faculty, and local business representatives attended this event,

Peter Zschokke began the event by discussing the need to upgrade the U.S. electricity grid to incorporate information technology and meet 21st-century needs for clean, reliable, yet affordable power. Rapid change is being driven by technological and societal change, including concerns about climate change and power reliability. Society presently is more than ever dependent on energy, yet it is not a priority in the minds of consumers. Zschoke explained, “A major issue today is the type of energy grid we face. We have a one-way flow of energy from generation to consumers… This is slowly but surely changing. As distributed generation rises in popularity, it’s no longer a one-way flow, but actually, a two-way flow, and the grid has got to change dramatically.” A major challenge facing utilities such as National Grid is the peak demand during the day (typically between morning and evening) as well as during the year. During these peak times, utilities must have the capacity to produce additional energy, which is very expensive. The current energy grid does not allow for efficiencies and often results in over a generation of energy in order to be prepared to meet peak demand. The problem of matching load demand with supply is exacerbated as renewables penetrate the grid.

 “The Smart Grid, on the other hand, has the potential to manage loads, manage renewable generation, through that period of time from about 8am in the morning to 9pm at night – to actually lower the overall demand in New England and save costs at the wholesale level,” explained Zschokke. He described the ultimate goal of the Smart Grid or Integrated Grid – to manage how renewable generation can be utilized in a way that integrates the demand and production relationship. Real-time pricing and decentralized network architecture are key. The Smart Grid can produce a number of benefits both to consumers and producers of energy, such as increased reliability, improved demand response, increased utilization of generation capacity, increased utilization of renewable and customer-generated energy (wind/solar power), and the ultimate benefit of overall increase in power grid efficiencies and cost savings.

In the discussion that followed, event attendees raised questions about the rising cost of energy for consumers, the need for business and policy innovations, and the education of consumers in order to advance smart grid technologies. Zschokke shared his long-term vision of consumers paying for service rather than for electricity use, similar to the way they pay for their smartphones today. Such an approach could help change the incentives for utilities and allow them to deliver energy in a more efficient and sustainable way while encouraging conservation and participation by consumers.