As areas like California and Texas struggle amid wildfires, extreme freezes, high winds and other challenges, and take measures to keep the lights on, it’s worth pausing to consider what “resilient” and “reliable” grid power means from the perspective of grid planning. What, specifically, should the operators of the bulk power system do to make their grids more reliable? Do wholesale power markets need to be reformed, to internalize the costs of power shutoffs and send price signals that project developers can respond to? How can new technologies, like demand response systems and microgrids, play new roles in making grids more resilient? And at an even more fundamental level… who is the grid for, anyway? Does the grid exist to serve people, or do people exist to serve the grid?
Energy Transition Show regular Lorenzo Kristov, a grid architect of over 20 years’ experience, has been thinking deeply about these questions and shares his thoughts with us in this episode. Inverting the usual logic of grid planning, he suggests that more active participation by customers and distributed energy resources can help improve both grid resilience and reliability, while democratizing grid power and grid governance. This thoughtful, heady interview will leave even veteran grid experts with more than a few new ideas to consider!
Guest:Lorenzo Kristov is an independent consultant focusing on power system transition to integrate high levels of renewable generation and distributed energy resources (DER). From 1999 to 2017 Lorenzo worked at California ISO as a principal in market design and infrastructure policy, where he was a lead designer of the locational marginal pricing (LMP) market system the ISO implemented in 2009. Areas of expertise include: wholesale market design; DER participation in wholesale markets; coordination of transmission-distribution system operations; distribution system operator (DSO) models and distribution-level markets; microgrids and energy resilience strategies; whole-system grid architecture.
On the Web: Lorenzo’s profile on LinkedIn
Recording date: May 24, 2021
Air date: June 23, 2021
Geek rating: 9
Teaser photo credit: By NASA https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147941/extreme-winter-weather-causes-us-blackouts – https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147941/extreme-winter-weather-causes-us-blackouts, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99988811
